The Hotel New Hampshire

'Honestly, your language,' Mother said -- repeatedly, to us all.

Frank had taken to peeing against the trash barrels at the delivery entrance in the morning; he claimed he could never get to the bathroom when he wanted to. I went upstairs and used the bathroom attached to Iowa Bob's room, and used the weights there, too, of course.

'What a racket to wake up to!' old Bob complained. 'I never thought this is how retirement would be. Listening to someone peeing and weight-lifting. What an alarm clock!'

'You like to get up early, anyway,' I told him.

'It's not when that I mind,' said the old coach. 'It's how.'

And we slipped through November that way -- a freak snowfall early in the month: it really should have been rain, I knew. What did it mean that it wasn't rain? I wondered, thinking of Ronda Ray and her dayroom.

It was a dry November.

Egg had a run of ear infections; he seemed partially deaf most of the time.

'Egg, what did you do with my green sweater?' Franny asked.

'What?' Egg said.

'My green sweater!' Franny screamed.

'I don't have a green sweater,' Egg said.

'It's my green sweater!' Franny shouted. 'He dressed his bear in it yesterday -- I saw it,' Franny told Mother. 'And now I can't find it.'

'Egg, where's your bear?' Mother asked.

'Franny doesn't have a bear,' Egg said. That's my bear.'

'Where's my running hat?' I asked Mother. 'It was on the radiator in the hall last night.'

'Egg's bear is probably wearing it,' Frank said. 'And he's out doing wind sprints.'

'What?' Egg said.

Lilly also had medical problems. We had our annual physicals just before Thanksgiving and our family doctor -- an old geezer named Dr. Blaze, whose fire, Franny remarked, was almost out -- discovered during a routine check that Lilly hadn't grown in a year. Not a pound, not a fraction of an inch. She was exactly the same size she'd been when she was nine, which was not much bigger than she'd been at eight -- or (checking the records) at seven.

'She's not growing?' Father asked.

'I've said so, for years,' Franny said. 'Lilly doesn't grow -- she just is.'

Lilly seemed unimpressed by the analysis; she shrugged. 'So I'm small,' she said. 'Everyone's always saying so. So what's the matter with being small?'

'Nothing, dear,' Mother said. 'You can be as small as you want, but you should be growing -- just a little.'

'She's going to be one of those who shoots up all at once,' said Iowa Bob, but even he looked doubtful. Lilly didn't impress you as the sort who would ever 'shoot up.'

We made her stand back to back with Egg; at six, Egg was almost as big as Lilly at ten, and he certainly looked more solid.

'Stand still!' Lilly said to Egg. 'Stop standing on your toes!'

'What?' said Egg.

'Stop standing on your toes, Egg!' Franny said.

'They're my toes!' Egg said.

'Maybe I'm dying,' Lilly said, and everyone shivered, especially Mother.