The Hotel New Hampshire

'Who are you talking to?' Father called.

'No one! Just a drunk!' I said.

'Jesus God,' said Father, 'A drunk isn't no one!'

'I can handle it!' I called.

'Wait till I get dressed,' Father said. 'Jesus God.'

'Get going!' I yelled at the man in the white dinner jacket.

'Goodbye! Goodbye!' the man called, happily waving to me from the bottom step of the Hotel New Hampshire. 'I had a wonderful time!'

The letter, of course, was from Freud. I knew that, and I wanted to see what it said before I let my father see it. I wanted to talk with Franny about it, for hours -- and even with Mother -- before I let Father see it. But there wasn't time. The letter was brief and to the point.

IF YOU GOT THIS, THEN YOU WENT TO HARVARD LIKE YOU PROMISED ME [Freud wrote]. YOU GOOD BOY, YOU!

'Good night! God bless you!' cried the man in the white dinner jacket. But he would walk no farther than the perimeter of light; where the darkness of Elliot Park began, he stopped and waved.

I flicked off the light so that if Father came, Father couldn't spot the apparition in formal attire.

'I can't see!' the drunk wailed, and I turned the light on again.

'Get out of here or I'll beat the shit out of you!' I screamed at him.

'That's no way to handle it' I heard Father yelling.

'Good night, bless you all!' cried the man; he was still in the circle of light when I cut the light off him, again, and he made no protest. I kept the light off. I finished Freud's letter.

I FINALLY GOT A SMART BEAR [Freud wrote]. IT MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE. I HAD A GOOD HOTEL GOING, BUT I GOT OLD. IT COULD STILL BE A GREAT HOTEL [Freud added], IF YOU AND MARY COME HELP ME RUN IT. I GOT A SMART BEAR, BUT I NEED A SMART HARVARD BOY LIKE YOU, TOO!

Father stormed into the wretched lobby of the Hotel New Hampshire; in his slippers he stumbled over a beer bottle, which he kicked, and his bathrobe flapped in the wind from the open door.

'He's gone,' I said to Father. 'Just some drunk.' But Father snapped on the outside light -- and there, waving, on the rim of the light, was the man in the white dinner jacket. 'Goodbye!' he called, hopefully. 'Goodbye! Good luck! Goodbye!' The effect was stunning: the man in the white dinner jacket stepped out of the light and was gone -- as gone as if he were gone to sea -- and my father gaped into the darkness after him.

'Hello!' Father screamed. 'Hello? Come back! Hello?'

'Goodbye! Good luck! Goodbye!' called the voice of the man in the white dinner jacket, and my father stood staring into the darkness until the wind chilled him and he shivered in his bathrobe and slippers; he let me pull him inside.

Like any storyteller, I had the power to end the story, and I could have. But I didn't destroy Freud's letter; I gave it to Father, while the vision of the man in the white dinner jacket was still upon him. I handed over Freud's letter -- like any storyteller, knowing (more or less) where we would all be going.

7 Sorrow Strikes Again

Sabrina Jones, who taught me how to kiss -- whose deep and mobile mouth will have a hold on me, always -- found the man who could fathom her teeth-in-or-out mystery; she married a lawyer from the same firm in which she was a secretary and had three healthy children ('Bang, Bang, Bang,' as Franny would say).

Bitty Tuck, who fainted while diaphragming herself -- whose wondrous breasts and modern ways would, one day, seem not nearly as unique as they seemed to me in 1956 -- survived her encounter with Sorrow; in fact, I heard (not long ago) that she is still unmarried, and still a party girl.

And a man named Frederick Worter, who was only a hair over four feet tall, and forty-one years old, and who was better known to our family as 'Fritz' -- whose circus, called Fritz's Act, was an advance booking for a summer that we looked forward to with curiosity and dread -- bought the first Hotel New Hampshire from my father in the winter of 1957.

'For a son, I'll bet,' Franny said. But we children never knew how much Father sold the Hotel New Hampshire for; since Fritz's Act was the only advance booking for the summer of 1957, my father had written to Fritz first -- warning the diminutive circus king of our family's move to Vienna.

'Vienna?' Mother kept muttering, and shaking her head at my father. 'What do you know about Vienna?'

'What did I know about motorcycles?' Father asked. 'Or bears? Or hotels?'

'And what have you learned?' Mother asked him, but my father had no doubt. Freud had said that a smart bear made all the difference.

'I know that Vienna isn't Dairy, New Hampshire,' Father said to Mother; and he apologized to Fritz of Fritz's Act -- saying that he was putting the Hotel New Hampshire up for sale, and that the circus might need to seek other lodgings. I don't know if the circus called Fritz's Act made my father a good offer, but it was the first offer, and Father took it.