I came out of the bathroom, naked, and when Franny saw me, she covered her head with the sheet and said, “Jesus God.” I slipped into bed beside her and she turned her back to me and began to giggle.
“Your balls are all wet,” she said.
“I dried myself!” I said.
“You missed your balls,” she said.
“Nothing like wet balls,” I said, and Franny and I laughed as if we were crazy. We were.
“I love you,” she tried to tell me, but she was laughing too hard.
“I want you,” I told her, but I was laughing so hard that I sneezed—right in the middle of telling her that I wanted her—and that broke us up for a while longer. It was like that as long as she kept her back to me and we lay together like the stereotypical love spoons, but when she turned to me, when she lay on top of me with her breasts against my chest when she scissored her legs around me—everything changed. If it had been too funny when we started, now it was too serious, and we couldn’t stop. The first time we made love, we were in a more or less conventional position—“nothing too Tantric, please,” Franny had asked me. And when it was over, she said, “Well, that was okay. Not great, but nice—right?”
“Well, it was better than ‘nice’—for me,” I said. “But not quite ‘great’—I agree.”
“You agree,” Franny repeated. She shook her head, she touched me with her hair. “Okay,” she whispered. “Get ready for great.”
At one point, I must have held her too tightly. She said, “Please don’t hurt me.”
I said, “Don’t be frightened.”
She said, “I am, just a little.”
“I am—a lot,” I said.
It is improper to describe making love to one’s sister. Does it suffice to say that it became “great,” and it got even greater? And later it grew worse, of course—later we got tired. About four o’clock in the afternoon Lilly knocked discreetly on the door.
“Is that a maid?” Franny called.
“No, it’s me,” Lilly said. “I’m not a maid, I’m a writer.”
“Go away and come back in an hour,” Franny said.
“Why?” Lilly asked.
“I’m writing something,” Franny said.
“No, you’re not,” Lilly said.
“I’m trying to grow!” Franny said.
“Okay,” Lilly said. “Keep passing the open windows,” she added.
In a sense, of course, Franny was writing something; she was the author of how our relationship would turn out—she took a mother’s responsibility for it. She went too far—she made love to me too much. She made me aware that what was between us was all too much.
“I still want you,” she murmured to me. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. When I entered her, she winced.
“Are you sore?” I whispered.
“Of course I’m sore!” she said. “But you better not stop. If you stop, I’ll kill you,” Franny told me. She would have, too, I realized later. In a way—if I had stayed in love with her—she would have been the death of me; we would have been the death of each other. But she simply overdid it; she knew exactly what she was doing.
“We better stop,” I whispered to her. It was almost five o’clock.
“We better not stop,” Franny said fiercely.
“But you’re sore,” I protested.
“I want to be sorer,” Franny said. “Are you sore?” she asked me.
“A little,” I admitted.
“I want you a lot sore,” Franny said. “Top or bottom?” she asked me grimly.
When Lilly knocked at the door again, I was on the verge of imitating Screaming Annie; if there’d been a new bridge around, I could have cracked it.
“Come back in an hour!” Franny yelled.
“It’s seven o’clock,” said Lilly. “I’ve been away for three hours!”
“Go have dinner with Frank!” Franny suggested.
“I had lunch with Frank!” Lilly cried.
“Go have dinner with Father!” Franny said.
“I don’t even want to eat,” Lilly said. “I’ve got to write—it’s time to grow.”
“Take a night off!” Franny said.
“The whole night?” Lilly asked.
“Give me three more hours,” Franny said. I groaned quietly. I didn’t think I had three more hours left in me.
“Aren’t you getting hungry, Franny?” Lilly said.
“There’s always room service,” Franny said. “And I’m not hungry, anyway.”
But Franny was insatiable; her hunger for me would save us both.
“No more, Franny,” I begged her. It was about nine o’clock, I think. It was so dark I couldn’t see anymore.
“But you love me, don’t you?” she asked me, her body like a whip—her body was a barbell that was too heavy for me.
At ten o’clock I whispered to her, “For God’s sake, Franny. We’ve got to stop. We’re going to hurt each other, Franny.”
“No, my love,” she whispered. “That’s exactly what we’re not going to do: hurt each other. We’re going to be just fine. We’re going to have a good life,” she promised me, taking me into her—again. And again.
“Franny, I can’t,” I whispered to her. I felt absolutely blind with pain; I was as blind as Freud, as blind as Father. And it must have hurt Franny more than it hurt me.
“Yes you can, my love,” Franny whispered. “Just once more,” she urged me. “I know you’ve got it in you.”
“I’m finished, Franny,” I told her.
“Almost finished,” Franny corrected me. “We can do it just once more,” she said. “After this,” she told me, “we’re both finished with it. This is the last time, my love. Just imagine trying to live every day like this,” Franny said, pressing against me, taking my last breath away. “We’d go crazy,” Franny said. “There’s no living with this,” she whispered. “Come on and finish it,” she said in my ear. “Once more, my love. Last time!” she cried to me.
“Okay!” I cried to her. “Here I come.”
“Yes, yes, my love,” Franny said; I felt her knees lock against my spine. “Hello, good-bye, my love,” she whispered. “There!” she cried, when she felt me shaking. “There, there,” she said, soothingly. “That’s it, that’s all she wrote,” she murmured. “That’s the end of it. Now we’re free. Now that’s over.”
She helped me to the bathtub. The water stung me like rubbing alcohol.
“Is that your blood or mine?” I asked Franny, who was trying to save the bed—now that she had saved us.
“It doesn’t matter, my love,” Franny said cheerfully. “It washes away.”
“This is a fairy tale,” Lilly would write—of our family’s whole life. I agree with her; Iowa Bob would have agreed with her, too. “Everything is a fairy tale!” Coach Bob would have said. And even Freud would have agreed with him—both Freuds. Everything is a fairy tale.
Lilly arrived coincidentally with the room service cart and the bewildered New York foreigner who delivered our multi-course meal, and several bottles of wine, at about eleven in the evening.
“What are you celebrating?” Lilly asked Franny and me.
“Well, John just finished a long run,” Franny said, laughing.
“You shouldn’t run in the park at night, John,” Lilly said, worriedly.
“I ran up Fifth Avenue,” I said. “It was perfectly safe.”
“Perfectly safe,” Franny said, bursting out laughing.