“Keep passing the open windows, my dear,” my father will tell just about anyone. “That’s the important thing, dear,” he adds. No doubt it is Lilly who lends such authority to my father’s advice. He was always good at advising us children—even when he knew absolutely nothing about what was wrong. “Maybe especially when he knows absolutely nothing,” Frank says. “I mean, he still doesn’t know I’m queer and he gives me good advice all the time.” What a knack!
“Okay, okay,” Franny said to me on the phone, just last winter, just after the big snow. “I didn’t call you to hear the ins and outs of every rape in Maine—not this time, kid,” Franny told me. “Do you still want a baby?”
“Of course I do,” I told her. “I’m trying to convince Susie of it, every day.”
“Well,” Franny said, “how’d you like a baby of mine?”
“But you don’t want a baby, Franny,” I reminded her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean Junior and I got a little sloppy,” Franny said. “And rather than do the modern thing, we thought we knew the perfect mother and father for a baby.”
“Especially these days, man,” Junior said, on his end of the phone. “I mean, Maine may be the last hideout.”
“Every kid should grow up in a weird hotel, don’t you agree?” Franny asked.
“What I thought, man,” said Junior Jones, “was that every kid should have at least one parent who does nothing. I don’t mean to insult you, man,” Junior said to me, “but you’re just a perfect sort of caretaker. You know what I mean?”
“He means, you look after everybody,” Franny said, sweetly. “He means, it’s kind of like your role. You’re a perfect father.”
“Or a mother, man,” Junior added.
“And when Susie’s got a baby around, perhaps she’ll see the light,” Franny said.
“Maybe she’ll get brave enough to give it a shot, man,” said Junior Jones. “So to speak,” he added, and Franny howled on her end of the phone. They’d obviously been cooking this phone call up together, for quite some time.
“Hey!” Franny said on the phone. “Cat got your tongue? Are you there? Hello, hello!”
“Hey, man,” said Junior Jones. “You passed out or something?”
“Has a bear got your balls?” Franny asked me. “I’m asking you, do you want my baby?”
“That’s not a frivolous question, man,” said Junior Jones.
“Yes or no, kid?” Franny said. “I love you, you know,” she added. “I wouldn’t have a baby for just anybody, you know, kid.” But I couldn’t speak, I was so happy.
“I’m offering you nine fucking months of my life! I’m offering you nine months of my beautiful body, kid!” Franny teased me. “Take it or leave it!”
“Man!” cried Junior Jones. “Your sister, whose body is desired by millions, is offering to change her shape for you. She’s willing to look like a fucking Coke bottle just to give you a baby, man. I don’t know exactly how I’m going to put up with it,” he added, “but we both love you, you know. What do you say? Take it or leave it.”
“I love you!” Franny added to me, fiercely. “I’m trying to give you what you need, John,” she told me.
But Susie the bear took the phone from me. “For Christ’s sake,” she said to Franny and Junior, “you wake us up with what I’m sure is another fucking rape and now you’ve got him all red in the face and unable to speak! What the fuck is going on this morning, anyway?”
“If Junior and I have a baby,” Franny asked Susie, “will you and John take care of it?”
“You bet your sweet ass, honey,” said my good Susie the bear.
And so the matter was decided. We’re still waiting. Leave it to Franny to take longer than anybody else. “Leave it to me, man,” says Junior Jones. “This baby’s going to be so big it needs a little more time in the cooker than most.”
He must be right, because Franny’s been carrying my baby for almost ten months now. “She’s big enough to play for the Browns,” Junior Jones complains; I call him every night for a progress report.
“Jesus God,” Franny says to me. “I just lie in bed all day, waiting to explode. I’m so bored. The things I suffer for you, my love,” she tells me—and we share a private laugh over that.
Susie goes around singing “Any Day Now,” and Father is lifting more and more weight; Father is weight lifting with a frenzy these days. He is convinced the baby will be born a weight lifter, and Father says he’s got to get in shape to handle it. And all the rape crisis women are being very patient with me—about the way I lunge for the phone when it rings (toward either phone). “It’s just the hot line,” they tell me. “Relax.”
“It’s probably just another rape, honey,” Susie reassures me. “It’s not your baby. Calm down.”
It’s not at all that I’m anxious to discover if it will be a boy or a girl. For once I agree with Frank. It doesn’t matter. Nowadays, of course, with the precautionary tests they take—especially with a woman Franny’s age—they already know the sex of the child; or someone knows. Not Franny—she didn’t want to know. Who wants to know such things in advance? Who doesn’t know that half of pleasure lies in the wonder of anticipation?
“Whatever it is, it’s going to be bored,” Frank says.
“Bored, Frank!” Franny howls. “How dare you say my baby will be bored?”
But Frank is just expressing a typical New York City opinion of growing up in Maine. “If the baby grows up in Maine,” Frank insists, “it will have to be bored.”
But I point out to Frank that life is never boring in the Hotel New Hampshire. Not in the lighthearted first Hotel New Hampshire, not in the darkness of the dream that was the second Hotel New Hampshire, and not in our third Hotel New Hampshire, either—not in the great hotel we have at last become. No one is bored. And Frank finally agrees; he is a frequent and ever-welcome guest here, after all. He takes over the library on the second floor the way Junior Jones dominates the barbells in the ballroom when he is visiting, the way Franny’s beauty graces every room when she is here—the good Maine air and the cold Maine sea: Franny graces it all. I fully expect that Franny’s child will have a similar good influence.
To comfort her, I tried to read Franny a Donald Justice poem over the phone, the one called “To a Ten-Months’ Child.”
Late arrival, no
One would think of blaming you
For hesitating so.
Who, setting his hand to knock
At a door so strange as this one,
Might not draw back?
“Hold it right there,” Franny interrupted me. “No more fucking Donald Justice, please. I’ve heard enough Donald Justice poems to get pregnant from them, or at least sick to my stomach.”
But Donald Justice is right, as usual. Who wouldn’t hesitate to come into this world? Who wouldn’t put off this fairy tale as long as possible? Already, you see, Franny’s child is indicating a remarkable insight, a rare sensitivity.
And yesterday it snowed; in Maine we learn to take weather personally. Susie was investigating the alleged rape of a waitress in Bath, and I was worried about her driving back in the storm, but Susie was safely home before dark and we both said how this storm reminded us of the big snow of last winter, of the day Franny called to tell us about her coming gift.