“Come on, get in,” I said to her, and Lilly crawled into bed with Franny and me.
“We’re going to move to a hotel,” Lilly said.
“Not quite,” said Franny.
But they seemed to be talking about something else downstairs at the dining table. Coach Bob was angry with my Father, again—for the same old thing, it seemed: for never being satisfied, as Bob put it, for living in the future. For always making plans for the next year instead of just living, moment by moment.
“But he can’t help it,” my mother was saying; she always defended my father from Coach Bob.
“You’ve got a wonderful wife, and a wonderful family,” Iowa Bob was telling my father. “You’ve got this big old house—an inheritance! You didn’t even have to pay for it! You’ve got a job. So what if the pay’s not great—what do you need money for? You’re a lucky man.”
“I don’t want to be a teacher,” Father said quietly, which meant he was angry again. “I don’t want to be a coach. I don’t want my kids to go to a school this bad. It’s a hick town, and a floundering school full of rich kids with problems; their parents send them here in a desperate effort to arrest their already considerable sophistication—run-amok sophistication on the part of the kids, run-amok hickness on the part of the school and the town. It’s the worst of both worlds.”
“But if you just spent more time with the kids, now,” Mother said, quietly, “and worried a little less about where they’re all going to be in a few years.”
“The future again!” said Iowa Bob. “He lives in the future! First it was all the travelling—all so he could go to Harvard. So he went to Harvard, then, as fast as he could—so he could be through with it. For what? For this job, which he’s done nothing but complain about. Why doesn’t he enjoy it?”
“Enjoy this?” Father said, “You don’t enjoy it, do you?”
We could imagine our grandfather, Coach Bob, fuming; fuming was how he ended most arguments with my father, who was quicker than Iowa Bob; when Bob felt outwitted, but still right, he fumed. Franny and Lilly and I could imagine his knotty, bald head smoldering. It was true that he had no higher regard for the Dairy School than my father had, but Iowa Bob had at least committed himself to something, he felt, and he wished to see my father involved with what he was doing instead of involved—as Bob would say—with the future. After all, Coach Bob had once bitten a running back; he had not seen my father ever so engaged.
He was probably distressed that my father never became passionate about any sport, although Father was athletic and liked exercise. And Iowa Bob loved my mother very much; he had known her all the years my father was away at the war, away at Harvard, and away with Earl. Coach Bob probably thought that my father neglected his family; in the last years, I know, Bob thought Father had neglected Earl.
“Excuse me,” we heard Frank say; Franny locked her hands around my waist at the base of my spine; I tried to force her chin up, off my shoulder, but Lilly was sitting on my head.
“What is it, dear?” Mother said.
“What’s up, Frank?” Father said, and we could tell by the sharp creak of a chair that Father had grabbed for Frank; he was always trying to loosen Frank up a little by wrestling with him, or trying to get him to play, but Frank wouldn’t go for it. Franny and I loved it when Father would roughhouse with us, but Frank didn’t like it at all.
“Excuse me,” Frank repeated.
“You’re excused, you’re excused,” Father said.
“Franny is out of her room, she’s in bed with John,” Frank said. “And Lilly’s with them. She brought them something to eat.”
I felt Franny slide away from me; she was out of my bed and out of my room, her flannel nightie ballooning like a sail in the draught from the upstairs hall by the stairwell; Lilly grabbed her sheet and crawled into my closet. The old Bates family house was huge; there were so many places to hide, but my mother knew them all. I thought Franny was dashing back to her room, but I heard her going downstairs, instead, and then I heard her screaming.
“You weirdo fink, Frank!” she screamed. “You fart! You turd in a birdbath!”
“Franny!” Mother said.
I ran to the stairwell and hugged the banister; the stairs were carpeted, deep and soft, the same carpet that covered the house, I could see Franny go straight for the headlock on Frank in the dining room. She took him down fast—Frank was slow-moving and not very physical; he was badly coordinated, although bigger than Franny, and much bigger than me. I rarely fought with him, even in fun; Frank did little in the way of fighting for fun, and even in fun he could hurt you. He was too large, and despite his distaste for the physical life, he was strong. He had a way, too, of finding your ear with his elbow, or your nose with his knee; he was the kind of fighter whose fingers and thumbs always found an eye, whose head bobbed up and split your lip against your own teeth. There are people who are so physically uncomfortable with themselves that they seem to jar against any other body. Frank was like that, and I left him alone; it was not just because he was two years older.
Franny occasionally couldn’t stand not testing him, but they almost always hurt each other. I watched her locked in a death grip with Frank under the dining room table.
“Stop them, Win!” my mother said, but Father hit his head on the table trying to drag them out where he could separate them; Coach Bob went under the table from the other side.
“Shit!” Father said.
I felt something warm against my hip at the banister; it was Lilly, peering out from under her sheet.
“You rat’s asshole, Frank!” Franny was screaming.
Then Frank got Franny’s hair and yanked her head against the dining table leg; although I did not have breasts of my own, I could feel it in my chest when Frank dug his knuckles into Franny’s breast. She had to let go of her headlock and he rapped her head against the table leg twice more, snarling her hair around his fist, before Coach Bob got three of their four legs in his huge hands and hauled them out from under the table. Franny lashed out with her free foot and caught Bob with a good blow to the nose, but the old Iowa lineman hung on. Franny was crying now, but she managed to strain against her hair hard enough to bite Frank on the cheek. Frank grabbed one of her breasts in his hand; he must have squeezed her hard because Franny’s mouth opened against Frank’s cheek and a losing sob broke from her. It was so terrible and defeated a sound that it sent Lilly running back to my room with her sheet. Father knocked Frank’s hand from Franny’s breast and Coach Bob got a headlock on Franny, so that she couldn’t bite Frank again. But Franny had a hand free and she went for Frank’s private parts; whether you were in a cup, in or out of a jock, or wearing nothing at all, Franny could get to your private parts when the chips were down. Frank was suddenly all arms and legs jerking, and a moan so blue escaped him that I shivered. Father slapped Franny in the face, but she wouldn’t let go; he had to claw her fingers open. Coach Bob dragged Frank free of her, but Franny took a last kick with her long leg and Father was forced to slap her, hard, across the mouth. That ended it.
Father sat on the dining room carpet, holding Franny’s head against his chest and rocking her in his arms while she cried. “Franny, Franny,” he said to her softly. “Why does everyone have to hurt you to stop you?”
“Easy, son, just breathe easy,” Coach Bob told Frank, who lay on his side with his knees up to his chest, his face as grey as one of the Dairy School colours; old Iowa Bob knew how to console somebody who’d been felled by a blow to the balls. “Feel kind of sick, don’t you?” Coach Bob inquired, gently. “Just breathe easy, lie still. It goes away.”