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I didn't know. By the sudden outburst we heard, from Franny, we knew that Father had broken the news to her. A slight distraction to Franny's grief was caused by Iowa Bob. He insisted on going out and finding Chipper Dove himself, and it took some persuading to talk him out of it. Franny wanted another bath, and I lay in bed listening to the tub filling. Then I got up and went to the bathroom door and asked her if there was anything I could get her.

'Thank you,' she whispered. 'Just go out and get me yesterday and most of today,' she said. 'I want them back.'

'Is that all?' I said. 'Just yesterday and today?'

'That's all,' she said. Thank you.'

'I would if I could, Franny,' I told her.

'I know,' she said. I heard her sinking slowly in the tub. 'I'm okay,' she whispered. 'Nobody got the fucking me in me.'

'I love you,' I whispered.

She didn't answer me, and I went back to bed.

I heard Coach Bob, in his rooms above us -- doing push-ups, and then some sit-ups, and then a little work with the one-arm curls (the barbells' rhythmic clanks and the old man's enraged breaths) -- and I wished he had been allowed to find Chipper Dove, who would have been no match for the old Iowa lineman.

Unfortunately, Dove was a match for Junior Jones and the Black Arm of the Law. Dove had gone straight to the girls' dorm, and to the room of a doting cheerleader named Melinda Mitchell. She was called Mindy and she was gaga over Dove. He told her he'd been 'fooling around' with Franny Berry, but that when she started fooling around with Lenny Metz and Chester Pulaski, too, it had put him off. 'A cock tease,' he called my sister, and Mindy Mitchell agreed. She had been jealous of Franny for years.

'But now Franny's got the black bunch after me,' Dove told Mindy. 'She's pals with them. Especially Junior Jones,' Dove said, ' -- that goody-goody spade who's a fink for the Dean.' So Mindy Mitchell tucked Dove into her bed with her, and when Harold Swallow came whispering at her door ('Dove, Dove -- have you seen Dove? Black Arm of the Law wants to know'), she said she didn't let any boy into her room and she wouldn't let Harold in, either.

So they didn't find him. He was expelled from the Dairy School in the morning -- along with Chester Pulaski and Lenny Metz. The parents of the gang-bangers, when they heard the story, were grateful enough that nothing criminal was being charged that they accepted the expulsion from school rather graciously. Some of the faculty, and most of the trustees, were upset that the incident couldn't have been suppressed until after the Exeter game, but it was pointed out that Iowa Bob's backfield was a less embarrassing loss than losing Iowa Bob himself -- for the old man surely would have refused to coach in a game with those three still on his team.

It was an incident that was hushed up in the best private school tradition; it was remarkable, really, how a school as unsophisticated as the Dairy School could at times imitate exactly the decorum of silence in dealing with distasteful matters that the more sophisticated schools had learned like a science.

For 'beating up' Franny Berry -- in what was implied to be merely an extension of the general roughhouse quality of a Dairy School Halloween -- Chester Pulaski, Lenny Metz, and Chipper Dove were expelled. Dove, it appeared to me, got off scot-free. But Franny and I had not seen the last of him, and perhaps Franny already knew that. We had not seen the last of Junior Jones, either; he became Franny's friend, if not exactly her bodyguard, for the duration of his stay at Dairy. They went everywhere together, and it was clear to me that Junior Jones was responsible for helping Franny feel that she was, indeed, a good girl -- as he was always telling her. We had not seen the last of Jones when we left Dairy, although -- once again -- his style of rescuing Franny would distinguish itself by his late arrival. Junior Jones, as you know, would play college football at Penn State, and professional football for the Browns -- until someone would mess up his knee. He would then go to law school and become active in an organization in New York City -- which would be called, at his suggestion, the Black Arm of the Law. As Lilly would say -- and one day she would make this clear to us -- Everything is a fairy tale.

Chester Pulaski would suffer his racist nightmares most of his life, which would be over in a car. The police would say that he must have had his hands all over someone while he was supposed to be paying attention to the steering wheel. The woman was killed, too, and Lenny Metz said he knew her. When his collarbone healed, Metz went right back to carrying the ball; he played college football somewhere in Virginia and introduced Chester Pulaski to the woman he killed over one Christmas vacation. Metz would never be drafted by the pros -- for a pronounced lack of quickness -- but he was drafted by the U.S. Army, who didn't care how slow he was, and he died for his country, as they say, in Vietnam. Actually, he was not shot by the enemy; he did not step on a mine. It was another kind of combat that Lenny Metz succumbed to: he was poisoned by a prostitute, whom he had cheated.

Harold Swallow was both too crazy and too fast for me to keep up with. God knows what became of him. Good luck to you, Harold, wherever you are!

Perhaps because it was Halloween, and Halloween's atmosphere pervades my memory of Iowa Bob's winning season, they have all become like ghosts and wizards and devils and creatures of magic, to me. Remember, too: it was the first night we slept in the Hotel New Hampshire -- not that we slept for most of it. Any night in a new place is a little uneasy -- there are the different sounds of the beds to get used to. And Lilly, who always woke up with the same dry cough, as if she were a very old person -- and we'd be constantly surprised to see how small she was -- woke up coughing differently, almost as if she were as exasperated with her own poor health as Mother was. Egg never woke up unless someone woke him, and then he behaved as if he'd been awake for hours. But the morning after Halloween, Egg woke up by himself -- almost peacefully. And I had heard Frank masturbate in his room for years, but it was different hearing him do it in the Hotel New Hampshire -- perhaps because I knew that Sorrow was in a trash bag under his bed.

The morning after Halloween, I watched the early light fall in Elliot Park. There'd been a frost, and through the frozen rinds of someone's mangled pumpkin I saw Frank trudging to the bio lab with Sorrow in the trash bag over his shoulder. Father saw him out the same window.

'Where the hell is Frank going with the garbage?' Father asked.

'He probably couldn't find the trash barrels,' I said, so that Frank could make good his escape. 'I mean, we don't have a phone that works, and we were out of electricity. There probably aren't any trash barrels, either.'

'There are so,' Father said. 'The barrels are out at the delivery entrance.' He stared after Frank and shook his head. The damn fool must be going all the way to the dump,' Father said. 'Jesus, that boy is queer.'

I shivered, because I knew that Father didn't know that Frank really was queer.

When Egg was finally out of the bathroom, Father went to use the facilities and found that Franny had beaten him to the door. She was drawing another bath for herself, and Mother told Father, 'Don't you say a word to her. She can take all the baths she wants.' And they went away, ar

guing -- which they rarely did. 'I told you we'd need another bathroom,' Mother said.

I listened to Franny, drawing her bath. 'I love you,' I whispered at the locked door. But -- over the sound of the healing water -- it is unlikely that Franny ever heard me.

5 Merry Christmas, 1956

I remember the rest of 1956, from Halloween to Christmas, as the length of time it took Franny to stop taking three baths a day -- and to return to her natural fondness for her own good, ripe smell. Franny always smelled nice to me -- although at times she gave off a very strong smell -- but from Halloween to Christmas, 1956, Franny did not smell nice to herself. And so she took so many baths that she did not smell at all.

In the Hotel New Hampshire, our family took over another bathroom and sharpened our skills at Father's first family business. Mother took charge of the cranky pride of Mrs. Urick, and the plain-but-good production of Mrs. Urick's kitchen; Mrs. Urick took charge of Max, in spite of his being well hidden from her, on the fourth floor. Father handled Ronda Ray -- 'not literally,' as Franny would say.

Ronda had a curious energy. She would strip and make up all the beds in a single morning; she could serve four tables in the restaurant without botching an order or making anyone wait; she could spell Father at the bar (we were open every evening, except Monday, until eleven) and have all the tables set before breakfast (at seven). But when she retired, to her 'dayroom,' she seemed either in hibernation or in a deep stupor, and even at the peak of her energy -- when she was getting everything done, on time -- she looked sleepy.

'Why do we say it's a dayroom?' Iowa Bob asked. 'I mean, if Ronda goes back to Hampton Beach, when does she do it? I mean, it's all right that she lives here, but why don't we say she lives here -- why doesn't she say so?'