Page 55

d of money I'd stuffed in my shoe -- that Ronda Ray asked me, 'Do you know, John-O, that it's customary to tip a waitress?' And I got the picture; I wondered if Franny overheard me that morning -- or overheard the subsequent crinkling of bills.

I spent my Christmas money on Ronda Ray.

I bought a little something for Mother and Father, of course. We were not big on gifts at Christmas -- the idea was to give something silly. I think I got Father an apron to wear behind the bar at the Hotel New Hampshire; it was one of those aprons with a stupid slogan on it. I think I got Mother a china bear. Frank always got Father a tie and Mother a scarf, and Mother gave the scarves to Franny, who wore them every which way, and Father gave the ties back to Frank, who liked ties.

For Christmas, 1956, we made something special for Iowa Bob: a framed, blown-up photograph of Junior Jones scoring Dairy's only touchdown against Exeter. That was not so silly, but everything else was. Franny bought Mother a sexy dress that Mother would never wear. Franny was hoping Mother would give it to her, but Mother would never have allowed Franny to wear it, either.

'She can wear it for Father when they visit old Three E,' Franny told me, in a grouchy mood.

Father bought Frank a bus driver's uniform, because Frank was so fond of uniforms; Frank would wear it when he played doorman at the Hotel New Hampshire. On those rare occasions when we had more than one overnight guest, Frank liked to pretend that there was always a doorman at the Hotel New Hampshire. The bus driver's uniform was the good old Dairy death-grey colour; the pants and the jacket sleeves were too short for Frank, and the cap was too large, so that Frank had an ominous, seedy-funeral-parlour look to him when he let in the guests.

'Welcome to the Hotel New Hampshire!' he practiced saying, but it always sounded as if he didn't mean it.

No one knew what to get Lilly -- certainly not a dwarf, or an elf, or anything little.

'Give her food!' Iowa Bob suggested, a few days before Christmas. My family never went in for all this organized Christmas shopping shit, either. It was always down-to-the-last-minute with us, although Iowa Bob made a big deal about the tree that he chopped down in Elliot Park one morning: it was too large to stand up in the restaurant of the Hotel New Hampshire without being cut in half.

'You chopped down that lovely tree in the park!' Mother said.

'Well, we own the park, don't we?' Coach Bob said. 'What else do you do with trees?' He was from Iowa, after all, where you can see for miles -- sometimes, without a tree in sight.

It was on Egg that we lavished the most presents, because he was the only one of us who was the prime age for Christmas that year. And Egg was very fond of things. Everyone got him animals and balls and tub toys and outdoor equiment -- most of it junk that would be lost or outgrown or broken or under the snow before the winter was over.

Franny and I found a jar of chimpanzee teeth in an antique store in Dairy, and we bought the teeth for Frank.

'He can use them in one of his stuffing experiments,' Franny said.

I was just as glad that we would not be giving Frank the teeth before Christmas, because I feared that Frank might try to use them in his version of Sorrow.

'Sorrow!' Iowa Bob screamed aloud one night, just before Christmas, and we all sat up in our beds with our hair itching. 'Sorrow!' the old man called and we heard him bellow down the deserted third-floor hall. 'Sorrow!' he called.

'The old fool is having a bad dream,' Father said, thumping upstairs in his bathrobe, but I went into Frank's room and stared at him.

'Don't look at me,' Frank said. 'Sorrow's still down at the lab. He's not finished.'

And we all went upstairs to see what was the matter with Iowa Bob.

He had 'seen' Sorrow, he said. Coach Bob had smelled the old dog in his sleep, and when he woke up, Sorrow was standing on the old oriental rug -- his favourite -- in Bob's room. 'But he looked at me with such menace,' old Bob said. 'He looked like he was going to attack!'

I stared at Frank again, but Frank shrugged. Father rolled his eyes.

'You were having a nightmare,' he told his old dad.

'Sorrow was in this room!' Coach Bob said. 'But he didn't look like Sorrow. He looked like he wanted to kill me.

'Hush, hush,' Mother said, and Father waved us out of the room; I heard him start talking to Iowa Bob that way I'd heard Father talk to Egg, or to Lilly -- or to any of us children, when we were younger -- and I realized that Father often talked to Bob that way, as if he thought his father was a child.

'It's that old rug,' Mother whispered to us kids. 'It's got so much dog hair on it that your grandfather can still smell Sorrow in his sleep.'

Lilly looked frightened, but Lilly often looked frightened. Egg was staggering around as if he were asleep on his feet.

'Sorrow is dead, isn't he?' Egg asked.

'Yes, yes,' Franny said.

'What?' Egg said, in such a loud voice that Lilly jumped.

'Okay, Frank,' I whispered in the stairwell. 'What pose did you put Sorrow in?'