by John Irving
'Yes, she's banging me,' I could have told him that night on Seventh Avenue. But I didn't say anything to him. I just stopped and stood in front of him, until I was sure he knew who I was. He hadn't changed; he looked almost exactly as he'd always looked, to me. And although I thought I had changed -- I knew the weight lifting had at least changed my body -- I think that Franny's constant correspondence with him must have kept our family close to Chipper Dove's memory (if not close to his heart).
Chipper Dove stopped in the middle of Seventh Avenue, too. After a second or two he said, softly, 'Well, look who's here.'
Everything is a fairy tale.
I looked at Chipper Dove's girl friend and said, 'Watch out he doesn't rape you.'
Chipper Dove's girl friend laughed -- that high-strung, overstrenuous laugh like breaking ice, that laugh of little icicles shattering. Dove laughed a little bit with her. The three of us stayed in the middle of Seventh Avenue; a taxi heading downtown and turning off Central Park South almost killed us, but only the girl friend flinched -- Chipper Dove and I didn't move.
'Hey, we're in the middle of the street, you know,' the girl said. She was a lot younger than he was, I noticed. She skipped to the east side of Seventh Avenue and waited for us, but we didn't move.
'I've enjoyed hearing from Franny,' Dove said.
'Why haven't you written her back?' I asked him.
'Hey!' his girl friend screamed at us, and another taxi, turning downtown, blew its horn at us and dodged around us.
'Is Franny in New York, too?' Chipper Dove asked me.
In a fairy tale, you often don't know what the people want. Everything had changed. I knew I didn't know if Franny wanted to see Chipper Dove or not. I knew I never knew what was in the letters she'd written him.
'Yes, she's in the city,' I said cautiously. New York is a big place, I was thinking; this felt safe.
'Well, tell her I'd like to see her,' he said, and he started to move around me. 'Can't keep this girl waiting,' he whispered to me, conspiratorially; he actually winked at me. I caught him under the armpits and just picked him up; for a quarterback, he didn't weigh much. He didn't struggle, but he looked genuinely surprised at how easily I had lifted him. I wasn't sure what to do with him; I thought a minute -- or it must have seemed like a minute to Chipper Dove -- and then I put him back down. I simply placed him back in front of me in the middle of Seventh Avenue.
'Hey, you crazy guys!' his girl friend called; two cabs, appearing to be in a race with each other, passed on either side of us -- the drivers kept their hands on their horns for a long way, heading downtown.
'Tell me why you would like to see Franny,' I told Chipper Dove.
'You've been doing a little work with the weights, I guess,' Dove said.
'A little,' I admitted. 'Why do you want to see my sister?' I asked him.
'Well, to apologize -- among other things,' he mumbled, but I could never believe him; he had that ice-blue smile in his ice-blue eyes. He seemed only slightly intimidated by my muscles; he had an arrogance larger than most people's hearts and minds.
'You could have answered just one of her letters,' I told him. 'You could have apologized in writing, anytime.'
'Well,' he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot, like a quarterback settling himself, getting ready to receive the ball. 'Well, it's all so hard to say,' he said, and I almost killed him on the spot; I could take almost anything from him but sincerity -- hearing him sound genuine was almost too much to bear. I felt a need to hug him -- to hug him harder than I had hugged Arbeiter -- but fortunately for both of us, he changed his tone. He was getting impatient with me.
'Look,' he said. 'By the statute of limitations in this country, I'm clear -- short of murder. Rape is short of murder, in case you don't know.'
'Just short,' I said. Another cab almost killed us.
'Chipper!' his girl friend was screaming. 'Shall I get the police?'
'Look,' Dove said. 'Just tell Franny I'd be happy to see her -- that's all. Apparently,' he said, with the ice-blue in his eyes slipping into his voice, 'apparently she'd like to see me. I mean, she's written me enough.' He was almost complaining about it, I thought -- as if my sister's letters had been tedious for him!
'If you want to see her, you can tell her yourself,' I told him. 'Just leave a message for her -- leave the whole thing up to her: if she wants to see you. Leave a message at the Stanhope,' I said.
'The Stanhope?' he said. 'She's just passing through?'
'No, she lives there,' I said. 'We're a hotel family,' I told him. 'Remember?'
'Oh yes,' he laughed, and I could see him thinking that the Stanhope was a big step up from the Hotel New Hampshire -- from either Hotel New Hampshire, though he'd only known the first one. 'Well,' he said, 'so Franny lives at the Stanhope.'
'We own the Stanhope, now,' I told him. I have no idea why I lied, but I simply had to do something to him. He looked a little stunned, and that was at least a mildly pleasing moment; a green sports car came so close to him that his scarf was flapped by the sudden passing wind. His girl friend ventured out in Seventh Avenue again; she cautiously approached us.
'Chipper, please,' she said softly.
'Is that the only hotel you own?' Dove asked me, trying to be cool about it.
'We own half of Vienna,' I told him. 'The controlling half. The Stanhope is just the first of many -- in New York,' I told him. 'We're going to take over New York.'
'And tomorrow, the world?' he asked, that ice-blue lilt in his voice.
'Ask Franny all about it,' I said. 'I'll tell her she can expect to hear from you.' I had to walk away from him so I wouldn't hurt him, but I heard his girl friend ask him, 'Who's Franny?'
'My sister!' I called. 'Your friend raped her! He and two other guys gang-banged her!' I shouted. Neither Chipper Dove nor his girl friend laughed this time, and I left them in the middle of Seventh Avenue. If I'd heard the squeal of tires and brakes, and the thud of bodies making contact with metal, or with the pavement, I wouldn't have turned around. It was only when I recognized the pain in my private parts as actually belonging to me that I realized I had walked too far. I'd walked past 222 Central Park South -- I was wandering around Columbus Circle -- and I had to turn around and head east. When I saw Seventh Avenue again, I saw that Chipper Dove and his girl friend had gone. I even wondered, for a second, if I had only dreamed them.
I would have preferred to have dreamed them, I think. I was worried how Franny would handle it, how she might 'deal with it,' as Susie was always saying. I was worried about even mentioning to Franny that I had seen Chipper Dove. What would it mean to her, for example, if Dove never called? It seemed unfair -- that on the very evening of Franny's triumph, and mine, I had to meet her rapist and tell him where my sister lived. I knew I was out of my league, I was over my head -- I was back to zero, I had no idea what Franny wanted. I knew I needed some expert rape advice.
Frank was asleep; he was no rape expert, anyway. Father was also asleep (in the room I shared with him), and I looked at the Louisville Slugger on the floor by my father's bed and knew what Father's rape advice would be -- I knew that any rape advice from Father would involve swinging that bat. I woke Father up taking off my running shoes.
'Sorry,' I whispered. 'Go back to sleep.'
'What a long run you had,' he groaned. 'You must be exhausted.'
I was, of course, but I was also wide-awake. I went and sat at the desk in front of Frank's six phones. The resident rape expert (in the second Hotel New Hampshire) was only a phone call away; the rape advice I wanted was actually residing in New York City now. Susie the bear was living in Greenwich Village. Although it was one o'clock in the morning, I picked up the phone. At last the issue had presented itself. It didn't matter that it was almost Christmas, 1964, because we were back to Halloween, 1956. All Franny's unanswered letters finally deserved an answer. Although Junior Jones's Black Arm of the Law would one day provide New York City with its admirable servic
es, Junior was still recovering from the thug game of football; he would spend three years in law school, and he'd spend another six starting the Black Arm of the Law. Although Junior would rescue Franny, he could be counted upon for his late arrivals. The issue of Chipper Dove had presented itself now; although Harold Swallow had never found him, Dove was out of hiding now. And in dealing with Chipper Dove, I knew, Franny would need the help of a smart bear.
Good old Susie the bear is a fairy tale, all by herself.
When she answered her telephone at 1 A.M. she was like a boxer springing off the ropes.
'Dumb-fuck! Creep-of-the-night! Pervert! Do you know what time it is?' Susie the bear roared.
'It's me,' I said.
'Jesus God,' Susie said. 'I was expecting an obscene call.' When I told her about Chipper Dove, she decided it was an obscene call. 'I don't think Franny's going to be happy that you told him where she lives,' Susie said. 'I think she wrote all those letters so she wouldn't ever hear from him again.'
Susie lived in a simply terrible place in Greenwich Village. Franny liked going down there to see her, and Frank occasionally dropped in -- when he was in the vicinity (there was a very Frank-like bar around the corner from where Susie lived) -- but Lilly and I hated the Village. Susie came uptown to see us.
In the Village, Susie could be a bear when she wanted to be; there were people down there who looked worse than bears. But when Susie came uptown, she had to look normal; they wouldn't have let her in the Stanhope, as a bear, and on Central Park South some policeman would have shot her -- thinking her an escapee from the Central Park Zoo. New York was not Vienna, and although Susie was trying to break herself of the bear habit, she could revert to bearishness in the Village and nobody would even notice. She lived with two other women in a place that had only a toilet and a cold-water sink; Susie came uptown to bathe -- preferring Lilly's suite at the Stanhope to the opulent bathroom at Frank's place at 222 Central Park South; I think Susie liked the potential danger of the upward-flushing toilets.
She was trying to be an actress in those days. The two women she shared the terrible apartment with were both members of something called the West Village Workshop. It was an actors' workshop; it was a place that trained street clowns. Frank said of it that if the King of Mice had still been alive, he could have gotten tenure at the West Village Workshop. But I thought that if there'd been such a thing as the West Village Workshop in Vienna, maybe the King of Mice would still be alive. There ought to be someplace where you can study street dancing, animal imitations, pantomime, unicycling, scream therapy, and acts of degradation that are only acts. Susie said the West Village Workshop was basically teaching her how to be as confident as a bear without the bear suit. It was a slow process, she admitted, and in the meantime -- hedging her bets -- she'd had the bear suit refashioned by an animal costume expert in the Village.
'You ought to see the suit now,' Susie was always telling me. 'I mean, if you think I looked like a real bear before, man ... you haven't seen the whole story!'
'It is rather remarkable,' Frank had told me. 'There's even a wet look about the mouth, and the eyes are uncanny. And the fangs,' Frank said -- always an admirer of costumes and uniforms, Frank would say, 'The fangs are great.'
'But we all want Susie to get over being a bear,' Franny said.
'We want the bear in her to emerge,' Lilly would say, and we'd all grunt and make other disgusting sounds together.
But when I told Susie that Franny and I had saved each other from each other -- only to meet up again with Chipper Dove -- Susie was all business; Susie was that ever-essential friend, the one who'll be a bear for you when the going gets rough.
'You at Frank's?' Susie asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'Hang in there, kid,' Susie said. 'I'll be right up. Warn the doorman.'
'Should I warn him about a bear or about you, Susie?' I asked her.
'One day, honey,' Susie said, 'the real me is going to surprise you.' One day, it was true, Susie would surprise me. But before Susie got up to 222 Central Park South, Lilly called me on one of Frank's six phones.
'What's wrong?' I said. It was nearly two in the morning.
'Chipper Dove,' Lilly whispered, in a frightened little voice. 'He called here! He asked for Franny!' That son of a bitch! I thought. He'd call up a girl he'd raped when she was sleeping! He must have wanted to be sure that Franny really did live at the Stanhope. So now he knew.
'What did Franny say to him?' I asked Lilly.
'Franny wouldn't talk to him,' Lilly said. 'Franny couldn't talk to him,' Lilly said. 'I mean, she couldn't get her mouth to work -- no words came out,' Lilly said. 'I told him Franny was out and he said he'd call again. You better come over here,' Lilly said. 'Franny is afraid,' Lilly whispered. 'I've never seen Franny afraid,' Lilly added. 'She won't even go back to bed, she just keeps looking out the window. I think she thinks he's going to rape her again,' Lilly whispered.
I went to Frank's room and woke him up. He sat bolt upright in bed, throwing back the covers and flinging the dressmaker's dummy away from him. 'Dove,' was all I had whispered to him. 'Chipper Dove,' was all I had to say, and Frank woke up as if he were still banging the cymbals. We left a message for Father in the tape recorder next to his bed. We just said we were at the Stanhope.
Father was pretty good on the telephone; he counted the holes. Even so, Father still got a lot of wrong numbers, and they made him so cross that he invariably shouted to the persons on the receiving end of his calls -- as if the wrong numbers had been their fault. 'Jesus God!' he would holler. 'You're the wrong number!' Thus, in this small way, did my father and his Louisville Slugger terrorize a portion of New York.
Frank and I met Susie at the door of 222 Central Park South. We had to run up to Columbus Circle to find a cab. Susie was not wearing the bear suit. She was wearing old pants and a sweater over a sweater over a sweater.
'Of course she's afraid,' Susie told Frank and me as we sped uptown. 'But she's got to deal with it. Fear is one of the first phases, my dears. If she can get over the fucking fear, then she gets to the anger. And once she's angry,' Susie said, 'then she's home free. Just look at me,' she declared, and Frank and I looked at her and didn't say anything. We were over our heads, and we knew it.
Franny was sitting wrapped in a blanket, her chair drawn up to the heat register; she peered out the window. The Metropolitan Museum stood in the pre-Christmas cold like a castle abandoned by its king and queen -- so abandoned it looked cursed; even the peasants were staying away.
'How can I even go out?' Franny whispered to me. 'He could be anywhere out there,' she said. 'I don't dare go out,' she repeated.
'Franny, Franny,' I said, 'he won't touch you again.'
'Don't tell her things,' Susie said to me. 'That's not the way. Don't tell -- ask her things. Ask her what she wants to do?'
'What do you want to do, Franny?' Lilly asked her.
'We'll do anything you want us to do, Franny,' Frank said.
'Think about what you want to have happen,' Susie the bear said to Franny.
Franny shivered, her teeth chattered. It was stifling in the suite, but Franny was bone-cold.
'I want to kill him,' Franny said, softly.
'Don't say anything,' Susie the bear whispered in my ear. There was nothing I could say, anyway. We sat in the room with Franny looking out the window for about an hour. Susie gave her a back rub to try to warm her up. Franny wanted to whisper something to me, so I bent down to her. 'Are you still sore?' she whispered. She wore a little smile and I smiled back at her and nodded. 'Me too,' she said, and smiled; but she looked right back out the window again, and she said, 'I wish he were dead.' In a little while she repeated, 'I simply can't go out, I can take all my meals here -- but one of you will have to be here, all the time.' We assured her we would be. 'Kill him,' she repeated, just as it was getting light above the park. 'He could be anywhere out there,' she said, watching the light grow. 'The bastard!' sh
e screamed, suddenly. 'I want to kill him!'
We took turns staying with her for a couple of days. We made up a story for Father -- that Franny had the flu and she was staying in bed so that she'd be all better in time for Christmas. It was a reasonable lie, we thought. Franny had lied to Father about Chipper Dove before; she'd told him she was just 'beaten up.'
We didn't even have a plan -- if Chipper Dove did call back, we had no idea how Franny even wanted to deal with it.
'Kill him,' she kept saying.
And Frank, waiting in the lobby with me for the Stanhope elevator to arrive, said, 'Maybe we should kill him. That would take care of it.'
Franny was our leader; when she was lost, we were all lost. We needed her judgment before we could settle on a plan.
'Maybe he'll never call again,' Lilly said.
'You're a writer, Lilly,' Frank said. 'You ought to know better. Of course he'll call.' Frank was making one of his anti-world statements -- expressing one of his perverse theories that precisely what you don't want to happen will. As a writer, Lilly would one day share Frank's Weltanschauung.
But Frank was right about Chipper Dove; he called. It was Frank who answered the phone. Frank was very uncool about it; when he heard Chipper Dove's ice-blue voice, he twitched -- he underwent such a spasm on the couch that he batted the standing lamp beside him, he sent the lampshade spinning, and Franny knew right away who it was. She started screaming, she ran out of the living room of the suite and into Lilly's bedroom (it was the closest hiding place), and Susie the bear and I had to run after her and hold her on Lilly's bed, trying to calm her down.
'Uh, no, she's not in right now,' Frank said to Chipper Dove. 'Want to leave a number where she can call you?' Chipper Dove gave Frank his number -- two numbers, actually: his number at home, and his number at work. The thought that he had a job seemed to make Franny suddenly sane again.
'What does he do?' she asked Frank.