The Hotel New Hampshire

by John Irving

  'That ain't no dog, man,' Ruthie said, smiling -- and obscenely kneading, kneading with her foot. Then Ruthie twisted her foot, sharply, in Susie's crotch and Susie the bear roared awake; she wheeled viciously on Ruthie, snapping at her. Dove saw the muzzle barely restraining her, he saw Ruthie bound out of the way of the long, striking claws. Ruthie threw the leash in Susie's face and ran to the far side of the room. Susie looked ready to charge after her, but Franny just reached out her hand. She touched Susie just once and Susie calmed right down. The bear put her head in Franny's lap. Susie growled softly there.

  'Earl! Earl!' she moaned.

  'That's a bear,' Dove said.

  'You bet your ass, man,' Ruthie said.

  And Frank, sailing even higher, singing his way into Lucia's song -- and, seemingly, rising above even her madness -- yelled out, 'That's a bear in heat!'

  'That's a bear that wants you,' I said to Chipper Dove.

  When Dove looked at the bear again, he saw that Franny had her hand on Susie exactly where a bear's private parts would be. Franny was rubbing the bear there, and Susie the bear got suddenly playful; she lolled her head around, she made the most disgusting noises. The West Village Workshop had simply worked wonders with Susie the bear; she'd been a smart bear before, but now she was a bear to be reckoned with.

  'That bear's so horny,' Ruthie said, 'she'd even fuck me.'

  'Hey, look,' said Chipper Dove. He was holding fast to the illusion that I was the only one among them who was sane. That was how he was reading it, now; I was his last hope. We had him right where Lilly wanted him when Scurvy, the maid, knocked on the door. I slung the barbell aside as if it weighed nothing at all. I yanked the door open so hard that Scurvy flew into the room in greater confusion and disarray than had marked Chipper Dove's entrance. Susie the bear growled -- not liking too much sudden movement -- and the terrified maid stared up at me.

  'It says DO NOT DISTURB, you moron!' I yelled at her. I pulled her to her feet and tore open the front of her little maid's costume. She started to get hysterical right away. I held her upside down and shook her. Frank howled with delight.

  'Black panties, black panties!' Frank shrieked on the bouncing bed.

  'You're' fired,' I told the sniveling maid. 'You don't come in when the sign says DO NOT DISTURB. If you can't learn that, you moron,' I told her, 'then you're fired.' I passed her, still holding her upside down, to Ruthie. Ruthie and Scurvy had been practicing this routine together all year, Susie had told me. It was a kind of apache dance. It was a kind of woman-raping-another-woman dance. Ruthie simply proceeded to maul Scurvy right there in front of Chipper Dove.

  'I don't care if you do own the hotel!' Scurvy was crying. 'You're terrible disgusting people and I won't clean up after that bear again, I won't, I won't,' she moaned. Then she did an absolutely stunning job of convulsing under Ruthie -- she gagged herself, she spewed, she gibbered. Ruthie left her in a ball, shriveled up and whining -- with an occasional, absolutely chilling spasm.

  Ruthie shrugged, and said to me, 'You got to get a tougher crew of maids than this white trash, man. Every time the bear rapes someone, the maids can't handle it. They just don't know how to deal with it.'

  And when I looked at Chipper Dove, I saw -- at last! -- that his ice-blue looks had left him. He was staring at the bear: Susie was more and more responsive, under Franny's touch. Ruthie went up to the bear and took her muzzle off; Susie gave us a toothy smile. She was more bear than any bear; for this single performance of Lilly's script, Susie the bear could have convinced a bear that she was a bear. A bear in heat.

  I don't even know if bears ever get in heat. 'It doesn't matter,' as Frank would say.

  All that mattered was that Chipper Dove believed it. Ruthie started scratching Susie, cautiously, behind the ears. 'See him? See him -- that one, over there?' Ruthie said sweetly. And Susie the bear began to shuffle and sway; she started nosing her way toward Chipper Dove.

  'Hey, look,' Dove started to say to me.

  'Better not move suddenly,' I told him. 'Bears don't like any sudden movement.'

  Dove froze. Susie, taking all the time in the world, started sniffing him over. Frank lay on the bed in the bedroom, exhausted. 'I'll give you some advice,' Frank said to Chipper Dove. 'You introduced me to mud puddles, so I'll give you some advice about bears,' Frank said.

  'Hey, please,' Chipper Dove said softly, to me.

  'The main thing,' Frank said, 'is don't move. Don't resist anything. The bear does not appreciate resistance of any kind.'

  'Just kind of go with it, man,' Ruthie said, dreamily.

  I stepped up to Dove and unbuckled his belt; he started to stop me, but I said, 'No sudden movements.' Susie the bear jabbed her snout into Dove's crotch the instant Dove's pants hit the rug with a soft flop.

  'I recommend holding your breath,' Frank advised, from the bedroom.

  And that was Lilly's cue. In she came. It looked to Dove as if she just walked in with her own key from the door to the hall.

  We all stared at the dwarf nurse; Lilly looked cross.

  'I had the feeling you were up to this again, Franny,' Lilly said to her patient. Franny curled up on the couch, putting her back to us all.

  'You're her nurse, not her mother,' I snapped at Lilly.

  'It's not good for her -- this lunatic raping, raping, raping everyone!' Lilly shouted at me. 'Every time that damn bear is in heat, you just pull anyone you want in here and rape him -- and I'm telling you it's not good for her.'

  'But it's all Franny likes,' Frank said, peevishly.

  'It's not right that she likes it,' Lilly pointed out, like a stubborn but good nurse, which she was.

  'Aw, come on,' I said. 'This one is special. This one raped her!' I cried to Lilly.

  'He made me fuck a mud puddle!' Frank wailed.

  'If we can just rape this one,' I pleaded with Lilly, 'we won't rape anybody else.'

  'Promises, promises,' said Lilly, folding her little arms across her little breasts.

  'We promise!' Frank shouted. 'Just one more. Just this one.'

  'Earl!' Susie snorted, and I thought Dove was going to faint dead away. Susie snorted violently into Dove's crotch. Susie the bear seemed to be saying that she was especially interested in this one, too.

  'Please, please!' Dove started to scream. Susie knocked his legs out from under him and laid her weight over his chest. She put a big paw -- a real paw -- right on his private parts. 'Please!' Dove said. 'Please don't! Please!'

  And that was all Lilly wrote. That was where we were supposed to stop. Nobody had any more lines, except Lilly. Lilly was just supposed to say, 'There will be no more rapes, no more -- that's final.' And I was supposed to pick Dove up and dump him out in the hall.

  But Franny got up off the couch and pushed everyone away; she walked over to Dove. 'That's enough, Susie,' Franny said, and Susie got off Dove. 'Put your pants back on, Chipper,' Franny said to him. He stood up but he fell; he struggled to his feet again and pulled his pants up. 'And the next time you take your pants off, for anybody,' Franny told Chipper Dove, 'I want you to think of me.'

  'Think of all of us,' said Frank, coming out of the bedroom.

  'Remember us,' I said to Chipper Dove.

  'If you see us again,' big Ruthie told him, 'better go the other way. Any one of us might kill you, man,' she told him, matter-of-factly.

  Susie the bear took her bear's head off; she would never need to wear it again. From now on, the bear suit was just for fun. She looked Chipper Dove right in the eye. The number one first-class hysteric named Scurvy got up off the rug and came over to look at Chipper Dove, too. She looked at him as if she was committing him to memory; then she shrugged, and lit a cigarette, and looked away.

  'Don't pass any open windows!' Frank called down the hall to Dove, as he left us; he walked away holding the wall of the hall for support. We all couldn't help but notice that he'd wet his pants.

  Chipper Dove moved like a man seeking the men's room
in a hospital ward for the disoriented; he moved with the feeble lack of sureness of a man who wasn't sure what experience awaited him in the men's room -- as if, even, he wouldn't be sure what to do when he arrived at the urinal.

  But there was, in all of us, that initial sense of letdown that should be documented in any fair study of revenge. Whatever we had done, it would never be as awful as what he had done to Franny -- and if it had been as awful, it would have been too much.

  I would feel, for the rest of my life, as if I were still holding Chipper Dove by his armpits -- his feet a few inches off the ground of Seventh Avenue. There was really nothing to do with him except put him down; there never would be anything to do with him, too -- with our Chipper Doves we just go on picking them up and putting them down, forever.

  And so, you'd think, that was that. Lilly had proven herself with a real opera, a genuine fairy tale. Susie the bear had played out the part; she had exhausted her bear's role; she would keep the bear suit only for its sentimental value, and for amusing children -- and, of course, for Halloween. Father was about to get a Seeing Eye dog for Christmas. It would be his first of many Seeing Eye dogs. And once he had an animal to talk to, my father would finally figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

  'Here comes the rest of our lives,' Franny said, with a kind of awed affection. 'The rest of our fucking lives is finally coming up,' she said.

  That day Chipper Dove wandered out of the Stanhope and back to his 'firm,' it seemed we all would be survivors -- those of us who were left; it seemed we had made it. Franny was now free to find a life, Lilly and Frank had their chosen careers -- or, as they say, their careers had chosen them. Father needed only a little time with the animal side of himself -- to help him make up his mind. I knew that an American literature degree from an Austrian university didn't qualify me for very much, but what did I have to do but look after my father -- but lift what weight I could lift off my brother and my sisters whenever the weight needed lifting?

  What we had all forgotten in the pre-Christmas decorations, in our frenzy over dealing with Chipper Dove, was that shape that had haunted us from the beginning. As in any fairy tale, just when you think you're out of the woods, there is more to the woods than you thought; just when you think you're out of the woods, it turns out you're still in them.

  How could we so quickly have forgotten the lesson of the King of Mice? How could we have put away that old dog of our childhood, our dear Sorrow, as neatly as Susie folded up her bear suit and said, 'That's it. That's over. Now it's a whole new ball game'?

  There is a song the Viennese sing -- it is one of their so-called Heurigen songs, the songs they sing to celebrate the first wine of the season. Typical of those people Freud understood so well, their songs are full of death wishes. The King of Mice himself, no doubt, once sang this little song.

  Verkauft's mei G'wand, I Fahr in Himmel.

  Sell my old clothes, I'm off to heaven.

  When Susie the bear took her friends back to the Village, Frank and Franny and Lilly and I called up good old room service and ordered the champagne. As we tasted the very slight sweetness of our revenge on Chipper Dove, our childhood appeared like a clear lake -- behind us. We felt we were free of sorrow. But one of us must have been singing that song, even then. One of us was secretly humming the tune.

  LIFE IS SERIOUS BUT ART IS FUN!

  The King of Mice was dead, but -- for one of us -- the King of Mice was not forgotten.

  I am not a poet. I was not even the writer in our family. Donald Justice would become Lilly's literary hero: he replaced even that marvelous ending of The Great Gatsby, which Lilly read to us too often. Donald Justice has most eloquently posed the question that flies to the heart of my hotel-living family. As Mr. Justice asks,

  How shall I speak of doom, and ours in special,

  But as of something altogether common?

  Add doom to the list, then. Especially in families, doom is 'altogether common.' Sorrow floats; love, too; and -- in the long run -- doom. It floats, too.

  12 The King of Mice Syndrome;

  the Last Hotel New Hampshire

  Here is the epilogue; there always is one. In a world where love and sorrow float, there are many epilogues -- and some of them go on and on. in a world where doom always muscles in, some of the epilogues are short.

  'A dream is a disguised fulfillment of a suppressed wish,' Father announced to us over Easter dinner at Frank's apartment in New York -- Easter, 1965.

  'You're quoting Freud again, Pop,' Lilly told him.

  'Which Freud?' Franny asked, by rote.

  'Sigmund,' Frank answered. 'From Chapter Four of The Interpretation of Dreams.'

  I should have known the source, too, because Frank and I were taking turns reading to Father in the evening. Father had asked us to read all of Freud to him.

  'So what did you dream about, Pop?' Franny asked him.

  'The Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea,' Father said. His Seeing Eye dog spent every mealtime with her head in Father's lap; every time Father reached for his napkin, he would deposit a morsel into the dog's waiting mouth and the dog would raise her head -- momentarily -- allowing Father access to his napkin.

  'You should not feed her at the table,' Lilly scolded Father, but we all liked the dog. She was a German shepherd with a particularly rich golden-brown color that liberally interrupted the black all over her body and dominated the tone of her gentle face; she was particularly long-faced and high-cheek-boned, so that her appearance was nothing like a Labrador retriever's. Father had wanted to call her Freud, but we thought there was enough confusion among us concerning which Freud was meant -- by this remark or that. A third Freud, we convinced Father, would have driven everyone crazy.

  Lilly suggested we call the dog Jung.

  'What? That traitor! That anti-Semite!' Frank protested. 'Whoever heard of naming a female after Jung?' Frank asked. 'That's something only Jung would have thought of,' he said, fuming.

  Lilly then suggested we call the dog Stanhope, because of Lilly's fondness for the fourteenth floor; Father liked the idea of naming his first Seeing Eye dog after a hotel, but he said he preferred naming the dog after a hotel he really liked. We all agreed, then, that the dog would be called 'Sacher.' Frau Sacher, after all, had been a woman.

  Sacher's only bad habit was putting her head in Father's lap every time Father sat down to eat anything, but Father encouraged this -- so it was really Father's bad habit. Sacher was otherwise a model Seeing Eye dog. She did not attack other animals, thus dragging my father wildly out of control after her; she was especially smart about the habits of elevators -- blocking the door from reclosing with her body until my father had entered or exited. Sacher barked at the doorman at the St. Moritz but was otherwise friendly, if a trifle aloof, with Father's fellow pedestrians. These were the days before you had to clean up after your dog in New York City, so Father was spared that humiliating task -- which would have been almost impossible for him, he realized. In fact, Father feared the passing of such a law years before anyone was talking about it. 'I mean,' he'd say, 'if Sacher shits in the middle of Central Park South, how am I supposed to find the crap? It's bad enough to have to pick up dog shit, but if you can't see it, it's positively arduous. I won't do it!' he would shout. 'If some self-righteous citizen even tries to speak to me, even suggests that I am responsible for my dog's messes, I think I'll use the baseball bat!' But Father was safe -- for a while. We wouldn't be living in New York by the time they passed the dog shit law. As the weather got nice, Sacher and my father would walk, unaccompanied, between the Stanhope and Central Park South, and my father felt free to be blind to Sacher's shitting.

  At Frank's, the dog slept on the rug between Father's bed and mine, and I sometimes wondered, in my sleep, if it was Sacher I heard dreaming, or Father.

  'So you dreamed about the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea,' Franny said to Father. 'So what else is new?'

  'No,' Father said. 'It wasn't one of the old
dreams. I mean, your mother wasn't there. We weren't young again, or anything like that.'

  'No man in a white dinner jacket, Daddy?' Lilly asked him.

  'No, no,' Father said. 'I was old. In the dream I was even older than I am now,' he said; he was forty-five. 'In the dream,' Father said, 'I was just walking along the beach with Sacher; we were just taking a stroll over the grounds -- around the hotel,' he said.

  'All around the ruins, you mean,' Franny said.

  'Well,' Father said, slyly, 'of course I couldn't actually see if the Arbuthnot was still a ruin, but I had the feeling it was restored -- I had the feeling it was all fixed up,' Father said, shoveling food off his plate and into his lap -- and into Sacher. 'It was a brand-new hotel,' Father said, impishly.

  'And you owned it, I'll bet,' Lilly said to him.

  'You did say I could do anything, didn't you, Frank?' Father asked.

  'In the dream you owned the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea?' Frank asked him. 'And it was all fixed up?'

  'Open for business as usual, Pop?' Franny asked him.

  'Business as usual,' Father said, nodding; Sacher nodded, too.

  'Is that what you want to do?' I asked Father. 'You want to own the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea?'

  'Well,' Father said. 'Of course we'd have to change the name.'

  'Of course,' Franny said.

  'The third Hotel New Hampshire!' Frank cried. 'Lilly!' he shouted. 'Just think of it! Another TV series!'

  'I haven't really been working on the first series,' Lilly said, worriedly.

  Franny knelt beside Father; she put her hand on his knee; Sacher licked Franny's fingers. 'You want to do it again?' Franny asked Father. 'You want to start all over again? You understand that you don't have to.'

  'But what else would I do, Franny?' he asked her, smiling. 'It's the last one -- I promise you,' he said, addressing all of us. 'If I can't make the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea into something special, then I'll throw in the towel.'

  Franny looked at Frank and shrugged; I shrugged, too, and Lilly just rolled her eyes. Frank said, 'Well, I guess it's simple enough to inquire what it costs, and who owns it.'