Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (22 page)

Now two more cooks had arrived and a Chinese boy was sautéing black mushrooms, and Ezra was running a mixer near the sink. Ruth sat down next to Cody, hooking her combat boots on the rung of his chair and hugging her ribs. Cody cut into a huge wedge of pie and gave some thought to food—to its inexplicable, loaded meaning in other people’s lives. Couldn’t you classify a person, he wondered, purely by examining his attitude toward food? Look at Cody’s mother—a nonfeeder, if ever there was one. Even back in his childhood, when they’d depended on her for nourishment … why, mention you were hungry and she’d suddenly act rushed and harassed, fretful, out of breath, distracted. He remembered her coming home
from work in the evening and tearing irritably around the kitchen. Tins toppled out of the cupboards and fell all over her—pork ’n’ beans, Spam, oily tuna fish, peas canned olive-drab. She cooked in her hat, most of the time. She whimpered when she burned things. She burned things you would not imagine it possible to burn and served others half-raw, adding jarring extras of her own design such as crushed pineapple in the mashed potatoes. (Anything, as long as it was a leftover, might as well be dumped in the pan with anything else.) Her only seasonings were salt and pepper. Her only gravy was Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, undiluted. And till Cody was grown, he had assumed that roast beef had to be stringy—not something you sliced, but a leathery dry object which you separated with a fork, one strand from the other, and dropped with a clunk upon your plate.

Though during illness, he remembered, you could count on her to bring liquids. Hot tea: she was good at that. And canned consommé. Thin things, watery things. Then she’d stand in the door with her arms folded while you drank it. He remembered that her expression, when others ate or drank, conveyed a mild distaste. She ate little herself, often toyed with her food; and she implied some criticism of those who acted hungry or over-interested in what they were served. Neediness: she disapproved of neediness in people. Whenever there was a family argument, she most often chose to start it over dinner.

Biting into Ruth’s flaky, shattering crust, Cody considered his mother’s three children—Jenny, for instance, with her lemon-water and lettuce-leaf diets, never allowing herself a sweet, skipping meals altogether, as if continually bearing in mind that disapproving expression of her mother’s. And Cody himself was not much different, when you came right down to it. It seemed that food didn’t count, with him; food was something required by others, so that for their sakes—on dates, at business luncheons—he would obligingly order a meal for himself just to keep them company. But all you’d find in his refrigerator was cream for his coffee and limes for his gin and tonics. He never ate breakfast; he often forgot lunch. Sometimes a gnawing feeling hit
his stomach in the afternoon and he sent his secretary out for food. “What kind of food?” she would ask. He would say, “Anything, I don’t care.” She’d bring a Danish or an eggroll or a liverwurst on rye; it was all the same to him. Half the time, he wouldn’t even notice what it was—would take a bite, go on dictating, leave the rest to be disposed of by the cleaning lady. A woman he’d once had dinner with had claimed that this was a sign of some flaw. Watching him dissect his fish but then fail to eat it, noticing how he refused dessert and then benignly, tolerantly waited for her to finish a giant chocolate mousse, she had accused him of … what had she called it? Lack of enjoyment. Lack of ability to enjoy himself. He hadn’t understood, back then, how she could draw so many implications from a single meal. And still he didn’t agree with her.

Yes, only Ezra, he would say, had managed to escape all this. Ezra was so impervious—so thickheaded, really; nothing ever touched him. He ate heartily, whether it was his mother’s cooking or his own. He liked anything that was offered him, especially bread—would have to watch his weight as he got older. But above all else, he was a feeder. He would set a dish before you and then stand there with his face expectant, his hands clasped tightly under his chin, his eyes following your fork. There was something tender, almost loving, about his attitude toward people who were eating what he’d cooked them.

Like Ruth, Cody thought.

He asked her for another slice of pie.

Mornings, now, he called her from New York, often getting her landlady out of bed; and Ruth when she answered was still creaky voiced from sleep—or was it from bewilderment, even now? Reluctantly, each time, she warmed to his questions, speaking shortly at first. Yes, she was fine. The restaurant was fine. Dinner last night had gone well. And then (letting her sentences stretch gradually longer, as if giving in to him all over again) she told him that this house was starting to wear her down—creepy boarders padding around in their slippers at
all hours, no one ever
going
anywhere, landlady planted eternally in front of her TV. This landlady, a widow, believed that Perry Como’s eyebrows quirked upward as they did because he was by nature a bass, and singing such high notes gave him constant pain; she had heard that Arthur Godfrey, too, had been enduring constant pain for years, smiling a courageous smile and wheeling about on his stool because the slightest step would stab him like a knife. Yes, everything, to Mrs. Pauling, was a constant pain;
life
was a constant pain, and Ruth had started looking around her and wondering how she stood this place.

Weekends—Friday and Saturday nights—Ruth tore through the restaurant kitchen slapping haunches of beef and whipping egg whites. Ezra worked more quietly. Cody sat at the wooden table. Now and then, Ruth would place some new dish in front of him and Cody would eat it dutifully. Every mouthful was a declaration of love. Ruth knew that. She was tense and watchful. She gave him sideways, piercing glances when he forked up one of her dumplings, and he was careful to leave nothing on his plate.

Then on Sunday mornings, yellow summer mornings at her boardinghouse, he rang her doorbell and pulled her close to him when she answered. Anytime he kissed her, he was visited by the curious impression that some other self of hers was still moving through the house behind her, spunky and lighthearted and uncatchable even yet, checking under pot lids, slamming cupboard doors, humming and tossing her head and wiping her hands on her blue jeans.

“I don’t understand,” Ezra told them.

“Let me start over,” said Cody.

Ezra said, “Is this some kind of a joke? Is that what it is? What is it?”

“Ruth and I—” Cody began.

But Ruth said, “Ezra, honey. Listen.” She stepped, forward. She was wearing the navy suit that Cody had bought her to go away in, and high-heeled shoes with slender straps. Although
it was a glaring day in August, her skin had a chilled, dry, powdery look, and her freckles stood out sharply. She said, “Ezra, we surely never planned on this. We never had the least intention, not me or Cody neither one.”

Ezra waited, evidently still not comprehending. He was backed against the huge old restaurant stove, as if retreating from their news.

“It just happened, like,” said Ruth.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” said Ezra.

“Ezra, honey—”

“You would never do this. It’s not true.”

“See, I don’t know how it came about but me and Cody … and I should’ve told you sooner but I kept thinking, oh, this is just some … I mean, this is silly; he’s so sophisticated, he isn’t someone for
me;
this is just some … daydream, see …”

“There’s bound to be an explanation,” Ezra said.

“I feel real bad about it, Ezra.”

“I’m sure I’ll understand in a minute,” he said. “Just give me time. Just wait a minute. Let me think it through.”

They waited, but he didn’t say anything more. He pressed two fingers against his forehead, as if working out some complicated puzzle. After a while, Cody touched Ruth’s arm. She said, “Well, Ezra, goodbye, I guess.” Then she and Cody left.

In the car, she cried a little—not making any fuss but sniffling quietly and keeping her face turned toward the side window. “Are you all right?” Cody asked.

She nodded.

“You’re sure you still want to go on with this.”

She nodded again.

They were planning to travel by train—Ruth’s idea; she had never set foot on a train—to New York City, where they would be married in a civil ceremony. Ruth’s people, she said, were mostly dead or wouldn’t much care; so there wasn’t any point having the wedding in her hometown. And it went without saying that
Cody’s
people … well. For the next little bit, they might as well stay in New York. By and by, things would simmer down.

Ruth took off one of her gloves, already gray at the seams, and crumpled it into a ball and blotted both her eyes.

Near Penn Station, Cody found a parking lot that offered weekly rates. It was a good deal of trouble, traveling by train, but worth it for Ruth’s sake. She was already perking up. She asked him if he thought there’d be a dining car—an “eating car,” she called it. Cody said he imagined so. He accepted the ticket the parking attendant gave him and slid out from behind the steering wheel, grunting a little; lately he’d put on a few pounds around the waist. He took Ruth’s suitcase from the trunk. Ruth wasn’t used to high heels and she hobbled along unsteadily, every now and then making a loud, scraping sound on the sidewalk. “I hope to get the knack of these things before long,” she told Cody.

“You don’t have to wear them, you know.”

“Oh, I surely
do
,” she said.

Cody guided her into the station. The sudden, echoing coolness seemed to stun her into silence. She stood looking around her while Cody went to the ticket window. A lady at the head of the line was arguing about the cost of her fare. A man in a crisp white suit rolled his eyes at Cody, implying exasperation at the wait. Cody pretended not to notice. He turned away as if checking the length of the line behind him, and a plump young woman with a child smiled instantly, fully prepared, and said, “Cody Tull!”

“Um—”

“I’m Jane Lowry. Remember me?”

“Oh, Jane! Jane Lowry! Well, good to see you, how nice to … and is this your little girl?”

“Yes; say hello to Mr. Tull, Betsy. Mr. Tull and Mommy used to go to school together.”

“So you’re married,” Cody said, moving forward in line. “Well, what a—”

“Remember the day I came to visit you, uninvited?” she asked. She laughed, and he saw, in the tilt of her head, a flash of the young girl he had known. She had lived on Bushnell Street, he remembered now; she had had the most beautiful hair, which
still showed its chips of gold light, although she wore it short now. “I had such a crush on you,” she said. “Lord, I made a total fool of myself.”

“You played a game of checkers with Ezra,” he reminded her.

“Ezra?”

“My brother.”

“You had a brother?”

“I certainly did; do. You played checkers with him all afternoon.”

“How funny; I thought you only had a sister. What was her name? Jenny. She was so skinny, I envied her for years. Anything she wanted, she could eat and not have it show. What’s Jenny doing now?”

“Oh, she’s in medical school. And Ezra: he runs a restaurant.”

“In those days,” said Jane, “my fondest wish was to wake up one morning and find I’d turned into Jenny Tull. But I’d forgotten you had a brother.”

Cody opened his mouth to speak, but the man in white had moved away and it was Cody’s turn at the window. And by the time he’d bought his tickets, Jane had switched to the other line and was busy buying hers.

He didn’t see her again—though he looked for her on the train—but it was odd how she’d plunged him into the past. Swaying on the seat next to Ruth, holding her small, rough hand but finding very little to say to her, he was startled by fragments of buried memories. The scent of chalk in geometry class; the balmy, laden feeling of the last day of school every spring; the crack of a baseball bat on the playground. He found himself in a summer evening at a drive-in hamburger stand, with its blinding lights surrounded by darkness, its hot, salty, greasy smell of French fries, and all his friends horsing around at the curb. He could hear an old girlfriend from years ago, her droning, dissatisfied voice: “You ask me to the movies and I say yes and then you change your mind and ask me bowling instead and I say yes to that but you say wait, let’s make it another night, as if anything you can have is something it turns out you don’t want …” He heard his mother telling Jenny not to slouch, telling Cody
not to swear, asking Ezra why he wouldn’t stand up to the neighborhood bully. “I’m trying to get through life as a liquid,” Ezra had said, and Cody (trying to get through life as a rock) had laughed; he could hear himself still. “Why aren’t cucumbers prickly any more?” he heard Ezra ask. And “Cody? Don’t you want to walk to school with me?” He saw Ezra aiming a red-feathered dart, his chapped, childish wrist awkwardly angled; he saw him running for the telephone—“I’ll get it! I’ll get it!”—hopeful and joyous, years and years younger. He remembered Carol, or was it Karen, reciting Ezra’s faults—a
motherly
man, she’d said; what had she said?—and it occurred to him that the reason he had dropped her was, she really hadn’t understood Ezra; she hadn’t appreciated what he was all about. Then Ruth squeezed his hand and said, “I intend to ride trains forever; it’s so much better than the bus. Isn’t it, Cody? Cody? Isn’t it?” The train rounded a curve with a high, thin, whistling sound that took him by surprise. He honestly believed, for an instant, that what he’d heard was music—a tune piped, a burble of notes, a little scrap of melody floating by on the wind and breaking his heart.

Twice or maybe three times a year, she goes out to the farm to make sure things are in order. She has her son Ezra drive her there, and she takes along a broom, a dustpan, rags, a grocery bag for trash and a bucket and a box of cleanser. Ezra asks why she can’t just keep these supplies in the farmhouse, but she knows they wouldn’t be safe. The trespassers would get them. Oh, the trespassers—the small boys and courting couples and the teen-aged gangs. It makes her mad to think of them. As the car turns off the main road, rattling up the rutted driveway, she already sees their litter—the beer cans tossed among the scrubby weeds, the scraps of toilet paper dangling from the bushes. This land has been let go and the vegetation is matted and wild, bristly, scratchy, no shade at all from the blazing sun. There are little spangles of bottle tops embedded in the dirt of the road. And the yard (which is not truly mown but sickled by Jared Peers, once or twice a summer) is flocked with white paper plates and Dixie cups, napkins, sandwich bags, red-striped straws, and those peculiarly long-lived, accordioned worms of paper that the straws were wrapped in.