Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (19 page)

“They put people off,” Ezra said. “They seemed to think the customers were taking an exam of some kind, not just ordering a meal. They were uppish.”

“I liked your waiters.”

“Nowadays our staff is homier,” Ezra said, and he gestured toward a passing waitress—a tal , stooped, colorless girl, open mouthed with concentration, fiercely intent upon the coffee mug that she carried in both hands.

She inched across the floor, breathing adenoidal y. She proceeded directly between Ezra and the customer. Ezra stepped back to give her room.

The customer said, was “Nettie,” I said, “you’ve just got to see Scarlatti’s. Don’t knock Baltimore,” I tel her, “til you see Scarlatti’s.” Then we come upon it and even the sign’s gone. Homesick Restaurant, you cal it now. What kind of a name is that? And the decor! Why, it looks like… why, a gigantic roadside diner!”

He was right. Cody agreed with him. Dining room wal s lined with home preserves, kitchen laid open to the public, unkempt cooks mil ing around compiling their favorite dishes (health food, street food, foreign food, whatever popped into their heads)…

Ever since Ezra had inherited this place—from a woman, wouldn’t you know—he’d been systematical y wrecking it.

He was ful y capable of serving a single entree al one evening, bringing it to your table himself as soon as you were seated. Other nights he’d offer more choice, four or five selections chalked up on the blackboard. But stil you might not get what you asked for. “The Smithfield ham,” you’d say, and up would come the okra stew.

“With that cough of yours, I know this wil suit you better,” Ezra would explain. But even if he’d judged correctly, was that any way to run a restaurant? You order ham, ham is what you get. Otherwise, you might as wel eat at home.

“You’l go bankrupt in a year,” Cody had promised, and Ezra almost did go bankrupt; most of the regular patrons disappeared. Some hung on, though; and others discovered it. There were several older people who ate here every night, sitting alone at their regular tables in the barn like, plank-floored dining room. They could afford it because the prices weren’t written but recited instead by the staff, evidently according to whim, altering with the customer.

(wasn’t that il egal?) Ezra worried about what these older people did on Sundays, when he closed.

Cody, on the other hand, worried about Ezra’s account books, but didn’t offer to go over them. He would find a disaster, he was sure—errors and bad debts, if not outright, naive crookery. Better not to know; better not to get involved.

“It’s true there’ve been some changes,” Ezra was tel ing his ex-customer, “but if you’l just try our food, you’l see that we’re stil a fine restaurant. Tonight it’s al one dish—pot roast.”

“Pot roast!”

“A real y special kind—consoling.”

“Pot roast I can get at home,” said the man. He clamped a felt hat on his head and walked out.

“Oh, wel ,” Ezra told Cody. “You can’t please everybody, I guess.”

They made their way to the far corner, where a RESERVED sign sat upon the table that Ezra always chose for family dinners. Jenny and their mother weren’t there yet. Jenny, who’d arrived on the afternoon train, had asked her mother’s help in shopping for a dress to be married in. Now Ezra worried they’d be late.

“Everything’s planned for six-thirty,” he said.

“What’s keeping them?”

“Wel , no problem if it’s only pot roast.”

“It’s not only pot roast,” Ezra said. He sat in a chair. His suit had a way of waffling around him, as if purchased for a much larger man. “This is something more. I mean, pot roast is real y not the right name; it’s more like… what you long for when you’re sad and everyone’s been wearing you down. See, there’s this cook, this real country cook, and pot roast is the least of what she does. There’s also pan-fried potatoes, black-eyed peas, beaten biscuits genuinely beat on a stump with the back of an ax— his “Here they come,” Cody said.

Jenny and her mother were just walking across the dining room. They carried no parcels, but something made it clear they’d been shopping—perhaps the frazzled, cross look they shared. Jenny’s lipstick was chewed off. Pearl’s hat was knocked crooked and her hair was frizzier than ever.

“What took you so long?” Ezra asked, jumping up. “We were starting to worry.”

“Oh, this Jenny and her notions,” said Pearl.

“Her size eight figure and no bright colors, no pastels, no gathers or puckers or trim, nothing to make her look fat, socal ed… Why are there five places set?” The question took them al off guard. It was true, Cody saw. There were five plates and five crystal wineglasses.

“How come?” Pearl asked Ezra.

“Oh… I’l get to that in a minute. Have a seat, Mother, over there.”

But she kept standing. “Then at last we find just the right thing,” she said. “A nice soft gray with a crocheted col ar, Jenny al the way. “It’s you,” I tel her. And guess what she does.

She has a tantrum in the middle of Hutzler’s department store.”

“Not a tantrum, Mother,” Jenny told her.

“I merely said—his “Said, “It isn’t a funeral, Mother; I’m not going into mourning.” You’d think I’d chosen widow’s weeds. This was a nice pale gray, very ladylike, very suitable for a second marriage.”

“Anthracite,” Jenny told Cody.

“Pardon?”

“Anthracite was what the saleslady cal ed it.

In other words: coal. Our mother thinks it suitable to marry me off in a coal-black wedding dress.”

“Uh,” said Ezra, looking around at the other diners,

“maybe we should be seated now.”

But Pearl just stood straighter. “And then” she told her sons, “then, without the slightest bit of thought, doing it only to spite me, she goes rushing over to the nearest rack and pul s out something white as snow.”

“It was cream colored,” Jenny said.

“Cream, white—what’s the difference? Both are inappropriate, if you’re marrying for the second time and the divorce hasn’t yet been granted and the man has no steady employment. “I’l take this one,” she says, and it’s not even the proper size, miles too big, had to be left at the store for alterations.”

“I happened to like it,” Jenny said.

“You were lost in it.”

“It made me look thin.”

“Maybe you could wear a shawl or something, brown,” said her mother. “That might tone it down some.”

“I can’t wear a shawl in a wedding.”

“Why not? Or a little jacket, say a brown linen jacket.”

“I look fat in jackets.”

“Not in a short one, Chanel-type.”

“I hate Chanel.”

“Wel ,” said Pearl, “I can see that nothing wil satisfy you.”

“Mother,” Jenny said, “I’m already satisfied.

I’m satisfied with my cream-colored dress, just the way it is. I love it. Wil you please just get off my back?”

“Did you hear that?” Pearl asked her sons.

“Wel , I don’t have to stand here and take it.” And she turned and marched back across the dining room, erect as a little wind-up dol .

Ezra said, “Huh?”

Jenny opened a plastic compact, looked into it, and then snapped it shut, as if merely making certain that she was stil there.

“Please, Jenny, won’t you go after her?” Ezra asked.

“Not on your life.”

“You’re the one she fought with. I can’t persuade her.”

“Oh, Ezra, let’s for once just drop it,” Cody said. “I don’t think I’m up to al this.”

“What are you saying? Not have dinner at al ?”

“I could only eat lettuce leaves anyhow,” Jenny told him.

“But this is important! It was going to be an occasion. Oh, just… wait. Wait here a minute, wil you?” Ezra turned and rushed off to the kitchen. From the swarm of assorted cooks at the counter, he plucked a smal person in overal s. It was a girl, Cody guessed—a weasel-faced little redhead. She fol owed Ezra jauntily, almost stiff-legged, wiping her palms on her backside.

“I’d like you to meet Ruth,” Ezra said.

Cody said, “Ruth?”

“We’re getting married in September.”

“Oh,” said Cody.

Then Jenny said, “Wel , congratulations,” and kissed Ruth’s bony, freckled cheek, and Cody said, “Uh, yes,” and shook her hand. There were cal uses like pebbles on her palm. “How do,” she told him. He thought of the phrase banty hen, although he had never seen a banty hen. Or maybe she was more of a rooster. Her brisk, carroty hair was cut so short that it seemed too scant for her skul .

Her blue eyes were round as marbles, and her skin was so thin and tight (as if, like her hair, it had been skimped on) that he could see the white cartilage across the bridge of her nose. “So,” he said.

“Ruth.”

“Are you surprised?” Ezra asked him.

“Yes, very surprised.”

“I wanted to do it right; I was going to announce it over drinks and then cal her in to join the family dinner. But, honey,” Ezra said, turning to Ruth, “I guess Mother was overtired. It didn’t work out the way I’d planned.”

“Shit, that’s okay,” Ruth told him.

Cody said, “Surely. Certainly. We can always do it later.” Then Jenny started asking about the wedding, and Cody excused himself and said he thought he’d go see how their mother was. Outside in the dark, walking up the street toward home, he had the strangest feeling of loss. It was as if someone had died, or had left him forever—the beautiful, black-haired Ruth of his dreams.

“I knew what that dinner was going to be, tonight,” Pearl told Cody. “I’m not so dumb. I knew. He’s got himself engaged; he’s going to marry the country cook. I knew that anyway but it al came home to me when I walked in the restaurant and saw those five plates and glasses.

Wel , I acted badly. Very badly.

You don’t have to tel me, Cody. It was just that I saw those plates and something broke inside of me.

I thought, “Wel , al right, if that’s how it’s got to be, but not tonight, just not tonight, Lord, right on top of buying wedding dress number two for my only daughter.” So then, why, I went and made a scene that caused the dinner to be canceled, exactly as if I’d planned it al ahead of time, which of course I hadn’t. You believe me, don’t you?

I’m not blind. I know when I’m being unreasonable.

Sometimes I stand outside my body and just watch it al , total y separate. “Now, stop,” I say to myself, but it’s like I’m… elated; I’ve got to rush on, got to keep going. “Yes, yes, I’l stop,” I think, “only let me say this one more thing, just this one more thing…”

“Cody, don’t you believe I want you three to be happy? Of course I do. Natural y. Why, I wouldn’t hold Ezxa back for the world, if he’s so set on marrying that girl—though I don’t know what he sees in her, she’s so scrappy and hoydenish; I think she’s from Garrett County or some such place and hardly wears shoes—you ought to see the soles of her feet sometime—but what I want to say is, I’ve never been one of those mothers who try to keep their sons for themselves. I honestly hope Ezra marries. I truly mean that. I want somebody taking care of him, especial y him. You can manage on your own but Ezra is so, I don’t know, defenseless… Of course I love you al the same amount, every bit the same, but… wel , Ezra is so good. You know?

Anyway, now he has this Ruth person and it’s changed his whole outlook; watch him sometime when she walks into a room, or swaggers, or whatever you want to cal it. He adores her. They get al playful together, like two puppies.

Yes, often they remind me of puppies, snuggling down and giggling, or bounding about the kitchen or listening to that hil bil y music that Ruth seems to be so crazy about. But, Cody.

Promise not to tel this to anyone. Promise?

Cody, sometimes I stand there watching them and I see they believe they’re completely special, the first, the only people ever to feel the way they’re feeling. They believe they’l live happily ever after, that al the other marriages going on around them—those ordinary, worn-down, flattened-in arrangements—why, those are nothing like what they’l have. They’l never settle for so little. And it makes me mad. I can’t help it, Cody. I know it’s selfish, but I can’t help it. I want to ask them, “Who do you think you are, anyhow? Do you imagine you’re unique? Do you real y suppose I was always this difficult old woman?”’

“Cody, listen. I was special too, once, to someone. I could just reach out and lay a fingertip on his arm while he was talking and he would instantly fal silent and get al confused.

I had hopes; I was courted; I had the most beautiful wedding. I had three lovely pregnancies, where every morning I woke up knowing something perfect would happen in nine months, eight months, seven… so it seemed I was ful of light; it was light and plans that fil ed me. And then while you children were little, why, I was the center of your worlds! I was everything to you! It was Mother this and Mother that, and “Where’s Mother? Where’s she gone to?”’ and the moment you came in from school,

“Mother?

Are you home?”’ It’s not fair, Cody. It’s real y not fair; now I’m old and I walk along unnoticed, just like anyone else. It strikes me as unjust, Cody. But don’t tel the others I said so.”

At work that next week, charting the steps by which power dril s were fitted into their housings, Cody watched the old, dark Ruth fade from the rafters and hal ways, until at last she was completely gone and he forgot why she had moved him so. Now a new Ruth appeared. Skinny and boyish, overal s flapping around her shinbones, she raced giggling down the assembly line with Ezra hot on her heels.

Ezra’s hair was tousled. (he was not immune at al , it appeared, but had only been waiting in his stubbornly trustful way for the proper person to arrive.) He caught her in the supervisor’s office and they scuffled like… yes, like two puppies. A cowlick bounced on the crown of Ruth’s head. Her lips were chapped and cracked.

Her nails were bitten into tiny pink cushions and there were scrapes and burns across her knuckles, scars from her country cooking.

Cody cal ed his mother and said he’d be down for the weekend. And would Ruth be around, did she think?

After al , he said, it was time he got to know his future sister-in-law.

He arrived on Saturday morning bringing flowers, copper-colored roses. He found Ruth and Ezra playing gin on the living room floor.