Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (22 page)

—would wonder what was wrong, but they didn’t even look around. Ezra was out front, chalking up tonight’s menu.

“Just what is your problem?” Ruth asked him.

“Do you have something against me? You think I’m some Garrett County hick that you don’t want marrying your brother?”

“Of course I don’t want you marrying him,” Cody said. “I love you.”

“Huh?”

This wasn’t the moment he had planned, but he rushed on anyway, as if drunk. “I mean it,” he said, “I feel driven. I feel pul ed. I have to have you. You’re al I ever think about.” She was staring at him, astonished, with one hand cupped to scoop the meat cubes into a skil et.

“I guess I’m not saying it right,” he told her.

“Saying what? What are you talking about?”

“Ruth. I real y, truly love you,” he said.

“I’m sick over you. I can’t even eat. Look at me! I’ve lost eleven pounds.”

He held out his arms, demonstrating. His jacket hung loose at the sides. Lately he’d moved his belt in a notch; his suits no longer fit so smoothly but seemed rumpled, gathered, bunchy.

“It’s true you’re kind of skinny,” Ruth said slowly.

“Even my shoes feel too big.”

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

“You haven’t heard a word I said!”

“Over me, you said. You must be making fun.”

“Ruth, I swear—was he said.

“You’re used to New York City girls, models, actresses; you could have anyone.”

“It’s you I’l have.”

She studied him a moment. It began to seem he’d final y broken through; they were having a conversation.

Then she said, “We got to get that weight back on you.” He groaned.

“See there?” she asked. “You never eat a thing I offer you.”

“I can’t,” he told her.

“I don’t believe you ever once tasted my cooking.” She set the skil et aside and went over to the tal black kettle that was simmering on the stove.

“Country vegetable,” she said, lifting the lid.

“Real y, Ruth…”

She fil ed a smal crockery bowl and set it on the table.

“Sit down,” she said. “Eat. When you’ve tried it, I’l tel you the secret ingredient.”

Steam rose from the bowl, with a smel so deep and spicy that already he felt overfed. He accepted the spoon that she held out. He dipped it in the soup reluctantly and took a sip.

“Wel ?” she asked.

“It’s very good,” he said.

In fact, it was delicious, if you cared about such things.

He’d never tasted soup so good. There were chunks of fresh vegetables, and the broth was rich and heavy. He took another mouthful. Ruth stood over him, her thumbs hooked into her blue jeans pockets. “Chicken feet,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“Chicken feet is the secret ingredient.” He lowered the spoon and looked down into the bowl.

“Eat up,” she told him. “Put some meat on your bones.” He dipped the spoon in again.

After that, she brought him a salad made with the herbs she’d grown on the roof and a basketful of rol s she’d baked that afternoon—a recipe from home, she said. Cody ate everything. As long as he ate, she watched him. When she brought him more butter for his rol s, she leaned close over him and he felt the warmth she gave off.

Now two more cooks had arrived and a Chinese boy was saut@eing 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 fel al 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 wel be dumped in the pan with anything else.) Her only seasonings were salt and pepper. Her only gravy was Campbel ’s cream of mushroom soup, undiluted. And til 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 il ness, he remembered, you could count on her to bring liquids. Hot tea: she was good at that. And canned consommè. 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 al owing herself a sweet, skipping meals altogether, as if continual y 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 al 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 eggrol or a liverwurst on rye; it was al 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 cal ed 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 stil he didn’t agree with her.

Yes, only Ezra, he would say, had managed to escape al this. Ezra was so impervious—so thickheaded, real y; nothing ever touched him. He ate heartily, whether it was his mother’s cooking or his own.

He liked anything that was offered him, especial y bread

—would have to watch his weight as he got older. But above al 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 fol owing 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 cal ed her from New York, often getting her landlady out of bed; and Ruth when she answered was stil 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 wel . And then (letting her sentences stretch gradual y longer, as if giving in to him al over again) she told him that this house was starting to wear her down—creepy boarders padding around in their slippers at al hours, no one ever going anywhere, landlady planted eternal y 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 dutiful y. 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, yel ow summer mornings at her boardinghouse, he rang her doorbel and pul ed 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 stil 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—was 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 chil ed, 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 stil 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—his “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 sil y; 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’l 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, “Wel , 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 al right?”

Cody asked.

She nodded.

“You’re sure you stil 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… wel . For the next little bit, they might as wel 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 bal 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 cal ed 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 rol ed 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, ful y prepared, and said, “Cody Tul !”

“Urn—his “I’m Jane Lowry. Remember me?”

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

“Yes; say hel o to Mr. Tul , Betsy.

Mr. Tul and Mommy used to go to school together.”

“So you’re married,” Cody said, moving forward in line.

“Wel , what a—his “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 Bushnel Street, he remembered now; she had had the most beautiful hair, which stil 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.