Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

What I had intended, before our misunderstanding, was that we might become better acquainted over the summer and then marry in the fall. I still find marriage a viable option. I know this must seem sudden — we haven’t exactly had a normal American courtship — but after all, we are neither of us frivolous people.

Bear in mind that we will both be at Paulham next year and could share a single apartment, buy groceries in economy lots, etc. Also, I sense that your finances have been something of a problem, and I would be glad to assume that responsibility.

The above sounds more pragmatic than I’d intended. Actually, I find I love you, and am awaiting your earliest reply.

Sincerely, Harley Baines

P.S. I know that you’re intelligent. You didn’t have to make up all those questions about genetics.

The postscript, she thought, was the most affecting part of the letter. It was written in a looser hand, as if impulsively, while the rest seemed copied and perhaps recopied from a rough draft. She read the letter again, and then folded it and set it on her bed. She went over to study her goldfish, who had left too much food floating on the surface of the water. She would have to cut down on their rations. Dear Harley, she practiced. It was such a surprise to … No. He wouldn’t care for gushiness. Dear Harley: I have considered your terms and … What she was trying to say was “Yes.” She was pulled only very slightly by the feelings she’d had for him earlier (which now seemed faded and shallow, a schoolgirl crush brought on by senior panic). What appealed to her more was the angularity of the situation — the mighty leap into space with someone she hardly knew. Wasn’t that what a marriage ought to be? Like one of those movie-style disasters — shipwrecks or earthquakes or enemy prisons — where strangers, trapped in close quarters by circumstance, show their real strengths and weaknesses.

Lately, her life had seemed to be narrowing. She could predict so easily the successive stages of medical school, internship, and residency. She had looked in a mirror, not so long ago, and realized all at once that the clear, fragile skin around her eyes would someday develop lines. She was going to grow old like anyone else.

She took paper from a bureau drawer, sat down on her bed, and uncapped her fountain pen. Dear Harley: she wrote. She plucked a microscopic hair from the pen point. She thought a while. Then she wrote, All right, and signed her name — the ultimate in no-nonsense communication. Even Harley couldn’t find it excessive.

The following evening, just before supper, Jenny arrived in Baltimore. She had burned all her bridges: quit her job, given away her goldfish, and packed everything in her room. It was the most reckless behavior she had ever shown. On the Greyhound bus she sat grandly upright, periodically shrugging off the snoring soldier who drooped against her. When she reached the terminal she hailed a cab, instead of waiting for a city bus, and rode home in style.

No one had been told she was coming, so she was puzzled by the fact that while she was paying off the driver, the front door of her house opened wide and her mother proceeded across the porch and down the steps in a flowing, flowered dress, high-heeled pumps, and a hat whose black net veil was dotted with what looked like beauty spots. Behind her came Ezra in un-pressed clothes that were a little too full cut, and last was Cody, dark and handsome and New Yorkish in a fine-textured, fitted gray suit and striped silk tie. For a second, Jenny fancied they were headed for her funeral. This was how they would look — formally dressed and refraining from battle — if Jenny were no longer among them. Then she shook the thought away, and smiled and climbed out of the taxi.

Her mother halted on the sidewalk. “My stars!” she said. “Ezra, when you say family dinner, you mean family dinner!” She raised her veil to kiss Jenny’s cheek. “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming? Ezra, did you plan it this way?”

“I didn’t know a thing about it,” Ezra said. “I thought of writing you, Jenny, but I didn’t think you’d come all this distance just for supper.”

“Supper?” Jenny asked.

“It’s some idea of Ezra’s,” Pearl told her. “He found out Cody was passing through, maybe spending the night, and he said, ‘I want both of you to get all dressed up—’ ”

“I am not spending the night,” Cody said. “I’m running on a schedule here, when will you see that? I shouldn’t even be staying for supper. I ought to be in Delaware.”

“Ezra’s got something he wants to say,” Pearl said, picking a thread off Jenny’s sundress, “some announcement he wants to make, and is taking us to Scarlatti’s Restaurant. Though hot as it is, I believe a leaf of lettuce is just about all I could manage. Jenny, honey, you’re thin as a stick! And what’s in this big suitcase? How long are you planning to stay?”

“Oh, well … not long,” Jenny said. She felt shy about telling her news. “Maybe I ought to change clothes. I’m not as dressed up as the rest of you.”

“No, no, you’re fine,” Ezra told her. He was rubbing his hands together, the way he always did when he was pleased. “Oh, it’s working out so well!” he said. “A real family dinner! It’s just like fate.”

Cody took Jenny’s suitcase inside the house. Meanwhile, her mother fussed: smoothing Jenny’s hair, clucking at her bare legs. “No stockings! On a public conveyance.” Cody came back and opened the door of a shiny blue car at the curb. He helped Pearl in, cupping her elbow. “What do you think of my car?” he said to Jenny.

“It’s very nice. Did you buy it new?”

“How else? A Pontiac. Smell that new-car smell,” he said. He walked around to the driver’s seat. Jenny and Ezra settled in the rear; Ezra’s knobby wrists dangled between his knees.

“Of course, it’s not yet paid for,” Cody said, pulling into traffic, “but it will be very soon.”

“Cody Tull!” his mother said. “You didn’t go in debt for this.”

“Why not? I’m getting rich, I tell you. Five years from now I can walk into an auto dealer, any dealer — Cadillac — and slap cold cash on the counter and say, ‘I’ll take three. Or on second thought, make that four.’ ”

“But not now,” said Pearl. “Not yet. You know how I feel about buying on time.”

“Time is what I deal with,” Cody said. He laughed, and shot through an amber light. “What could be more fitting? Ten years more, you’ll be riding in a limousine.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“And Ezra can go to Princeton, if he likes. And I can buy Jenny a clinic all her own. I can pay for her to specialize in every field, one by one.”

Now was the moment for Jenny to mention Harley, but she watched the scenery and said nothing.

At Scarlatti’s, they were shown to a table in the corner, at the end of the long, brocade-draped dining room. It was early evening, not yet dark. The restaurant was almost empty. Jenny wondered where Mrs. Scarlatti was. She started to ask about her, but Ezra was too busy overseeing their meal. He had ordered ahead, evidently, and now wanted it known that four would be eating instead of three. “We have my sister with us too. It’s going to be a real family dinner.” The waiter, who seemed fond of Ezra, nodded and went to the kitchen.

Ezra sat back and smiled at the others. Pearl was polishing a fork with her napkin. Cody was still talking about money. “I plan to buy a place in Baltimore County,” he said, “in the not-too-distant future. There’s no particular reason that I should be based in New York. I always did want land, that rolling Maryland farmland. I might raise horses.”

“Horses! Oh, Cody, really, that’s just not our style,” Pearl said. “What would you want with horses?”

“Mother,” Cody said, “anything’s our style. Don’t you see? There’s no limit. Mother, do you know who called for my services last week? The Tanner Corporation.”

Pearl set her fork down. Jenny tried to remember where she had heard that name before. It rang just the dimmest bell; it was like some lowly household object that you never look at, and only notice when you return after years of absence. “Tanner?” she asked Cody. “What’s that?”

“It’s where our father worked.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Where he still may, for all I know. But, Jenny, you should have seen it. Such a nickel-and-dime operation … I mean, not small, good Lord, with that mess of branch offices overlapping and conflicting, but so … tacky. Really so