She made her way between the tables, toward a corridor with an EXIT sign over the archway. But just before the ladies’ room, in front of a swinging, leather-covered door, she caught sight of Josiah. He had his white uniform on and was carrying an aqua plastic dishpan full of chicory leaves. “Josiah,” she said.
He stopped short and his face lit up. “Hi, Jenny,” he said.
They stood smiling at each other, not speaking. She reached out to touch his wrist.
“Oh, no!” her mother cried.
Jenny snatched her hand back and spun around.
“Oh, Jenny. Oh, my God,” Pearl said. Her eyes were no longer gray; they were black, and she gripped her shiny black purse. “Well, I understand it all now,” she said.
“No, wait,” Jenny said. Her heart was beating so fast, it seemed she was vibrating where she stood.
“Visiting for no apparent reason,” said Pearl, “and slipping away this morning to meet him like a tramp, some cheap little tramp—”
“Mother, you’ve got it wrong!” Jenny told her. “It’s nothing, don’t you see?” She felt she had run out of breath. Gasping for air, she gestured toward Josiah, who merely stood there with his mouth agape. “He just … we just met in the hall and … it’s not that way at all, he’s
But she had to say this to Pearl’s back, hurrying after her through the dining room. Pearl reached their table and said, “Ezra, I cannot stay here.”
Ezra stood up. “Mother?”
“I simply cannot,” she said. She gathered up her coat and walked away.
“But what happened?” Ezra asked, turning to Jenny. “What’s bothering her?”
Cody said, “That lukewarm soup, no doubt,” and he rocked back comfortably in his chair with a cigar between his teeth.
“I wish just once,” Ezra said, “we could eat a meal from start to finish.”
“I don’t feel well,” Jenny told him.
In fact, her lips were numb. It was a symptom she seemed to remember from before, from some long- forgotten moment, or maybe from a nightmare.
She left her coat behind, and she rushed through the dining room and out to the street. At first, she thought her mother had disappeared. Then she found her, half a block ahead — a militant figure walking briskly. Oh, what if she wouldn’t even turn around? Or worse, would turn and lash out, slap, snap, her clawed pearl ring, her knowing face … But Jenny ran to catch up with her, anyway. “Mother,” she said.
In the light from the liquor store window, she saw her mother reassemble her expression — take on a cool, unperturbed look.
“You’ve got it all wrong,” Jenny told her. “I’m not a tramp! I’m not cheap! Mother, listen to me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Pearl said politely.
“Of course it matters!”
“You’re over twenty-one. If you don’t know good from bad by now, there’s nothing more I can do about it.”
“I felt sorry for him,” Jenny said.
They crossed a street and started up the next block.
“He told me his mother had died,” Jenny said.
They veered around a gang of teen-aged boys.
“She was all he had — his father’s dead too. She was the center of his life.”
“Well,” said Pearl, “I suppose it can’t have been easy for her.”
“I don’t know how he’s going to manage now she’s gone.”
“I believe I saw her in the grocery once,” said Pearl. “A brown-haired woman?”
“Plumpish, sort of.”
“Full in the face?”
“Like a wood thrush,” Jenny said.
“Oh, Jenny,” said her mother, and she gave a little laugh. “The things you come up with, sometimes!”
They passed the candy store, and then the pharmacy. Jenny and her mother fell into step. They passed the fortune-teller’s window. The same dusty lamp glowed on the table. Jenny, looking in, thought that Mrs. Parkins had not been much of a prophet. Why, she had even had to listen to the radio for tomorrow’s weather! And she should have guessed from the very first instant, from the briefest, most cursory glance, that Jenny was not capable of being destroyed by love.
4
Heart Rumors
The first few times that Mrs. Scarlatti stayed in the hospital, Ezra had no trouble getting in to visit her. But the last time was harder. “Relative?” the nurse would ask.
“No, ah, I’m her business partner.”
“Sorry, relatives only.”
“But she doesn’t have any relatives. I’m all she’s got. See, she and I own this restaurant together.”
“And what’s that in the jar?”
“Her soup.”
“Soup,” said the nurse.
“I make this soup she likes.”
“Mrs. Scarlatti isn’t keeping things down.”
“I know that, but I wanted to give her something.”
This would earn him a slantwise glance, before he was led brusquely into Mrs. Scarlatti’s room.
In the past, she had chosen to stay in a ward. (She was an extremely social woman.) She’d sit up straight in her dramatic black robe, a batik scarf hiding her hair, and “Sweetie!” she’d say as he entered. For a moment the other women would grow all sly and alert, till they realized how young he was — way too young for Mrs. Scarlatti. But now she had a private room, and the most she could do when he arrived was open her eyes and then wearily close them. He wasn’t even sure that he was welcome any more.
He knew that after he left, someone would discard his soup. But this was his special gizzard soup that she had always loved. There were twenty cloves of garlic in it. Mrs. Scarlatti used to claim it settled her stomach, soothed her nerves — changed her whole perception of the day, she said. (However, it wasn’t on the restaurant’s menu because it was a bit “hearty”—her word — and Scarlatti’s Restaurant was very fine and formal. This hurt Ezra’s feelings, a little.) When she was well enough to be home, he had often brewed single portions in the restaurant kitchen and carried them upstairs to her apartment. Even in the hospital, those first few times, she could manage a small-sized bowl of it. But now she was beyond that. He only brought the soup out of helplessness; he would have preferred to kneel by her bed and rest his head on her sheets, to take her hands in his and tell her, “Mrs. Scarlatti, come back.” But she was such a no-nonsense woman; she would have looked shocked. All he could do was offer this soup.
He sat in a corner of the room in a green vinyl chair with steel arms. It was October and the steam heat had come on; the air felt sharp and dry. Mrs. Scarlatti’s bed was cranked upward slightly to help her breathe. From time to time, without opening her eyes, she said, “Oh, God.” Then Ezra would ask, “What? What is it?” and she would sigh. (Or maybe that was the radiator.) Ezra never brought anything to read, and he never made conversation with the nurses who squeaked in and out on their rubber soles. He only sat, looking down at his pale, oversized hands, which lay loosely on his knees.
Previously, he had put on weight. He’d been nowhere near fat, but he’d softened and spread in that mild way that fair-haired men often do. Now the weight fell off. Like Mrs. Scarlatti, he was having trouble keeping things down. His large, floppy clothes covered a large, floppy frame that seemed oddly two-dimensional. Wide in front and wide behind, he was flat as paper when viewed from the side. His hair fell forward in a sheaf, like wheat. He didn’t bother pushing it back.
