Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

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 barnlike, 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 illegal?) 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 telling his ex-customer, “but if you’ll just try our food, you’ll see that we’re still a fine restaurant. Tonight it’s all one dish — pot roast.”

“Pot roast!”

“A really 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, well,” 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?”

“Well, 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 really 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—”

“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, so-called … Why are there five places set?”

The question took them all off guard. It was true, Cody saw. There were five plates and five crystal wineglasses. “How come?” Pearl asked Ezra.

“Oh … I’ll 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 collar, Jenny all the way. ‘It’s you,’ I tell 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—”

“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 called 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 pulls 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’ll 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.”

“Well,” said Pearl, “I can see that nothing will 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. Will you please just get off my back?”

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

Ezra said, “Huh?”

Jenny opened a plastic compact, looked into it, and then snapped it shut, as if merely making certain that she was still 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 all this.”

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

“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, will you?”

Ezra turned and rushed off to the kitchen. From the swarm of assorted cooks at the counter, he plucked a small person in overalls. It was a girl, Cody guessed — a weasel-faced little redhead. She followed 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, “Well, congratulations,” and kissed Ruth’s bony, freckled cheek, and Cody said, “Uh, yes,” and shook her hand. There were calluses 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 skull. 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 call 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