Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

pounds, could not eat — a myth, he’d always thought that was — and hardly slept at night. When he did sleep, he willed himself to dream of Ruth but never did; she was impishly, defiantly absent, and daytimes when they next met he thought he saw something taunting in the look she gave him.

He often found it difficult to keep their conversations going. It struck him sometimes — in the middle of the week, when he was far from Baltimore — that this whole idea was deranged. They would never be anything but strangers. What single interest, even, did they have in common? But every weekend he was staggered, all over again, by her strutting walk, her belligerent chin and endearing scowl. He was moved by her musty, little-boyish smell; he imagined how her small body could nestle into his. Oh, it was Ruth herself they had in common. He would reach out to touch the spurs of her knuckles. She would ruffle and draw back. “What are you doing?” she would ask. He didn’t answer.

“I know what you’re up to,” his mother told him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I see through you like a sheet of glass.”

“Well? What am I up to, then?” he asked. He really did hope to hear; he had reached the stage where he’d angle and connive just to get someone to utter Ruth’s name.

“You don’t fool me for an instant,” said his mother. “Why are you so contrary? You’ve got no earthly use for that girl. She’s not your type in the slightest; she belongs to your brother, Ezra, and she’s the only thing in this world he’s ever wanted. If you were to win her away, tell me what you’d do with her! You’d drop her flat. You’d say, ‘Oh, my goodness, what am I doing with this little person?’ ”

“You don’t understand,” said Cody.

“This may come as a shock,” his mother told him, “but I understand you perfectly. With the rest of the world I might not be so smart, but with my three children, why, not the least little thing escapes me. I know everything you’re after. I see everything in your heart, Cody Tull.”

“Just like God,” Cody said.

“Just like God,” she agreed.

Ezra arranged a celebration dinner for the evening before Jenny’s wedding — a Friday. But Thursday night, Jenny phoned Cody at his apartment. It was a local call; she said she wasn’t ten blocks away, staying at a hotel with Sam Wiley. “We got married yesterday morning,” she said, “and now we’re on our honeymoon. So there won’t be any dinner after all.”

“Well, how did all this come about?” Cody asked.

“Mother and Sam had a little disagreement.”

“I see.”

“Mother said … and Sam told her … and I said, ‘Oh, Sam, why not let’s just …’ Only I do feel bad about Ezra. I know how much trouble he’s gone to.”

“By now, he ought to be used to this,” Cody said.

“He was going to serve a suckling pig.”

Hadn’t Ezra noticed (Cody wondered) that the family as a whole had never yet finished one of his dinners? That they’d fight and stamp off halfway through, or sometimes not even manage to get seated in the first place? Well, of course he must have noticed, but was it clear to him as a pattern, a theme? No, perhaps he viewed each dinner as a unit in itself, unconnected to the others. Maybe he never linked them in his mind.

Assuming he was a total idiot.

It was true that once — to celebrate Cody’s new business — they had made it all the way to dessert; so if they hadn’t ordered dessert you could say they’d completed the meal. But the fact was, they did order dessert, which was left to sag on the plates when their mother accused Cody of deliberately setting up shop as far from home as possible. There was a stiff-backed little quarrel. Conversation fell apart. Cody walked out. So technically, even that meal could not be considered finished. Why did Ezra go on trying?

Why did the rest of them go on showing up, was more to the point.

In fact, they probably saw more of each other than happy families did. It was almost as if what they couldn’t get right, they had to keep returning to. (So if they ever did finish a dinner, would they rise and say goodbye forever after?)

Once Jenny had hung up, Cody sat on the couch and leafed through the morning’s mail. Something made him feel unsettled. He wondered how Jenny could have married Sam Wiley — a scrawny little artist type, shifty eyed and cocky. He wondered if Ezra would cancel his dinner altogether or merely postpone it till after the honeymoon. He pictured Ruth in the restaurant kitchen, her wrinkled little fingers patting flour on drumsticks. He scanned an ad for life insurance and wondered why no one depended on him — not even enough to require his insurance money if he should happen to die.

He ripped open an envelope marked AMAZING OFFER! and found three stationery samples and a glossy order blank. One sample was blue, with LMR embossed at the top. Another had a lacy PAULA, the P entwined with a morning-glory vine, and the third was one of those letters that form their own envelopes when folded. The flap was printed with butterflies and Mrs. Harold Alexander III, 219 Saint Beulah Boulevard, Dallas, Texas. He studied that for a moment. Then he took a pen from his shirt pocket, and started writing in an unaccustomed, backhand slant:

Dear Ruth,

Just a line to say hey from all of us. How’s the job going? What do you think of Baltimore? Harold says ask if you met a young man yet. He had the funniest dream last night, dreamed he saw you with someone tall, black hair and gray eyes and gray suit. I said well, I certainly hope it’s a dream that comes true!

We have all been fine tho Linda was out of school one day last week. A case of “math test-itis” it looked like to me, ha ha! She says to send you lots of hugs and kisses. Drop us a line real soon, hear?

Cody felt he had just found the proper tone toward the end; he was sorry to run out of space. He signed the letter Luv, Sue (Mrs. Harold Alexander III), and sealed, stamped, and addressed it. Then he placed it in a business envelope, and wrote a note to his old college roommate in Dallas, asking if he would please drop the enclosed in the nearest mailbox.

That weekend he didn’t go home, and his reward was to dream about Ruth. She was waiting for a train that he was traveling on. He saw her on the platform, peering into the windows of each passenger car as it slid by. He was so eager to reach her, to watch her expression ease when she caught sight of him, that he called her name aloud and woke himself up. He heard it echoing in the dark — not her name, after all, but some meaningless sleep sound. For hours after that he tried to burrow back inside the dream, but he had lost it.

The next morning he began another letter, on the sheet headed PAULA. In a curlicued script, he wrote:

Dear Ruthie,

You old thing, don’t you keep in touch with your friends any more? I told Mama the other day, Mama that Ruth Spivey has forgotten all about us I believe.

Things here are not going too good. I guess you might have heard that me and Norman are separated. I know you liked him, but you had no idea how tiresome he could be, always so slow and quiet, he got on my nerves. Ruthie stay clear of those pale blond thoughtful kind of men, they’re a real disappointment. Go for someone dark and interesting who will take you lots of places you’ve never been. I’m serious, I know what I’m talking about.

Mama sends you greetings and asks do you want her to sew you anything. She’s real crippled now with the arthritis in her knees and can only sit in her chair, has plenty of time for sewing.

See ya, Paula