Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

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 all 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 eggroll or a liverwurst on rye; it was all 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 called 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 still he didn’t agree with her.

Yes, only Ezra, he would say, had managed to escape all this. Ezra was so impervious — so thickheaded, really; nothing ever touched him. He ate heartily, whether it was his mother’s cooking or his own. He liked anything that was offered him, especially bread — would have to watch his weight as he got older. But above all 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 following 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 called her from New York, often getting her landlady out of bed; and Ruth when she answered was still 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 well. And then (letting her sentences stretch gradually longer, as if giving in to him all over again) she told him that this house was starting to wear her down — creepy boarders padding around in their slippers at all hours, no one ever going anywhere, landlady planted eternally 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 dutifully. 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, yellow summer mornings at her boardinghouse, he rang her doorbell and pulled 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 still 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—” 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 chilled, 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 still 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—”

“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 silly; 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’ll 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, “Well, 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 all right?” Cody asked.

She nodded.

“You’re sure you still 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 … well. For the next little bit, they might as well 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 ball 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 called 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 rolled 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, fully prepared, and said, “Cody Tull!”

“Um—”

“I’m Jane Lowry. Remember me?”

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

“Yes; say hello to Mr. Tull, Betsy. Mr. Tull and Mommy used to go to school together.”

“So you’re married,” Cody said, moving forward in line. “Well, what a—”

“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 Bushnell Street, he remembered now; she had had