“Things are kind of busy.”
“Won’t Ruth be there during the week?”
“I want her here with me,” he said. “After all, we just did get married.”
“Well, when will we see you?”
“Pretty soon, not too long, I’m sure we’ll be down in a while …”
But they weren’t; or if they were, they didn’t tell Pearl, and she was too proud to ask again. The summer ended and the leaves turned all colors, but Ezra dragged himself along with no change. “Sweetheart,” Pearl told him, as in his boyhood, “isn’t there someone you’d like to have home? Some friend to dinner? Anyone,” she said. Ezra said no.
From time to time, Pearl called Cody in New York again. He was courteous and noncommittal. Ruth, if she spoke, gave flustered replies and didn’t seem to have her wits about her. Then in October, two full weeks went by when no one answered the phone at all. Pearl wondered if they’d gone to the farm, and she begged Ezra to investigate. But when he finally agreed to, he found nobody there. “Someone’s shattered four windowpanes,” he reported. “Threw rocks at them, or shot them out.” This made Pearl feel frightened. The world was closing in on them; even here on her own familiar streets, she no longer felt safe. And who knew what might have become of Ruth and Cody? They could be lying dead in their apartment, victims of a burglary or some bizarre, New York-type accident, their bodies undiscovered for weeks. Oh, this was what happened when you broke off all ties with your family! It wasn’t right; with your family, if with no one else, you have to keep on trying.
She called frantically, day after day, often letting the phone ring thirty or forty times. There was something calming about that faraway purling sound. She was, at least, connected — though only to an object in Cody’s apartment.
Then he answered. It was late in October. She was so taken aback that she didn’t know what to say. It seemed the monotonous ring of the phone had grown to be enough for her. “Um, Cody …” she said.
“Oh. Mother.”
“Cody, where have you
“I had a job to see to in Ohio. I took Ruth along.”
“You didn’t answer the phone for weeks, and we looked for you out at the farm and some of the windows were broken.”
“Damn! I thought I was paying Jared to keep that kind of thing from happening.”
“You can’t imagine how I felt, Cody. When I heard about the windows I felt … You’re letting that place go to rack and ruin and we never get to see you any more.”
“I do have a job to do, Mother.”
“I thought that once you married, you were moving down to Baltimore. You were doing over the farmhouse and planting a garden and all.”
“Yes, definitely. That’s a definite possibility,” said Cody. “Get Ezra to tape those windows, will you? And tell him to speak to Jared. I can’t have the place depreciating.”
“All right, Cody,” she said.
Then she asked about Thanksgiving. “Will you be coming down? You know how Ezra likes to have us at the restaurant.”
“Oh, Ezra and his restaurant …”
“Please. We’ve hardly seen you,” she said.
“Well, maybe.”
So in November they returned — Cody looking elegant and casual, Ruth incongruous in a large, ornate blue dress. Her hair was so stubby, her head so Small, that the dress appeared to be drowning her. She staggered in her high-heeled shoes. She still would not meet Ezra’s gaze.
“What have you two been up to?” Pearl asked Ruth, as they rode in Cody’s Cadillac to the restaurant.
“Oh, nothing so much.”
“Are you decorating Cody’s apartment?”
“Decorating? No.”
“We’ve hardly seen it,” Cody said. “I’m taking on longer-term jobs. In December I start reorganizing a textile plant in Georgia, a
“December? But then you’d miss Christmas,” said Pearl.
Cody looked surprised. He said, “Why would we miss it?”
“I mean, would you still make the trip to Baltimore?”
“Oh. Well, no, I guess not,” he said. “But we’re here for Thanksgiving, aren’t we?”
She resolved to say no more. She had her dignity.
They sat at their regular family table, surrounded by a fair-sized crowd. (In those days — the start of the sixties — shaggy young people had just discovered Ezra’s restaurant, with its stripped wood and pure, fresh food, and they thronged there every evening.) It was sad that Jenny couldn’t come; she was spending the holiday with her in-laws. But Ruth, at least, rounded out their number. Pearl smiled across the table at her. Ruth said, “It feels right funny to be eating where I used to be cooking.”
“Would you like to visit the kitchen?” Ezra asked. “The staff would enjoy seeing you.”
“I don’t mind if I do,” she said. It was the first time since her marriage that she’d looked at him directly — or the first that Pearl knew about.
So Ezra scraped back his chair and rose, and guided Ruth into the kitchen. Pearl could tell that Cody wasn’t pleased. He stopped in the act of unfolding his napkin and gazed after them, even taking a breath as if preparing to object. Then he must have thought better of it. He shook out the napkin angrily, saying nothing.
“So,” said Pearl. “When do you move to the farm?”
“Farm? Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Everything’s so changed; the whole character of my work has changed.” He looked again toward the kitchen.
“But you’d planned on raising a family there. It was all you ever talked about.”
“Yes, well, and these long-term contracts,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her.
Pearl said, “You had your heart just set on it.”
But he continued watching the other two. He was not the least bit interested in what she might be saying. The kitchen was fully exposed, and could not have concealed the smallest secret. So why was Cody nervous? Ezra and Ruth stood talking with one of the cooks, their backs to the dining room. Ezra gestured as he spoke. He lifted both arms wide, one arm behind Ruth but not touching her, not brushing her shoulder, surely not encircling her or anything like that. Even so, Cody rose abruptly from his chair. “Cody!” Pearl said. He strode toward the kitchen, with his napkin crumpled in one fist. Pearl stood up and hurried after him, and arrived in time to hear him say, “Let’s go, Ruth.”
“Go?”
“I didn’t come here to watch you and Ezra chumming it up in the kitchen.”
Ruth looked scared. Her face seemed to grow more pointed.
“Come on,” said Cody, and he took her elbow. “Goodbye,” he told Pearl and Ezra.
“Oh!” said Pearl, running after them. “Oh, Cody, what can you be thinking of? How can you act so foolish?”
Cody yanked Ruth’s coat from a brass hook in passing. He opened the front door and pulled Ruth into the street and shut the door behind them.
Ezra said, “I don’t understand.”
Pearl said, “Why does it always turn out this way? How come we end up quarreling? Don’t we all love each other? Everything else aside,” she said, “don’t we all want the best for one another?”
“Certainly we do,” Ezra said.
His answer was so level and firm that she felt comforted. She knew things were bound to work out someday. She let him lead her back to the table, and the two of them had a forlorn turkey dinner on the wide expanse of white linen.
Upstairs there are four bedrooms, sparsely furnished, musty. The beds are so sunken-looking, evidently even the courting couples have not been tempted by them. They’re untouched, the drab, dirty quilts still smooth. But a
