Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

say Baltimore was unlucky.’ ”

“Well, now, I’m trying to follow you, here,” Ezra said.

“It’s whether you add up the list or not,” Jenny said. “I mean, if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad. And Cody certainly catalogues; he’s ruining his life with his catalogues. But after all, I told him, we made it, didn’t we? We did grow up. Why, the three of us turned out fine, just fine!”

“It’s true,” said Ezra, his forehead smoothing. “You especially, Jenny. Look at you: a doctor.”

“Oh, shoo, I’m nothing but a baby weigher,” Jenny said. But she was pleased, and when they rose to go she took along the photographs to make him happy.

Joe said if they did have a baby, he’d like it to be a girl. He’d looked around and noticed they were a little short on girls. “How can you say that?” Jenny asked. She ticked the girls off on her fingers: “Phoebe, Becky, Jane …”

When her voice trailed away, he stood watching her. She was expecting him to speak, but he didn’t. “Well?” she asked.

“That’s only three.”

She felt a little rush of confusion. “Have I left one out?”

“No, you haven’t left one out. Has she left one out,” he told the wall. He snorted. “Has she left one out, she asks. What a question! No, you haven’t left one out. Three is all we have. Three girls.”

“Well, there’s no need to act so cross about it.”

“I’m not cross, I’m frustrated,” he said. “I’m trying to have a conversation here.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“Yes, yes …”

“Then where’s the problem?”

He wouldn’t say. He stood in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded tight across his chest. He gazed off to one side, scowling. Jenny was puzzled. Were they quarreling, or what? When the silence stretched on, she gradually, imperceptibly returned to slicing the cucumbers for supper. She brought the knife down as quietly as possible, and without a sound scooped the disks of cucumber into a bowl. (When she and Joe had first met, he’d said, “Do you put cucumber on your skin?” “Cucumbers?” she’d asked, astonished. “You look so cool,” he told her, “I thought of this bottle of cucumber milk my aunt used to keep on her vanity table.”)

Two of the children, Jacob and Peter, were playing with the Ouija board in front of the refrigerator. Jenny had to step over them when she went to get the tomatoes. “Excuse me,” she told them. “You’re in my way.” But they ignored her; they were intent on the board. “What will I be when I grow up?” Jacob asked, and he set his fingertips delicately upon the pointer. “Upper middle class, middle middle class, or lower middle class: which?”

Jenny laughed, and Joe glared at her and wheeled and stamped out of the kitchen.

On the evening news, a helicopter crewman who’d been killed in Laos was buried with full military honors. An American flag, folded into a cushiony triangle, was handed to the parents — a gray-haired, square-chinned gentleman and his fragile wife. The wife wore a trim beige raincoat and little white gloves. It was she who accepted the flag. The husband had turned away and was weeping, would not even say a few words to the microphone somebody offered him. “Sir? Sir?” a reporter asked.

One white glove reached out and took the microphone. “What my husband means to say, I believe,” the wife declared in a feathery, Southern voice, “is we thank all those who’ve gathered here, and we know we’re just going to be fine. We’re strong, and we’re going to be fine.”

“Hogwash,” Slevin said.

“Why, Slevin,” said Jenny. “I didn’t know you were political.”

“I’m not; it’s just a bunch of hogwash,” he told her. “She ought to say, ‘Take your old flag! I object! I give up!’ ”

“My goodness,” Jenny said mildly. She was sorting Ezra’s photos; she held one out to distract him. “Look,” she said. “Your Uncle Cody, at age fifteen.”

“He’s not my uncle.”

“Of course he is.”

“He’s not my real uncle.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew him. You’d like him,” Jenny said. “I wish he’d come for a visit. He’s so … un-brotherly or something; I don’t know. And look!” she said, alighting on another photo. “Isn’t my mother pretty?”

“I think she looks like a lizard,” Slevin said.

“Oh, but when she was a girl, I mean … isn’t it sad how carefree she was.”

“Half the time, she forgets my name,” Slevin said.

“Well, she’s old,” Jenny told him.

“Not that old. What she’s saying is, I’m not worth her bother. Old biddy. Sits at the head of the table with a piece of bread on her plate and sets both hands down flat and just stares around at us, stares around, face like one of those rotating fans, waiting for the butter but never asking, never saying a word. Till finally you or Dad says, ‘Mother? Could we pass you the butter?’ and she says, ‘Why, thank you,’ like she was wondering when you’d realize.”

“She hasn’t had an easy life,” Jenny said.

“I wish just once we’d get all through the meal and nobody offer her the butter.”

“She raised us on her own, you know,” Jenny told him. “Don’t you think it must have been hard? My father walked out and left her when I was nine years old.”

“He did?” Slevin asked. He stared at her.

“He left her, absolutely. We never set eyes on him again.”

“Bastard,” Slevin said.

“Oh, well,” said Jenny. She leafed through some more photos.

“Jesus! These people! They try to do you in.”

“You’re overreacting,” Jenny told him. “I can’t even remember the man, if you want to know the truth. Wouldn’t know him if I saw him. And my mother managed fine. It all worked out. Look at this, Slevin: see Ezra’s old-fashioned haircut?”

Slevin shrugged and switched the TV channel.

“And see what I was like at your age?” She handed him the picture with the tam-o’-shanter.

He glanced over. He frowned. He said, “Who did you say that was?”

“Me.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is. Me at thirteen. Mother wrote the date on the back.”

“It’s not!” he said. His voice was unusually high; he sounded like a much younger child. “It isn’t! Look at it! Why, it’s like a … concentration camp person, a victim, Anne Frank! It’s terrible! It’s so sad!”

Surprised, she turned the photo around and looked again. True, the picture wasn’t particularly happy — it showed a dark little girl with a thin, watchful face — but it wasn’t as bad as all that. “So what?” she asked, and she held it out to him once more. He drew back sharply.

“It’s somebody else,” he told her. “Not you; you’re always laughing and having fun. It’s not you.”

“Oh, fine, it’s not me, then,” she said, and she returned to the rest of the photos.

“I want to talk to you about that oldest boy,” her mother said on the phone. “What’s his name? Kevin?”

“Slevin, Mother. Honestly.”

“Well, he stole my vacuum cleaner.”

“He did what?”

“Sunday afternoon, when you all came to visit, he slipped into my pantry and made off with my Hoover upright.”

Jenny sat down on her bed. She said, “Let me get this straight.”