Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

said.

“Never mind.”

He walked her anyway, relieving her of the laundry bag while she carried the baby astride her hip. They passed the mailman. He was bent so low to the ground that he didn’t even notice them.

Out by the car, Ezra said, “I’ve got this lump.”

“Oh?” said Jenny. “Where?”

He touched his groin. “In the morning it starts out small,” he said, “but by evening it’s so big, it’s like a rock or something in my trouser pocket. I’m wondering if it’s, you know. Cancer.”

“It’s not cancer. More likely a hernia, from the sound of it,” she said. “Go see a doctor.” She got in the car and buckled the baby into her carrier. Then she leaned out the open window. “Do I have all the children?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She waved and drove off.

Back in the house, his mother was hovering at the window exactly as if she could see. “That girl has too big a family,” she said. “I suppose her looks must be ruined by now.”

“No, I haven’t noticed it.”

“And her hair. Honestly. Ezra, tell me the truth,” she said. “How does Jenny seem to you?”

“Oh, the same as always.”

“I mean, don’t you think she’s let herself go? What about what she was wearing, for instance?”

He tried to remember. It was something faded, but perfectly acceptable, he guessed. Was it blue? Gray? He tried to picture her hairdo, the style of her shoes, but only came up with the chiseled lines that had always, even in her girlhood, encircled her neck — rings of lines that gave her a lush look. For some reason, those lines made him sad now, and so did Jenny’s olive hands with the ragged, oval fingernails, and the crinkles at the corners of her eyes, and the news that his life would, after all, go on and on and on.

“February sixth, nineteen-ten,” Ezra read aloud. “I baked a few Scottish Fancies but they wouldn’t do to take to a tea.”

His mother, listening intently, thought that over a while. Then she made her gesture of dismissal and started rocking again in her rocker.

“I hitched up Prince and rode downtown for brown silk gloves and an ice bag. Then got out my hat frames and washed my straw hat. For supper fixed a batch of—”

“Move on,” his mother said.

He riffled through the pages, glimpsing buttonhole stitch and watermelon social and set of fine furs for $22.50. “Early this morning,” he read to his mother, “I went out behind the house to weed. Was kneeling in the dirt by the stable with my pinafore a mess and the perspiration rolling down my back, wiped my face on my sleeve, reached for the trowel, and all at once thought, Why I believe that at just this moment I am absolutely happy.”

His mother stopped rocking and grew very still.

“The Bedloe girl’s piano scales were floating out her window,” he read, “and a bottle fly was buzzing in the grass, and I saw that I was kneeling on such a beautiful green little planet. I don’t care what else might come about, I have had this moment. It belongs to me.”

That was the end of the entry. He fell silent.

“Thank you, Ezra,” his mother said. “There’s no need to read any more.”

Then she fumbled up from her chair, and let him lead her to the kitchen for lunch. He guided her gently, inch by inch. It seemed to him that he had to be very careful with her. They were traversing the curve of the earth, small and steadfast, surrounded by companions: Jenny flying past with her children, the drunks at the stadium sobering the instant their help was needed, the baseball players obediently springing upward in the sunlight, and Josiah connected to his unknown gift giver as deeply, and as mysteriously, as Ezra himself was connected to this woman beside him.

10 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

When Pearl Tull died, Cody was off on a goose hunt and couldn’t be reached for two days. He and Luke were staying in a cabin owned by his business partner. It didn’t have a telephone, and the roads were little more than logging trails.

Late Sunday, when they returned, Ruth came out to the driveway. The night was chilly, and she wore no sweater but hugged herself as she walked toward the car, her white, freckled face oddly set and her faded red hair standing up in the wind. That was how Cody guessed something was wrong. Ruth hated cold weather, and ordinarily would have waited inside the house.

“It’s bad news,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“What happened?”

“Your mother’s passed away.”

“Grandma died?” asked Luke, as if correcting her.

Ruth kissed Luke’s cheek but kept her eyes on Cody, maybe trying to gauge the damage. Cody himself, wearily closing the car door behind him, was uncertain of the damage. His mother had been a difficult woman, of course. But even so …

“She died in her sleep, early yesterday,” Ruth said. She took Cody’s hand in both of hers and gripped it, tightly, so that the pain he felt right then was purely physical. He stood for a while, allowing her; then he gently pulled away and went to open the car trunk.

They had not bagged any geese — the hunt had been a lame excuse, really, to spend some time with Luke, who was now a senior in high school and would not be around for much longer. All Cody had to unload was the rifles in their canvas cases and a duffel bag. Luke brought the ice chest. They walked toward the house in silence. Cody had still not responded.

“The funeral’s tomorrow at eleven,” said Ruth. “I told Ezra we’d be there in the morning.”

“How is he taking it?” Cody asked.

“He sounded all right.”

Inside the front door, Cody set down the duffel bag and propped the rifles against the wall. He decided that he felt not so much sad as heavy. Although he was lean bodied, still in good shape, he imagined that he had suddenly sunk in on himself and grown denser. His eyes were weighty and dry, and his step seemed too solid for the narrow, polished floorboards in the hall.

“Well, Luke,” he said.

Luke seemed dazed, or perhaps just sleepy. He squinted palely under the bright light.

“Do you want to go to the funeral?” Cody asked him.

“Sure, I guess,” said Luke.

“You wouldn’t have to.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Of course he’s going,” said Ruth. “He’s her grandson.”

“That doesn’t obligate him,” Cody told her.

“Of course it obligates him.”

This was where they differed. They could have argued about it all night, except that Cody was so tired.

For their journey south, Cody drove Ruth’s car because his own was still spattered with mud from the goose hunt. He supposed they would have to ride in some shiny, formal funeral procession. But when he happened to mention this to Ruth, halfway down the turnpike, she told him that Ezra had said their mother had requested cremation. (“Golly,” Luke breathed!) There would only be the service, therefore — no cemetery trip and no burial.