Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“Very sensible,” Cody said. He thought of the tidy framework of his mother’s bones, the crinkly bun on the back of her head. Did that fierce little figure exist any more? Was it already ashes? “Ah, God, it’s barbaric, however you look at it,” he told Ruth.

“What, cremation?” she asked.

“Death.”

They sped along — Cody in his finest gray suit, Ruth in stiff black beside him. Luke sat in the rear, gazing out the side window. They were traveling the Beltway now, approaching Baltimore. They passed trees ablaze with red and yellow leaves and shopping malls full of ordinary, Monday morning traffic. “When I was a boy, this was country,” Cody said to Luke.

“You told me.”

“Baltimore was nothing but a little harbor town.”

There was no answer. Cody searched for Luke in the rear-view mirror. “Hey,” he said. “You want to drive the rest of the way?”

“No, that’s all right.”

“Really. You want to?”

“Let him be,” Ruth whispered.

“What?”

“He’s upset.”

“What about?”

“Your mother, Cody. You know he always felt close to her.”

Cody couldn’t figure how anyone could feel close to his mother — not counting Ezra, who was thought by some to be a saint. He checked Luke’s face in the mirror again, but what could you tell from that impassive stare? “Hell,” he said to Ruth, “all I asked was did he want to drive.”

The city seemed even more ruined than usual, tumbling under a wan, blue sky. “Look at there,” Cody said. “Linsey’s Candy and Tobacco. They sold cigarettes to minors. Bobbie Jo’s Barbecue. And there’s my old school.”

On Calvert Street, the row houses stood in two endless lines. “I don’t see how you knew which one was home,” Luke had told him once, and Cody had been amazed. Oh, if you lived here you knew. They weren’t alike at all, not really. One had dozens of roses struggling in its tiny front yard, another an illuminated madonna glowing night and day in the parlor window. Some had their trim painted in astonishing colors, assertively, like people with their chins thrust out. The fact that they were attached didn’t mean a thing.

He parked in front of his mother’s house. He slid from the car and stretched, waiting for Ruth and Luke.

By now, Pearl would have been out the door and halfway down the steps, reaching for the three of them with those eager, itchy fingers of hers.

“Is that your sister’s car?” Ruth asked him.

“I don’t know what kind of car she drives.”

They climbed the steps. Ruth had her hand hooked in the back of Luke’s belt. He was too tall for her to cup the nape of his neck, as she used to do.

When Cody first left home, he would knock when he returned for a visit. It was a deliberate, planned act; it was an insult to his mother. She had known that and objected. “Can’t you walk straight in? Do you have to act like company?”

“But company is what I am,” he’d said. She had started outwitting him; she had lain in wait, rushing to meet him at the very first sound of his shoes on the sidewalk. (So it was, perhaps, not solely love that had sent her plunging down the steps.) Now, crossing the porch, Cody didn’t know whether to knock or just open the door. Well, he supposed this house belonged to Ezra now. He knocked.

Ezra looked sad and exhausted, loosely filling a lightweight khaki suit that only he would have thought appropriate. As always, he seemed whiskerless, boy faced. There was a space between his collar and the knot of his tie. A handkerchief bunched messily out of his jacket pocket. “Cody. Come in,” he said. He touched Cody’s arm in that tentative way he had — something more than a handshake, less than a hug. “Ruth? Luke? We were starting to worry about you.”

From the gloomy depths of the house, Jenny stepped forward to kiss everyone. She smelled of some complicated perfume but had her usual hastily assembled look — her tailored coat unbuttoned, her dark hair rough and tossed. Her husband ambled behind her, fat and bearded, good-natured. He clapped Cody on the shoulder. “Nice to see you. Too bad about your mother.”

“Thank you, Joe.”

“We’re supposed to be starting for the church this very minute,” Jenny said. “We have to leave early because we’re picking up some of the children on the way.”

“I’m all set,” Cody said.

Ezra asked, “But don’t you want coffee first?”

“No, no, let’s get going.”

“See,” Ezra said, “I had planned on coffee and pastries before we started out. I’d assumed you’d be coming earlier.”

“We’ve already had breakfast,” Cody told him.

“But everything’s on the table.”

Cody felt his old, familiar irritation beginning. “Ezra—” he said.

“That was thoughtful of you,” Ruth told Ezra, “but really, we’re fine, and we wouldn’t want to hold people up.”

Ezra checked his watch. He glanced behind him, toward the dining room. “It’s only ten-fifteen,” he said. He walked over to a front window and lifted the curtain.

Now that it was apparent he had something on his mind, the others stood waiting. (He could be maddeningly slow, and all the slower if pushed.)

“It’s like this,” he said finally.

He coughed.

“I was kind of expecting Dad,” he said.

There was a blank, flat pause.

“Who?” Cody asked.

“Our father.”

“But how would he know?”

“Well, ah, I invited him.”

“Ezra, for God’s sake,” Cody said.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Ezra said. “It was Mother’s. She talked about it when she got so sick. She said, ‘Look in my address book. Ask everybody in it to my funeral.’ I wondered who she meant, at first. You know she never wrote anyone, and most of her relatives are dead. But as soon as I opened the address book I saw it: Beck Tull. I didn’t even realize she knew where he had run off to.”

“He wrote her; that’s how she knew,” Cody said.

“He did?”

“From time to time he sent these letters, boasting, bragging. Doing fine … expecting a raise … I peeked inside when Mother wasn’t looking.”

“I never even guessed,” said Ezra.

“What difference would it have made?”

“Oh, I don’t know …”

“He ditched us,” Cody said, “when we were kids. What do you care about him now?”

“Well, I don’t,” said Ezra. And Cody, who had so often been exasperated by Ezra’s soft heart, saw that in this case, it was true: he really didn’t care. He looked directly at Cody with his peculiarly clear, light-filled eyes, and he said, “It was Mother who asked; not me. All I did was call him up and say, ‘This is Ezra. Mother has died and we’re holding her funeral Monday at eleven.’ ”

“That was all?” Cody said.

“Well, and then I told him he could stop by the house first, if he got here early.”

“But you didn’t ask, ‘How are you?’ or ‘Where’ve you been?’ or ‘Why’d you go?’ ”