Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“I just said, ‘This is Ezra. Mother has died and—’ ”

Cody laughed.

“At any rate,” Jenny said, “it doesn’t seem he’s coming.”

“No,” said Cody, “but think about it. I mean, don’t you get it? First he leaves and Mother pretends he hasn’t. Out of pride, or spite, or something, she never says a word about it, makes believe to all of us that he’s only on a business trip. A thirty-five-year business trip. Then Ezra calls him on the phone and does the very same thing. ‘This is Ezra,’ he says, as if he’d seen Dad just yesterday—”

Jenny said, “Can we get started now? My children will be freezing to death.”

“Oh, surely,” Ruth told her. “Cody, honey, her children are waiting on us.”

“Mother would have done that, just exactly,” Cody said. “If Dad had walked in she would have said, ‘Ah, yes, there you are. Can you tell me if my slip is showing?’ ”

Joe gave a little bark of laughter. Ezra smiled, but his eyes filmed over with tears. “That’s true,” he said. “She would have. You know? She really would have.”

“Fine, then, she would have,” Jenny said. “Shall we go?”

She had been so young when their father left, anyhow. She claimed to have forgotten all about him.

At the funeral, the minister, who had never met their mother, delivered a eulogy so vague, so general, so universally applicable that Cody thought of that parlor game where people fill in words at random and then giggle hysterically at the story that results. Pearl Tull, the minister said, was a devoted wife and a loving mother and a pillar of the community. She had lived a long, full life and died in the bosom of her family, who grieved for her but took comfort in knowing that she’d gone to a far finer place.

It slipped the minister’s mind, or perhaps he hadn’t heard, that she hadn’t been anyone’s wife for over a third of a century; that she’d been a frantic, angry, sometimes terrifying mother; and that she’d never shown the faintest interest in her community but dwelt in it like a visitor from a superior neighborhood, always wearing her hat when out walking, keeping her doors tightly shut when at home. That her life had been very long indeed but never full; stunted was more like it. Or crabbed. Or … what was the word Cody wanted? Espaliered. Twisted and flattened to the wall — all the more so as she’d aged and wizened, lost her sight, and grown to lean too heavily on Ezra. That she was not at all religious, hadn’t set foot in this church for decades; and though in certain wistful moods she might have mentioned the possibility of paradise, Cody didn’t take much comfort in the notion of her residing there, fidgeting and finding fault and stirring up dissatisfactions.

Cody sat in the right front pew, the picture of a bereaved and dutiful son. But skeptical thoughts flowed through his head so loudly that he almost believed they might be heard by the congregation. He was back to his boyhood, it seemed, fearing that his mother could read his mind as unhesitatingly as she read the inner temperature of a roasting hen by giving its thigh a single, contemptuous pinch. He glanced sideways at Ruth, but she was listening to the minister.

The minister announced the closing hymn, which Pearl had requested in her funeral instructions: “We’ll Understand It All By and By.” Raising his long, boneless face to lead the singing, Reverend Thurman did appear bewildered — perhaps less by the Lord’s mysterious ways than by the unresponsive nature of this group of mourners. Most were just staring into open hymn-books, following each stanza silently. And there were so few of them: a couple of Ezra’s co-workers, some surly teen-aged grandchildren sulking in scattered pews, and five or six anonymous old people, who were probably there as church members but gave the impression of having wandered in off the streets for shelter, dragging their string-handled shopping bags.

When the service was finished, the minister descended from the pulpit and stopped to offer Cody, as firstborn, a handshake and condolences. “All my sympathy … know what a loss …”

“Thank you,” said Cody, and he and Ruth and the minister proceeded down the aisle. Jenny and Joe followed, and last came Ezra, blowing his nose. By rights the grandchildren should have risen too, but if they had there would have been hardly any guests remaining.

Outside, the cold was a relief, and Cody was grateful for the lumbering noise of the traffic in the street. He stood between Jenny and Ruth and accepted the murmurs of strangers. “Beautiful service,” they told him.

“Thank you,” he said.

He heard a woman say to Ezra, over by the church doorway, “I’m so sorry for your trouble,” and Ezra said, kindly, “Oh, that’s all right”—although for Ezra alone, of the three of them, this death was clearly not all right. What would he fill his life with now? He had been his mother’s eyes. Lately, he had been her hands and feet as well. Now that she was gone he would come home every night and … do what? What would he do? Just sit on the couch by himself, Cody pictured; or lie on his bed, fully dressed, staring into the swarming, brownish air above his bed.

Jenny said, “Did Ezra tell you we’re meeting at his restaurant afterward?”

Cody groaned. He shook an old man’s hand and said to Jenny, “I knew it. I just knew it.” Hadn’t he told Ruth, in fact? In the car coming down, he’d said, “Oh, God, I suppose there’ll be one of those dinners. We’ll have to have one of those eternal family dinners at Ezra’s restaurant.”

“He’s probably too upset,” Ruth said. “I doubt he’d give a dinner now.”

This showed she didn’t know Ezra as well as she’d always imagined. Certainly he would give a dinner. Any excuse would do — wedding or engagement or nephew’s name on the honor roll. “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant! Everyone in the family! Just a cozy family gathering”—and he’d rub his hands together in that annoying way he had. He no doubt had his staff at work even at this moment, preparing the … what were they called? The funeral baked meats. Cody sighed. But he suspected they would have to attend.

The old man must have spoken; he was waiting for Cody to answer. He tilted his flushed, tight-skinned face beneath an elaborate plume of silver hair that let the light shine through. “Thank you,” Cody said. Evidently, this was the wrong response. The old man made some disappointed adjustment to his mouth. “Um …” said Cody.

“I said,” the old man told him, “I said, ‘Cody? Do you know me?’ ”

Cody knew him.

It shouldn’t have taken him so long. There were clues he should have picked up at once: that fan-shaped pompadour, still thick and sharply crimped; the brilliant blue of his eyes; the gangsterish air of his pinstriped, ill- fitting navy blue suit.

“Yes,” the old man said, with a triumphant nod. “It’s your father speaking, Cody.”

Cody said to Jenny, “I’m not sure if Ezra remembered to set a place for Dad.”

“What?” Jenny said. She looked at Beck Tull. “Oh,” she said.

“At the restaurant. Did he remember?”

“Oh, well, probably,” she said.

“Nothing fancy,” Cody told Beck.

Beck gaped at him.

“Just a light repast at the Homesick.”

“What are you talking about?” Beck asked.

“Dinner afterward, of course, at the Homesick Restaurant.”

Beck passed a hand across his forehead. He said, “Is this here Jenny?”

“Yes,” Jenny told him.

“Jenny, last time I set eyes on you you were just about eight years old,” said Beck. “Was it eight? Or nine. Your favorite song was ‘Mairzy Doats.’ You babbled that thing night and day.”

“Oh, yes,” Jenny said distantly. “And little lambs eat ivy.”

Beck, who had drawn a breath to go on speaking, paused and shut his mouth.

“You remember Ruth,” said Cody.

“Ruth?”

“My wife.”

“Why should I remember her? I’ve been away! I haven’t been here!”

Ruth stepped forward to offer her hand. “So Cody’s married,” said Beck. “Fancy that. Any children?”

“Well, Luke, of course,” Cody said.

“I’m a grandfather!” He turned to Jenny. “How about you? Are you married?”

“Yes, but he’s left to pick up the little ones,” Jenny said. She waved goodbye to somebody.

“And Ezra?” Beck asked. “Where’s Ezra?”