Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“Oh,” said Jenny, taking a bib from her purse. “Yes, it’s quite a crowd.”

“Eleven, twelve … thirteen … counting the baby, it’s fourteen people!”

“There would have been fifteen, but Slevin’s off at college,” Jenny said.

Beck shook his head. Jenny tied the bib around the baby’s neck.

“What we’ve got,” said Beck, “is a … well, a crew. A whole crew.”

Phoebe, who was religious, started loudly reciting a blessing. Mrs. Potter set a steaming bowl of soup before Beck. He sniffed it, looking doubtful.

“It’s eggplant soup,” Ezra told him.

“Ah, well, I don’t believe …”

“Eggplant Soup Ursula. A recipe left behind by one of my very best cooks.”

“On this day of death,” Phoebe said, “the least some people could do is let a person pray in silence.”

“She cooked by astrology,” Ezra said. “I’d tell her, ‘Let’s have the endive salad tonight,’ and she’d say, ‘Nothing vinegary, the stars are wrong,’ and up would come some dish I’d never thought of, something I would assume was a clear mistake, but it worked; it always worked. There might be something to this horoscope business, you know? But last summer the stars advised her to leave, and she left, and this place has never been the same.”

“Tell us the secret ingredient,” Jenny teased him.

“Who says there’s a secret ingredient?”

“Isn’t there always a secret ingredient? Some special, surprising trick that you’d only share with blood kin?”

“Well,” said Ezra. “It’s bananas.”

“Aha.”

“Without bananas, this soup is nothing.”

“On this day of death,” Phoebe said, “do we have to talk about food?”

“It is not a day of death,” Jenny told her. “Use your napkin.”

“The thing is,” Beck said. He stopped. “What I mean to say,” he said, “it looks like this is one of those great big, jolly, noisy, rambling … why, families!”

The grown-ups looked around the table. The children went on slurping soup. Beck, who so far hadn’t even dipped his spoon in, sat forward earnestly. “A clan, I’m talking about,” he said. “Like something on TV. Lots of cousins and uncles, jokes, reunions—”

“It’s not really that way at all,” Cody told him.

“How’s that?”

“Don’t let them mislead you. It’s not the way it appears. Why, not more than two or three of these kids are even related to you. The rest are Joe’s, by a previous wife. As for me, well, I haven’t been with these people in years — couldn’t tell you what that baby’s name is. Is it a boy or a girl, by the way? Was I even informed of its birth? So don’t count me in your clan. And Becky down there, at the end of the table —”

“Becky?” said Beck. “Does she happen to be named for me, by any chance?”

Cody stopped, with his mouth open. He turned to Jenny.

“No,” said Jenny, wiping the baby’s chin. “Her name’s Rebecca.”

“You think we’re a family,” Cody said, turning back. “You think we’re some jolly, situation-comedy family when we’re in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place, and our mother was a witch.”

“Oh, Cody,” Ezra said.

“A raving, shrieking, unpredictable witch,” Cody told Beck. “She slammed us against the wall and called us scum and vipers, said she wished us dead, shook us till our teeth rattled, screamed in our faces. We never knew from one day to the next, was she all right? Was she not? The tiniest thing could set her off. ‘I’m going to throw you through that window,’ she used to tell me. ‘I’ll look out that window and laugh at your brains splashed all over the pavement.’ ”

The main course was set before them, on tiptoe, by Mrs. Potter and another woman who smiled steadily, as if determined not to hear. But nobody picked up his fork. The baby crooned softly to a mushroom button. The other children watched Cody with horrified, bleached faces, while the grown-ups seemed to be thinking of something else. They kept their eyes lowered. Even Beck did.

“It wasn’t like that,” Ezra said finally.

“You’re going to deny it?” Cody asked him.

“No, but she wasn’t always angry. Really she was angry very seldom, only a few times, widely spaced, that happened to stick in your mind.”

Cody felt drained. He looked at his dinner and found pink-centered lamb and bright vegetables — a perfect arrangement of colors and textures, one of Ezra’s masterpieces, but he couldn’t take a bite.

“Think of the other side,” Ezra told him. “Think of how she used to play Monopoly with us. Listened to Fred Allen with us. Sang that little song with you — what was the name of that song you two sang? Ivy, sweet sweet Ivy … and you’d do a little soft-shoe. The two of you would link arms and soft-shoe into the kitchen.”

“Is that right!” said Beck. “I didn’t remember Pearl could soft-shoe.”

Mrs. Potter poured wine into Cody’s glass. He set his fingers around the stem but then couldn’t lift it. He was conscious of Ruth, to his right, watching him with concern.

Then Ezra said, “So! What do you think of this wine, Dad?”

“Oh, afraid I’m not much for wine, son,” said Beck.

“This is a really good one.”

“Little shot of bourbon is more my style,” said Beck.

“And best of all’s the dessert wine. They make it with these grapes that have suffered from a special kind of mold, you see—”

“Well, wait now,” Beck said. “Mold?”

“You’re going to love it.”

“And what is this here whitish stuff?”

“It’s kasha.”

“I don’t believe I’ve heard of that.”

“You’ll love it,” Ezra said.

Beck shook his head, but he looked gratified, as if he liked to think that Ezra had traveled so far beyond him.

Then Cody pushed his plate away. “I’ve got this partner, Sloan,” he said. “A bachelor all his life. He never married.”

Everyone took on an exaggerated attentiveness — even the children.

“Last year,” Cody said, “Sloan ran into some old girlfriend, a woman he’d known years ago, and she had her little daughter with her. They were celebrating the daughter’s birthday. Sloan asked which birthday it was, just making conversation, and when the woman told him, something rang a bell. He calculated the dates, and he said, ‘Why! My God! She must be mine!’ The woman looked over at him, sort of vaguely, and then she collected her thoughts and said, ‘Oh. Yes, she is, as a matter of fact.’ ”

They waited. Cody smiled and gave them a little salute, implying that they could go back to their food.

“Well. What a strange lady,” Beck said finally.

“Not at all,” Cody told him.

“You’d think she’d at least have—”

“What she was saying was, the man had nothing to do with them. He wasn’t ever there, you see, so he didn’t count. He wasn’t part of the family.”

Beck drew back sharply. His eyes no longer seemed so blue; they had darkened to a color nearer navy.

Then Joe said, “The baby!”

The baby was struggling soundlessly, convulsively, mouth open and face going purple. “She’s strangling,” Jenny said. Several people leapt up and a wineglass overturned. Joe was trying to pull the baby from the high chair, but Jenny stopped him. “Never mind that! Let me at her!” It seemed the tray was strapped in place and they couldn’t get the baby out from under it. An older child started crying. Something crashed to the floor. Jenny punched