Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

you recall the archery set? I thought it would be such fun, bring us all together — a family drive to the country, where we’d set up a target on a tree trunk and shoot our bows and arrows. But it didn’t work out like I’d planned. First Pearl claims she’s not athletic, then Jenny says it’s too cold, then you and Ezra get in some kind of, I don’t know, argument or quarrel, end up scuffling, shoot off an arrow, and wing your mother.”

“I remember that,” said Cody.

“Shot her through the shoulder. A disaster, a typical disaster. Then next week, while I’m away, something goes wrong with the wound. I come home from a sales trip and she tells me she nearly died. Something, I don’t know, some infection or other. For me, it was the very last straw. I was sitting over a beer in the kitchen that Sunday evening and all at once, not even knowing I’d do it, I said, ‘Pearl, I’m leaving.’ ”

Cody said, “You mean that was when you left?”

“I packed a bag and walked out,” said Beck.

Cody sat down on the stoop.

“See,” said Beck, “what it was, I guess: it was the grayness; grayness of things; half-right-and-half- wrongness of things. Everything tangled, mingled, not perfect any more. I couldn’t take that. Your mother could, but not me. Yes sir, I have to hand it to your mother.”

He sighed and stroked the lining of his jacket.

“I’ll be honest,” he said, “when I left I didn’t think I’d ever care to see you folks again. But later, I started having these thoughts. What do you suppose Cody’s doing now? What’s Ezra up to, and Jenny?’ ‘My family wasn’t so much,’ I thought, ‘but it’s all there really is, in the end.’ By then, it was maybe two, three years since I’d left. One night I was passing through Baltimore and I parked a block away, got out and walked to the house. Pretty near froze to death, standing across the street and waiting. I guess I was going to introduce myself or something, if anybody came out. It was you that came. First I didn’t even know you, wondered if someone else had moved in. Then I realized it was just that you had grown so. You were almost a man. You came down the walk and you bent for the evening paper and as you straightened, you kind of flipped it in the air and caught it again, and I saw that you could live without me. You could do that carefree a thing, you see — flip a paper and catch it. You were going to turn out fine. And I was right, wasn’t I? Look! Haven’t you all turned out fine — leading good lives, the three of you? She did it; Pearl did it. I knew she would manage. I turned and walked back to my car.

“After that, I just stuck to my own routine. Had a few pals, a lady friend from time to time. Somebody’d start to think the world of me and I would tell myself, ‘I wish Pearl could see this.’ I’d even write her a note, now and then. I’d write and give her my latest address, anyplace I moved to, but what I was really writing to say was, ‘There’s this new important boss we’ve got who regards me very highly.’ Or, ‘There’s a lady here who acts extremely thrilled when I drop by.’ Crazy, isn’t it? I do believe that all these years, anytime I had any success, I’ve kind of, like, held it up in my imagination for your mother to admire. Just take a look at this, Pearl, I’d be thinking. Oh, what will I do now she’s gone?”

He shook his head.

Cody, searching for something to say, happened to look toward Prima Street and see his family rounding the corner, opening like a fan. The children came first, running, and the teen-agers loped behind, and the grown-ups — trying to keep pace — were very nearly running themselves, so that they all looked unexpectedly joyful. The drab colors of their funeral clothes turned their faces bright. The children’s arms and legs flew out and the baby bounced on Joe’s shoulders. Cody felt surprised and touched. He felt that they were pulling him toward them — that it wasn’t they who were traveling, but Cody himself.

“They’ve found us,” he told Beck. “Let’s go finish our dinner.”

“Oh, well, I’m not so sure,” Beck said. But he allowed himself to be helped to his feet. “Oh, well, maybe this one last course,” he said, “but I warn you, I plan to leave before that dessert wine’s poured.”

Cody held on to his elbow and led him toward the others. Overhead, seagulls drifted through a sky so clear and blue that it brought back all the outings of his boyhood — the drives, the picnics, the autumn hikes, the wildflower walks in the spring. He remembered the archery trip, and it seemed to him now that he even remembered that arrow sailing in its graceful, fluttering path. He remembered his mother’s upright form along the grasses, her hair lit gold, her small hands smoothing her bouquet while the arrow journeyed on. And high above, he seemed to recall, there had been a little brown airplane, almost motionless, droning through the sunshine like a bumblebee.

DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT A Reader’s Guide

ANNE TYLER

A CONVERSATION WITH ANNE TYLER

Q: You’ve been known to claim Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant as the favorite of all your novels. What, in your eyes, sets it apart from the rest? What about it wins it such a special place in your heart?

A: For one thing, this book somehow managed to end up very much like the book I envisioned when I first began writing it. That almost never happens. I remember that when I’d finished, I thought, I’ve done what I wanted to. And then I’m so attached to the characters. I still miss them, even all these years later.

Q: In all of your work, you focus on the romantic and familial relationships that shape people’s lives. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, however, seems almost exclusively interested in family. What made you choose to zoom in so much on family matters, when writing this novel? Did family affairs seem more relevant to your life at the time than affairs of the heart? Which subject interests you the most?

A: I’ve often said that writing a book is like plucking an olive out of a bottle — one of those narrow bottles in which the olives are stacked in a single row. What comes next is what I write, willy-nilly. I wish I could tell you why!

As for whether family relationships or romantic relationships are more interesting: Somewhere in this book, Jenny says that marriage is like the earthquake in a disaster movie; it flings people together and exposes their true characters. I think that’s even truer of family life. Families are almost impossible to get out of, and therefore they make wonderful petri dishes for novelists.

Q: From chapter to chapter, you change narrative voice, giving the reader glimpses of several different characters’ points of view. Did you have fun doing this? Was there a particular character from whose point of view you enjoyed writing the most? Did you find yourself becoming angry at one character in one chapter and then defending him or her in the next?

A: Changing the point of view is one of my favorite parts of writing. It’s such a luxury not to be imprisoned behind a single set of eyes. And I love the challenge when I think, There’s no way on earth I could know how it feels to be so-and-so, and then I have to come up with a way. Probably one of the reasons I still feel so much affection for this book is that I enjoyed the viewpoint of each person equally, and I hadn’t expected that: Pearl, for instance — my least sympathetic character; Cody, in his continual stew of resentment; and hard-shelled Jenny. In a way, I felt that Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant educated me.

Q: What authors have influenced your writing style the most? Was there one writer who influenced Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant in particular?