Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (27 page)

She was thinking of his restaurant, which always intimidated her a little. Recently, Ezra had remodeled the living quarters above it into a series of tiny, elegant private dining rooms like those in old movies—the velvet-hung compartments where the villain attempts to seduce the heroine. They’d be perfect for anniversary couples, Ezra said. (Like most unmarried men, he
was comically, annoyingly sentimental about marriage.) But so far, only business groups and heavily jeweled Baltimore politicians had asked to use the rooms.

Now he said, “A hamburger’s fine; I’m crazy about hamburgers.” And when they walked through the plate glass doorway, into a slick, tiled area lined with glaring photos of onion rings and milkshakes, he looked around him happily. Secretaries clustered at some tables, construction workers at others. “It’s getting like a collective farm,” Ezra said. “All these chain places that everyone comes to for breakfast, lunch, sometimes supper … like a commune or a kibbutz or something. Pretty soon we won’t have private kitchens at all; you just drop by your local Gino’s or McDonald’s. I kind of like it.”

Jenny wondered if there were any eating place he wouldn’t like. At a soup kitchen, no doubt, he’d be pleased by the obvious hunger of the customers. At a urine-smelling tavern he’d discover some wonderful pickled eggs that he’d never seen anywhere else. Oh, if it had to do with food, he was endlessly appreciative.

While he ordered for them, she settled herself at a table. She took off her raincoat, smoothed her hair, and scraped at a Pablum spot on her blouse. It felt strange to be sitting alone. Always there was someone—children, patients, colleagues. The empty space on either side of her gave her an echoing, weightless feeling, as if she lacked ballast and might at any moment float upward.

Ezra returned with their hamburgers. “How’s Joe?” he asked, sitting down.

“Oh, fine. How’s Mother?”

“Doing well, sends her love … I brought you something,” he said. He set aside his burger to rummage through his windbreaker pockets. Eventually, he came up with a worn white envelope. “Pictures,” he said.

“Pictures?”

“Photos. Mother’s got all these photos; I just discovered them. I thought maybe you’d be interested in having a few.”

Jenny sighed. Poor Ezra: he was turning into the family
custodian, tending their mother and guarding their past and faithfully phoning his sister for lunch. “Why don’t you keep them,” she said. “You know I’d just lose them.”

“But a lot of these are of you,” he said. He spilled the envelope onto the table. “I figured the children might like them. For instance, somewhere here …” He shuffled various versions of a younger, sterner Jenny. “Here,” he said. “Don’t you see Becky in this?”

It was Jenny in a plaid tam-o’-shanter, unsmiling. “Ugh,” she said, stirring her coffee.

“You were a really nice little girl,” said Ezra. He returned to his burger but kept the photo before him. On the back of it, Jenny saw, something had been written in pencil. She tried to make it out. Ezra noticed and said, “Fall, 1947. I got Mother to write the dates down. And I’m going to send Cody some, too.”

Jenny could just imagine Cody’s face when he got them. “Ezra,” she said, “to tell the truth, I wouldn’t waste the postage.”

“Don’t you think he’d like to compare these with how Luke looks, growing up?”

“Believe me,” she said, “he’d burn them. You know Cody.”

“Maybe he’s changed,” Ezra said.

“He hasn’t,” said Jenny, “and I doubt he ever will. Just mention something—one little harmless memory from our childhood—and his mouth turns down.
You
know how his mouth does. I said to him once, I said, ‘Cody, you’re no better than the Lawsons.’ Remember the Lawsons? They moved into our neighborhood from Nashville, Tennessee, and the very first week all four childlren got mumps. Mrs. Lawson said, ‘This city is unlucky, I believe.’ The next week a pipe in their basement burst and she said, ‘Well, that’s Baltimore.’ Then their daughter broke her wrist … When they moved back to Tennessee, I went over to say goodbye. They were loading up their car trunk and they happened to slam the lid down smack on the fingers of their youngest boy. When they drove off he was screaming, and Mrs. Lawson called out, ‘Isn’t this a fitting way to leave? I always did say Baltimore was unlucky.’ ”

“Well, now, I’m trying to follow you, here,” Ezra said.

“It’s whether you add up the list or not,” Jenny said. “I mean, if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad. And Cody certainly catalogues; he’s ruining his life with his catalogues. But after all, I told him, we made it, didn’t we? We did grow up. Why, the three of us turned out fine, just fine!”

“It’s true,” said Ezra, his forehead smoothing. “You especially, Jenny. Look at you: a doctor.”

“Oh, shoo, I’m nothing but a baby weigher,” Jenny said. But she was pleased, and when they rose to go she took along the photographs to make him happy.

Joe said if they did have a baby, he’d like it to be a girl. He’d looked around and noticed they were a little short on girls. “How can you say that?” Jenny asked. She ticked the girls off on her fingers: “Phoebe, Becky, Jane …”

When her voice trailed away, he stood watching her. She was expecting him to speak, but he didn’t. “Well?” she asked.

“That’s only three.”

She felt a little rush of confusion. “Have I left one out?”

“
No
, you haven’t left one out. Has she left one out,” he told the wall. He snorted. “Has she left one out, she asks. What a question!
No
, you haven’t left one out. Three is all we have. Three girls.”

“Well, there’s no need to act so cross about it.”

“I’m not cross, I’m frustrated,” he said. “I’m trying to have a conversation here.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“Yes, yes …”

“Then where’s the problem?”

He wouldn’t say. He stood in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded tight across his chest. He gazed off to one side, scowling. Jenny was puzzled. Were they quarreling, or what? When the silence stretched on, she gradually, imperceptibly returned to slicing the cucumbers for supper. She brought the
knife down as quietly as possible, and without a sound scooped the disks of cucumber into a bowl. (When she and Joe had first met, he’d said, “Do you put cucumber on your skin?” “
Cucumbers?
” she’d asked, astonished. “You look so cool,” he told her, “I thought of this bottle of cucumber milk my aunt used to keep on her vanity table.”)

Two of the children, Jacob and Peter, were playing with the Ouija board in front of the refrigerator. Jenny had to step over them when she went to get the tomatoes. “Excuse me,” she told them. “You’re in my way.” But they ignored her; they were intent on the board. “What will I be when I grow up?” Jacob asked, and he set his fingertips delicately upon the pointer. “Upper middle class, middle middle class, or lower middle class: which?”

Jenny laughed, and Joe glared at her and wheeled and stamped out of the kitchen.

On the evening news, a helicopter crewman who’d been killed in Laos was buried with full military honors. An American flag, folded into a cushiony triangle, was handed to the parents—a gray-haired, square-chinned gentleman and his fragile wife. The wife wore a trim beige raincoat and little white gloves. It was she who accepted the flag. The husband had turned away and was weeping, would not even say a few words to the microphone somebody offered him. “Sir? Sir?” a reporter asked.

One white glove reached out and took the microphone. “What my husband means to say, I believe,” the wife declared in a feathery, Southern voice, “is we thank all those who’ve gathered here, and we know we’re just going to be fine. We’re strong, and we’re going to be fine.”

“Hogwash,” Slevin said.

“Why, Slevin,” said Jenny. “
I
didn’t know you were political.”

“I’m not; it’s just a bunch of hogwash,” he told her. “She ought to say, ‘Take your old flag! I object! I give up!’ ”

“My goodness,” Jenny said mildly. She was sorting Ezra’s photos; she held one out to distract him. “Look,” she said. “Your Uncle Cody, at age fifteen.”

“He’s not my uncle.”

“Of course he is.”

“He’s not my real uncle.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew him. You’d like him,” Jenny said. “I wish he’d come for a visit. He’s so … un-brotherly or something; I don’t know. And look!” she said, alighting on another photo. “Isn’t my mother pretty?”

“
I
think she looks like a lizard,” Slevin said.

“Oh, but when she was a girl, I mean … isn’t it sad how carefree she was.”

“Half the time, she forgets my name,” Slevin said.

“Well, she’s old,” Jenny told him.

“Not that old. What she’s saying is, I’m not worth her bother. Old biddy. Sits at the head of the table with a piece of bread on her plate and sets both hands down flat and just stares around at us, stares around, face like one of those rotating fans, waiting for the butter but never asking, never saying a word. Till finally you or Dad says, ‘Mother? Could we pass you the butter?’ and she says, ‘Why,
thank
you,’ like she was wondering when you’d realize.”

“She hasn’t had an easy life,” Jenny said.

“I wish just once we’d get all through the meal and nobody offer her the butter.”

“She raised us on her own, you know,” Jenny told him. “Don’t you think it must have been hard? My father walked out and left her when I was nine years old.”

“He did?” Slevin asked. He stared at her.

“He left her, absolutely. We never set eyes on him again.”

“Bastard,” Slevin said.

“Oh, well,” said Jenny. She leafed through some more photos.

“Jesus! These people! They try to do you in.”

“You’re overreacting,” Jenny told him. “I can’t even remember the man, if you want to know the truth. Wouldn’t know
him if I saw him. And my mother managed fine. It all worked out. Look at this, Slevin: see Ezra’s old-fashioned haircut?”

Slevin shrugged and switched the TV channel.

“And see what I was like at your age?” She handed him the picture with the tam-o’-shanter.

He glanced over. He frowned. He said, “Who did you say that was?”

“Me.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is. Me at thirteen. Mother wrote the date on the back.”

“It’s not!” he said. His voice was unusually high; he sounded like a much younger child. “It isn’t! Look at it! Why, it’s like a … concentration camp person, a victim, Anne Frank! It’s terrible! It’s so sad!”

Surprised, she turned the photo around and looked again. True, the picture wasn’t particularly happy—it showed a dark little girl with a thin, watchful face—but it wasn’t as bad as all that. “So what?” she asked, and she held it out to him once more. He drew back sharply.

“It’s somebody else,” he told her. “Not you; you’re always laughing and having fun. It’s not you.”

“Oh, fine, it’s not me, then,” she said, and she returned to the rest of the photos.

“I want to talk to you about that oldest boy,” her mother said on the phone. “What’s his name? Kevin?”

“Slevin, Mother. Honestly.”

“Well, he stole my vacuum cleaner.”

“He did what?”

“Sunday afternoon, when you all came to visit, he slipped into my pantry and made off with my Hoover upright.”

Jenny sat down on her bed. She said, “Let me get this straight.”

“It’s been missing all week,” her mother said, “and I couldn’t
understand it. I knew we hadn’t been burglarized, and even if we had, what would anyone want with my old Hoover?”

“But why accuse Slevin?”

“My neighbor told me, just this afternoon. Mrs. Arthur. Said, Was that your grandson I saw Sunday? Kind of hefty boy? Loading your Hoover upright into your daughter’s car trunk?’ ”

“That’s impossible,” Jenny said.

“Now, how do you know that? How do you know what is or is not possible? He’s hardly more than a stranger, Jenny. I mean, you got those children the way other people get weekend guests.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Jenny told her.

“Well, all I ask is for you to go check Slevin’s bedroom. Just check.”

“What, this minute?”

“There’s lint specks all over my carpet.”

“Oh, all right,” Jenny said.

She laid the receiver on her pillow and climbed from the second floor to the third. Slevin’s door was open and he wasn’t in his room, although his radio rocked with the Jefferson Airplane. She stepped stealthily over Slevin’s knapsack, avoided a teetering pile of
Popular Science
magazines, opened his closet door, and found herself staring at her mother’s vacuum cleaner. She would know it anywhere: an elderly machine with a gray cloth dust bag. Its cord was coiled neatly and it seemed unharmed. If he’d taken it apart to learn how it worked, she might have understood. Or if he’d smashed it, out of some rage toward her mother. But there it sat, entire. She stood puzzling over it for several seconds. Then she wheeled it out of the closet and lugged it down the stairs, to where her mother’s voice was twanging impatiently from the receiver. “Jenny? Jenny?”

“Well, you’re right,” Jenny said. “I found it in his room.”

There was a pause in which Pearl could have said, “I told you so,” but kindly did not. Then she said, “I wonder if he might be calling for help in some way.”

“By stealing a
vacuum
cleaner?”

“He’s really a very sweet boy,” Pearl said. “I can see that. Maybe he’s asking for a psychologist or some such.”

“More likely he’s asking for a neater house,” Jenny said. “The dust balls on his closet floor have started raising a family.”

She pictured Slevin, in desperation, stealing an arsenal of cleaning supplies—this neighbor’s broom, that neighbor’s Ajax, gathered with the same feverish zeal he showed in collecting Indian head pennies. She was attacked by a sudden sputter of laughter.

“Oh, Jenny,” her mother said sadly. “Do you have to see everything as a joke?”

“It’s not
my
fault if funny things happen,” Jenny said.

“It most certainly is,” said her mother, but instead of explaining herself, she all at once grew brisk and requested the return of her vacuum cleaner by tomorrow morning.