Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant Part 26

The last two children slipped into the empty chairs on either side of Beck. They twined their feet through the rungs, set pointy elbows on the table. Surrounded, Beck gazed first to his left and then to his right. "Will you look at this!" he said.

"Pardon?" Jenny asked.

"This group. This gathering. This...a.s.semblage!"

"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 a.s.sume was a clear mistake, but it worked; it always worked. There might be something to 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." 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! 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 me in your clan. And Becky down there, at the end of the table-" 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 sc.u.m 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 n.o.body picked up his fork. The baby crooned softly to a mushroom b.u.t.ton. 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 always angry. Really she was angry very seldom, only a few times, widely s.p.a.ced, that happened to stick in your mind." angry. Really she was angry very seldom, only a few times, widely s.p.a.ced, 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 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 gla.s.s. 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 G.o.d! 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 winegla.s.s 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 the baby in the midriff and a mushroom b.u.t.ton shot onto the table. The baby wailed and turned pink. Hiccuping, she was dragged from the high chair and placed on her mother's lap, where she settled down cheerfully and started pursuing a pea around the rim of Jenny's plate.

"Will I live to see them grown?" Jenny asked the others.

"He's gone," said Ezra.

They knew instantly whom he meant. Everyone looked toward Beck's chair. It was empty. His napkin was tossed aside, one corner dipping into his plate and soaking up gravy.

"Wait here," Ezra said.

They not only waited; they suspended talk, suspended movement, while Ezra rushed across the dining room and out the front door. There was a pause, during which even the baby said nothing. Then Ezra came back, running his fingers distractedly through his hair. "He's nowhere in sight," he said. "But it's only been a minute. We can catch him! Come on, all of you."

Still, no one moved.

"Please!" said Ezra. "Please. For once, I want this family to finish a meal together. Why, every dinner we've ever had, something has gone wrong. Someone has left in a huff, or in tears, everything's fallen apart...Come on! Everybody out, cover the area, track him down! We could gather back here when we find him and take up where we left off."

"Or," Cody pointed out, "we could finish the meal without without him. That's always a possibility." him. That's always a possibility."

But it wasn't; even he could see that. One empty place at the table ruined everything. The chair itself, with its harp-shaped wooden back, had a desolate, reproachful look. Slowly, people rose. The children grouped around Ezra, who was issuing directives like a military strategist. "You and the little ones try Bushnell Street...rendezvous with Joe on Prima..." Then Ruth stood up too, to take the baby while Jenny put her coat on. They headed for the door. "Good hunting!" Cody called, and he tipped his chair back expansively and asked Mrs. Potter for another gla.s.s of wine.

Inwardly, though, he felt chastened. He thought of times in grade school when he'd teased some cla.s.smate to tears, taken things a little too far, and then looked around to find that all of his friends had stopped laughing. Wasn't there the same hollow silence in this dining room, among these sheeted tables? Mrs. Potter replaced the wine bottle upon a silver-rimmed coaster. She stepped back and folded her hands across her stomach.

"I believe I'll just go check on how they're doing," Cody told her.

Outside, the sky had deepened to a blue that was almost gaudy. A weak sun lit the tops of the buildings, and it didn't seem so cold. Cody stood with his hands at his hips, his feet spread wide-unperturbed, to all appearances-and looked up and down the street. One section of the search party was just disappearing around a corner: Joe and the teen-agers. A stately black woman with her head wrapped in bandannas had stopped to redistribute the contents of two grocery bags.

Cody took the alley to the right of the doorway, a narrow strip of concrete lined with old packing crates and garbage cans battered shapeless. He pa.s.sed the restaurant's kitchen window, where an exhaust fan blew him a memory of Ezra's lamb. He skirted a spindly, starved cat with a tail as matted as a worn-out bottlebrush. The back of his neck took on that special alertness required on Baltimore streets, but he walked at an easy, sauntering pace with his hands in his trouser pockets.

"Always have a purpose," his father used to tell him. "Act like you're heading someplace purposeful, and none of the low-life will mess with you." He had also said, "Never trust a man who starts his sentences with 'Frankly,'" and "Nine tenths of a good sidearm pitch is in the flick of the wrist," and, "If you want to sell a person something, look off elsewhere as you're speaking, not straight into his eyes."

"All we have is each other," Ezra would say, justifying one of his everlasting dinners. "We've got to stick together; n.o.body else has the same past that we have." But in that meager handful of advice offered by Beck Tull-truly the sole advice Cody could remember from him-there didn't seem much of a past to build on. From the sound of it, you would imagine that the three of them shared only a purposeful appearance, a mistrust of frankness, a deft wrist, and an evasive gaze.

Cody suddenly longed for his son-for Luke's fair head and hunched shoulders. (He would rather die than desert a child of his. He had promised himself when he was a boy: anything but that.) He thought back to their goose hunt, where they hadn't had much to say to each other; they had been shy and standoffish together. He wondered whether Sloan would lend him the cabin again next weekend, so they could give it another try.

He came out on Bushnell-sunnier than the alley and almost empty. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked around him and-why! There was Luke, as if conjured up, sitting for some reason on the stoop of a boarded-over building. Cody started toward him, walking fast. Luke heard his footsteps and raised his head as Cody arrived. But it wasn't Luke. It was Beck. His silver hair appeared yellow in the sunlight, and he had taken off his suit coat to expose his white shirt and his sharp, c.o.c.ked shoulders so oddly like Luke's. Cody came to a halt.

"I was just looking for the Trailways station," Beck told him. "I thought I could make it walking, but now I'm not so sure."

Cody took out his handkerchief to wipe his forehead.

"See, Claudette will be expecting me," said Beck. "That's the lady friend I mentioned. I figured I better go on and find a bus. Sorry to eat and run, but you know how it is with women. I told her I'd be home before supper. She's depending on me."

Cody replaced the handkerchief.

"I guess she'll want to get married, after this," said Beck. "She knows about Pearl's pa.s.sing. She's sure to be making plans."

He held up his jacket, as if inspecting it for flaws. He folded it carefully, inside out, and laid it over his arm. The lining was something silky, faintly rainbow hued, like the sheen on aging meat.

"To tell the truth," Beck said, "I don't much want to marry her. It's not only that daughter; it's me. It's really me. You think I haven't had girlfriends before? Oh, sure, and could have married almost any one of them. Lots have begged me, 'Write your wife. Get a divorce. Let's tie the knot.' 'Well, maybe in a while,' I'd tell them, but I never did. I don't know, I just never did."

"You left us in her clutches," Cody said.

Beck looked up. He said, "Huh?"

"How could you do that?" Cody asked him. "How could you just dump us on our mother's mercy?" He bent closer, close enough to smell the camphorish scent of Beck's suit. "We were kids, we were only kids, we had no way of protecting ourselves. We looked to you for help. We listened for your step at the door so we'd be safe, but you just turned your back on us. You didn't lift a finger to defend us."

Beck stared past Cody at the traffic.

"She wore me out," he told Cody finally.

"Wore you out?"

"Used up my good points. Used up all my good points."

Cody straightened.

"Oh, at the start," Beck said, "she thought I was wonderful. You ought to have seen her face when I walked into a room. When I met her, she was an old maid already. She'd given up. No one had courted her for years; her girlfriends were asking her to baby-sit; their children called her Aunt Pearl. Then I came along. I made her so happy! There's my downfall, son. I mean with anyone, any one of these lady friends, I just can't resist a person I make happy. Why, she might be gap-toothed, or homely, or heavyset-all the better! I expect that if I'd got that divorce from your mother I'd have married six times over, just moving on to each new woman that cheered up some when she saw me, moving on again when she got close to me and didn't act so pleased any more. Oh, it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son-did I tell you that when you were young? When your mother and I were first married, everything was perfect. It seemed I could do no wrong. Then bit by bit I guess she saw my faults. I'd never hid them, but now it seemed they mattered after all. I made mistakes and she saw them. She saw that I was away from home too much and not enough support to her, didn't get ahead in my work, put on weight, drank too much, talked wrong, ate wrong, dressed wrong, drove a car wrong. No matter how hard I tried, seemed like everything I did got muddled. Spoiled. Turned into an accident. I'd bring home a simple toy, say, to cheer you all up when I came, and it would somehow start a fight-your mother saying it was too expensive or too dangerous or too difficult, and the three of you kids bickering over who got to play with it first. Do 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 that was when you left?" was when you left?"