Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant Part 8

They threaded through a spa.r.s.e crowd of people in raincoats. "Mother's still at work," Ezra said, "but she ought to be home by the time we get there. And I've put in a call to Cody. I thought we might all have dinner at the restaurant tomorrow night; he's supposed to be pa.s.sing through."

"How is is the restaurant?" the restaurant?"

Ezra looked unhappy. He guided Jenny through the door, into a dripping mist that felt cool on her skin. "She's not at all well," he said.

Jenny wondered why he called the restaurant "she," as if it were a ship. But then he said, "The treatments are making her worse. She can't keep anything down," and she understood that he must mean Mrs. Scarlatti. Last fall, Mrs. Scarlatti had been hospitalized for a cancer operation-her second, though up until then no one had known of the first. Ezra had taken it very hard. Mournfully trudging down a row of taxis, he said, "She hardly ever complains, but I know she's suffering."

"Are you running the restaurant alone, then?"

"Oh, yes, I've been doing that since November. Everything: the hiring and the firing, bringing in new help as people quit. A restaurant is not all food, you know. Sometimes it seems that food is the least of it. I feel the place is falling apart on me, but Mrs. Scarlatti says not to worry. It always looks like that, she says. Life is a continual shoring up, she says, against one thing and another just eroding and crumbling away. I'm beginning to think she's right."

They had reached his car, a dented gray Chevy. He opened the door for her and heaved her suitcase into the rear, which was already a chaos of Restaurateur's Weeklys Restaurateur's Weeklys, soiled clothing, and some kind of tongs or skewers in a Kitchen Korner shopping bag. "Sorry about the mess," he said when he'd slid behind the wheel. He started the engine and backed out of his parking slot. "Have you learned to drive yet?"

"Yes, Harley taught me. Now I drive him everywhere; he likes to be free to think."

They were on Charles Street. The rain was so fine that Ezra hadn't bothered to turn on his windshield wipers, and the gla.s.s began to film over. Jenny peered ahead. "Can you see?" she asked Ezra.

He nodded.

"First he wants me to drive," she said, "and then he criticizes every last little thing about how I do it. He's so clever; you don't know how far his cleverness can extend. I mean, it's not just math or genetics he knows all about but the most efficient temperature for cooking pot roast, the best way to organize my kitchen-everything, all charted out in his mind. When I'm driving he says, 'Now, Jennifer, you know full well that three blocks from here is that transit stop where you have to veer left, so what are you doing in the right-hand lane? You ought to plan ahead more,' he says. 'Three blocks!' I say. 'Good grief! I'll get to it when I get to it,' and he says, 'That's exactly what your trouble is, Jenny.' 'Between here and that transit stop,' I tell him, 'anything might happen,' and he says, 'Not really. No, not really. In all three intersections there's a left-turn lane, as you'll recall, so you wouldn't have to wait for ...' Nothing is unplanned, for Harley. You can see the numbered pages leafing over inside his head. There's never a single mistake."

"Well," Ezra said, "I guess it's like a whole different outlook, being a genius."

"It's not as if I hadn't been warned," said Jenny, "but I didn't realize it was a warning. I was too young to read the signals. I thought he was only like me, you know-a careful careful person; I always was careful, but now compared to Harley I don't seem careful at all. I should have guessed when I went to meet his parents before the wedding, and all the books in his room were arranged by height and blocks of color. Alphabetized I could have understood; or separated by subject matter. But this arbitrary, fixed pattern of things, a foot of red, a foot of black, no hardbacks mingling with the paperbacks...it's worse than Mother's bureau drawers. It's out of the frying pan, into the fire! The first time Harley kissed me, he had to brush off this bedspread beforehand that we'd been sitting on. Wouldn't you think that might have told me something? Every night now before he goes to sleep he perches on the edge of the bed and brushes off the soles of his feet. These bare white feet, untouched...what could have dirtied them? He wears shoes every waking moment and slippers if he takes one step in the night. But no, there he sits, so methodical, so exact, everything in its proper sequence, brush-brush...sometimes I think I'll hit him. I'm fascinated, I stand there watching him brush his left foot first, his right foot second, not letting either touch the floor once he's finished with it, and I think, 'I'm going to bash your head in for you, Harley.'" person; I always was careful, but now compared to Harley I don't seem careful at all. I should have guessed when I went to meet his parents before the wedding, and all the books in his room were arranged by height and blocks of color. Alphabetized I could have understood; or separated by subject matter. But this arbitrary, fixed pattern of things, a foot of red, a foot of black, no hardbacks mingling with the paperbacks...it's worse than Mother's bureau drawers. It's out of the frying pan, into the fire! The first time Harley kissed me, he had to brush off this bedspread beforehand that we'd been sitting on. Wouldn't you think that might have told me something? Every night now before he goes to sleep he perches on the edge of the bed and brushes off the soles of his feet. These bare white feet, untouched...what could have dirtied them? He wears shoes every waking moment and slippers if he takes one step in the night. But no, there he sits, so methodical, so exact, everything in its proper sequence, brush-brush...sometimes I think I'll hit him. I'm fascinated, I stand there watching him brush his left foot first, his right foot second, not letting either touch the floor once he's finished with it, and I think, 'I'm going to bash your head in for you, Harley.'"

Ezra cleared his throat. "It's the adjustment," he said. "Yes, that's it: adjustment. The first year of marriage. I'm sure that's all it is."

"Well, maybe so," Jenny said.

She wished she hadn't talked so much.

When they reached home, therefore-where their mother had just arrived herself-Jenny said nothing at all about Harley. (Pearl thought Harley was wonderful, admirable-maybe not so easy to hold a conversation with but the perfect person to marry her daughter.) "Now tell me," Pearl said when she'd kissed her. "How come you didn't bring that husband of yours? You haven't had some silly kind of quarrel."

"No, no. It's only my work. The strain of work," Jenny said. "I wanted to come and rest, and Harley couldn't leave his lab."

It was true that the house seemed restful, suddenly. After Ezra left for Scarlatti's, her mother led Jenny to the kitchen and brewed her a cup of tea. One thing Pearl never skimped on was tea. She moved around the room, heating the speckled brown teapot, humming some old, wavery hymn. The damp weather had frizzed her hair into little corkscrews and the steam had turned her cheeks pink; she looked almost pretty. (What kind of a marriage had she had? Something must have gone terribly wrong with it, but Jenny couldn't help imagining it as perfect, all of a piece, her parents permanently joined. That her father had left was only a fluke-some misunderstanding still not cleared up.) "I thought we'd have a very light supper," said her mother. "Maybe a salad or something."

"That would be fine," Jenny said.

"Something plain and simple."

Plain and simple was just what Jenny needed. She loosened; she was safe at last, in the only place where people knew exactly who she was and loved her anyhow.

So it was all the odder that after supper, touring the house, she felt a flash of pity for Ezra when she looked in upon his room. Still here! she thought, seeing his boyish tartan blanket on the bed, his worn recorder on the windowsill, the stamped metal tray on his bureau heaped with ancient, green-tinged pennies. How can he bear it? she wondered, and she went back down the stairs, shaking her head and marveling.

This was what Jenny had brought with her: a change of clothes, her anatomy textbook, Harley's letter proposing marriage, and his photo in a sterling silver frame. Unpacking, she set the photo firmly on her desk and examined it. She had brought it not for sentimental reasons but because she planned to think Harley over, to sum him up, and she didn't want distance to alter her judgment. She foresaw that she might be so misguided as to miss him. This picture would remind her not to. He was a stiff and stodgy man; you could see it in the thickened line of his jaw and in the opaque, bespectacled gaze he directed at the camera. He disapproved of her reasoning methods-too rushed and haphazard, he said. He didn't like her chattery friends. He thought her clothes lacked style. He criticized her table manners. "Twenty-five chews per bite," he would tell her. "That's my advice. Not only is it more healthful, but you'll find yourself not eating so much." He was obsessed by the fear that she might grow fat. Since Jenny could count every one of her ribs, she wondered if he had a kind of mad spot-if he were insane not through and through, but in one isolated area. It was the uncontrollability he feared, perhaps: he would not like to see Jenny ballooning, the pounds collecting unrestrained; he wouldn't like to see her getting out of hand getting out of hand. That must be it. But she did begin to wonder if she might be gaining weight. She started stepping on the scales every morning. She stood in front of the full-length mirror, sucking in her stomach. Was it possible her hips were widening? Out in public, though, she noticed that the fleshy women were the ones who caught Harley's eye-the burgeoning and dimpled ones, blondes, a little blowzy. It was a mystery, really.

Jenny's grades were not very good. She wasn't failing, or anything like that; but neither was she making A's, and her lab work was often slipshod. Sometimes it seemed to her that she'd been hollow, all these years, and was finally caving in on herself. They'd found her out: at heart, there was nothing to her.

Packing for this trip (which Harley saw as a waste of time and money), she had strode across the bedroom to where his photo sat on the bureau. Harley was standing in front of it. "Move, please," she told him. He looked offended and stepped aside. Then, when he saw what she wanted, his face had...well, flown open, you might say. His glare had softened, his lips had parted to speak. He was touched. And she she was touched that was touched that he he was touched. Nothing was ever simple; there were always these complications. But what he said was, "I don't understand you. Your mother has frightened and mistreated you all your life, and now you want to visit her for no apparent reason." was touched. Nothing was ever simple; there were always these complications. But what he said was, "I don't understand you. Your mother has frightened and mistreated you all your life, and now you want to visit her for no apparent reason."

Probably what he was saying was "Please don't go."

You had to be a trained decoder to read the man.

She shook open his letter of proposal. See how he had dated it: 18 July, 1957 18 July, 1957-a form that struck her as pretentious, unless of course he happened to be English. She wondered how she could have overlooked the pompous language, the American courtship American courtship (as if his superior intelligence placed him on a whole separate continent), and most of all, the letter itself, the very fact that it was written, advancing the project of marriage like a corporation merger. (as if his superior intelligence placed him on a whole separate continent), and most of all, the letter itself, the very fact that it was written, advancing the project of marriage like a corporation merger.

Well, she had had overlooked it. She'd chosen not to see. She knew she had acted deviously in this whole business-making up her mind to win him, marrying him for practical reasons. She had calculated, was what it was. But she felt the punishment was greater than the crime. It wasn't such a terrible crime. She'd had no idea (would any unmarried person?) what a serious business she was playing with, how long it lasts, how deep it goes. And now look: the joke was on her. Having got what she was after, she found it was she who'd been got. Talk about calculating! He was going to run her life, arrange it perfectly by height and color. He was going to sit in the pa.s.senger seat with that censorious expression on his face and dictate every turn she took, and every shift of gears. overlooked it. She'd chosen not to see. She knew she had acted deviously in this whole business-making up her mind to win him, marrying him for practical reasons. She had calculated, was what it was. But she felt the punishment was greater than the crime. It wasn't such a terrible crime. She'd had no idea (would any unmarried person?) what a serious business she was playing with, how long it lasts, how deep it goes. And now look: the joke was on her. Having got what she was after, she found it was she who'd been got. Talk about calculating! He was going to run her life, arrange it perfectly by height and color. He was going to sit in the pa.s.senger seat with that censorious expression on his face and dictate every turn she took, and every shift of gears.

Because she knew it would make Ezra happy, she went to visit the restaurant late in the evening. The rain had stopped, but there was still a mist. She felt she was walking underwater, in one of those dreams where a person can breathe as easily as on land. There were only a few other people out-all of them hurrying, locked in themselves, shrouded by raincoats and plastic scarves. Traffic swished by; reflections of the headlights wavered on the streets.

The restaurant's kitchen seemed overcrowded; it was a miracle that an acceptable plate of food could emerge from it. Ezra stood at the stove, supervising the skimming of some broth or soup. A young girl lifted ladles full of steaming liquid and emptied them into a bowl. "When you're done-" Ezra was saying, and then he said, "Why, h.e.l.lo, Jenny," and came to the door where she waited. Over his jeans he wore a long white ap.r.o.n; he looked like one of the cooks. He took her around to meet the others; sweaty men chopping or straining or stirring. "This is my sister, Jenny," he would say, but then he'd get sidetracked by some detail and stand there discussing food. "Can I offer you something to eat?" he asked finally.

"No, I had supper at home."

"Or maybe a drink from the bar?"

"No, thanks."

"This is our headwaiter, Oakes. And this is Josiah Payson; you remember him."

She looked up and up, into Josiah's face. He was all in white, spotless (how had they found a uniform to fit him?), but his hair still bristled wildly. And it was no easier than ever to see where he was directing his gaze. Not at her; that was certain. He was avoiding her. He seemed completely blind to the sight of her.

"When the Boyces come," Ezra was saying to Oakes, "tell them we have the cream of mussel soup. There's only enough for the two of them; it's waiting on the back burner."

"How are you, Josiah?" Jenny asked.

"Oh, not bad."

"So you work here now."

"I'm the salad chef. Mostly, I cut things up."

His spidery hands twisted in front of him. The crease in his forehead seemed deeper than ever.

"I've thought of you often," Jenny said.

She didn't mean it, at first. But then she understood, with a rush to her head that was something like illness, that she spoke the truth: she had been thinking of him all these years without knowing it. It seemed he had never once left her mind. Even Harley, she saw, was just a reverse kind of Josiah, a Josiah turned inside out: equally alien, black-and-white, incomprehensible to anyone but Jenny.

"Is your mother well?" she asked him.

"She died."

"Died!"

"A long time ago. She went out shopping and she died. I live in my house all alone now."

"I'm sorry," Jenny said.

But still he wouldn't meet her eyes.

Ezra turned from Oakes and asked, "Are you sure I can't get you a snack, Jenny?"

"I have to leave," she told him.

Going home, she wondered why the walk seemed so long. Her feet felt unusually heavy, and there was some old, rusty pain deep inside her chest.

The ash grove, how graceful, Ezra's recorder piped out, how sweetly his singing how sweetly his singing...Waking slowly, still webbed in bits of dreams, Jenny found it strange that a pearwood recorder should put forth plums-perfectly round, pure, plummy notes arriving in a spill on her bed. She sat up and thought for a moment. Then she pushed her blankets back and reached for her clothes.

Ezra was playing "Le G.o.diveau de Poisson" when she left the house.

Down this street, and then that one, and then another that turned out to be a mistake. She had to retrace her path. It was going to be a beautiful day. The sidewalks were still wet, but the sun was rising in a pearly pink sky above the chimneys. She dug her hands in her coat pockets. She met an old man walking a poodle, but no one else, and even he pa.s.sed soundlessly and vanished.

When she reached the street she wanted, nothing looked familiar and she had to take the alley. She could only find the house from the rear. She recognized that makeshift gray addition behind the kitchen, and the buckling steps that gave beneath her feet, and the wooden door with most of its paint worn off. She looked for a bell to ring but there wasn't one; she had to knock. There was the sc.r.a.ping of furniture somewhere inside the house-chair legs pushing back. Josiah, when he came, was so tall that he darkened the window she peered through.

He opened the door. "Jenny?" he said.

"h.e.l.lo, Josiah."

He looked around him, as if supposing she had come to see someone else. She noticed his breakfast on the kitchen table: a slice of white bread spread with peanut b.u.t.ter. In the scuffed linoleum and the sink full of dirty dishes, in his tattered jeans and raveling brown sweater, she read neglect and hopelessness. She pulled her coat tighter around her.

"What are you, what are you here for?" he asked.

"I did everything wrong," she told him.

"What are you talking about?"

"You must feel I'm just like the others! Just like the ones you want to escape from, off in the woods with your sleeping bag."

"Oh, no, Jenny," he said. "I would never believe you're like that."

"You wouldn't?"

"n.o.body would; you're too pretty."

"But I mean-" she said.

She set a hand on his sleeve. He didn't pull away. Then she stepped closer and slipped her arms around him. She could feel, even through her coat, how thin and bony his rib cage was, and how he warmed his skimpy sweater. She laid her ear against his chest, and he slowly, hesitantly raised his hands to her shoulders. "I should have gone on kissing you," she said. "I should have told my mother, 'Go away. Leave us alone.' I should have stood up for you and not been such a coward."

"No, no," she heard him say. "I don't think about it. I don't think about it."

She drew back and looked up at him.

"I don't talk about it," he said.

"Josiah," she said, "won't you at least tell me it's all right now?"

"Sure," he said. "It's all right, Jenny."

After that, there was really nothing else to discuss. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him goodbye, and she thought he looked directly at her when he smiled and let her go.

"To everybody's good health," Cody said, raising his gla.s.s. "To Ezra's food. To Scarlatti's Restaurant."

"To a happy family dinner," Ezra said.

"Oh, well, that too, if you like."

They all drank, even Pearl-or maybe the little sip she took was only make-believe. She was wearing her netted hat and a beige tailored suit so new that it failed to sit back when she did. Jenny was in an ordinary skirt and blouse, but still she felt dressed up. She felt wonderful, in fact-perfectly untroubled. She kept beaming at the others, pleased to have them around her.

But really, were they all here? In Jenny's new mood, her family seemed too small. These three young people and this shrunken mother, she thought, were not enough to sustain the occasion. They could have used several more members-a family clown, for instance; and a genuine black sheep, blacker than Cody; and maybe one of those managerial older sisters who holds a group together by force. As things were, it was Ezra who had to hold them together. He wasn't doing a very good job. He was too absorbed in the food. Right now he was conferring with the waiter, gesturing toward the soup, which had arrived a touch too cool, he said-though to Jenny it seemed fine. And now Pearl was collecting her purse and sliding back her chair. "Powder room," she mouthed to Jenny. Ezra would be all the more upset, once he noticed she'd gone. He liked the family in a group, a cl.u.s.ter, and he hated Pearl's habit of constantly "freshening up" in a restaurant, just as he hated for Cody to smoke his slim cigars between courses. "I wish just once," he was always saying, "we could get through a meal from start to finish," and he would say it again as soon as he discovered Pearl was missing. But now he was telling the waiter, "If Andrew would keep the china hot-"

"He mostly does, I swear it, but the warming oven's broke."

"What's your opinion?" Cody whispered, setting his face close to Jenny's. "Has Ezra ever slept with Mrs. Scarlatti? Or has he not."

Jenny's mouth dropped open.

"Well?" he asked.

"Cody Tull!"

"Don't tell me it hasn't occurred to you. A lonely rich widow, or whatever she is; nice-looking boy with no prospects..."

"That's disgusting," Jenny told him.

"Not at all," Cody said blandly, sitting back. He had a way of surveying people from under half-lowered lids which made him look tolerant and worldly. "There's nothing wrong," he said, "with taking advantage of your luck. And you have to admit Ezra's lucky; born born lucky. Have you ever noticed what happens when I bring around my girlfriends? They fall all over him. They have ever since we were kids. What do they see in him, anyway? How does he do it? lucky. Have you ever noticed what happens when I bring around my girlfriends? They fall all over him. They have ever since we were kids. What do they see in him, anyway? How does he do it? Is Is it luck? You're a woman; what's his secret?" it luck? You're a woman; what's his secret?"

"Honestly, Cody," Jenny said, "I wish you'd grow out of this."

Ezra finished his conversation with the waiter. "Where's Mother?" he asked. "I turn my back one second and she disappears."

"Powder room," said Cody, lighting a cigar.

"Oh, why does she always do that? More soup is coming, fresh off the stove, piping hot this time."

"Are you having it brought in by barefoot runners?" Cody asked.

Jenny said, "Don't worry, Ezra. I'll go call her."

She made her way between the tables, toward a corridor with an EXIT EXIT sign over the archway. But just before the ladies' room, in front of a swinging, leather-covered door, she caught sight of Josiah. He had his white uniform on and was carrying an aqua plastic dishpan full of chicory leaves. "Josiah," she said. sign over the archway. But just before the ladies' room, in front of a swinging, leather-covered door, she caught sight of Josiah. He had his white uniform on and was carrying an aqua plastic dishpan full of chicory leaves. "Josiah," she said.

He stopped short and his face lit up. "Hi, Jenny," he said.

They stood smiling at each other, not speaking. She reached out to touch his wrist.

"Oh, no!" her mother cried.

Jenny s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand back and spun around.