Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

10 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

When Pearl Tull died, Cody was off on a goose hunt and couldn’t be reached for two days. He and Luke were staying in a cabin owned by his business partner. It didn’t have a telephone, and the roads were little more than logging trails.

Late Sunday, when they returned, Ruth came out to the driveway. The night was chilly, and she wore no sweater but hugged herself as she walked toward the car, her white, freckled face oddly set and her faded red hair standing up in the wind. That was how Cody guessed something was wrong. Ruth hated cold weather, and ordinarily would have waited inside the house.

“It’s bad news,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“What happened?”

“Your mother’s passed away.”

“Grandma died?” asked Luke, as if correcting her.

Ruth kissed Luke’s cheek but kept her eyes on Cody, maybe trying to gauge the damage. Cody himself, wearily closing the car door behind him, was uncertain of the damage. His mother had been a difficult woman, of course. But even so …

“She died in her sleep, early yesterday,” Ruth said. She took Cody’s hand in both of hers and gripped it, tightly, so that the pain he felt right then was purely physical. He stood for a while, allowing her; then he gently pulled away and went to open the car trunk.

They had not bagged any geese — the hunt had been a lame excuse, really, to spend some time with Luke, who was now a senior in high school and would not be around for much longer. All Cody had to unload was the rifles in their canvas cases and a duffel bag. Luke brought the ice chest. They walked toward the house in silence. Cody had still not responded.

“The funeral’s tomorrow at eleven,” said Ruth. “I told Ezra we’d be there in the morning.”

“How is he taking it?” Cody asked.

“He sounded all right.”

Inside the front door, Cody set down the duffel bag and propped the rifles against the wall. He decided that he felt not so much sad as heavy. Although he was lean bodied, still in good shape, he imagined that he had suddenly sunk in on himself and grown denser. His eyes were weighty and dry, and his step seemed too solid for the narrow, polished floorboards in the hall.

“Well, Luke,” he said.

Luke seemed dazed, or perhaps just sleepy. He squinted palely under the bright light.

“Do you want to go to the funeral?” Cody asked him.

“Sure, I guess,” said Luke.

“You wouldn’t have to.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Of course he’s going,” said Ruth. “He’s her grandson.”

“That doesn’t obligate him,” Cody told her.

“Of course it obligates him.”

This was where they differed. They could have argued about it all night, except that Cody was so tired.

For their journey south, Cody drove Ruth’s car because his own was still spattered with mud from the goose hunt. He supposed they would have to ride in some shiny, formal funeral procession. But when he happened to mention this to Ruth, halfway down the turnpike, she told him that Ezra had said their mother had requested cremation. (“Golly,” Luke breathed!) There would only be the service, therefore — no cemetery trip and no burial. “Very sensible,” Cody said. He thought of the tidy framework of his mother’s bones, the crinkly bun on the back of her head. Did that fierce little figure exist any more? Was it already ashes? “Ah, God, it’s barbaric, however you look at it,” he told Ruth.

“What, cremation?” she asked.

“Death.”

They sped along — Cody in his finest gray suit, Ruth in stiff black beside him. Luke sat in the rear, gazing out the side window. They were traveling the Beltway now, approaching Baltimore. They passed trees ablaze with red and yellow leaves and shopping malls full of ordinary, Monday morning traffic. “When I was a boy, this was country,” Cody said to Luke.

“You told me.”

“Baltimore was nothing but a little harbor town.”

There was no answer. Cody searched for Luke in the rear-view mirror. “Hey,” he said. “You want to drive the rest of the way?”

“No, that’s all right.”

“Really. You want to?”

“Let him be,” Ruth whispered.

“What?”

“He’s upset.”

“What about?”

“Your mother, Cody. You know he always felt close to her.”

Cody couldn’t figure how anyone could feel close to his mother — not counting Ezra, who was thought by some to be a saint. He checked Luke’s face in the mirror again, but what could you tell from that impassive stare? “Hell,” he said to Ruth, “all I asked was did he want to drive.”

The city seemed even more ruined than usual, tumbling under a wan, blue sky. “Look at there,” Cody said. “Linsey’s Candy and Tobacco. They sold cigarettes to minors. Bobbie Jo’s Barbecue. And there’s my old school.”

On Calvert Street, the row houses stood in two endless lines. “I don’t see how you knew which one was home,” Luke had told him once, and Cody had been amazed. Oh, if you lived here you knew. They weren’t alike at all, not really. One had dozens of roses struggling in its tiny front yard, another an illuminated madonna glowing night and day in the parlor window. Some had their trim painted in astonishing colors, assertively, like people with their chins thrust out. The fact that they were attached didn’t mean a thing.

He parked in front of his mother’s house. He slid from the car and stretched, waiting for Ruth and Luke.

By now, Pearl would have been out the door and halfway down the steps, reaching for the three of them with those eager, itchy fingers of hers.

“Is that your sister’s car?” Ruth asked him.

“I don’t know what kind of car she drives.”

They climbed the steps. Ruth had her hand hooked in the back of Luke’s belt. He was too tall for her to cup the nape of his neck, as she used to do.

When Cody first left home, he would knock when he returned for a visit. It was a deliberate, planned act; it was an insult to his mother. She had known that and objected. “Can’t you walk straight in? Do you have to act like company?”

“But company is what I am,” he’d said. She had started outwitting him; she had lain in wait, rushing to meet him at the very first sound of his shoes on the sidewalk. (So it was, perhaps, not solely love that had sent her plunging down the steps.) Now, crossing the porch, Cody didn’t know whether to knock or just open the door. Well, he supposed this house belonged to Ezra now. He knocked.

Ezra looked sad and exhausted, loosely filling a lightweight khaki suit that only he would have thought appropriate. As always, he seemed whiskerless, boy faced. There was a space between his collar and the knot of his tie. A handkerchief bunched messily out of his jacket pocket. “Cody. Come in,” he said. He touched Cody’s arm in that tentative way he had — something more than a handshake, less than a hug. “Ruth? Luke? We were starting to worry about you.”

From the gloomy depths of the house, Jenny stepped forward to kiss everyone. She smelled of some complicated perfume but had her usual hastily assembled look — her tailored coat unbuttoned, her dark hair rough and tossed. Her husband ambled behind her, fat and bearded, good-natured. He clapped Cody on the shoulder. “Nice to see you. Too bad about your mother.”

“Thank you, Joe.”

“We’re supposed to be starting for the church this very minute,” Jenny said. “We have to leave early because we’re picking up some of the children on the way.”

“I’m all set,” Cody said.

Ezra asked, “But don’t you want coffee first?”

“No, no, let’s get going.”

“See,” Ezra said, “I had planned on coffee and pastries before we started out. I’d assumed you’d be coming earlier.”

“We’ve already had breakfast,” Cody told him.

“But everything’s on the table.”

Cody felt his old, familiar irritation beginning. “Ezra—” he said.

“That was thoughtful of you,” Ruth told Ezra, “but really, we’re fine, and we wouldn’t want to hold people up.”

Ezra checked his watch. He glanced behind him, toward the dining room. “It’s only ten-fifteen,” he said. He walked over to a front window and lifted the curtain.

Now that it was apparent he had something on his mind, the others stood waiting. (He could be maddeningly slow, and all the slower if pushed.)

“It’s like this,” he said finally.

He coughed.

“I was kind of expecting Dad,” he said.

There was a blank, flat pause.

“Who?” Cody asked.

“Our father.”

“But how would he know?”

“Well, ah, I invited him.”

“Ezra, for God’s sake,” Cody said.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Ezra said. “It was Mother’s. She talked about it when she got so sick. She said, ‘Look in my address book. Ask everybody in it to my funeral.’ I wondered who she meant, at first. You know she never wrote anyone, and most of her relatives are dead. But as soon as I opened the address book I saw it: Beck Tull. I didn’t even realize she knew where he had run off to.”

“He wrote her; that’s how she knew,” Cody said.

“He did?”

“From time to time he sent these letters, boasting, bragging. Doing fine … expecting a raise … I peeked inside when Mother wasn’t looking.”

“I never even guessed,” said Ezra.

“What difference would it have made?”

“Oh, I don’t know …”

“He ditched us,” Cody said, “when we were kids. What do you care about him now?”

“Well, I don’t,” said Ezra. And Cody, who had so often been exasperated by Ezra’s soft heart, saw that in this case, it was true: he really didn’t care. He looked directly at Cody with his peculiarly clear, light-filled eyes, and he said, “It was Mother who asked; not me. All I did was call him up and say, ‘This is Ezra. Mother has died and we’re holding her funeral Monday at eleven.’ ”

“That was all?” Cody said.

“Well, and then I told him he could stop by the house first, if he got here early.”

“But you didn’t ask, ‘How are you?’ or ‘Where’ve you been?’ or ‘Why’d you go?’ ”

“I just said, ‘This is Ezra. Mother has died and—’ ”

Cody laughed.

“At any rate,” Jenny said, “it doesn’t seem he’s coming.”

“No,” said Cody, “but think about it. I mean, don’t you get it? First he leaves and Mother pretends he hasn’t. Out of pride, or spite, or something, she never says a word about it, makes believe to all of us that he’s only on a business trip. A thirty-five-year business trip. Then Ezra calls him on the phone and does the very same thing. ‘This is Ezra,’ he says, as if he’d seen Dad just yesterday—”

Jenny said, “Can we get started now? My children will be freezing to death.”

“Oh, surely,” Ruth told her. “Cody, honey, her children are waiting on us.”

“Mother would have done that, just exactly,” Cody said. “If Dad had walked in she would have said, ‘Ah, yes, there you are. Can you tell me if my slip is showing?’ ”

Joe gave a little bark of laughter. Ezra smiled, but his eyes filmed over with tears. “That’s true,” he said. “She would have. You know? She really would have.”

“Fine, then, she would have,” Jenny said. “Shall we go?”

She had been so young when their father left, anyhow. She claimed to have forgotten all about him.

At the funeral, the minister, who had never met their mother, delivered a eulogy so vague, so general, so universally applicable that Cody thought of that parlor game where people fill in words at random and then giggle hysterically at the story that results. Pearl Tull, the minister said, was a devoted wife and a loving mother and a pillar of the community. She had lived a long, full life and died in the bosom of her family, who grieved for her but took comfort in knowing that she’d gone to a far finer place.

It slipped the minister’s mind, or perhaps he hadn’t heard, that she hadn’t been anyone’s wife for over a third of a century; that she’d been a frantic, angry, sometimes terrifying mother; and that she’d never shown the faintest interest in her community but dwelt in it like a visitor from a superior neighborhood, always wearing her hat when out walking, keeping her doors tightly shut when at home. That her life had been very long indeed but never full; stunted was more like it. Or crabbed. Or … what was the word Cody wanted? Espaliered. Twisted and flattened to the wall — all the more so as she’d aged and wizened, lost her sight, and grown to lean too heavily on Ezra. That she was not at all religious, hadn’t set foot in this church for decades; and though in certain wistful moods she might have mentioned the possibility of paradise, Cody didn’t take much comfort in the notion of her residing there, fidgeting and finding fault and stirring up dissatisfactions.

Cody sat in the right front pew, the picture of a bereaved and dutiful son. But skeptical thoughts flowed through his head so loudly that he almost believed they might be heard by the congregation. He was back to his boyhood, it seemed, fearing that his mother could read his mind as unhesitatingly as she read the inner temperature of a roasting hen by giving its thigh a single, contemptuous pinch. He glanced sideways at Ruth, but she was listening to the minister.

The minister announced the closing hymn, which Pearl had requested in her funeral instructions: “We’ll Understand It All By and By.” Raising his long, boneless face to lead the singing, Reverend Thurman did appear bewildered — perhaps less by the Lord’s mysterious ways than by the unresponsive nature of this group of mourners. Most were just staring into open hymn-books, following each stanza silently. And there were so few of them: a couple of Ezra’s co-workers, some surly teen-aged grandchildren sulking in scattered pews, and five or six anonymous old people, who were probably there as church members but gave the impression of having wandered in off the streets for shelter, dragging their string-handled shopping bags.

When the service was finished, the minister descended from the pulpit and stopped to offer Cody, as firstborn, a handshake and condolences. “All my sympathy … know what a loss …”

“Thank you,” said Cody, and he and Ruth and the minister proceeded down the aisle. Jenny and Joe followed, and last came Ezra, blowing his nose. By rights the grandchildren should have risen too, but if they had there would have been hardly any guests remaining.

Outside, the cold was a relief, and Cody was grateful for the lumbering noise of the traffic in the street. He stood between Jenny and Ruth and accepted the murmurs of strangers. “Beautiful service,” they told him.

“Thank you,” he said.

He heard a woman say to Ezra, over by the church doorway, “I’m so sorry for your trouble,” and Ezra said, kindly, “Oh, that’s all right”—although for Ezra alone, of the three of them, this death was clearly not all right. What would he fill his life with now? He had been his mother’s eyes. Lately, he had been her hands and feet as well. Now that she was gone he would come home every night and … do what? What would he do? Just sit on the couch by himself, Cody pictured; or lie on his bed, fully dressed, staring into the swarming, brownish air above his bed.

Jenny said, “Did Ezra tell you we’re meeting at his restaurant afterward?”

Cody groaned. He shook an old man’s hand and said to Jenny, “I knew it. I just knew it.” Hadn’t he told Ruth, in fact? In the car coming down, he’d said, “Oh, God, I suppose there’ll be one of those dinners. We’ll have to have one of those eternal family dinners at Ezra’s restaurant.”

“He’s probably too upset,” Ruth said. “I doubt he’d give a dinner now.”

This showed she didn’t know Ezra as well as she’d always imagined. Certainly he would give a dinner. Any excuse would do — wedding or engagement or nephew’s name on the honor roll. “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant! Everyone in the family! Just a cozy family gathering”—and he’d rub his hands together in that annoying way he had. He no doubt had his staff at work even at this moment, preparing the … what were they called? The funeral baked meats. Cody sighed. But he suspected they would have to attend.

The old man must have spoken; he was waiting for Cody to answer. He tilted his flushed, tight-skinned face beneath an elaborate plume of silver hair that let the light shine through. “Thank you,” Cody said. Evidently, this was the wrong response. The old man made some disappointed adjustment to his mouth. “Um …” said Cody.

“I said,” the old man told him, “I said, ‘Cody? Do you know me?’ ”

Cody knew him.

It shouldn’t have taken him so long. There were clues he should have picked up at once: that fan-shaped pompadour, still thick and sharply crimped; the brilliant blue of his eyes; the gangsterish air of his pinstriped, ill-fitting navy blue suit.

“Yes,” the old man said, with a triumphant nod. “It’s your father speaking, Cody.”

Cody said to Jenny, “I’m not sure if Ezra remembered to set a place for Dad.”

“What?” Jenny said. She looked at Beck Tull. “Oh,” she said.

“At the restaurant. Did he remember?”

“Oh, well, probably,” she said.

“Nothing fancy,” Cody told Beck.

Beck gaped at him.

“Just a light repast at the Homesick.”

“What are you talking about?” Beck asked.

“Dinner afterward, of course, at the Homesick Restaurant.”

Beck passed a hand across his forehead. He said, “Is this here Jenny?”

“Yes,” Jenny told him.

“Jenny, last time I set eyes on you you were just about eight years old,” said Beck. “Was it eight? Or nine. Your favorite song was ‘Mairzy Doats.’ You babbled that thing night and day.”

“Oh, yes,” Jenny said distantly. “And little lambs eat ivy.”

Beck, who had drawn a breath to go on speaking, paused and shut his mouth.

“You remember Ruth,” said Cody.

“Ruth?”

“My wife.”

“Why should I remember her? I’ve been away! I haven’t been here!”

Ruth stepped forward to offer her hand. “So Cody’s married,” said Beck. “Fancy that. Any children?”

“Well, Luke, of course,” Cody said.

“I’m a grandfather!” He turned to Jenny. “How about you? Are you married?”

“Yes, but he’s left to pick up the little ones,” Jenny said. She waved goodbye to somebody.

“And Ezra?” Beck asked. “Where’s Ezra?”

“Over there by the steps,” Cody said.

“Ah.”

Beck set off jauntily, running a hand through his crest of hair. Jenny and Cody gazed after him.

“If I just saw him on the street,” Jenny said, “I would have passed him by.”

“We are just seeing him on the street,” Cody told her.

“Well. Yes.”

They watched Beck arrive before Ezra with a bounce, like a child presenting some accomplishment. Ezra bent his head courteously to hear Beck’s words, then gave him a mild smile and shook his hand.

“Imagine!” they heard Beck say. “Look at you! Both my sons are bigger than I am.”

“Dinner is at my restaurant,” Ezra told him calmly.

Beck’s expression faltered once again, but recovered itself. “Wonderful!” he said. He moved toward the teen-agers, who had got wind of what was going on and stood in a clump nearby — silent, staring, hostile as usual. Beck seemed not to notice. “I’m your grandpa,” he told them. “Your Grandpa Tull. Ever heard of me?” Probably they hadn’t, unless they’d thought to inquire. He moved down the line, beaming. “I’m your long-lost grandpa. And you are—? What a handsome young fellow!”

He pumped the hand of the tallest teen-ager, who unfortunately was not a grandson at all but one of Ezra’s salad boys.

Cody and Ruth and Jenny led the way to the restaurant on foot. The others lagged behind untidily. The first group turned onto St. Paul Street and passed various bustling little buildings — a dry cleaner’s and a drugstore and a florist. All the other pedestrians were black; most held jangling radios to their ears, so that scraps of songs about love and jealousy and hardhearted women kept approaching and fading away. Then Ezra’s wooden sign swung overhead, and the three of them climbed the steps and walked in.

In the chilly light from the windows, the restaurant seemed glaringly empty. One long table was covered with white linen, set with crystal and china. Thirteen places, Cody counted; for Jenny’s Joe would be bringing more children, those too small to have sat through the service. A sweet-faced, plump waitress in a calico smock was drawing up a high chair for the baby. When she saw them come in, she stopped to give Jenny a hug. “I’m so sorry for your trouble,” she said. “You and all your family, hear?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Potter,” Jenny said. “Do you know my brother Cody? And this is Ruth, his wife.”

Mrs. Potter clicked her tongue. “It’s a terrible day for you,” she said.

Cody turned toward the door in time to see Beck and Ezra enter, trailed by teen-agers. Ezra had obviously relaxed and grown talkative; he never could be cool to anyone for long. “So I tore out that wall there …” he was saying.

“Very nice. Very classy,” said Beck.

“Stripped down these floors …”

“I hope you don’t serve that kind of food a fellow can’t identify.”

“Oh, no.”

“A mishmash of food, one thing not separate from another.”

“No, never,” Ezra said.

Cody watched with interest. (Ezra very often served such food.) Ezra led Beck through the room, waving an arm here and there. “See, these tables can be moved together if anyone should … and this is the kitchen … and these are two of my cooks, Sam and Myron. They’ve come in especially for our dinner. At night I have three more: Josiah, Chenille, and Mohammad.”

“Quite an operation,” said Beck.

The others, meanwhile, hung around their table. No one took a seat. Cody’s son, Luke, and Jenny’s son Peter — both unnaturally formal in white shirts and ties — wrestled together in an aimless, self-conscious way, tossing hidden glances at Beck. Probably these children saw him as a brand-new chance — a fresh start, someone to appreciate them at last. Yet when they finally sat down, no one chose a place near Beck. It was shyness, maybe. Even Ezra settled some distance away. Since Joe and the younger ones had still not arrived, this meant that Beck found himself flanked by several empty chairs. He didn’t seem to notice. Kinglike, he sat alone, folding his hands before his plate and beaming around at the others. A tracery of red veins, distinct as mapped rivers and tributaries, showed in his cheeks. “So,” he said. “My son owns a fancy restaurant.”

Ezra looked pleased and embarrassed.

“And my daughter’s a doctor,” said Beck. “But Cody? What about you?”

Cody said, “Why, you know: I’m an efficiency consultant.”

“A, how’s that?”

Cody didn’t answer. Ezra said, “He checks out factories. He tells them how to do things more efficiently.”

“Ah! A time-study man.”

“He’s one of the very best,” said Ezra. “He’s always getting written up in articles.”

“Is that so. Well, I sure am proud of you, son.”

Cody had a sudden intimation that tomorrow, it would be more than he could manage to drag himself off to work. His success had finally filled its purpose. Was this all he had been striving for — this one brief moment of respect flitting across his father’s face?

“I often wondered about you, Cody,” Beck said, leaning toward him. “I often thought about you after I went away.”

“Oh?” said Cody, politely. “Have you been away?”

His father sat back.

“Any how,” Ezra said. He cleared his throat. “Well. Dad. Are you still working for the Tanner Corporation?”

“No, no, I’m retired. Retired in sixty-five. They gave me a wonderful banquet and a sterling silver pen-and-pencil set. Forty-two years of service I put in.”

Ruth murmured — an admiring, womanly sound. He turned to her and said, “To tell you the truth, I kind of miss it. Miss the contacts, miss the life … A salesman’s life has a lot of action, know what I mean? Lot of activity. Oftentimes now it doesn’t seem there’s quite enough to keep me busy. But I do a bit of socializing, cardplaying. Got a few buddies at my hotel. Got a lady friend I see.” He peeked around at the others from under his tufted eyebrows. “I bet you think I’m too old for such things,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking! But this is a really fine lady; she puts a lot of stock in me. And you understand I mean no disrespect to your mother, but now that she’s gone and I’m free to remarry …”

Somehow, it had never occurred to Cody that his parents were still married. Jenny and Ezra, too, blinked and drew back slightly.

“Only trouble is this lady’s daughter,” Beck told them. “She’s got this daughter, no-good daughter, thirty-five years old if she’s a day but still residing at home. Eustacia Lee. No good whatsoever. Lost two fingers in a drill press years ago and never worked since, spent her compensation money on a snowmobile. I’m not too sure I want to live with her.”

No one seemed able to think of any comment.

Then Joe arrived. He burst through the door, traveling in an envelope of fresh-smelling air, carrying the baby and towing a whole raft of children. Really there were only three, but it seemed like more; they were so chattery and jumbled. “Mrs. Nesbitt almost didn’t let me out of school,” and “You’ll never guess what the baby ate,” and “Phoebe had to stay in for being prejudiced in math.” “Who’s this?” a child asked, facing Beck.

“Your Grandpa Tull.”

“Oh,” she said, taking a seat. “Do us kids get wine?”

“Joe, I’d like you to meet my father,” Jenny said.

“Really?” said Joe. “Gosh.” But then he had to figure out the high-chair strap.

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 … assemblage!”

“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 the baby in the midriff and a mushroom button 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 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 glass of wine.

Inwardly, though, he felt chastened. He thought of times in grade school when he’d teased some classmate 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 passed 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; nobody 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, cocked 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 passing. 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 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.