Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [102]
He looked over at Luke. Luke waited for him to go on.
“See,” Cody said, “December twenty-seventh was Ezra’s birthday.”
“So?” Luke asked.
“So she wouldn’t leave her precious boy on his birthday! Not even to visit her oldest, dearest, only friend, that her other boy had given her a ticket for.”
“I wouldn’t like for Mom to leave me on my birthday, either,” Luke said.
“No, no, you’re missing the point. She wouldn’t leave Ezra, her favorite. Me or my sister, she would surely leave.”
“How do you know that?” Luke asked him. “Did you ever try giving her a ticket on your birthday? I bet she’d have said the same thing.”
“My birthday is in February,” Cody said. “Nowhere near any occasion for gift giving. Oh, I don’t know why I bother talking to you. You’re an only child, that’s your trouble. You haven’t the faintest idea what I’m trying to get across.” And he turned his pillow over and settled back with a sigh.
Luke went out in the yard and threw his baseball against the garage. It thudded and bounced back, shimmering in the sunlight. In the old days, his mother had practiced throwing with him. She had taught him to bat and pitch overhand, too. She was good at sports. He saw glimpses in her, sometimes, of the scatty little tomboy she must once have been. But it had always seemed, when they played ball together, that this was only a preparation for the real game, with his father. It was like cramming for an exam. Then on weekends Cody came home and pitched the ball to him and said, “Not bad. Not bad at all,” when Luke hit it out of the yard. At these moments Luke was conscious of adding a certain swagger to his walk, a certain swing to his shoulders. He imagined he was growing to be more like his father. Sauntering into the house after practice, he’d pass Cody’s parked car and ask, “She still getting pretty good mileage?” He would stand in front of the open refrigerator and swig iced tea directly from the pitcher—something his mother detested. Oh, it was time to put his mother behind him now—all those years of following her through the house, enmeshed in her routine, dragging his toy broom after her big one or leaning both elbows on her dressing table to watch, entranced, as she dusted powder on her freckled nose. The dailiness of women’s lives! He knew all he cared to know about it. He was exhausted by the trivia of measuring out the soap flakes, waiting for the plumber. High time to move to his father’s side. But his father lay on his back in the bedroom, cursing steadily. “What the hell is the matter with this TV? Why bother buying a Sony if there’s no one who will fix it?”
“I’ll find us a repairman today,” Ruth’s new, soft voice floated out.
Ruth wore dresses all the time now because Cody said he was tired of her pantsuits. “Everlasting polyester pantsuits,” he said, and it was true she didn’t look as stylish as most other women, though Luke wasn’t so sure that the pantsuits were to blame. Even after she changed to dresses, something seemed to be wrong. They were too big, or too hard-surfaced, or too shiny; they looked less like clothes than … housing, Luke thought. “Is this better?” she asked his father, and she stood hopefully in the doorway, flat on her penny loafers because in Garrett County, she said, they had never learned her to walk in high heels. By then, Cody had recovered from his mood. He said, “Sure, honey. Sure. It’s fine.” He wasn’t always evil tempered. It was the strain of lying immobile. It was the constant discomfort. He did make an effort. But then, not two hours later: “Ruth, will you explain why I have