Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [117]
“How’s Becky doing, anyhow?” Cody asked, and Luke had an image of Cody’s reaching into a wild snarl of strings and tugging on the one short piece that wasn’t all tangled with the others.
“No one knows,” Pearl said, rocking.
Ruth massaged her forehead, which had the strained, roughened look it always got after a difficult day. Ezra laughed at something on TV. Cody, who was watching the two of them, sighed sharply and turned back to his mother.
“We’d better be going,” he told her.
She straightened. “What?” she said. “You’re leaving?”
“We’ve got a long drive.”
“But that’s exactly why you’re staying!” she told him. “Rest tonight. Start fresh in the morning.”
“We can’t,” said Cody.
“Why can’t you?”
“We have to … ah, feed the dog.”
“I didn’t know you had a dog.”
“A Doberman.”
“But Dobermans are vicious!”
“That’s why we better hurry back and feed him,” Cody said. “Don’t want him eating up the neighbors.”
He reached out a hand toward Luke, and Luke clambered off the reclining chair to help him to his feet. When Cody’s fingers closed on his, Luke imagined some extra tightness—a secret handshake, a nudge at the joke they’d put over on Pearl. He kept his face deliberately expressionless.
“Listen, all,” Ezra said. “It isn’t long till Thanksgiving, you know.”
Everybody stared at him.
“Will you come back here for Thanksgiving? We could have a family dinner at the restaurant.”
“Oh, Ezra, no telling where we’ll be by then,” said Cody.
“What,” said Pearl. “You never heard of airplanes? Amtrak? Modern transportation?”
“We’ll talk about it when the time gets closer,” Cody said, patting her shoulder. “Ruth, you got everything? So long, Ezra, let me know how it’s going.”
There was a flurry of hugs and handshakes. Later, Luke wasn’t sure he’d said thank you to Ezra—though what did he want to thank him for, exactly? Something or other … They made their way down the sidewalk and into Cody’s car, which still had the stale, blank smell of air-conditioned air. Everyone called out parts of sentences, as if trying to give the impression that they had so much left to say to each other, there wasn’t room to fit it all in. “Now, you be sure to—” “It sure was good to—” “Tell Jenny we wish—” “And drive defensively, hear?”
They pulled away from the curb, waving through the window. Pearl and Ezra fell behind. Luke, sitting in back, faced forward and found his father at the wheel. Ruth was in the passenger seat. “Mom?” Luke said. “Don’t you think you ought to drive?”
“He insisted,” Ruth said. “He drove all the way here, too.” She turned and looked at Luke meaningfully, over the back of the seat. “He said he wanted it to be him that drove to get you.”
“Oh,” said Luke.
What was she waiting for? She went on looking at him for some time, but then gave up and turned away again. Trying his best, Luke sat forward to observe how Cody managed.
“Well, I guess it wouldn’t be all that hard,” he said, “except for shifting the gears.”
“Shifting’s easy,” Cody told him.
“Oh.”
“And luckily there’s no clutch.”
“No.”
They passed rows and rows of houses, many with their porches full of people rocking in the dark. They turned down a block where there were stoops instead of porches, white stoops set close to the street. On one of these a whole family perched, with a beer cooler and an oscillating fan and a baby in a mesh crib on the sidewalk. A TV sat on a car hood at the curb so if you happened by on foot, you’d have to cross between TV and audience, muttering, “Excuse me, please,” just as if you