Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [129]
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