Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [29]
“What could it mean?” his mother asked. “I take a roll of film to the drugstore and I come back with the shock of my life. I just wanted to get the camera ready for Christmas. I was expecting maybe some scenes from last summer, or Jenny’s birthday cake … and here I find Ezra like a derelict! A common drunk! Could this be what it looks like? Answer me!”
“He’s not as perfect as you think he is,” Cody told her.
“But he’s never given me a moment’s worry.”
“He’s done a lot that might surprise you.”
Pearl sat down on his bed. She was shaking her head, looking stunned. “Oh, Cody, it’s such a battle, raising children,” she said. “I know you must think I’m difficult. I lose my temper, I carry on like a shrew sometimes, but if you could just realize how … helpless I feel! How scary it is to know that everyone I love depends on me! I’m afraid I’ll do something wrong.”
She reached up—for the photos, he thought, and he held them out to her; but no, what she wanted was his hand. She took it and pulled him down beside her. Her skin felt hot and dry. “I’ve probably been too hard on you,” she said. “But I look to you for support now, Cody. You’re the only person I can turn to; it may be you and I are more alike than you think. Cody, what am I going to do?”
She leaned closer, and Cody drew back. Even her eyes seemed to give off heat. “Uh, well …” he said.
“Who took that picture, anyhow? Was it you?”
“Look,” he said. “It was a joke.”
“Joke?”
“Ezra didn’t drink that stuff. I just set some bottles around him.”
Her gaze flicked back and forth across his face.
“He’s never touched a drop,” Cody told her.
“I see,” she said. She freed his hand. She said, “Well, all I can say is, that’s some joke, young man.” Then she stood up and took several steps away from him. “That’s some sense of humor you’ve got,” she said.
Cody shrugged.
“Oh, I suppose it must seem very funny, scaring your mother half out of her wits. Letting her babble on like a fool. Slandering your little brother. It must seem hilarious, to someone like you.”
“I’m just naturally mean, I guess,” Cody said.
“You’ve been mean since the day you were born,” she told him.
After she had walked out, he went to work resealing his father’s letter.
Ezra landed on Park Place and Cody said, “Aha! Park Place with one hotel. Fifteen hundred dollars.”
“Poor, poor Ezra,” Jenny said.
“How’d you do that?” Ezra asked Cody.
“How’d I do what?”
“How’d you get a hotel on Park Place? A minute ago it was mortgaged.”
“Oh, I scrimped and saved,” Cody said.
“There’s something peculiar going on here.”
“Mother!” Jenny called. “Cody’s cheating again!”
Their mother was stringing the Christmas tree lights. She looked over and said, “Cody.”
“What did I do?” Cody asked.
“What did he do, children?”
“He’s the banker,” Jenny said. “He made us let him keep the bank and the deeds and the houses. Now he’s got a hotel on Park Place and all this extra money. It’s not fair!”
Pearl set down the box of lights and came over to where they were sitting. She said, “All right, Cody, put it back. Jenny keeps the deeds from now on; Ezra keeps the bank. Is that clear?”
Jenny reached for the deeds. Ezra began collecting the money.
“And I tell you this,” Pearl said. “If I hear one more word, Cody Tull, you’re out of the game. Forever! Understood?” She bent to help Ezra. “Always cheating, tormenting, causing trouble …” She laid the fives beside the ones, the tens beside the fives. “Cody? You hear what I say?”
He heard, but he didn’t bother answering. He sat back and smiled, safe and removed, watching her stack the money.
3
Destroyed by Love
I
Supposedly, Jenny Tull was going to be a beauty someday, but the people who told her that were so old they might easily be dead by the time that day arrived, and no one her own age saw much promise in her. At seventeen, she was skinny and severe and studious-looking. Her bones were so sharp, they seemed likely to puncture her skin. She had coarse dark hair that