Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [38]
Meanwhile, her brother Cody had become a success—shot ahead through several different firms, mainly because of his ideas for using the workers’ time better; and then branched out on his own to become an efficiency expert. And Ezra still worked for Mrs. Scarlatti, but he had advanced as well. He really ran the kitchen now, while Mrs. Scarlatti played hostess out front. Jenny’s mother wrote to say it was a shame, a crime and a shame. I tell him the longer he piddles about in that woman’s restaurant the harder he’ll find it to get back on track, you know he always intended to go to college …
Pearl still clerked at the grocery store but was better dressed, looking less careworn, since Jenny’s scholarship and part-time jobs had relieved the last financial strain. Jenny saw her twice a year—at Christmas and just before the start of school each September. She made excuses for the other holidays, and during the summers she worked at a clothing shop in a small town near her college. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see her mother. She often thought of her wiry energy, the strength she had shown in raising her children single-handed, and her unfailing interest in their progress. But whenever Jenny returned, she was dampened almost instantly by the atmosphere of the house—by its lack of light, the cramped feeling of its papered rooms, a certain grim spareness. She almost wondered if she had some kind of allergy. It was like a respiratory ailment; on occasion, she believed she might be smothering. Her head grew stuffy, as it did when she had studied too long without a break. She snapped at people. Even Ezra irritated her, with his calm and his docility.
So she kept her distance, and after missing her family a while began to discard the very thought of them. She grew brisker, busier, more hurried. Ezra’s letters—as ponderous as his conversation, just this side of dull—would turn up on the edge of the bathroom sink or crumpled among the bedclothes, where Jenny had laid them aside in midsentence. Her mind just drifted, that was all. And twice, during her first two years in college, Cody stopped to see her while traveling through Pennsylvania on business, and both times she was happy at the prospect (he was so dashing and good-looking, she was proud to show him off), but she felt muffled, gradually, once he’d arrived. It wasn’t her fault; it was his. It seemed that everything she said carried, for him, the echo of their mother. She saw him stiffen. She knew exactly what he was thinking. “How are you fixed for money?” he would ask her. “You need a few new dresses?” She would say, “No, thanks, Cody, I’m fine”—really meaning it, needing nothing; but she saw, from his expression, what he had understood her to say: “No, no,” in Pearl’s thin voice, “never mind me …” She could not straighten his tie, or compliment his suit, or inquire about his present life without setting up that guarded look in his face. It made her feel unjustly accused. Did he really imagine she would be so domineering, or reproachful, or meddlesome? “Look,” she tried once. “Let’s start over. I didn’t intend what you think I intended.” But his wary, sidelong glance told her that he suspected even this. There was no way to cut themselves out of the tangle. She let him leave. Back in her dorm room she studied her reflection, her swing of dark