Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [55]
He decided to start serving his gizzard soup in the restaurant. He had the waiters announce it to patrons when they handed over the menu. “In addition to the soups you see here, we are pleased to offer tonight …” One of the waiters had failed to show up and Ezra hired a woman to replace him—strictly against Mrs. Scarlatti’s policy. (Waitresses, she said, belonged in truck stops.) The woman did much better than the men with Ezra’s soup. “Try our gizzard soup,” she would say. “It’s really hot and garlicky and it’s made with love.” Outside it was bitter cold, and the woman was so warm and helpful, more and more people followed her suggestion. Ezra thought that the next time a waiter left, he would hire a second woman, and maybe another after that, and so on.
He experimented the following week with a spiced crab casserole of his own invention, and then with a spinach bisque, and when the waiters complained about all they had to memorize he finally went ahead and bought a blackboard, SPECIALS, he wrote at the top. But in the hospital, when Mrs. Scarlatti asked how things were going, he didn’t mention any of this. Instead, he sat forward and clasped his hands tight and said, “Fine. Um … fine.” If she noticed anything strange in his voice, she didn’t comment on it.
Mrs. Scarlatti had always been a lean, dark, slouching woman, with a faintly scornful manner. It was true, as Ezra’s mother said, that she gave the impression of not caring what people thought of her. But that had been part of her charm—her sleepy eyes, hardly troubling to stay open, and her indifferent tone of voice. Now, she went too far. Her skin took on the pallid look of stone, and her face began to seem sphinxlike, all flat planes and straight lines. Even her hair was sphinxlike—a short, black wedge, a clump of hair, dulled and rough. Sometimes Ezra believed that she was not dying but petrifying. He had trouble remembering her low laugh, her casual arrogance. (“Sweetie,” she used to say, ordering him off to some task, trilling languid fingers. “Angel boy …”) He had never felt more than twelve years old around her, but now he was ancient, her parent or grandparent. He soothed and humored her. Not all she said was quite clear these days. “At least,” she whispered once, “I never made myself ridiculous, Ezra, did I?”
“Ridiculous?” he asked.
“With you.”
“With me? Of course not.”
He was puzzled, and must have shown it; she smiled and rocked her head on the pillow. “Oh, you always were a much-loved child,” she told him. It must have been a momentary wandering of the brain. (She hadn’t known him as a child.) “You take it all for granted,” she said. Maybe she was confusing him with Billy, her son. She turned her face away from him and closed her eyes. He felt suddenly anxious. He was reminded of that time his mother had nearly died, wounded by a misfired arrow—entirely Ezra’s fault; Ezra, the family stumbler. “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he had cried, but the apology had never been accepted because his brother had been blamed instead, and his father, who had purchased the archery set. Ezra, his mother’s favorite, had got off scot-free. He’d been left unforgiven—not relieved, as you might expect, but forever burdened. “You’re mistaken,” he said now, and Mrs. Scarlatti’s eyelids fluttered into crepe but failed to open. “I wish you’d get me straight. See who I am, I’m Ezra,” he said, and then (for no logical reason) he bent close and said, “Mrs. Scarlatti. Remember when I left the army? Discharged for sleepwalking? Sent home? Mrs. Scarlatti, I wasn’t really all the way asleep. I mean, I knew what I was doing. I didn’t plan to sleepwalk, but part of me was conscious, and observed what was going on, and could have wakened the rest of me if I’d tried. I had this feeling like