Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [58]
“I’m worried I don’t know how to get in touch with people,” Ezra said.
“Hmm?”
“I’m worried if I come too close, they’ll say I’m overstepping. They’ll say I’m pushy, or … emotional, you know. But if I back off, they might think I don’t care. I really, honestly believe I missed some rule that everyone else takes for granted; I must have been absent from school that day. There’s this narrow little dividing line I somehow never located.”
“Nonsense; I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said his mother, and then she held up an egg. “Will you look at this? Out of one dozen eggs, four are cracked. Two are smushed. I can’t imagine what Sweeney Brothers is coming to, these days.”
Ezra waited a while, but she didn’t say any more. Finally, he left.
He tore down the wall between the restaurant kitchen and the dining room, doing most of the work in a single night. He slung a sledgehammer in a steady rhythm, then ripped away at hunks of plaster till a thick white dust had settled over everything. Then he came upon a mass of pipes and electrical wires and he had to call in professionals to finish off the job. The damage was so extensive that he was forced to stay closed for four straight weekdays, losing a good deal of money.
He figured that while he was at it, he might as well redecorate the dining room. He raced around the windows and dragged down the stiff brocade draperies; he peeled up the carpeting and persuaded a brigade of workmen to sand and polish the floorboards.
By the evening of the fourth day, he was so tired that he could feel the hinging of every muscle. Even so, he washed the white from his hair and changed out of his speckled jeans and went to pay a visit to Mrs. Scarlatti. She lay in her usual position, slightly propped, but her expression was alert and she even managed a smile when he entered. “Guess what, angel,” she whispered. “Tomorrow they’re letting me leave.”
“Leave?”
“I asked the doctor, and he’s letting me go home.”
“Home?”
“As long as I hire a nurse, he says … Well, don’t just stand there, Ezra. I need for you to see about a nurse. If you’ll look in that nightstand …”
It was more talking than she’d done in weeks. Ezra felt almost buoyant with new hope; underneath, it seemed, he must have given up on her. But of course, he was also worried about the restaurant. What would she think when she saw it? What would she say to him? “Everything must go back again, just the way it was,” he could imagine. “Really, Ezra. Put up that wall this instant, and fetch my carpets and my curtains.” He suspected that he had very poor taste, much inferior to Mrs. Scarlatti’s. She would say, “Dear heart, how could you be so chintzy?”—a favorite word of hers. He wondered if he could keep her from finding out, if he could convince her to stay in her apartment till he had returned things to normal.
He thanked his stars that he hadn’t changed the sign that hung outside.
* * *
It was Ezra who settled the bill at the business office, the following morning. Then he spoke briefly with her doctor, whom he chanced to meet in the corridor. “This is wonderful about Mrs. Scarlatti,” Ezra said. “I really didn’t expect it.”
“Oh,” said the doctor. “Well.”
“I was getting sort of discouraged, if you want to know the truth.”
“Well,” the doctor said again, and he held out his hand so suddenly that it took Ezra a second to respond. After that, the doctor walked off. Ezra felt there was a lot more the man could have said, as a matter of fact.
Mrs. Scarlatti went home by ambulance. Ezra drove behind, catching glimpses of her through the tinted window. She lay on a stretcher, and next to her was another stretcher holding a man in two full leg casts. His wife perched beside him, evidently talking nonstop. Ezra could see the feathers on her hat bob up and down with her words.
Mrs. Scarlatti was let off first. The ambulance men unloaded her while Ezra stood around feeling useless. “Oh, smell that air,” said Mrs. Scarlatti. “Isn’t it fresh and beautiful.” Actually, it was terrible air—wintry and rainy and harsh with soot. “I never told