Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [6]
He was never coming back.
It was time to tell the children. She was amazed, in fact, that she’d managed to keep it from them for so long. Had they always been this easy to fool? One good thing about telling them: they would rally around her better. She didn’t like to admit it but she was losing control of the boys. Instead of supporting her—taking out the garbage, helping her in various manly and protective ways—they seemed to be running wild; yes, even Ezra. They didn’t even do the chores they used to do, let alone take on new ones. Cody in fact was hardly ever home. Ezra was dreamy and forgetful and would like as not walk off in the middle of a task. When she told them what was what, she thought, they’d be horrified at how they’d let her down. They’d ask why she’d hidden it all this time, what she could have been thinking of.
Only she couldn’t tell them.
She planned how she would do it: she would gather them around her on the sofa, in the lamplight, some evening after supper. “Children. Dear ones,” she would say. “There’s something you should know.” But she wouldn’t be able to continue; she might cry. It was unthinkable to cry in front of the children. Or in front of anyone. Oh, she had her pride! She was not a tranquil woman; she often lost her temper, snapped, slapped the nearest cheek, said things she later regretted—but thank the Lord, she didn’t expose her tears. She didn’t allow any tears. She was Pearl Cody Tull, who’d ridden out of Raleigh triumphant with her new husband and never looked back. Even now, even standing at the kitchen window, all alone, watching her tense and aging face, she didn’t cry.
Every morning, then, she went off to Sweeney Bros. She continued to wear her hat, giving the impression that she had merely dropped in and was helping out as a favor, in a pinch. As each customer approached (generally someone she knew, at least by sight), she would give a firm nod and then squint, implying a smile. She rang up the purchases efficiently while a boy named Alexander bagged them. “Thank you, and good day,” she said at the end, with another shorthand smile. She liked to seem crisp and professional. When neighbors showed up, people she knew more closely, she felt she was dying inside but she didn’t lose her composure. With them she was even crisper. She had a little rhythm between the key stabbing and the sliding of groceries along the wooden counter; it kept her mind off things. If she allowed herself to think, she started worrying. Summer had arrived and her children were out of school all day. No telling what they might be up to.
At five-thirty she walked home, past crowds of youngsters playing hopscotch or huddled over marble games, past babies set to air in their carriages, women perched on their stoops fanning themselves in the heat. She’d climb her steps and be met at the door with bad news: “Jenny fell down the stairs today and bit her lower lip clean through and had to go to Mrs. Simmons’s house for ice and gauze.”
“Oh, Jenny, honey!”
It seemed they greeted her with disaster, saved up all their accidents especially for her. She’d want to take off her hat and shoes and fall back onto the sofa; but no, it was “The toilet’s stopped up,” and “I tore my pants,” and “Cody hit Ezra with the orange juice pitcher.”
“Can’t you just let me be?” she would ask. “Can’t you just give me a minute to myself?”
She’d make supper from tins she’d brought home, nothing fancy. She would listen to the radio while she washed dishes. Jenny was supposed to dry but was off playing tag with the boys. Stepping out the back door to heave