Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [61]
Only one of Cody’s girlfriends had not been attracted to his brother. This was a social worker named Carol, or maybe Karen. Upon meeting Ezra, she had fixed him with a cool stare. Later, she had remarked to Cody that she disliked motherly men. “Always feeding, hovering,” she said (for she’d met him at his restaurant), “but acting so clumsy and shy, in the end it’s you that takes care of them. Ever notice that?” However, she hardly counted; Cody had so soon afterward lost interest in her.
You might wonder why he went on making these introductions, considering his unfortunate experiences—the earliest dating from the year he turned fourteen, the latest as recent as a month ago. After all, he lived in New York City and his family lived in Baltimore; he didn’t really have to bring these women home on weekends. In fact, he often swore that he would stop it. He would meet somebody, marry her, and not mention her even to his mother. But that would mean a lifetime of suspense. He’d keep watching his wife uncomfortably, suspiciously. He’d keep waiting for the inevitable—like Sleeping Beauty’s parents, waiting for the needle that was bound to prick her finger in spite of their precautions.
He was thirty years old by now, successful in his business, certainly ready to marry. He considered his New York apartment temporary, a matter of minor convenience; he had recently purchased a farmhouse in Baltimore County with forty acres of land. Weekends, he traded his slim gray suit for corduroys and he roamed his property, making plans. There was a sunny backyard where his wife could have her kitchen garden. There were bedrooms waiting to be stocked with children. He imagined them tumbling out to meet him every Friday afternoon when he came home. He felt rich and lordly. Poor Ezra: all he had was that disorganized restaurant, in the cramped, stunted center of the city.
Once, Cody invited Ezra to hunt rabbits with him in the woods behind the farm. It wasn’t a success. First Ezra fell into a yellowjackets’ nest. Then he got his rifle wet in the stream. And when they paused on a hilltop for lunch, he whipped out his battered recorder and commenced to tootling “Greensleeves,” scaring off all living creaures within a five-mile radius—which may have been his intention. Cody wasn’t even talking to him, at the end; Ezra had to chatter on by himself. Cody stalked well ahead of him in total silence, trying to remember why this outing had seemed such a good idea. Ezra sang “Mister Rabbit.” “Every little soul,” he sang, blissfully off-key, “must shine, shine …”
No wonder Cody was a cuticle chewer, a floor pacer, a hair rummager. No wonder, when he slept at night, he ground his teeth so hard that his jaws ached every morning.
Early in the spring of 1960, his sister, Jenny, wrote him a letter. Her divorce was coming through in June, she said—two more months, and then she’d be free to marry Sam Wiley. Cody didn’t think much of Wiley, and he flicked this news aside like a gnat and read on. Though it looks, she said, as if Ezra might beat me down the aisle. Her name is Ruth but I don’t know any more than that. Then she said she was seriously considering dropping out of medical school. The complications of her personal life, she said, were using up so much energy that she had none left over for anything else. Also, she had gained three pounds in the last six weeks and was perfectly obese, a whale, living now on lettuce leaves and lemon water. Cody was accustomed to Jenny’s crazy diets (she was painfully thin), so he skimmed that part. He finished the letter and folded it.
Ruth?
He opened it again.