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By Root 682 0

he’d offer more choice, four or five selections chalked up on the blackboard. But still you might not get what you asked for. “The Smithfield ham,” you’d say, and up would come the okra stew. “With that cough of yours, I know this will suit you better,” Ezra would explain. But even if he’d judged correctly, was that any way to run a restaurant? You order ham, ham is what you get. Otherwise, you might as well eat at home. “You’ll go bankrupt in a year,” Cody had promised, and Ezra almost did go bankrupt; most of the regular patrons disappeared. Some hung on, though; and others discovered it. There were several older people who ate here every night, sitting alone at their regular tables in the barnlike, plank-floored dining room. They could afford it because the prices weren’t written but recited instead by the staff, evidently according to whim, altering with the customer. (Wasn’t that illegal?) Ezra worried about what these older people did on Sundays, when he closed. Cody, on the other hand, worried about Ezra’s account books, but didn’t offer to go over them. He would find a disaster, he was sure—errors and bad debts, if not outright, naive crookery. Better not to know; better not to get involved.

“It’s true there’ve been some changes,” Ezra was telling his ex-customer, “but if you’ll just try our food, you’ll see that we’re still a fine restaurant. Tonight it’s all one dish—pot roast.”

“Pot roast!”

“A really special kind—consoling.”

“Pot roast I can get at home,” said the man. He clamped a felt hat on his head and walked out.

“Oh, well,” Ezra told Cody. “You can’t please everybody, I guess.”

They made their way to the far corner, where a RESERVED sign sat upon the table that Ezra always chose for family dinners. Jenny and their mother weren’t there yet. Jenny, who’d arrived on the afternoon train, had asked her mother’s help in shopping for a dress to be married in. Now Ezra worried they’d be late. “Everything’s planned for six-thirty,” he said. “What’s keeping them?”

“Well, no problem if it’s only pot roast.”

“It’s not only pot roast,” Ezra said. He sat in a chair. His suit had a way of waffling around him, as if purchased for a much larger man. “This is something more. I mean, pot roast is really not the right name; it’s more like … what you long for when you’re sad and everyone’s been wearing you down. See, there’s this cook, this real country cook, and pot roast is the least of what she does. There’s also pan-fried potatoes, black-eyed peas, beaten biscuits genuinely beat on a stump with the back of an ax—”

“Here they come,” Cody said.

Jenny and her mother were just walking across the dining room. They carried no parcels, but something made it clear they’d been shopping—perhaps the frazzled, cross look they shared. Jenny’s lipstick was chewed off. Pearl’s hat was knocked crooked and her hair was frizzier than ever. “What took you so long?” Ezra asked, jumping up. “We were starting to worry.”

“Oh, this Jenny and her notions,” said Pearl. “Her size eight figure and no bright colors, no pastels, no gathers or puckers or trim, nothing to make her look fat, so-called … Why are there five places set?”

The question took them all off guard. It was true, Cody saw. There were five plates and five crystal wineglasses. “How come?” Pearl asked Ezra.

“Oh … I’ll get to that in a minute. Have a seat, Mother, over there.”

But she kept standing. “Then at last we find just the right thing,” she said. “A nice soft gray with a crocheted collar, Jenny all the way. ‘It’s you,’ I tell her. And guess what she does. She has a tantrum in the middle of Hutzler’s department store.”

“Not a tantrum, Mother,” Jenny told her. “I merely said—”

“Said, ‘It isn’t a funeral, Mother; I’m not going into mourning.’ You’d think I’d chosen widow’s weeds. This was a nice pale gray, very ladylike, very suitable for a second marriage.”

“Anthracite,” Jenny told Cody.

“Pardon?”

“Anthracite was what the saleslady called it. In other words: coal. Our mother thinks it suitable to marry me off in a coal-black wedding dress.”

“Uh,” said Ezra, looking