Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [64]
But Pearl just stood straighter. “And then,” she told her sons, “then, without the slightest bit of thought, doing it only to spite me, she goes rushing over to the nearest rack and pulls out something white as snow.”
“It was cream colored,” Jenny said.
“Cream, white—what’s the difference? Both are inappropriate, if you’re marrying for the second time and the divorce hasn’t yet been granted and the man has no steady employment. ‘I’ll take this one,’ she says, and it’s not even the proper size, miles too big, had to be left at the store for alterations.”
“I happened to like it,” Jenny said.
“You were lost in it.”
“It made me look thin.”
“Maybe you could wear a shawl or something, brown,” said her mother. “That might tone it down some.”
“I can’t wear a shawl in a wedding.”
“Why not? Or a little jacket, say a brown linen jacket.”
“I look fat in jackets.”
“Not in a short one, Chanel-type.”
“I hate Chanel.”
“Well,” said Pearl, “I can see that nothing will satisfy you.”
“Mother,” Jenny said, “I’m already satisfied. I’m satisfied with my cream-colored dress, just the way it is. I love it. Will you please just get off my back?”
“Did you hear that?” Pearl asked her sons. “Well, I don’t have to stand here and take it.” And she turned and marched back across the dining room, erect as a little wind-up doll.
Ezra said, “Huh?”
Jenny opened a plastic compact, looked into it, and then snapped it shut, as if merely making certain that she was still there.
“Please, Jenny, won’t you go after her?” Ezra asked.
“Not on your life.”
“You’re the one she fought with. I can’t persuade her.”
“Oh, Ezra, let’s for once just drop it,” Cody said. “I don’t think I’m up to all this.”
“What are you saying? Not have dinner at all?”
“I could only eat lettuce leaves anyhow,” Jenny told him.
“But this is important! It was going to be an occasion. Oh, just … wait. Wait here a minute, will you?”
Ezra turned and rushed off to the kitchen. From the swarm of assorted cooks at the counter, he plucked a small person in overalls. It was a girl, Cody guessed—a weasel-faced little redhead. She followed Ezra jauntily, almost stiff-legged, wiping her palms on her backside. “I’d like you to meet Ruth,” Ezra said.
Cody said, “Ruth?”
“We’re getting married in September.”
“Oh,” said Cody.
Then Jenny said, “Well, congratulations,” and kissed Ruth’s bony, freckled cheek, and Cody said, “Uh, yes,” and shook her hand. There were calluses like pebbles on her palm. “How do,” she told him. He thought of the phrase banty hen, although he had never seen a banty hen. Or maybe she was more of a rooster. Her brisk, carroty hair was cut so short that it seemed too scant for her skull. Her blue eyes were round as marbles, and her skin was so thin and tight (as if, like her hair, it had been skimped on) that he could see the white cartilage across the bridge of her nose. “So,” he said. “Ruth.”
“Are you surprised?” Ezra asked him.
“Yes, very surprised.”
“I wanted to do it right; I was going to announce it over drinks and then call her in to join the family dinner. But, honey,” Ezra said, turning to Ruth, “I guess Mother was overtired. It didn’t work out the way I’d planned.”
“Shit, that’s okay,” Ruth told him.
Cody said, “Surely. Certainly. We can always do it later.”
Then Jenny started asking about the wedding, and Cody excused himself and said he thought he’d go see how their mother was. Outside in the dark, walking up the street toward home, he had the strangest feeling of loss. It was as if someone had died, or had left him forever—the beautiful, black-haired Ruth of his dreams.
“I knew what that dinner was going to be, tonight,” Pearl told Cody. “I’m not so dumb. I knew. He’s got himself engaged; he’s going to marry the country cook. I knew that anyway but it all came home to me when I walked in the restaurant and saw those five plates and glasses. Well, I acted badly. Very badly. You don’t have to tell me, Cody. It was just that I saw those plates and something broke inside of me. I thought,