Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [65]
“Cody, don’t you believe I want you three to be happy? Of course I do. Naturally. Why, I wouldn’t hold Ezra back for the world, if he’s so set on marrying that girl—though I don’t know what he sees in her, she’s so scrappy and hoydenish; I think she’s from Garrett County or some such place and hardly wears shoes—you ought to see the soles of her feet sometime—but what I want to say is, I’ve never been one of those mothers who try to keep their sons for themselves. I honestly hope Ezra marries. I truly mean that. I want somebody taking care of him, especially him. You can manage on your own but Ezra is so, I don’t know, defenseless … Of course I love you all the same amount, every bit the same, but … well, Ezra is so good. You know? Anyway, now he has this Ruth person and it’s changed his whole outlook; watch him sometime when she walks into a room, or swaggers, or whatever you want to call it. He adores her. They get all playful together, like two puppies. Yes, often they remind me of puppies, snuggling down and giggling, or bounding about the kitchen or listening to that hillbilly music that Ruth seems to be so crazy about. But, Cody. Promise not to tell this to anyone. Promise? Cody, sometimes I stand there watching them and I see they believe they’re completely special, the first, the only people ever to feel the way they’re feeling. They believe they’ll live happily ever after, that all the other marriages going on around them—those ordinary, worn-down, flattened-in arrangements—why, those are nothing like what they’ll have. They’ll never settle for so little. And it makes me mad. I can’t help it, Cody. I know it’s selfish, but I can’t help it. I want to ask them, Who do you think you are, anyhow? Do you imagine you’re unique? Do you really suppose I was always this difficult old woman?’
“Cody, listen. I was special too, once, to someone. I could just reach out and lay a fingertip on his arm while he was talking and he would instantly fall silent and get all confused. I had hopes; I was courted; I had the most beautiful wedding. I had three lovely pregnancies, where every morning I woke up knowing something perfect would happen in nine months, eight months, seven … so it seemed I was full of light; it was light and plans that filled me. And then while you children were little, why, I was the center of your worlds! I was everything to you! It was Mother this and Mother that, and ‘Where’s Mother? Where’s she gone to?’ and the moment you came in from school, ‘Mother? Are you home?’ It’s not fair, Cody. It’s really not fair; now I’m old and I walk along unnoticed, just like anyone else. It strikes me as unjust, Cody. But don’t tell the others I said so.”
At work that next week, charting the steps by which power drills were fitted into their housings, Cody watched the old, dark Ruth fade from the rafters and hallways, until at last she was completely gone and he forgot why she had moved him so. Now a new Ruth appeared. Skinny and boyish, overalls flapping around her shinbones, she raced giggling down the assembly line with Ezra hot on her heels. Ezra’s hair was tousled. (He was not immune at all, it appeared, but had only been waiting in his stubbornly trustful way for the proper person to arrive.) He caught her in the supervisor’s office and they scuffled like … yes, like two puppies. A cowlick bounced on the crown of Ruth’s head. Her lips were chapped and cracked. Her