Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [68]
“Good morning,” he said. Ruth looked up. The pudgy man retreated behind the refrigerator door.
“I hope you’re not too far into that cereal,” Cody said. “I came to invite you to breakfast.”
“What for?” Ruth asked, frowning.
“Well … not for any purpose. I’m just out walking and I thought you might want to walk with me, stop off for doughnuts and coffee someplace.”
“Now?”
“Of course.”
“Isn’t it raining?”
“Only a little bit.”
“No, thanks,” she said.
Her eyes dropped back to her newspaper. The landlady slid her locket along its chain with a miniature zipping sound.
“What’s going on in the world?” Cody asked.
“What world?” said Ruth.
“The news. What does the newspaper say?”
Ruth raised her eyes, and Cody saw the page she had turned to. “Oh,” he said. “The comics.”
“No, my horoscope.”
“Your horoscope.” He looked to the landlady for help. The landlady gazed off toward a cabinet full of jelly glasses. “Well, what … um, symbol are you?” Cody asked Ruth.
“Hmm?”
“What astrological symbol?”
“Sign,” she corrected him. She sighed and stood up, finally forced to recognize his presence. Snatching her paper from the table, she stalked off toward the parlor. Cody made way for her and then trailed after. Her jeans, he guessed, had been bought at a little boys’ clothing store. She had no hips whatsoever. Her sweater was transparent at the elbows.
“I’m Taurus,” she said over her shoulder, “but all that’s rubbish, anyhow. Total garbage.”
“Oh, I agree,” Cody said, relieved.
She stopped in the center of the parlor and turned to him. “Look at here,” she said, and she jabbed her finger at a line of newsprint. “Powerful ally will come to your rescue. Accent today on high finance.” She lowered the paper. “I mean, who do they reckon they’re dealing with? What kind of business am I supposed to be involved in?”
“Ridiculous,” said Cody. He was hypnotized by her eyebrows. They were the color of orange sherbet, and whenever she spoke with any heat the skin around them grew pink, darker than the eyebrows themselves.
“Ignore innuendos from long-time foe,” she read, running a finger down the column. “Or listen to this other one: Clandestine meeting could solve mystery. Almighty God!” she said, and she tossed the paper into an armchair. “You got to lead quite a life, to get anything out of your horoscope.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Cody said. “Maybe it’s truer than you realize.”
“Come again?”
“Maybe it’s saying you ought to lead such a life. Ought to be more adventurous, not just slave away in some restaurant, mope around a gloomy old boardinghouse …”
“It’s not so gloomy,” Ruth said, lifting her chin.
“Well, but—”
“And anyhow, I won’t always be here. Me and Ezra, after we marry, we’re moving in above the Homesick. Then once we get us some money we plan on a house.”
“But still,” said Cody, “you won’t have anywhere near what those horoscopes are calling for. Why, there’s all the outside world! New York, for instance. Ever been to New York?”
She shook her head, watching him narrowly.
“You ought to come; it’s springtime there.”
“It’s springtime here,” she said.
“But a different kind.”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” she told him.
“Well, all I want to say is, Ruth: why settle down so soon, when there’s so much you haven’t seen yet?”
“Soon?” she said. “I’m pretty near twenty years old. Been rattling around on my own since my sixteenth birthday. Only thing I want is to settle down, sooner the better.”
“Oh,” said Cody.
“Well, have a good walk.”
“Oh, yes, walk …”
“Don’t drown,” she told him, callously.
At the door, he turned. He said, “Ruth?”
“What.”
“I don’t know your last name.”
“Spivey,” she said.
He thought it was the loveliest sound he had ever heard in his life.
The following weekend, he drove her out to see his farm. “I have seen all the farms I care to,” she said, but Ezra said, “Oh, you ought to go, Ruth. It’s pretty this time of year.” Ezra himself had