Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [70]
Often, after leaving Ruth, Cody would be muttering to himself as he strode away. He would slam a fist in his palm or kick his own car. But at the same time, he had an underlying sense of exhilaration. Yes, he would have to say that he’d never felt more alive, never more eager for each new day. Now he understood why he’d lost interest in Carol or Karen, what’s-her-name, the social worker who hadn’t found Ezra appealing. She’d made it too easy. What he liked was the competition, the hope of emerging triumphant from a neck-and-neck struggle with Ezra, his oldest enemy. He even liked biding his time, holding himself in check, hiding his feelings from Ruth till the most advantageous moment. (Was patience Ezra’s secret?) For, of course, this wasn’t an open competition. One of the contestants didn’t even know he was a contestant. “Gosh, Cody,” Ezra said, “it’s been nice to have you around so much lately.” And to Ruth, “Go, go; you’ll enjoy it,” when Cody invited her anywhere.
Once, baiting Ezra, Cody stole one of Ruth’s brown cigarettes and smoked it in the farmhouse. (The scent of burning tar filled his bedroom. If he’d had a telephone, he would have forgotten all his strategies and called her that instant to confess he loved her.) He stubbed out the butt in a plastic ashtray beside his bed. Then later he invited Ezra to look at his new calves, took him upstairs to discuss a leak in the roof, and led him to the nightstand where the ashtray sat. But Ezra just said, “Oh, was Ruth here?” and launched into praise for an herb garden she was planting on top of the restaurant. Cody couldn’t believe that anyone would be so blind, so credulous. Also, he would have died for the privilege of having Ruth plant herbs for him. He thought of the yard out back, where he’d always envisioned his wife’s kitchen garden. Rosemary! Basil! Lemon balm!
“Why didn’t she come to me?” he asked Ezra. “She could always grow her herbs on my farm.”
“Oh, well, the closer to home the fresher,” said Ezra. “But you’re kind to offer, Cody.”
Oiling his rifles that night, Cody seriously considered shooting Ezra through the heart.
When he complimented Ruth, she bristled. When he brought her the gifts he’d so craftily chosen (gold chains and crystal flasks of perfume, music boxes, silk flowers, all intended to contrast with the ugly, mottled marble rolling pin that Ezra presented, clumsily wrapped, on her twentieth birthday), she generally lost them right away or left them wherever she happened to be. And when he invited her places, she only came along for the outing. He would take her arm and she’d say, “Jeepers, I’m not some old lady.” She would scramble over rocks and through forests in her combat boots, and Cody would follow, bemused and dazzled, literally sick with love. He had lost eight pounds, could not eat—a myth, he’d always thought that was—and hardly slept at night. When he did sleep, he willed himself to dream of Ruth but never did; she was impishly, defiantly absent, and daytimes when they next met he thought he saw something taunting in the look she gave him.
He often found it difficult to keep their conversations going. It struck him sometimes—in the middle of the week, when he was far from Baltimore—that this whole idea was deranged. They would never be anything but strangers. What single interest, even, did they have in common? But every weekend he was staggered, all over again, by her strutting walk, her belligerent chin and endearing scowl. He was moved by her musty, little-boyish smell; he imagined how her small body could nestle into his. Oh, it was Ruth herself they had in common. He would reach out to touch the spurs of her knuckles. She would ruffle and draw back. “What are you doing?” she would ask. He didn’t answer.
“I know what you’re up to,” his mother told him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I see through you like a sheet of glass.”
“Well? What am I up to, then?” he asked. He really did hope to hear; he had reached the stage where he’d angle and connive just to get someone to utter Ruth’s name.
“You don’t fool me for an instant,”