Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [83]
It was the first time Pearl had ever visited them, the first and only time, and this was after years of very little contact at all. They seldom came to Baltimore. They never returned to the farm. And Cody wrote almost no letters, though he would telephone on birthdays and holidays. He was more like an acquaintance, Pearl thought. A not very cordial acquaintance.
Once she and Ezra were driving down a road in West Virginia, on an outing to Harper’s Ferry, when they chanced to come up behind a man in jogging shorts. He was running along the edge of the highway, a tall man, dark, with a certain confident, easy swing to his shoulders … Cody! Out here in the middle of nowhere, by sheer coincidence, Cody Tull! Ezra slammed on his brakes, and Pearl said, “Well, did you ever.” But then the jogger, hearing their car, had turned his face and he wasn’t Cody after all. He was someone entirely different, beefy jawed, nowhere near as handsome. Ezra sped up again. Pearl said, “How silly of me, I know full well that Cody’s in, ah …”
“Indiana,” said Ezra.
“Indiana; I don’t know why I thought …”
They were both quiet for several minutes after that, and in those minutes Pearl imagined the scene if it really had been Cody—if he had turned, astonished, as they sailed past. Oddly enough, she didn’t envision stopping. She thought of how his mouth would fall open as he recognized their faces behind the glass; and how they would gaze out at him, and smile and wave, and skim on by.
Whenever he phoned he was cheerful and hearty. “How’ve you been, Mother?”
“Why, Cody!”
“Everything all right? How’s Ezra?”
Oh, on the phone he was so nice about Ezra, interested and affectionate like any other brother. And on the rare occasions when he and Ruth came through Baltimore—heading somewhere else, just briefly dropping in—he seemed so pleased to shake hands with Ezra and clap him on the back and ask what he’d been up to. At first.
Only at first.
Then: “Ruth! What are you and Ezra talking about, over there?” Or: “Ezra? Do you mind not standing so close to my wife?” When Ezra and Ruth were hardly speaking, really. They were so cautious with each other, it hurt to watch.
“Cody. Please. What are you imagining?” Pearl would ask him, and then he would turn on her: “Naturally, you wouldn’t see it. Naturally, he can do no wrong, can he, Mother. Your precious boy. Can he.”
She had given up, finally, on ever being asked to visit. When Cody called and told her Ruth was pregnant, some two or three years into the marriage, Pearl said, “Oh, Cody, if she’d like it at all, I mean when the baby arrives … if she’d like me to come take care of things …” But evidently, she wasn’t needed. And when he called to say that Luke was born—nine pounds, three ounces; everything fine—she said, “I can’t wait to see him. I honestly can’t wait.” But Cody let that pass.
They sent her photos: Luke in an infant seat, blond and stern. Luke creeping bear-style across the carpet, on hands and feet instead of knees. (Cody had crept that way too.) Luke uncertainly walking, with a clothespin in each fat fist. He had to have the clothespins, Ruth wrote, because then he thought he was holding on to something. Otherwise, he fell. Now that photos were arriving, letters came too, generally written by Ruth. Her grammar was shocking and she couldn’t spell. She said, Me and Cody wrecken Luke’s eyes are going to stay blue, but what did Pearl care about grammar? She saved every letter and put Luke’s pictures on her desk in little gilt frames she bought at Kresge’s.
I think I ought to come see Luke before he’s grown, she wrote. No one answered. She wrote again. Would June be all right? Then Cody wrote that they were moving to Illinois in June, but if she really wanted then maybe she could come in July.
So she went to Illinois in July, traveling with a trainload