Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [95]
When they learned it was coming to television, they had all begged to stay up and watch. The older ones made cocoa and the younger ones set out potato chips. Becky and Slevin arranged a ring of chairs around the TV set in the living room.
“You know what’s going to happen,” Joe told Jenny. “After all this time, even A Taste of Honey won’t be A Taste of Honey.”
In a way, he was right. Not that she didn’t still love it—yes, yes, she assured the children, it was just as she’d remembered—but after all, she was a different person watching it. The movie wrenched her with pity, now, when before it had made her feel hopeful. And wasn’t it odd, wasn’t it downright queer, that she’d never identified the story with her own? In 1963, she was a resident in pediatrics, struggling to care for a two-year-old born six weeks after her marriage dissolved. Yet she’d watched a movie about an unwed, unsupported pregnant girl with the most detached enjoyment, dreamily making her way through a box of pretzels. (And what had she been doing in a movie theater, anyway? How had she found the time, during such a frantic schedule?)
When it was over, she switched off the TV and shooed the children up the stairs. Quinn, the youngest, who had not been all that impressed with A Taste of Honey, was sound asleep and had to be carried by Joe. Even the older ones were groggy and blinking. “Wake up,” she told them. “Come on, now,” and she tugged at Jacob, who had dropped in a bundle on the topmost step. One by one she guided them to their beds and kissed them good night. How noisy their rooms seemed, even in silence!— that riotous clamor of toys and flung-off clothes, their vibrant, clashing rock star posters and antiwar bumper stickers and Orioles banners. Three of the children wouldn’t use sheets but slept in sleeping bags instead—garishly patterned, zippered cocoons sprawled on top of the blankets; and Phoebe didn’t like beds at all but curled in a quilt on the floor, most often out in the hall in front of her parents’ room. She lay across the doorway like a bodyguard, and you had to watch your step in the dark so as not to trip on her.
“I want that radio down,” Jenny said, and she kissed the top of Becky’s head. Then she peeked into Slevin’s room, knocked on the frame of his open door, and entered. He wore his daytime clothes to bed, as always—even his wide tooled belt with the trucker’s buckle—and he lay on top of the covers. She had been kissing him good night every night since she’d married Joe, but still he acted bashful. All she really did was brush her cheek against his, allowing him his dignity. “Sleep well,” she told him.
He said, “I see you found the vacuum cleaner.”
“Vacuum cleaner,” she said, stalling for time.
“I’m sorry I took it,” he said. “I guess your mom is pretty mad, huh? But it wasn’t stealing; honest. I just needed to borrow it for a spell.”
She sat on the edge of the bed. “Needed to borrow it for what?” she asked.
He said, “Well, for … I don’t know. Just for … See, there it was in the pantry. It was exactly like my mother’s. Just exactly. You know how you never think about a thing, or realize you remember it, and then all at once something will bring it all back? I forgot how it had that rubber strip around the edge so it wouldn’t scuff the furniture, and that tall, puffy bag I used to be scared of when I was a kid. It even smelled the same. It had that same clothy smell, just like my mother’s. You know? So I wanted to take it home. But once I got it here, well, it didn’t work out. It’s like I had