Anne Tyler: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“Well,” said Dr. Vincent. He cleared his throat. He removed his hand from hers. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“I’m sure.”

He seemed to be thinking. He turned away and said to Ezra, “You hear what she says?”

“Yes,” said Ezra, closer than Pearl had expected.

“I suggest we call your brother and sister, though.”

Pearl felt a stirring of interest.

“But if it’s that serious …” Ezra said.

“Let’s just see what happens,” the doctor told him. He laid a palm on Pearl’s forehead.

After that, he must have left. The roar came back to her ears and she didn’t quite hear him go. She was dwelling on thoughts of Cody and Jenny; it would be lovely to have all her children together. Then suddenly a heavy chill spread across her chest. Why, she thought. Dr. Vincent is going to allow this! Yes, he’s really going to allow it. This is it, then!

Surely not.

She’d been preoccupied with death for several years now; but one aspect had never before crossed her mind: dying, you don’t get to see how it all turns out. Questions you have asked will go unanswered forever. Will this one of my children settle down? Will that one learn to be happier? Will I ever discover what was meant by such-and-such? All these years, it emerged, she’d been expecting to run into Beck again. How odd; she hadn’t realized. She had also supposed that there would be some turning point, a flash of light in which she’d suddenly find out the secret; one day she’d wake up wiser and more contented and accepting. But it hadn’t happened. Now it never would. She’d supposed that on her deathbed … deathbed! Why, that was this everyday, ordinary Posturepedic, not the ornate brass affair that she had always envisioned. She had supposed that on her deathbed, she would have something final to tell her children when they gathered round. But nothing was final. She didn’t have anything to tell them. She felt a kind of shyness; she felt inadequate. She stirred her feet fretfully and searched for a cooler place on the pillow.

“Children,” she had said. This was just before Cody left for college, the day she’d burned Beck’s letters. She said, “Children, there’s something I want to discuss with you.”

Cody was talking about a job. He had to find one in order to help with the tuition fees. “I could work in the cafeteria,” he was saying, “or maybe off-campus. I don’t know which.” Then he heard his mother and looked over at her.

“It’s about your father,” Pearl said.

Jenny said, “I’d choose the cafeteria.”

“You know, my darlings,” Pearl told them, “how I always say your father’s away on business.”

“But off-campus they might pay more,” said Cody, “and every penny counts.”

“At the cafeteria you’d be with your classmates, though,” Ezra said.

“Yes, I thought of that.”

“All those coeds,” Jenny said. “Cheerleaders. Girls in their little white bobby sox.”

“Sweater girls,” Cody said.

“There’s something I want to explain about your father,” Pearl told them.

“Choose the cafeteria,” Ezra said.

“Children?”

“The cafeteria,” they said.

And all three gazed at her coolly, out of gray, unblinking, level eyes exactly like her own.

She dreamed it was her nineteenth birthday and that devilish John Dupree had brought her a tin of chocolates and a burnt-leather ornament for her hair. “Why, John, how cunning! Have a sweet,” she told him. In the dream, it puzzled her to know that John Dupree had been dead for sixty-one years. He was killed in the Argonne Forest by the Huns. She remembered paying a visit of condolence to his mother, who, however, was not receiving guests. “It’s all been a mistake, apparently,” Pearl told John Dupree. And she fastened up her hair with the burnt-leather ornament.

“There’s no question,” Jenny said. “We have to call an ambulance. What’s got into Dr. Vincent? Is he senile?”

“He does all right, for his age,” Ezra said. As usual, he seemed to have missed some central point; even Pearl could see that. Jenny sighed, or perhaps just made some impatient rustling sound with her clothes.

“It’s lucky you called me,” she said. “I come and find everything falling apart.”

“Nothing’s falling apart.”

“And why is she lying flat? She’s obviously having trouble breathing. Where’s that big green cushion Becky made her?”

Pearl had been skidding through time, for a moment — preparing to go by ambulance to have her arrow wound treated. She was braced for the precarious, tilting trip down the stairs on a stretcher. It was mention of Becky that set her straight. Becky was her grandchild, Jenny’s oldest daughter. “Jenny?” she said.

“How are you feeling?” Jenny asked.

“Is Cody here too?”

Apparently not. Jenny leaned over the bed to give her a kiss. Pearl patted Jenny’s hair and found it badly cut, choppy to the touch, but for once she didn’t scold. (Jenny had lovely thick hair that she tended to ignore, to mistreat, as if looks didn’t really matter.) “It was nice of you to come,” Pearl told her.

“Well goodness, I was worried,” said Jenny. “You’re the only mother we have.”

Pearl felt she had come full circle. “You should have got an extra,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

She didn’t repeat it. She turned her face on the pillow and was overtaken by a sudden jolt of anger. Why hadn’t they arranged for an extra? All those years when she was the only one, the sole support, the lone tall tree in the pasture just waiting for the lightning to strike … well. She seemed to be losing track of her thoughts. “Did you bring the children?” she said.

“Not this time. I left them with Joe.”

Joe? Oh, yes, her husband. “Why isn’t Cody here?” Pearl asked.

“Well, you know,” said Ezra, “it’s always so hard to locate him …”

“We think you should go to the hospital,” Jenny told Pearl.

“Oh, thank you, dear, but I don’t believe I care to.”

“You’re not breathing right. Where’s that cushion Becky made when she was little? The one with the uplifting motto,” Jenny said. “ Sleep, o faithful warrior, upon thy carven pillow .” She gave a little snort of laughter, and Pearl smiled, picturing Jenny’s habit of covering her mouth with her hand as if overcome, as if struck absolutely helpless by life’s silliness. “Anyhow,” Jenny said, pulling herself together. “Ezra, you agree with me, don’t you?”

“Agree?”

“About the hospital.”

“Ah …” said Ezra.

There was a pause. You could pluck this single moment out of all time, Pearl thought, and still discover so much about her children — even about Cody, for his very absence was a characteristic, perhaps his main one. And Jenny was so brisk and breezy but … oh, you might say somewhat opaque, a reflecting surface flashing your own self back at you, giving no hint of her self. And Ezra, mild Ezra: no doubt confusedly tugging at the shock of fair hair that hung over his forehead, considering and reconsidering … “Well,” he said, “I don’t know … I mean, maybe if we waited a while …”

“But how long? How long can we afford to wait?”

“Oh, maybe just till tonight, or tomorrow …”

“Tomorrow! What if it’s, say, pneumonia?”

“Or it could be only a cold, you see.”

“Yes, but—”

“And we wouldn’t want her to go if it makes her unhappy.”

“No, but—”

Pearl listened, smiling. She knew the outcome now. They would deliberate for hours, echoing each other’s answers, repeating and rephrasing questions, evading, retreating, arguing for argument’s sake, ultimately going nowhere. “You never did face up to things,” she said kindly.