Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant Part 17

"I think she looks like a lizard," Slevin said. think she looks like a lizard," Slevin said.

"Oh, but when she was a girl, I mean...isn't it sad how carefree she was."

"Half the time, she forgets my name," Slevin said.

"Well, she's old," Jenny told him.

"Not that old. What she's saying is, I'm not worth her bother. Old biddy. Sits at the head of the table with a piece of bread on her plate and sets both hands down flat and just stares around at us, stares around, face like one of those rotating fans, waiting for the b.u.t.ter but never asking, never saying a word. Till finally you or Dad says, 'Mother? Could we pa.s.s you the b.u.t.ter?' and she says, 'Why, thank thank you,' like she was wondering when you'd realize." you,' like she was wondering when you'd realize."

"She hasn't had an easy life," Jenny said.

"I wish just once we'd get all through the meal and n.o.body offer her the b.u.t.ter."

"She raised us on her own, you know," Jenny told him. "Don't you think it must have been hard? My father walked out and left her when I was nine years old."

"He did?" Slevin asked. He stared at her.

"He left her, absolutely. We never set eyes on him again."

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Slevin said.

"Oh, well," said Jenny. She leafed through some more photos.

"Jesus! These people! They try to do you in."

"You're overreacting," Jenny told him. "I can't even remember the man, if you want to know the truth. Wouldn't know him if I saw him. And my mother managed fine. It all worked out. Look at this, Slevin: see Ezra's old-fas.h.i.+oned haircut?"

Slevin shrugged and switched the TV channel.

"And see what I was like at your age?" She handed him the picture with the tam-o'-shanter.

He glanced over. He frowned. He said, "Who did you say that was?"

"Me."

"No, it's not."

"Yes, it is. Me at thirteen. Mother wrote the date on the back."

"It's not!" he said. His voice was unusually high; he sounded like a much younger child. "It isn't! Look at it! Why, it's like a...concentration camp person, a victim, Anne Frank! It's terrible! It's so sad!"

Surprised, she turned the photo around and looked again. True, the picture wasn't particularly happy-it showed a dark little girl with a thin, watchful face-but it wasn't as bad as all that. "So what?" she asked, and she held it out to him once more. He drew back sharply.

"It's somebody else," he told her. "Not you; you're always laughing and having fun. It's not you."

"Oh, fine, it's not me, then," she said, and she returned to the rest of the photos.

"I want to talk to you about that oldest boy," her mother said on the phone. "What's his name? Kevin?"

"Slevin, Mother. Honestly."

"Well, he stole my vacuum cleaner."

"He did what?"

"Sunday afternoon, when you all came to visit, he slipped into my pantry and made off with my Hoover upright."

Jenny sat down on her bed. She said, "Let me get this straight."

"It's been missing all week," her mother said, "and I couldn't understand it. I knew we hadn't been burglarized, and even if we had, what would anyone want with my old Hoover?"

"But why accuse Slevin?"

"My neighbor told me, just this afternoon. Mrs. Arthur. Said, Was that your grandson I saw Sunday? Kind of hefty boy? Loading your Hoover upright into your daughter's car trunk?'"

"That's impossible," Jenny said.

"Now, how do you know that? How do you know what is or is not possible? He's hardly more than a stranger, Jenny. I mean, you got those children the way other people get weekend guests."

"You're exaggerating," Jenny told her.

"Well, all I ask is for you to go check Slevin's bedroom. Just check."

"What, this minute?"

"There's lint specks all over my carpet."

"Oh, all right," Jenny said.

She laid the receiver on her pillow and climbed from the second floor to the third. Slevin's door was open and he wasn't in his room, although his radio rocked with the Jefferson Airplane. She stepped stealthily over Slevin's knapsack, avoided a teetering pile of Popular Science Popular Science magazines, opened his closet door, and found herself staring at her mother's vacuum cleaner. She would know it anywhere: an elderly machine with a gray cloth dust bag. Its cord was coiled neatly and it seemed unharmed. If he'd taken it apart to learn how it worked, she might have understood. Or if he'd smashed it, out of some rage toward her mother. But there it sat, entire. She stood puzzling over it for several seconds. Then she wheeled it out of the closet and lugged it down the stairs, to where her mother's voice was tw.a.n.ging impatiently from the receiver. "Jenny? Jenny?" magazines, opened his closet door, and found herself staring at her mother's vacuum cleaner. She would know it anywhere: an elderly machine with a gray cloth dust bag. Its cord was coiled neatly and it seemed unharmed. If he'd taken it apart to learn how it worked, she might have understood. Or if he'd smashed it, out of some rage toward her mother. But there it sat, entire. She stood puzzling over it for several seconds. Then she wheeled it out of the closet and lugged it down the stairs, to where her mother's voice was tw.a.n.ging impatiently from the receiver. "Jenny? Jenny?"

"Well, you're right," Jenny said. "I found it in his room."

There was a pause in which Pearl could have said, "I told you so," but kindly did not. Then she said, "I wonder if he might be calling for help in some way."

"By stealing a vacuum vacuum cleaner?" cleaner?"

"He's really a very sweet boy," Pearl said. "I can see that. Maybe he's asking for a psychologist or some such."

"More likely he's asking for a neater house," Jenny said. "The dust b.a.l.l.s on his closet floor have started raising a family."

She pictured Slevin, in desperation, stealing an a.r.s.enal of cleaning supplies-this neighbor's broom, that neighbor's Ajax, gathered with the same feverish zeal he showed in collecting Indian head pennies. She was attacked by a sudden sputter of laughter.

"Oh, Jenny," her mother said sadly. "Do you have to see everything as a joke?"

"It's not my my fault if funny things happen," Jenny said. fault if funny things happen," Jenny said.

"It most certainly is," said her mother, but instead of explaining herself, she all at once grew brisk and requested the return of her vacuum cleaner by tomorrow morning.

Jenny and Joe and every child except the baby were watching television. It was long past bedtime for most of them, but this was a special occasion: the Late, Late Show was A Taste of Honey A Taste of Honey. Everyone in the house had heard of A Taste of Honey A Taste of Honey. It was Jenny's all-time favorite movie. She had seen it once, back in 1963, and never forgotten it. Nothing else had ever measured up to it, she was fond of saying, and after returning from some other movie she was sure to announce, "Well, it was all right, I guess, but it wasn't A Taste of Honey. A Taste of Honey." By now, any one of the children could finish that sentence before she got it halfway out. They'd ask as soon as she walked in the door, "Was it A Taste of Honey A Taste of Honey, Jenny? Was it?" and Phoebe was once heard telling Peter, "I like the new teacher okay, I guess, but she isn't A Taste of Honey. A Taste of Honey."

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 A Taste of Honey won't be won't be A Taste of Honey. A Taste of Honey."

In a way, he was right. Not that she didn't still love it-yes, yes, she a.s.sured 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 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, clas.h.i.+ng rock star posters and antiwar b.u.mper stickers and Orioles banners. Three of the children wouldn't use sheets but slept in sleeping bags instead-garishly patterned, zippered coc.o.o.ns 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, 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 lost the connection. It wasn't the same after all."

"That's all right, Slevin," she said. "Heavens, honey, that's all right." Then she worried her voice had shown too much, would make him bashful again, so she laughed a little and said, "Shall we get you a Hoover of your own for your birthday?"

He turned over on his side.

"Or we could have it made up in calico," she told him, giggling. "A tiny stuffed calico vacuum cleaner to take to bed with you."

But Slevin just closed his eyes, so after a while she wished him good night and left.

She dreamed she was back with Sam Wiley, her second husband and the one she'd loved the best. She'd made a fool of herself over Sam. She dreamed he was twirling on that high wooden stool they used to have in their kitchen in Paulham. He was preening the scrolls of his handlebar mustache and singing "Let It Be." Which hadn't even existed, at the time.

She opened her eyes and heard "Let It Be" on one of the children's radios, sailing out across the dark hall. How often had she told them? She got up and made her way to Peter's room-barefoot, stepping over Phoebe. Radios late at night sounded so different, she thought-so far away and crackling with static, almost gritty, as if the music had had to travel above miles of railroad tracks and deserted superhighways, past coal yards and auto dumps, oil derricks and factory smokestacks and electrical transformers. She switched off the radio and pulled Peter's sleeping bag up around his shoulders. She checked on the baby in her crib. Then she returned to bed, s.h.i.+vering slightly, and huddled against Joe's hulking back for warmth.

"Mack the Knife," Sam used to sing, and "Greenfields"-yes, that had been around. She remembered how operatic he'd get, rolling his eyes, pounding his chest, trying to make her laugh. (She'd been an earnest young medical student, in those days.) Then she remembered the tender, aching line that the examining table had pressed across the mound of the baby, when Jenny was an intern bending over a patient. Six months pregnant, seven months...By her eighth month the marriage was finished, and Jenny was walking around in a daze. She saw that she had always been doomed to fail, had been unlovable, had lacked some singular quality that would keep a husband. She had never known this consciously, before, but the pain she felt was eerily familiar-like a suspicion, long held, at last confirmed.

She wore uniforms designed for male physicians with forty-inch waists; there were no maternity lab coats. On rounds, professors would give her doubtful glances and ask if she were sure she was up to this. Sympathetic nurses brought her so many cups of coffee that she thought she would float away. One of those nurses stayed with her through most of her labor. Other women had their husbands, but Jenny had Rosa Perez, who let her squeeze her fingers as hard as needed and never said a word of complaint.

And what was the name of that neighbor who used to watch the baby? Mary something-Mary Lee, Mary Lou-some fellow intern's wife, as poor as Jenny and the mother of two children under two. She baby-sat for a pittance, but even that was more than Jenny could afford. And the schedule! Months of nights on duty, thirty-six hours on call and twelve off, emergency room, obstetrics, trauma surgery...and her residency was not much better. Meanwhile, Becky changed from an infant to a little girl, an outsider really, a lively child with Sam Wiley's snapping black eyes, unrelated to Jenny. Though it was a shock, sometimes, to see her give that level, considering stare so typical of the Tulls. Was it possible, after all, that this small stranger might const.i.tute a family? She learned to walk; she learned to talk. "No!" she would say, in her firm, s.p.u.n.ky voice; and Jenny, trying to stay awake at three in the morning or three in the afternoon, whatever bit of time they had together, dropped her head in her hands. "No!" said Becky, and Jenny hauled off and slapped her hard across the mouth, then shook her till her head lolled, then flung her aside and ran out of the apartment to...where? (A movie, perhaps?) In those days, objects wobbled and grew extra edges. She was so exhausted that the sight of her patients' white pillows could mesmerize her. Sounds were thick, as if underwater. Words on a chart were meaningless-so many k's and g's, such a choppy language English was, short syllables, clumps of consonants, she'd never noticed; like Icelandic, maybe, or Eskimo. She slammed Becky's face into her Peter Rabbit dinner plate and gave her a b.l.o.o.d.y nose. She yanked a handful of her hair. All of her childhood returned to her: her mother's blows and slaps and curses, her mother's pointed fingernails digging into Jenny's arm, her mother shrieking, "Guttersnipe! Ugly little rodent!" and some sc.r.a.p of memory-she couldn't quite place it-Cody catching hold of Pearl's wrist and fending her off while Jenny shrank against the wall.

Was this what it came to-that you never could escape? That certain things were doomed to continue, generation after generation? She failed to see a curb and sprained her ankle, hobbled to work in agony. She misdiagnosed a case of viral pneumonia. She let a greenstick fracture slip right past her. She brought Becky a drink of water in the middle of the night and then suddenly, without the slightest intention, screamed, "Take it! Take it!" and threw the cup into Becky's face. Becky s.h.i.+vered and caught her breath for hours afterward, even in her sleep, though Jenny held her tightly on her lap.

Then her mother called from Baltimore and said, "Jenny? Don't you write your family any more?"

"Well, I've been so busy," Jenny meant to say. Or: "Leave me alone, I remember all about you. It's all come back. Write? Why should I write? You've damaged me; you've injured me. Why would I want to write?"

Instead, she started...not crying, exactly, but something worse. She was torn by dry, ragged sobs; she ran out of air; there was a grating sound in her chest. Her mother said, calmly, "Jenny, hang up. You know that couch in your living room? Go lie down on it. I'll be there just as soon as Ezra can drive me."

Pearl stayed two weeks, using all of her vacation time. The first thing she did was call Jenny's hospital and arrange for sick leave. Then she set about putting the world in order again. She smoothed clean sheets on Jenny's bed, brought her tea and bracing broths, shampooed her hair, placed flowers on her bureau. Becky, who had hardly seen her grandmother till now, fell in love with her. Pearl called Becky "Rebecca" and treated her formally, respectfully, as if she were not quite sure how much she was allowed. Every morning she walked Becky to the playground and swung her on the swings. In the afternoon they went shopping together. She bought Becky an old-fas.h.i.+oned dress that made her look solemn and reasonable. She bought picture books-nursery rhymes and fairy tales and The Little House The Little House. Jenny had forgotten about The Little House The Little House. Why, she had loved that book! She'd requested it every evening, she remembered now. She'd sat on that homely old sofa and listened while her mother, with endless patience, read it three times, four times, five...Now Becky said, "Read it again," and Pearl returned to page one, and Jenny listened just as closely as Becky did.

Sundays, when his restaurant closed, Ezra drove up from Baltimore. He was not, in spite of his innocent face, an open sort of person, and rather than speak outright of Jenny's new breakability he kept smiling serenely at some point just beyond her. She took comfort from this. There was already too much openness in the world, she felt-everyone raging and weeping and rejoicing. She imagined that Ezra was not subject to the ups and downs that jolted other people. She liked to have him read the papers to her (trouble in Honduras, trouble in Saigon, natural disasters in Haiti and Cuba and Italy) while she listened from a nest of deep blue blankets and a nightgown still warm from her mother's iron.

On the second weekend, Cody blew in from wherever he'd vanished to most recently. He traveled on a breeze of energy and money; Jenny was impressed. He used her telephone for two hours like the wheeler-dealer he always was and arranged to pay for a full-time sitter, a slim young woman named Delilah Greening who turned out to be better help than Jenny would ever have again. Then he slung his suit coat over one shoulder, gave her a little salute, and was gone.

She slept, sometimes, for twelve and fourteen hours straight. She woke dislocated, frightened by the sunlit, tickling silence of the apartment. She mixed up dreams and real life. "How did it happen-?" she might ask her mother, before she remembered that it hadn't happened (the Shriners' parade through her bedroom, the elderly gentleman hanging by his heels from her curtain rod like a piece of fruit). Sometimes at night, voices came vividly out of the dark. "Dr. Tull. Dr. Tull," they'd say, urgently, officially. Or, "Six hundred fifty milligrams of quinine sulfate..." Her own pulse thudded in her eardrums. She held her hand toward the light from the streetlamp and marveled at how white and bloodless she had become.

When her mother left and Delilah arrived, Jenny got up and returned to work. For a while, she carried herself as gently as a cup of liquid. She kept level and steady, careful not to spill over. But she was fine, she saw; she really was fine. Weekends, her mother and Ezra paid brief visits, or Jenny took Becky down to Baltimore on the train. They both dressed up for these trips and sat very still so as not to muss their clothes. Jenny felt purified, like someone who had been drained by a dangerous fever.

And the following summer, when she could have accepted more lucrative offers in Philadelphia or Newark, she chose Baltimore instead. She joined two older pediatricians, entered Becky in nursery school, and shortly thereafter purchased her Bolton Hill row house. She continued to feel fragile, though. She went on guarding a trembly, fluid center. Sometimes, loud noises made her heart race-her mother speaking her name without warning, or the telephone jangling late at night. Then she would take herself in hand. She would remind herself to draw back, to loosen hold. It seemed to her that the people she admired (one of her partners, who was a wry, funny man named Dan Charles; and her brother Ezra; and her neighbor Leah Hume) had this in common: they gazed at the world from a distance. There was something sheeted about them-some obliqueness that made them difficult to grasp. Dan, for instance, kept up such a steady, easy banter that you never could ask him about his wife, who was forever in and out of mental inst.i.tutions. And Leah: she could laugh off the repeated failures of her crazy business ventures like so many pratfalls. How untouched she looked, and how untouchable, chuckling to herself and covering her mouth with a shapely, badly kept hand! Jenny studied her; you could almost say she took notes. She was learning how to make it through life on a slant. She was trying to lose her intensity.

"You've changed," her mother said (all intensity herself). "You've grown so different, Jenny. I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong, but something something is." She wanted Jenny to remarry; she hoped for a dozen grandchildren, at least; she was always after Jenny to get out and mingle, socialize, make herself more attractive, meet some nice young man. What Jenny didn't tell her was, she simply couldn't be bothered with all that. She felt textureless, so that events just slid right off her with no friction whatsoever; and the thought of the heartfelt conversations required by a courts.h.i.+p filled her with impatience. is." She wanted Jenny to remarry; she hoped for a dozen grandchildren, at least; she was always after Jenny to get out and mingle, socialize, make herself more attractive, meet some nice young man. What Jenny didn't tell her was, she simply couldn't be bothered with all that. She felt textureless, so that events just slid right off her with no friction whatsoever; and the thought of the heartfelt conversations required by a courts.h.i.+p filled her with impatience.

Then she met Joe with his flanks of children-his padding, his moat, his barricade of children, all in urgent need of her brisk and competent attention. No conversation there there-she and Joe had hardly found a moment to speak to each other seriously. They were always trying to be heard above the sound of toy trucks and xylophones. She didn't even have time for thinking any more.

"Of course, the material object is nothing," said the priest. He winced at a squeal from the waiting room. "That's unimportant, the least of my concerns. Though it did have some historical value. It was donated, I believe, by the missionary brother of one of our paris.h.i.+oners."

Jenny leaned back against the receptionist's window and touched a hand to her forehead. "Well, I don't..." she said. "What did you say this was?" did you say this was?"

"A rhinoceros foot," said the priest, "in the shape of an umbrella stand. Or an umbrella stand in the shape of a rhinoceros foot. It was an actual rhinoceros foot from...wherever rhinoceri come from."

A naked toddler shot out a door like a stray piece of popcorn, pursued by a nurse with a hypodermic needle. The priest stood back to give them room. "We know it was there in the morning," he said. "But at four o'clock, it was gone. And Slevin was in just previously; I'd asked him to come for a chat. Only I was on the phone when he arrived. By the time I'd hung up he was gone, and so was the rhinoceros foot."

Jenny said, "I wonder if his mother had a rhinoceros foot."

"Pardon?" said the priest.

She realized how this must have sounded, and she laughed. "No," she said, "I don't mean she she had rhinoceros feet...oh, Lord..." had rhinoceros feet...oh, Lord..."

The priest said, "Dr. Tull, don't you see this is serious? We have a child in trouble here, don't you see that? Don't you think something ought to be done? Where do you stand stand, Dr. Tull?"

Jenny's smile faded and she looked into his face. "I don't know," she said, after a pause. She felt suddenly bereft, as if something were missing, as if she'd given something up. She hadn't always always been like this! she wanted to tell him. But aloud she said, "I only meant, you see...I believe he steals what reminds him of his mother. Hoovers and umbrella stands. Doesn't that make sense?" been like this! she wanted to tell him. But aloud she said, "I only meant, you see...I believe he steals what reminds him of his mother. Hoovers and umbrella stands. Doesn't that make sense?"

"Ah," said the priest.

"What's next, I wonder," Jenny said. She mused for a moment. "Picture it! Grand pianos. Kitchen sinks. Why, we'll have his mother's whole household," she said, "her photo alb.u.ms and her grade-school yearbooks, her college roommate asleep on our bed and her high school boyfriends in our living room." She pictured a row of dressed-up boys from the fifties, their hair slicked down wetly, their s.h.i.+rts ironed crisply, perched on her couch like mannequins with heart-shaped boxes of chocolates on their knees. She laughed. The priest groaned. A little blue plastic helicopter buzzed across the waiting room and landed in Jenny's hair.

8.

This Really Happened.

The summer before Luke Tull turned fourteen, his father had a serious accident at the factory he was inspecting. A girder swung around on its cable, hit Luke's father and the foreman standing next to him, and swept them both off the walkway and down to the lower level of the factory. The foreman was killed. Cody lived, by some miracle, but he was badly hurt. For two days he lay in a coma. There was a question of brain damage, till he woke and, in his normal, crusty way, asked who the h.e.l.l was in charge around here.

Three weeks later, he came home by ambulance. His thick black hair had been shaved off one side of his head, where a gauze patch covered the worst of his wounds. His face-ordinarily lean and tanned-was swollen across one cheekbone and turning different shades of yellow from slowly fading bruises. His ribs were taped and an arm and a leg were in casts-the right arm and the left leg, so he couldn't use crutches. He was forced to lie in bed, cursing the game shows on TV. "Fools. Jacka.s.ses. Who do they think would be watching this c.r.a.p?"

Luke's mother, who had always been so spirited, lost something important to the accident. First, in the terrible coma days, she drifted around in a wash of tears-a small, wan, pink-eyed woman. Her red hair seemed drained of color. Luke would say, "Mom?" and she wouldn't hear, would sometimes s.n.a.t.c.h up her car keys as if mistaking who had called and go tearing off to the hospital again, leaving Luke alone. Even after the coma ended, it didn't seem she came back completely. When Cody was brought home, she sat by his bed for hours saying nothing, lightly stroking one thick vein that ran down the inside of his wrist. She watched the game shows with a tremulous smile. "Jesus, look at them squawk," Cody said disgustedly, and Ruth bent down and laid her cheek against his hand as if he'd uttered something wonderful.