Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

Author:Anne Tyler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Death, Family, Mothers, Family Life, Parenting, General, Romance, Motherhood, Children of divorced parents, Runaway husbands, Baltimore (Md.), Domestic relations, Maryland, Fiction, Domestic fiction, Mothers - Death, Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780449911594
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 1982-03-15T06:31:33+00:00

Mornings, now, he called her from New York, often getting her landlady out of bed; and Ruth when she answered was still creaky voiced from sleep—or was it from bewilderment, even now? Reluctantly, each time, she warmed to his questions, speaking shortly at first. Yes, she was fine. The restaurant was fine. Dinner last night had gone well. And then (letting her sentences stretch gradually longer, as if giving in to him all over again) she told him that this house was starting to wear her down—creepy boarders padding around in their slippers at all hours, no one ever going anywhere, landlady planted eternally in front of her TV. This landlady, a widow, believed that Perry Como’s eyebrows quirked upward as they did because he was by nature a bass, and singing such high notes gave him constant pain; she had heard that Arthur Godfrey, too, had been enduring constant pain for years, smiling a courageous smile and wheeling about on his stool because the slightest step would stab him like a knife. Yes, everything, to Mrs. Pauling, was a constant pain; life was a constant pain, and Ruth had started looking around her and wondering how she stood this place.

Weekends—Friday and Saturday nights—Ruth tore through the restaurant kitchen slapping haunches of beef and whipping egg whites. Ezra worked more quietly. Cody sat at the wooden table. Now and then, Ruth would place some new dish in front of him and Cody would eat it dutifully. Every mouthful was a declaration of love. Ruth knew that. She was tense and watchful. She gave him sideways, piercing glances when he forked up one of her dumplings, and he was careful to leave nothing on his plate.

Then on Sunday mornings, yellow summer mornings at her boardinghouse, he rang her doorbell and pulled her close to him when she answered. Anytime he kissed her, he was visited by the curious impression that some other self of hers was still moving through the house behind her, spunky and lighthearted and uncatchable even yet, checking under pot lids, slamming cupboard doors, humming and tossing her head and wiping her hands on her blue jeans.

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