Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

scenes, blended from a dozen repetitions: meals shattered by quarrels, other meals disrupted when Ezra spil ed his milk, drives in the country where his father lost the way and his mother snapped out pained and exasperated directions. He thought of once when the Nash’s radiator had erupted in steam and his father, looking helpless, had flung his suit coat over it. “Oh, honestly,” his mother had said. But that was way back; it was years ago, wasn’t it? Cody journeyed through the various cubbies and crannies of the house, hunting up the trappings of his father’s “phases” (as his mother cal ed them). There were the badminton racquets, the butterfly net, the archery set, the camera with its unwieldy flashgun, and the shoe box ful of foreign stamps stil in their glassine envelopes. But it meant nothing that these objects remained behind. What was alarming was his father’s half of the bureau: an empty sock drawer, an empty underwear drawer. In the shirt drawer, one unused sports shirt, purchased by the three children for Beck’s last birthday, his forty-fourth. And a ful assortment of pajamas; but then, he always slept in his underwear. In the wardrobe, just a hanger strung with ties—his oldest, dul est, most frayed and spotted ties —and a pair of shoes so ancient that the toes curled up.
    Cody’s brother and sister were staggeringly unobservant.
    They flitted in and out of the house like birds—Ezra playing his whistle, Jenny singing parts of jump-rope songs. Cody had the impression that musical notes fil ed their heads to overflowing; they left no room for anything serious.
    Auntie Sue got dressed in blue, Jenny sang, put on shoes and rubbers too… Her plain, flat voice and heedlessly swinging braids somehow reassured him. After al , what could go so wrong, when she skipped past with her ragged rope?
    What could go so very wrong?
    Then one Saturday she said, “I’m worried about Daddy.”
    “Why?” Cody asked.
    “Cody,” she said, in her elderly way, “you can see that he doesn’t come home any more. I think he’s left us.”
    “Don’t be sil y,” Cody told her.
    She surveyed him for a moment, with a composure that made him uneasy, and when he didn’t say any more she turned and went out on the porch. He heard the glider creak as she settled into it. But she didn’t start singing. In fact, the house was unusual y quiet. The only sound was his mother’s heels, clicking back and forth overhead as she put away the laundry. And Ezra wasn’t playing his whistle.
    Cody had no idea where Ezra was.
    He went upstairs to his mother’s bedroom. She was folding a sheet. “What’re you doing?” he asked. She gave him a look. He settled in a ladder-backed chair to watch her work. She was wearing a housedress that he very much disliked, cream colored with deep red streaks across it like paintbrush strokes.
    The shoulders were shaped by triangular pads that unbuttoned and removed when it was rime to wash the dress. Cody had often thought of stealing those pads.
    With her shoulders broadened, his mother looked powerful and sharp and scary. On her feet were open-toed shoes and short white socks. She traveled rapidly between the laundry basket and the bed, laying out stacks of clothing. There was no stack for his father.
    “When is Dad coming home?” he asked.
    “Oh,” she said, “pretty soon.”
    She didn’t meet his eyes.

    Cody looked around him and noticed, for the first time, that there was something pinched and starved about the way this house was decorated. Not a single perfume bottle or china figurine sat upon his mother’s bureau. No pictures hung on the wal s. Even the bedside tables were completely bare; and in al the drawers in this room, he knew, every object would be aligned and squared precisely—the clothing organized by type and color, whites grading into pastels and then to darks; comb and brush paral el; gloves paired and folded like a row of clenched fists. Who wouldn’t leave