Read Online Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler - Free Book Online Page A

when Ezra’s class was at lunch, and he slipped behind the cloakroom partition and stuck the whistle in the pocket of Josiah’s enormous black peacoat. After that there was a stretch of Indian summer and Josiah evidently left his jacket where it hung, so the whistle stayed lost for days. Ezra was very upset about it. “Have you seen my whistle?” he asked everybody. For once, Cody didn’t have to listen to
    “Greensleeves” and “The Ash Grove,” played on that breathy little pipe, whose range was so limited that for high notes, Ezra had to blow extra hard and split people’s eardrums.
    “You took it,” Ezra told Cody. “Didn’t you? I know you did.”
    “What would I want with a stupid toy whistle?” Cody asked.
    He was hoping that when it turned up in Josiah Payson’s pocket, Ezra would blame Josiah. But it didn’t happen that way. Whatever passed between them was settled without any fuss, and the two of them continued to be friends. Once again, a cracked, foggy “Ash Grove” burbled in every corner of the house.
    Their mother went on one of her rampages. “Pearl has hit the warpath,” Cody told his brother and sister. He always cal ed her Pearl at such times.
    “Better look out,” he said. “She’s dumped al Jenny’s bureau drawers.”
    “Oh-oh,” Ezra said.
    “She’s slamming things around and talking to herself.”

    “Oh, boy,” Jenny said.
    Cody had met the other two on the porch; they’d stayed late at school. He silently opened the door for them, and they crept up the stairs. Each took a great, lunging stride over the step that creaked—although surely their mother would not have heard them. She was making too much noise in the kitchen.
    Throwing pots through windowpanes, was what it sounded like.
    They tiptoed across the hal to Jenny’s room.
    “What a mess!” Ezra breathed. Heaps of clothing covered the floor. Empty drawers had been hurled everywhere. The wardrobe stood open, its hangers stripped, and Jenny’s puff-sleeved dresses lay in a heap. Jenny stared from the doorway. “Jen?” Cody asked her. “What did you do?”
    “Nothing,” Jenny said in a quavery voice.
    “Think! Some little thing, something you’ve forgotten about…”
    “Nothing. I promise.”
    “Wel , help me get these drawers back in,” he said to Ezra.

    It was a two-man job. The drawers were oak, cumbersome and inclined to stick. Cody and Ezra grunted as they fitted them into the bureau. Jenny traveled around the room col ecting her clothes.
    Tears had fil ed her eyes, and she kept dabbing at her nose with one or another rol ed pair of socks. “Stop that,” Cody told her. “She’l do it al again, if she finds snot on your socks.”
    He and Ezra gathered slips and hair ribbons, shook out blouses, tried to get the dresses back on their hangers the way they’d been before. Some were hopelessly wrinkled, and those they smoothed as best they could and hid at the rear of the wardrobe. Meanwhile Jenny knelt on the floor, sniffling and folding undershirts.
    “I wish we could just go off,” Ezra said, “and not come back til it’s over.”
    “It won’t be over til she’s had her scene,” Cody told him. “You know that. There’s no way we can get around it.”
    “I wish Daddy were here.”
    “Wel , he’s not, so shut up.”
    Ezra straightened a sash.

    After they’d put everything in order, the three of them sat in a row on Jenny’s bed. The sounds from the kitchen were different now—cutlery rattling, glassware clinking. Their mother must be setting the table.
    Pretty soon she’d serve supper. Cody had such a loaded feeling in his throat, he never wanted to eat again. No doubt the others felt the same; Ezra kept swal owing. Jenny said,
    “Let’s run away from home.”
    “We don’t have anyplace to run to,” Cody said.
    Their mother came to the foot of the stairs and cal ed them. Her voice was thin, like the sound of a gnat.
    “Children.”
    They filed down, dragging their feet.