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

pains with the backs. Each one waited for the others. Then they went into the kitchen. Their mother was slicing a brick of Spam. She didn’t look at them, but she started speaking the instant they were seated. “It’s not enough that I should have to work till five p.m., no; then I come home and find nothing seen to, no chores done, you children off till all hours with disreputable characters in the alleys or wasting your time with school chorus, club meetings; table not set, breakfast dishes not washed, supper not cooked, floors not swept, mail in a heap on the mat … and not a sign of any of you. Oh, I know what’s going on! I know what you three are up to! Neighborhood savages, that’s what you are, mingling with each and all. How am I supposed to deal with this? How am I expected to cope? Useless daughter, great unruly bruising boys … I know what people are saying. You think my customers aren’t glad to tell me? Coming in simpering, Well, Mrs. Tull, that oldest boy of yours is certainly growing up. I saw him with a pack of Camels in the street in front of the Barlow girl’s house.’ And I have to smile and take it. Have to stand there on exhibit while they’re all thinking, ‘Poor Mrs. Tull, I don’t know how she can hold her head up. It’s clear she doesn’t have the least ability to handle those children; look at how they’re disgracing her.’ Sticking potatoes on people’s exhaust pipes and letting the air out of tires and shooting at streetlights with BB guns and stealing hubcaps and making off with traffic signs and moving Mrs. Correlli’s madonna to Sonny Boy Brown’s kitchen stoop and hanging around the hydrants with girls no better than tramps, girls in tight sweaters and ankle chains, oh, I hear about it everywhere …”
    “But not me, Mama,” Jenny said.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I don’t do those things.”
    Well, of course she didn’t (only Cody did), but she shouldn’t have pointed that out. Now she’d drawn attention to herself. Pearl turned, gathered force, and plunged. “You! I know about you. I couldn’t believe my ears. What should I be doing but coming down the church steps Sunday when I see you with that Melanie Miller from your Bible class. ‘Oh, Melanie …’ ” She made her voice shrill and prissy, nothing like Jenny’s, really. “ ‘Melanie, I just love your dress. I wish I had a dress like that.’ Understand,” she said, turning to the boys, “this was a cheap little number from Sears. The plaid wasn’t matched; there was a ruffle at the hem like a … square dance outfit and a bunch of artificial flowers pinned to the waist. A totally inappropriate dress for a nine-year-old, or for anyone. But ‘Oh, I wish I had that,’ your sister says, so everyone thinks, ‘Poor Mrs. Tull, she can’t even afford a Sears and Roebuck dress with artificial flowers; I don’t know how she manages, slaving away at that grocery all day and struggling over her budget at night, cutting here and cutting there, wondering will she scrape by, hoping nobody runs up a doctor bill, praying her children’s feet will stop growing …’
    “And Melanie’s mother, well, it’s just like opening the door to such a person. First thing you know she’ll be walking in here big as life: ‘Mrs. Tull, I happen to have the catalogue we ordered Melanie’s dress from, if you would care for one for Jenny.’ As if I’d want to dress my daughter like an orphan! As if I’d like for her to duplicate some other child! ‘No, thank you, Mrs. Miller,’ I’ll say. ‘I may not be able to afford so very much but at least when I do buy, I buy with finished seams. No, Mrs. Miller, you keep your so-called wish book, your quarter-inch hem allowances, smashed felt flowers …’ What’s wrong with us, I’d like to know? Aren’t we good enough for my own blood daughter? Doesn’t she feel I’m doing my best, my level best, to provide? Does she have to pick up riffraff? Does she have to