Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Read Online Free PDF

winced and tore the letter into squares.
    Later, when her eyes went, she saved her mail for Ezra. She’d hold up an envelope. “Where’s this from? I can’t quite make it out.”
    “National Rifle Association.”
    “Throw it away. What’s this?”
    “Republican Party.”
    “Throw it away. And this?”
    “Something in longhand, from Richmond.”
    “Throw it away.”
    He didn’t ask why. None of her children possessed a shred of curiosity.
    She dreamed her uncle hitched up Prince and took her to a medal contest, but she had failed to memorize a piece and stood onstage like a dumb thing with everybody whispering. When she woke, she was cross with herself. She should have done “Dat Boy Fritz”; she’d always been good at dialect. And she knew it off by heart still, too. Her memory had not faded in the slightest. She rearranged her pillow, irritably. Her edges felt uneven, was how she put it to herself. She slept again and dreamed the house was on fire. Her skin dried out from the heat and her hair seemed to sizzle in her ears. Jenny rushed upstairs to save her costume jewelry and her footsteps died away all at once, as if she’d fallen into space. “Stop!” Pearl shouted. She opened her eyes. Someone was sitting next to her, in that leather armchair that creaked. “Jenny?” she said.
    “It’s Ezra, Mother.”
    Poor Ezra, he must be exhausted. Wasn’t it supposed to be the daughter who came and nursed you? She knew she should send him away but she couldn’t make herself do it. “I guess you want to get back to that restaurant,” she told him.
    “No, no.”
    “You’re like a mother hen about that place,” she said. She sniffed. Then she said, “Ezra, do you smell smoke?”
    “Why do you ask?” he said (cautious as ever).
    “I dreamed the house burned down.”
    “It didn’t really.”
    “Ah.”
    She waited, holding herself in. Her muscles were so tense, she ached all over. Finally she said, “Ezra?”
    “Yes, Mother?”
    “Maybe you could just check.”
    “Check what?”
    “The house, of course. Check if it’s on fire.”
    She could tell he didn’t want to.
    “For my sake,” she told him.
    “Well, all right.”
    She heard him rise and shamble out. He must be in his stocking feet; she recognized that shushing sound. He was gone so long that she began to fear the worst. She strained for the roar of the flames but heard only the horns of passing cars, the clock radio’s electric murmur, a bicycle bell tinkling beneath the window. Then here he came, heavy and slow on the stairs. Evidently there was no emergency. He settled into his chair again. “Everything’s fine,” he told her.
    “Thank you, Ezra,” she said humbly.
    “You’re welcome.”
    She heard him pick up his magazine.
    “Ezra,” she said, “I’ve had a thought. Did you happen to check the basement?”
    “Yes.”
    “You went clear to the bottom of the steps.”
    “Yes, Mother.”
    “I don’t much care for how that furnace sounds.”
    “It’s fine,” he told her.
    It was fine. She resolved to believe him. She soothed herself by wandering, mentally, from one end of the house to the other, cataloguing how well she’d managed. The fireplace flue was shut against the cold. The drains were clear and the faucets were tight and she’d bled the radiators herself—sightless, turning her key back sharply the instant she heard the hiss of water. The gutters were swept and the roof did not leak and the refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. Everything was proceeding according to instructions.
    “Ezra,” she said.
    “Yes, Mother.”
    “You know that address book in my desk.”
    “What address book?”
    “Pay attention, Ezra. I only have the one. Not the little red book for telephone numbers but the black one, in my stationery drawer.”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “I want everybody in it invited to my funeral.”
    There was a thrumming silence, as if she had said a bad word. Then Ezra said, “
Funeral
, Mother? You’re not