Free Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler Page B

in the glider. Then Cody said, “A black-haired girl. Ninth-grader.”
    “New in town,” Ezra agreed.
    “When’d you see her?”
    “Just yesterday,” Ezra said. “I was walking home from school, playing my whistle, and she caught up with me and said she liked it and asked if I wanted to see her recorder. So I went to her house and I saw it.”
    “To her
house?
Did she know you were my brother?”
    “Well, no, I don’t think so,” Ezra said. “She has a parakeet that burps and says, ‘Forgive me.’ Her mother served us cookies.”
    “You met her mother?”
    “It would be nice to have a recorder, someday.”
    “She’s too old for you,” Cody said.
    Ezra looked surprised. “Well, of course,” he said. “She’s fourteen and a half.”
    “What would she want with a little sixth-grader?”
    “She wanted to show me her whistle,” Ezra said.
    “Shoot,” said Cody.
    “Cody? Are we going to walk toward Sloop Street?”
    “Nah,” said Cody. He kicked a pillar.
    “If I asked Mother,” Ezra said, “do you think she would get me one of those recorders for Christmas?”
    “You dunce,” said Cody. “You raving idiot. Do you think she’s got money to spare for goddamn
whistles?
”
    “Well, no, I guess not,” Ezra said.
    Then Cody went into the house and locked the door, and when Ezra started pounding on it Cody told their mother it was only Mr. Milledge, having one of his crazy spells.
    Monday morning, he looked for Edith on the way to school but he didn’t see her. As it turned out, she was tardy. She arrived in homeroom just after the bell. He tried to catch her eye but she didn’t glance his way; only gazed fixedly at the teacher all during announcements. And when the first bell rang she walked to class with Sue Meeks and Harriet Smith. Evidently, she was no longer friendless.
    By third period, it was clear she was avoiding him. He couldn’t even get near her; she had a constant bodyguard. But what had he done wrong? He cornered Barbara Pace—a plump, cheerful redhead who served as a kind of central switchboard for ninth-grade couples. “What’s the matter with Edith?” he asked.
    “Who?”
    “Edith Taber. We were getting along just fine and now she won’t speak.”
    “Oh,” she said. She shifted her books. She was wearing aman-sized shirt with the tails out. Come to think of it, so were half the other girls. “Well,” she said, “I guess she likes somebody else now.”
    “Is it my brother?” Cody asked.
    “Who’s your brother?”
    “Ezra. My brother, Ezra.”
    “
I
didn’t know you had a brother,” she said, peering at him.
    “Well, she liked me well enough last week. What happened?”
    “See,” she told him patiently, “now she’s been to a couple of parties and naturally she’s developed new interests. She’s got a sort of … broader view, and also she didn’t realize about your reputation.”
    “What reputation?”
    “Well, you do drink, Cody. And you hung around with that cheap Lorena Schmidt all summer; you smell like a walking cigarette; and you almost got arrested over Halloween.”
    “Did my brother tell her that?”
    “What’s this about your brother? Everybody told her. It’s not exactly a secret.”
    “Well, I never claimed to be a saint,” Cody said.
    “She says you’re real good-looking and all but she wants a boy she can respect,” said Barbara. “She thinks she might like Francis Elburn now.”
    “Francis Elburn! That fairy.”
    “He’s really more her type,” said Barbara.
    “His hair is curly.”
    “So?”
    “Francis Elburn; Jesus Christ.”
    “There’s no need to use profanity,” Barbara told him.
    Cody walked home alone, long after the others had left, choosing streets where he’d be certain not to run into Edith or her friends. Once he turned down the wrong alley and it struck him that he was still an outsider, unfamiliar with the neighborhood. His classmates had been born and raised here, most ofthem, and were more