37 pages • 1 hour read
Anne TylerDinner At The Homesick Restaurant
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Country Cook”
Cody has always resented his girlfriends’ interest in Ezra, who seems “honestly unaware” (114) of this interest. Now a successful 30-year-old businessman, he has an apartment in New York and a 40-acre farm in Baltimore County. Jenny writes to Cody ahead of her divorce, saying that she will soon be “free to marry Sam Wiley” (116), whom Cody does not hold in high regard. Jenny says, however, that Ezra might marry before her; he has been dating a mysterious woman named Ruth. Cody struggles to imagine Ezra getting married. Ezra invites the family to a dinner at the renamed Homesick Restaurant. Cody assumes Ezra is running the business into the ground. Jenny and Pearl arrive late, bickering after a day spent dress shopping. As the argument threatens to cancel the dinner, Pearl leaves and then Ezra introduces Ruth, “a weasel-faced little redhead” (120) who works in the restaurant kitchen. Cody catches up to his mother, who launches into an impassioned tirade; she is cynical about the prospective marriage.
Cody cannot stop thinking about Ruth so arranges a visit home. When he watches her cook, this obsession intensifies. After they leave, Ezra kisses Ruth goodnight, and Cody labels it “a bumbling, inadequate kiss” (125), feeling satisfied. Walking home, Ezra asks Cody for help with “life insurance […] things like that” (126) and Cody agrees. Cody visits Ruth alone the next morning and invites her to breakfast. She refuses, and they have a stilted conversation. The next weekend, he drives her to see his farm. She seems unimpressed, prompting Cody to ask Ruth whether she dislikes him for any reason; “Your attitude” (130), she answers. Cody confesses that she is “the most beautiful woman” (130) he has ever seen. She refuses to speak to him on the ride home. Cody’s obsession continues for months, and he has “never felt more alive” (131). His expensive gifts seem to have little effect, but this does not ease his interest. Even Pearl notices and chastises Cody, saying that Ruth is “not your type in the slightest; she belongs to your brother” (132). Jenny and Sam Wiley elope ahead of their scheduled wedding. Ezra had arranged a big dinner, and Cody wonders whether Ezra realizes that such dinners always end in arguments and are never finished.
Cody begins to forge letters to Ruth from made-up people, and the last one congratulates her for dating Cody. Ruth tells him that he “went too far with that last letter” (135), and he admits that he loves her. Ruth assumes that Cody is mocking her, and she forces him to—at last—try her cooking. This prompts him to reflect on his mother’s (low quality) cooking. Ezra, he realizes, is the only sibling who has managed to escape their mother’s contempt for cooking. He begins to call Ruth each morning from his office. She confesses that her small apartment is beginning to trouble her. They begin an affair, and Cody finally reveals this to Ezra. He has bought Ruth new clothes for the reveal; Ezra asks if it is “some kind of joke” (140). Ruth tells Ezra that neither she nor Cody planned for their affair, “it just happened” (140). While Ezra struggles to understand, Ruth and Cody leave and plan to marry. On the way to New York, Cody runs into Jane Lowry. Jane admits that she “had such a crush” (142) on Cody; she cannot even remember Ezra. The whistling of the train reminds Cody of Ezra, “a little scrap of melody floating by on the wind and breaking his heart” (143).
Chapter 6 Summary: “Beaches on the Moon”
Pearl cares for Cody’s farm and is concerned about trespassers. Cody has left the farm to languish for years, which she believes is “a disgrace and a shame” (144). Ezra helps her; Pearl remembers how he had come home one afternoon and told her what Cody had done. Though she had expected it to happen, she tries to console Ezra, suggesting that Cody stole Ruth “to be mean” (146). Cody and Ruth had planned to settle on the farm. Ezra had stopped playing music, seeming “limp and beaten” (147), after having his disposition so improved by meeting Ruth. Pearl blames Cody.
At one time, Pearl tried to send Ezra to the farm with domestic supplies, hoping he and Ruth might reunite. This fails, though it angers Cody. A week later, Pearl convinces Ezra to drive her to the farm and finds it abandoned. Ruth and Cody move back to New York. Contact becomes infrequent if at all. They finally return to Baltimore for Thanksgiving. At the restaurant, Ezra escorts Ruth into the kitchen to meet with her former colleagues. This displeases Cody, who is now dismissive about ever moving to the farm. He storms into the kitchen and drags Ruth out, as he “didn’t come here to watch you and Ezra chumming it up in the kitchen” (152).
When Pearl visits Cody and Ruth in Illinois, she feels the tension in their marriage. At this stage, they rarely return to Baltimore and “never returned to the farm” (154). When they do return, Cody’s initial warmth toward Ezra always gives way to raging jealousy. After two or three years, Ruth becomes pregnant; they send photos of baby Luke but all suggestions of a visit are ignored. Finally, after two years, Pearl visits and is surprised by how much she loves Luke. The lack of warmth in the marriage, however, leaves Pearl feeling “weary and hopeless” (156). On seeing Ezra, she recognizes his personality in Luke.
As Pearl and Ezra clean the farm, Pearl reflects on Luke (by now 8-years-old). Ezra shows Luke his old pearwood recorder. Ezra takes Luke to buy oil to treat the instrument, and Cody frets until they return; he takes Luke away before he can learn how to play a song. Cody says that Ezra is “out to steal my son” (158). Pearl believes that “her family has failed” (158); two unhappy sons and a daughter who cannot stay married. Pearl blames herself and longs for the warmth enjoyed by other families. They finish cleaning the farmhouse, and Pearl knows that she and Ezra will return next year and the year after that, “loyal and responsible, together forever” (160).
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
Cody’s seduction of Ezra’s fiancée Ruth is the key element of the narrative; the first woman with whom Ezra falls in love becomes an obsession for Cody, who steal her away from Ezra only to find himself locked into an unsatisfying and unrewarding marriage. The chapters take the bullying, competitive behavior of Cody’s youth and reapply this behavior to his adult life. Just as when he was young, Cody covets whatever his brother has. Cody’s jealousy of Ezra—whether it is Cody’s girlfriends paying attention to Ezra or Pearl paying more attention to the younger son—becomes one of the defining characteristics of Cody’s life. Everything he does, he judges against his brother.
Though Cody is more successful, extroverted, and driven than Ezra, he cannot help himself but desire whatever Ezra has. Ruth becomes the ultimate expression of this. She is what makes Ezra the happiest so Cody cannot help but want her. Cody does not want to charm Ruth because she appeals to him in a sexual sense; rather, she represents his ability to prove himself to be better and more worthy of attention that Ezra. So, when Cody steals Ruth away, he wins in the sense that he destroys Ezra’s happiness and demonstrates his value in comparison to his brother. However, Cody loses in the sense that he forever alters the relationship with his family and finds himself trapped in an ultimately loveless marriage, one that is unlike anything he ever desired when he was young.
The clearest expression of this is the farmhouse. At a young age, Cody brags about wanting to buy a farm in the countryside. When he becomes successful, he quickly realizes this dream. As a result of his courtship of Ruth, he cannot bring himself to live on the farm. It would keep him too close to Ezra, whose very proximity to Ruth makes Cody jealous. He abandons the farm and—by extension—abandons the dream he had when he was young. He leaves the farm behind, leaving his mother and his brother to clear up his mess. Cody has not achieved what he hoped for. Ruth is not like the endless women who seemed to appeal to him once and, instead of living on the farm, he bounces across the country. Cody is successful but is unable to put down roots; he has a wife and a son but is more concerned about the possibility of Ezra stealing either away than he is with ensuring that they are happy. Cody’s relationship with Ezra ultimately consumes him; the jealousy and the unbridled rage compel him to make mistakes that irrecoverably alter his life. Cody will never be able to have the life he wanted, all because he could not bring himself to put his fraternal jealousy aside.
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