Read Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant for Free Online

Beck, who through sheer thoughtlessness if not intention had shot her through the heart; or not the heart exactly but the fleshy part above it, between breast and shoulder. It was the queerest sensation, like being slapped—no sting whatsoever, but a jarring and then a disk of bright blood on her favorite blouse. “Oh!” she said, and she looked down, and went on holding her weeds. Then the pain began. Beck, white faced, pulled the arrow out. Jenny started crying. They drove straight home, forgetting to untack the target from the tree, but by the time they arrived the bleeding had stopped and it appeared there was no real danger. Pearl dressed the wound herself—iodine and gauze. Two days later, she noticed something amiss. The wound was not better but worse, inflamed, and she had a fever. Beck was on another trip, and she had to go to the doctor alone, rushing off breathless and hastily hatted because she wanted to get home again before the children returned from school. In those days, Dr. Vincent was just building up his practice after a tour of duty in the army. She remembered he still had a full head of hair, and he wasn’t yet wearing glasses. He gave her a shot of penicillin—a miracle drug he’d first used overseas, he said. Walking home, she felt a tremendous sense of well-being, the way you always do when a doctor has taken upon himself the burden of your illness; but that night, she collapsed. First there was a rash, then chills, then a hazy and swarming landscape. It was Cody who called the ambulance. In the hospital, once the crisis was past, everyone acted stern and reproachful, as if it had been her fault. “You almost died,” a nurse told her. But that was nonsense. Of course she wouldn’t have died; she had children. When you have children, you’re obligated to live. She closed her eyes againstthe nurse’s words. Then two doctors came in and pulled up chairs beside her bed and solemnly, portentously explained about penicillin. She must never, never take it again, and must keep instructions to that effect in her pocketbook at all times. Pearl wasn’t paying much heed (she was framing a request to be released, so she could get on home to her children), but she did remember they said, “Once is your limit. Twice will kill you.” That impressed her. It was like something in a fairy tale—like a magic potion you could use only once and never again. And here she’d wasted it on such a paltry occurrence: a bow-and-arrow wound. No more miracles! In later years, when penicillin was a household word and her grandchildren took it for every little thing, she would go on and on about it. “Lucky you. Poor me. I’d just better not get an infection, is all I can say, or come down with strep throat or pneumonia.”
    Pneumonia.
    There was a watery, roaring sound in her ears that made it hard to hear her own voice. She had to wait for it to subside before she spoke. “Dr. Vincent,” she said.
    “I’m here.”
    His hand was still on hers. It was no longer icy. He had warmed himself on her skin as if she were a stove. She gathered her voice and said, “Tell Ezra I’m staying.”
    “But—” he said.
    “I know what I’m doing.”
    He was silent.
    “Tell him,” she said forcefully, “that this is nothing. You understand? I don’t want any hospitals. It would kill me, just kill me to hear those loudspeakers paging doctors I have never heard of. This is just a cold. Tell him.”
    “Well,” said Dr. Vincent. He cleared his throat. He removed his hand from hers. “Are you sure?” he asked.
    “I’m sure.”
    He seemed to be thinking. He turned away and said to Ezra, “You hear what she says?”
    “Yes,” said Ezra, closer than Pearl had expected.
    “I suggest we call your brother and sister, though.”
    Pearl felt a stirring of interest.
    “But if it’s that serious …” Ezra said.
    “Let’s just see what happens,” the doctor told him. He laid a palm on Pearl’s forehead.
    After that,