The Journey Home

by Michael Baron

  “Maybe tomorrow, Diane,” Antoinette said quickly.

  The nurse tipped her head to one side. “Now, Antoinette, you know my name is Darlene. And you say ‘maybe tomorrow’ every day.” The nurse moved toward the calendar attached by a magnet to the refrigerator. “Now let me see – yes, it says right here that ‘tomorrow’ is today!” Darlene or Diane, or whatever her name was today – Antoinette was certain they kept changing it on her – held out her hand. “Come on, Antoinette, we’ll dance together. Everyone loves to watch you dance. You’re so graceful.”

  Antoinette stood from the couch and sat on her bed. “Maybe tomorrow. I mean it. I need to rest now.”

  The nurse let out a huge sigh, her shoulders rising and slumping in exaggerated fashion. “Okay, Antoinette. I’ll leave you alone this time. I’m not going to leave you alone tomorrow, though. Ice cream social tomorrow – and I want to see you there eating a huge sundae. I’ll put the whipped cream on it myself.”

  She left after that, which made Antoinette feel much, much better. She always felt so much pressure from this nurse. The other one – Jane, Judy, Angela, something like that – was much nicer and much more understanding. For a long time after the nurse left, Antoinette stayed on the edge of the couch, thinking a little about tomorrow’s ice cream social and all the people who would be there that she wouldn’t recognize, and then not thinking about much. Finally, she stood up, removed her housecoat, and slipped into bed. The sheets hugged her and she warmed to their embrace. As she did, she let her mind drift, knowing it would take her someplace she truly wanted to go.

  . . . Today they were walking on a New York City street. Antoinette recognized it as the neighborhood near their first apartment, the place they rented after they married sixty years ago. It was late spring, the sky was clear, and pedestrians bustled around them as Antoinette and her husband walked at their own, very steady, very relaxed pace.

  “It’s a beautiful day for a walk,” she said, “don’t you think, Don?”

  He took her hand, kissed the back of it lightly, and kept his clasped with hers as they strolled. “It is most definitely a beautiful day, Hannah.”

  Virtually from the moment they met, they’d called each other “Don” and “Hannah” after the couple played by Fred Astaire and Judy Garland in Easter Parade, the movie they saw on their first date. Antoinette was already in love by the time she went out with him for the first time – they’d been flirting for weeks – and when he took her dancing after the movie and called her “Hannah,” Antoinette was pretty sure that he felt the same way. From then on, he was her “Don” and she was his “Hannah,” and they never used their given names to address each other except on the rare occasion when one of them was very, very angry.

  They stopped at a store window so Antoinette could admire a blue chiffon dress. “It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”

  Don slipped an arm around her waist and put his face close to hers. “It is, and you would look remarkable in it. But I’m afraid it’s too expensive.”

  Antoinette turned to face him, which put their noses inches from each other and made her chuckle. “Too expensive? But we don’t even know what it costs.”

  Don kissed the tip of her nose and then took a couple of steps backward. “I’m afraid I do know what it would cost. You see, the price of the dress itself wouldn’t be the issue. The issue has to do with the neckline.” He gestured toward the store window. “Do you see how much of your shoulder would be left exposed? As you well know, Hannah, I become senseless with desire around your bare shoulders. That means that, to the price of the dress, we would have to add the fine I would pay for lewd public behavior if you ever wore it out of the house.”

  He grinned boyishly at that point, and Antoinette shoved him playfully. “That is the worst excuse ever devised to avoid buying me a dress.”

  “I’m just being practical, darling,” he said, still smiling and taking her hand to continue their walk.

  They stopped at an electronics store where Don ogled a new radio the way she had ogled the dress. Antoinette tried to come up with an excuse for not buying the radio that was as sappy and romantic as Don’s had been for not buying the dress, but her cleverness betrayed her. They left the store without the radio, anyway. In this case, Don really was being practical. They had a comfortable life, but they certainly didn’t have the luxury of purely frivolous expenses. The radio in the living room was a perfectly good one, certainly good enough to dance to.

  After a cup of coffee and a slice of blueberry pie at Horn & Hardart, they started back toward their apartment. The afternoon had left Antoinette feeling very much at ease. Her muscles felt smooth and her skin warm. Their pace, which had never been rapid, slowed even further, as though they were wading through a pool of the chocolate sauce Don loved for her to make for his ice cream.

  Don again raised her hand to his lips and kissed it softly. “I think a nap might be nice when we get home.”

  She squeezed their hands, which he still held to his face. “Mmm, sounds inviting. Let’s stop to get groceries for dinner now so we don’t need to go out again later.”

  “A nap sounds better.”

  “Now it sounds better. When we wake up afterward and you’re famished, you’ll wish I started dinner.”

  She turned him toward the market a block from their apartment. She wanted to cook something scandalously rich tonight. A gift for Don. Something to assure him that afternoons like the one they’d just spent were unspeakably precious to her. She chose leeks, cream, and chicken. She remembered noticing that they were low on butter, so she put some of that in her basket as well. Wild rice would be a surprising accompaniment, something that even seemed a little on the naughty side. And the asparagus looked very good.

  When they got back to the apartment, Don took to opening the mail while she melted leeks in butter and seasoned the chicken. She was browning the chicken in another skillet when Don came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “Smells delicious,” he said, kissing the side of her face.

  She turned the chicken with a fork. “It’s going to taste even better.”

  He kissed her again. “Do you know what would be even more delicious?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The nap we were talking about.”

  Antoinette could tell from the feel of him that Don’s mind was on anything but napping. “Are you so sleepy that you can’t wait for me to finish getting this in the oven?”

  He kissed her neck now, which left Antoinette feeling as melted as one of the leeks. “I’m very, very sleepy.”

  “Dinner won’t be as good if I leave it now.”

  “I can live with that,” he said, as he began to unbutton the back of her dress and Antoinette began to forget about dinner . . .

  The memory faded, but not the sensations that had accompanied the memory. The wonderful, deeply satisfying sensations. Antoinette pulled the sheets up around her neck. Feeling the warmth of his presence in the place she had created for them, she drifted off to sleep. Today had been a very good day.

  THREE

  Props

  “Becky told me last night that she was feeling very conflicted about having to choose between us.”

  Warren got out of the car wearing his Bluetooth earpiece. He hated how people looked when they wore these things in public, but he couldn’t get off the phone with Crystal just yet. “Does she realize that the other option would be not choosing between us?”

  “I mentioned that, but she’s taking this very hard. But get this. Do you know what she said? She said if it came down to it, she’d choose you.”

  Warren’s eyes flew open. “She said that?”

  “You don’t have to sound so elated, you know. You didn’t just win the lottery here. And yes, she did say that. If she didn’t have the kids and the most perfect husband ever invented, I’d say she was planning to make a move on you.”

  “Not everything comes down to sexual dynamics, Cr
ystal.”

  “I’m not saying that everything does. Just most things. We’ve had that conversation already; many times. The conversation we need to have right now is about the Fidelity fund.”

  Warren had been walking toward the door of the facility. Now he pivoted to sit on a bench. He didn’t want to be in the middle of this conversation in front of his mother or the staff. “I don’t understand how this is a negotiating point. I started that fund long before we were married.”

  “And in the last few years, I’ve contributed much more to it than you have. Especially in the last year. Have you even put a penny in there recently?”

  Warren’s eyes narrowed. “We both know why I haven’t put any money in there recently. In fact, you even agreed that it was the right decision.”

  “It was the right decision. Especially after you moved out. That doesn’t change the fact that I have at least as much right to that account as you have.”

  Warren’s shoulders slackened. “I’m going to be living off of that account soon if I don’t find something.”

  “Then you should find something. Look, I’m willing to compromise. We liquidate the account and each take a share commensurate with the amount we originally invested.”

  It wasn’t that simple, and Crystal knew it. When they had been a team, they apportioned their salaries to different functions. In their flushest years, a chunk of his paycheck went toward the down payment for the bigger house, while a slice of hers went into the Fidelity account for a rainy day. They contributed equally to their retirement account. The rest went into their joint account to pay bills, save for vacations, and for the occasional impulsive expense. It wouldn’t be simple, or even appropriate, to sift through this to learn how much of the Fidelity money was his, though he knew if they really did the math, it would turn out that he’d contributed at least eighty percent in one way or another.

  “I’m gonna have to sleep on this,” he said.

  “Don’t sleep too long. It’s time, Warren.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me there.”

  “Call me about this tomorrow.”

  “I will.”

  Warren ended the call and sat on the bench a minute longer. The sound of Crystal’s voice had once energized him. She could literally speed his metabolism just by talking to him. Now any conversation with her left him feeling as though he’d like to lie down for a while. Either that, or huddle in a corner. He felt genuinely weaker sitting here. Every conversation about the divorce sapped him just a little bit more. She was sapping the life force from him, one negotiation at a time. He wasn’t even forty yet, but he felt like a hundred and ten.

  He took a deep breath and tried to push the enervating details of an unanticipated legal wrangle out of his head. He had to get his spirits up again before going to see his mother.

  Treetops Senior Living Center had been her home for the past three years. She’d stayed in the house she shared with Dad, the house in which Warren had been born, for a little more than two years after he died. Her moving here wasn’t about her capacities. At seventy-seven, she was still sharp and surprisingly mobile. Rather, it was about her reach. Dad’s death had isolated her. Warren couldn’t remember a time when his mother and father hadn’t seemed utterly integrated into each other’s lives, and she seemed baffled over what to do without him, as though she were a car suddenly attempting to drive without an engine. When her next-closest friend Frances moved to Florida, Mom became even less mobile. She left the house infrequently and rarely for more than an hour or so.

  It took Warren a few months to convince Mom to look at assisted living facilities with him. She had no interest in going into an “old age home,” and she made Warren feel as though he were attempting to put her out to pasture by simply broaching the conversation. She was completely petulant during their first few tours, leaving him feeling guilty even though he knew what he was doing was necessary.

  When they visited Treetops, though, she started talking to one of the residents, a woman whose husband had died the year before, and they spent several minutes commiserating. When the woman told Mom that she needed to run because her weekly poker match was starting, Mom watched her walk away as though she desperately wanted to go out to play. She signed the lease the next week, and for the next two years, she seemed revived and social. Warren had a tough time reaching her on the phone because she always seemed to be elsewhere in the complex with her friends.

  Then about a year ago, it started to change. She started spending more time in her room. She was sequestering herself again, though this time the outside world was so close to her. Warren had no doubt that he’d find her in her apartment this afternoon. That wasn’t the only issue, though. She was closing herself off for a reason, one that Warren struggled to acknowledge. When Mom had allowed loneliness to master her, Warren had a good solution to offer. He had no such solution this time.

  Keisha, the boisterous woman at the reception desk, greeted him when he entered.

  “Well, aren’t you the handsomest thing I’ve seen all day,” she said, handing Warren a visitor’s badge.

  Warren slipped the nylon-stringed badge over his head. “You’re only saying that because I’m the first ‘thing’ under eighty you’ve seen all day.”

  Keisha shook her head in an exaggerated way. “Not true. Not true at all. Mrs. Phelps’s grandson was here this morning. Lovely man, but God didn’t give him a lot of physical gifts, if you know what I mean. You, on the other hand, are a specimen.”

  Warren leaned closer to the reception desk. “Keisha, you know if you keep flattering me I’m going to fall in love with you. Then your husband will pummel me, and none of us will come out ahead.”

  Keisha put a hand to her lips as though she’d been chastened by her transgression. “Too true, Warren. He is a very big and very jealous man.” Her eyes sparkled. “You do look very nice today, though.”

  Warren smiled at the receptionist and then headed down the hallway to his mother’s apartment. As he did, he ran into Jan, one of the nurses.

  “How’s she doing today?” Warren said, nodding in the direction of his mother’s room.

  Jan tossed her head from side to side, causing her blond bangs to shift back and forth. He guessed that Jan was in her early thirties, though this gesture made her seem a decade younger. “Same as yesterday, really. She almost agreed to come to the ice cream social. I tried to bribe her with extra hot fudge. She didn’t go for it, though.”

  “I can’t help but think that shutting herself off makes what’s going on in her head that much worse.”

  “There’s no medical reason to think that, but I know what you’re saying. She doesn’t seem to have much fight.”

  Warren took a deep breath and looked down the hall. “She’s never given in easily before. Even when she was shutting herself off in her house, she still seemed to have a little fight in her.”

  “Maybe she’ll bounce back. I’ve seen it happen.”

  Warren’s eyes flashed toward Jan’s. She didn’t withdraw in the slightest, which he appreciated. So many people shrunk away from these conversations, even professionals. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Jan touched him lightly on the arm. “I need to go see Mr. Humboldt. Come by after you see her if you want to talk some more.”

  With that, Jan headed down the hall and Warren continued to his mother’s place. He knocked on the door and waited the requisite thirty seconds for her to answer it. When Mom saw it was him, her face opened up and she drew the door wide.

  “Warren, honey, how are you? I was just about to make some tea. Would you like some?”

  Warren walked into the apartment and kissed his mother’s cheek. “Go sit. I’ll make it for you.”

  The apartment came with a two-burner electric stove and a microwave. They were essentially props, since Treetops prepared every meal for the residents, but it made the living space seem more like a home and less like a hotel suite. Warren filled the teapot sitting on the stove with w
ater and put the burner on. Then he sat in a chair next to his mother.

  “So, no ice cream for you today?”

  Mom’s face creased. “I didn’t feel like going out today. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “It’s good to get out with your friends. There are a lot of people you like out there.”

  “I’m good in here.”

  The teapot whistled a few minutes later and Warren rose to get the tea for them. He opened the cupboard above the stove and found it empty.

  “Mom, there’s no tea here.”

  “There must be. I made myself a cup this morning.”

  On a hunch, Warren looked into the trash for a discarded teabag. As he anticipated, none was there.

  “Do you want me to go down to the kitchen to get some teabags?”

  “No tea for me, thanks.”

  Closing his eyes for a second, Warren poured the steaming water into the sink and returned to his seat.

  “It’s so nice to see you, honey,” she said, reaching over to pat him on the knee. Then she pointed to the wall over his right shoulder. “Did you see that I put up that picture of your father and me from the cruise?”

  The picture had been up at least six months, his mother having pulled it from the closet filled with pictures she’d had hanging in the house. Warren glanced in that direction and said, “The two of you had a great time on that cruise.”

  “Your father gained seven pounds on that trip. He would have gained more if I didn’t make him take me dancing every night.”

  “Yeah, that was good thinking on your part.”

  Mom sat regarding him for a minute, her hands in her lap. “So how’s Crystal?”

  “I think she’s doing fine, Mom. Remember, we’re getting a divorce.”

  Mom’s brows knit, as though she were trying to process this information. Then she brightened. “It’s so nice to see you, honey. It’s the middle of the day, though. Is it okay that you come to visit now? Don’t your bosses want you at work?”

  Warren grimaced. “They don’t want me at work at all, Mom. They let me go a few months ago. That’s how I’m able to come here every day.”