The Journey Home

by Michael Baron

  He opened his eyes and looked across at Will, who stared back at him as though waiting for the next detail in an incredibly enticing story.

  “You had something there,” the boy said. “Didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not enough.”

  Will slumped, as though someone had let the air out of him. “It sure seemed like something was going on.”

  Joseph shook his head slowly. “Something. Just not anything that makes where we’re trying to go clearer.”

  Will ran a hand through his hair. “That sucks. You got my hopes up for a second there.”

  “Sorry to let you down.”

  The waiter came with their plates. Joseph’s meal was fragrant with smoke and sage. He could smell the care that went into this dish and he wanted to enjoy it. He wondered if he could muster enthusiasm for it, though.

  The retreat of his wife’s touch had blunted his appetite for anything else.

  EIGHT

  Aromatics

  Still feeling doubtful about the entire thing, Antoinette opened the closet door and put on the winter coat she saw there. Warren had said that all the things in this closet were hers, so she picked out the one that looked nicest.

  “Mom, it’s seventy degrees out,” Warren said, walking up to her and helping her to remove the coat. “I just thought you might want a sweater or something.” He hung the coat in the closet and pulled out a thin jacket. “This’ll be good,” he said, as he held it up for her to put on.

  He was insisting on taking her out, saying it would be good for her, even though she protested strongly that she didn’t want to go. Antoinette doubted it would be good for her – there was only one good place for her now – but she agreed to do so because she was sure Warren would just keep nagging her until she did. It was good for him, maybe. He was probably just bored of being with her and wanted to get out, and he figured he had to lug her around if he were going to do so. He could have just gone to lunch by himself if he was so antsy. She didn’t need him to be here if he didn’t want to be here.

  When they left the apartment, they passed several people in the hallway, some of whom said hello to her. Antoinette didn’t recognize any of them, but she smiled and nodded. The nurse that was usually nice to her came up to them and said something about Antoinette’s going on an “excursion.” Then she said something to Warren that Antoinette couldn’t hear. The nurse seemed a little too familiar in her attitude toward Warren. Antoinette would have to remind her that her son was married. She never appreciated a woman who tried to put herself between a man and his wife.

  Antoinette felt the breeze the second they walked out the door. Warren had an arm looped around one of hers, but she used her free hand to cinch the jacket around her neck. The heavier coat would have been better. She should have just trusted her own mind.

  “The car’s right over here,” Warren said, moving her toward the back end of the parking lot. If he knew he was going to drag her out of her apartment today, he should have parked closer. This was just another indication that he was doing this for himself and not for her.

  They drove down a street lined with trees that had white blossoms on them, and then turned onto a busy road. The cars drove very fast around here, not like where she and Don lived. And so many stores. Who bought all those things?

  “Are you hungry, Mom?” Warren said as he tried to keep up with the other cars. “I thought we could go to that diner you always liked.”

  “That would be fine.” Antoinette wasn’t very hungry and she had no idea which diner her son was talking about, but she didn’t want to get into a conversation with him right now. He needed to concentrate on the road. Two hands on the steering wheel would be nice, also.

  “Do you need anything while we’re out?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Are you sure? We can go to the mall after we eat, if you’d like.”

  “That’s okay. They give me everything I need, really.”

  Warren stopped at a traffic light and gestured around them. “They’re doing a ton of building all over here. They’re putting in a huge new Target down the block. You’ll have a field day in there when it’s open. Can you believe how much this area is changing?”

  Warren seemed excited about all the new stuff. Antoinette would have to take his word for it. She looked out the window and tried to get her bearings, but then the car was moving again and she lost her place.

  A few minutes later, Warren pulled his car into a parking lot. Antoinette assumed they’d arrived at the diner he’d been talking about. He came around to her side of the car and helped her out, which Antoinette appreciated since her legs had tightened up during the drive. Holding on to her son’s arm, she carefully climbed the five steps up to the diner’s entrance.

  The place seemed pleasant enough. There were mirrors on the wall, which gave Antoinette multiple reflections of herself. She should have done something with her hair, and would have if Warren had given her more warning. A large case to the right of the front door was full of oversized baked goods. The cakes seemed ridiculously high. Did people actually eat those things?

  A hostess welcomed them and sat them in a booth in the large dining room. Everything here seemed to be some shade of brown. It wasn’t particularly unpleasant, and it seemed clean, but a little color would have helped immensely. Don used to laugh at her about her penchant for splashing color all over their house, especially in the dining room and the kitchen. She always reminded him that people ate with their eyes as much as their stomachs, and he always responded by telling her that her cooking was so good that he could have feasted blindfolded. She loved when he cut off any disagreement with a compliment. He always knew what to say.

  Antoinette looked at her menu for a few minutes before deciding to have a couple of scrambled eggs and toast. It had been a long time since she’d felt any kind of appetite. She probably would have been fine with just some coffee, but Warren would have been disappointed. He even questioned her about choosing eggs before he ordered a cup of soup and a chicken potpie. She didn’t want to let him down – he seemed excited about bringing her here – but the eggs were going to be enough of a challenge.

  “Is your soup okay?” Antoinette said when the cup arrived a few minutes later.

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s fine.” Her son held his spoon toward her. “Do you want to try?”

  Antoinette waved a hand. “No, thanks.”

  Warren spooned a noodle and some broth, then sipped. “You’re not missing anything. Not exactly your home cooking, Mom.”

  “Restaurant food is different.”

  He reached for the pepper and shook it over his cup several times. “It’s definitely different. But why eat at home when you can pay so much more for something that doesn’t taste nearly as good?”

  Antoinette reached out to pat her son’s arm. He was a good boy. “You always appreciated my cooking.”

  “The whole neighborhood appreciated your cooking. Did you ever notice how many of my friends showed up just before dinnertime?” He took another spoonful of soup and wrinkled his nose. “Mrs. Feinberg cooked like this. That’s why Paul was always hanging out at our house.”

  Antoinette dipped her spoon in the cup and tasted. Warren was exaggerating about how bad the soup was, but only by a little. “Too much salt,” she said. “And much too much pepper, though that might not have been their fault. More aromatics in the broth would have helped.”

  Warren smiled at her as though she’d just revealed a gigantic secret. “I’m telling you, Mom, you should have opened that restaurant we always talked about.”

  “You always talked about it, not me. I never liked the idea of cooking for strangers. I didn’t even like cooking when your father brought home people from work. Cooking is for family.”

  “I’m telling you, Mom, all of the customers would have thought you were cooking just for them. You could have scored big.”

  She loo
ked out at him over arched eyebrows. “And who says that I didn’t score big?”

  Warren gave her a quick bow with his head. “Fair enough.”

  Antoinette’s plate came at that point and she tasted her eggs. At least she thought she tasted them. She couldn’t be certain because they didn’t seem to have any flavor.

  “Honey, could you pass me the pepper? You’d better give me the salt, too.”

  He handed both shakers across the table. “That yummy, huh?”

  “Just like home.” She grinned. “At least, just like Paul Feinberg’s home.”

  Warren laughed like Antoinette had just told the funniest joke in the world. She liked that she could get that kind of reaction from him. Maybe letting him get out with her wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  Warren seemed to like his potpie a little more than he liked his soup, and Antoinette seasoned her eggs further in an attempt to coax some flavor out of them. You had to try to make eggs taste this bland. Since she wasn’t particularly hungry anyway, though, she gave up after a few bites. When Warren finished his lunch, they ordered coffee and chatted. Antoinette asked her son about his wife and his job, which seemed to fluster him for some reason. She wondered what was going on. It wasn’t like him to be so closemouthed. Warren had always been very willing to talk to her about what was going on in his life. Her friends had often marveled at how candid Warren was with her. It seemed that once their children became teenagers, they wouldn’t tell their mothers much of anything. Maybe her son had just figured out that he was supposed to act this way as well.

  In all, in spite of Warren taking her to a strange place with bad food, it had turned out to be a very pleasant way to spend the time. At least it was until they got ready to leave.

  “Let me handle the tip,” Antoinette said when Warren reached into his pocket for some money to pay the check.

  “No, I’ve got it.”

  Antoinette reached for her purse. “Don’t be silly. You don’t need to pay for everything.”

  That was when she discovered that her purse wasn’t there. She looked on the floor to see if she’d accidentally knocked it over, but it wasn’t there, either. Her blood boiled instantly.

  “She took it.”

  Warren removed his napkin from his lap and was sliding to get out of the booth. “Who took what?”

  Antoinette nodded toward the waitress. “That woman took my purse.”

  “No, she didn’t, Mom.”

  Antoinette stood, checked her seat again, and then pointed toward the waitress. “That woman stole my purse,” she said loudly enough to draw the attention of people across the dining room.

  The waitress was delivering a plate to another customer when she looked up to see that Antoinette was pointing directly at her. She pretended to be confused.

  “You!” Antoinette said. “I know it was you!”

  The woman stood stock-still, obviously horrified that Antoinette had caught her. Warren came over to take her by the arm.

  “Mom, you’re being a little loud.”

  “You don’t think I should be loud about this?”

  “Mom, the woman didn’t take your purse.”

  “Then who did? It had to be her.”

  Warren tried to move her out of the restaurant, but Antoinette wouldn’t budge.

  “Mom, no one took your purse.”

  Antoinette turned her fury on her son. She couldn’t believe he was going to let them get away with this. “MY PURSE IS GONE!”

  Warren used a little more strength and pushed her toward the door. “Mom, quiet down. Everyone is looking at us.”

  “They shouldn’t be looking at us – they should be looking for their purses. This restaurant is a den of thieves.”

  The hostess came toward them as Warren continued to manhandle her out of the place. “Is there a problem, sir?”

  “There’s no problem,” Warren said apologetically.

  Antoinette couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “How could you be such a wimp? You’re letting them steal from me!”

  Warren applied more pressure to her arm and practically threw her out of the diner. In spite of her aching legs, he scurried her along and didn’t let go of her until he’d forced her into the car.

  When he came around to sit in the driver’s seat, she glared at him. “You disappoint me,” she said severely.

  “Mom, the woman didn’t steal your purse.”

  “Then who did?”

  “No one did. You didn’t have it with you.”

  Antoinette threw her hands up in the air. “Well, that’s just ridiculous. I always have my purse with me.”

  Warren took a deep breath, and Antoinette could practically see his mind working as he tried to come up with a response.

  “You haven’t used a purse in more than a year. I don’t even know if you have a purse anymore.”

  “Well, you should. I use the leather purse that you gave me for Christmas.”

  Warren shook his head slowly. “I gave you that purse ten years ago. We gave it to Goodwill when we moved you out of the house because you’d replaced it with the black one with the gold clasp.”

  For the first time since this incident started, Antoinette felt confused. Why would Warren tell her that he’d given her the purse so long ago? She remembered that Christmas vividly. Don had teased her about all the stuff she was moving from her old bag. The waitress was probably just going to throw that stuff in the garbage after she took her money.

  Ten years ago. Why would Warren say something like that?

  Her confusion fogged her anger. As Warren drove her back home, she stared out the window at the unfamiliar landscape.

  She felt very tired.

  NINE

  Getting to Delicious

  The episode at the diner had confounded Warren more than any previous event with his mother. It wasn’t simply that she’d become so irrational about the purse, though that was harrowing enough. What truly upset him was the juxtaposition of her fury against the pleasantness of the conversation they’d been having earlier in the meal. This spoke volumes about where things were going.

  When they’d been joking about the diner’s mediocre food and reminiscing about his mother’s cooking, Mom had seemed more alive than she had recently, and he’d found that extremely encouraging. When she started deconstructing his soup and analyzing its shortcomings, it was as though he was a teenager and she was in her fifties again.

  Regardless of how much he’d read about his mother’s disease, he continued to be mystified by the processes of the human brain. She looked at a town that she’d lived in for decades as though she’d never seen it before, but she could call up her cooking knowledge without a hitch. This had to have something to do with the way these things were imprinted on her mind, but Warren knew that the nuances of how this worked would always elude him. One thing was certain, though: his mother might have lost touch with most of the world around her, but she still felt some connection to food. Since taking her out to eat was probably too risky to venture again, Warren decided he would bring food to her in a way she never could have anticipated. He would cook for her.

  Warren had grown up loving food. It was impossible to live in his home and feel differently. Something always seemed to be on the stove or in the oven, and the aromas always seemed seductive. While he attached to the family passion for dining very early, he never connected with his mother’s excitement for making meals. They’d spent some enjoyable times in the kitchen when he was younger, and even when he was older he’d help her chop vegetables from time to time, but the end product was always much more appealing to him than the work involved in getting there. When he moved out, he cooked at home maybe a dozen times a year, always keeping it as simple as he possibly could. Crystal enjoyed cooking a little, so she made the meals when they weren’t eating out or taking in. Since he’d been living on his own again, he’d done little more than toss some pasta with olive oil on occasion.

  Now, though, that w
as going to change. He’d stopped at a local supermarket on the way to Treetops to buy the ingredients necessary to make one of his mother’s classic dishes. He’d eaten it so often growing up that he knew the components by heart. He’d seen his mother prepare it numerous times. What made the dish so delicious was its simplicity, a point that Mom had reinforced every time someone complimented her on it. How hard could it be for him to prepare this for her?

  He could do this one on a stovetop, which was important, since her apartment only had those two open-coil burners to work with. He bought the necessary groceries and drove out of the supermarket parking lot toward Treetops. That was when he remembered that his mother no longer owned any cooking tools. A quick stop at Bed, Bath & Beyond for a skillet, some tongs, and an inexpensive chef’s knife addressed that.

  Laden with packages, he simply smiled at Keisha as he entered, choosing not to engage in their traditional faux flirting today. He didn’t even stop for a visitor’s pass. The staff certainly knew who he was by now. Some of them probably even thought that he lived here, though of course he was at least twenty-five years younger than the youngest resident. He used a free knuckle to knock on the door of his mother’s apartment, so caught up in his mission that he didn’t anticipate the sudden dread he felt at wondering who she would be when she answered.

  Fortunately, the woman that received him today was the gentle, smiling one. “Warren, honey, how are you? Do you want some tea? I was just about to make some.”

  Warren kissed his mother on the cheek and put the bags down on the floor near the cooktop. “Maybe later, Mom. Hey, I’ve decided to make us lunch. I thought I’d try my hand at making your Chicken Margaret. Sound good to you?”

  “Chicken Margaret,” Mom said wistfully. The expression on her face seemed a mix of confusion and melancholy. Warren had anticipated the former, but not the latter. He certainly hoped he wasn’t going to wind up upsetting her with this. It was so difficult to know what her triggers were now.