“I would love that, Don. I would so dearly love that.”
He kissed her again, and then sat next to her on the bed, pulling her hand into his lap with both of his. “Hannah, I’ve had a traveling companion. I did-n’t begin to realize who he was until yesterday. He’s seventeen now and he’s done a lot of growing up on his own, but he’s a very good kid. You’d be proud of what he’s become.”
Antoinette felt the first tear roll down her cheek. “Billy?”
“Our Billy. He’s been driving me all over the place. He’s a very good driver. He gets that from his dad. We had quite the moment when we both realized who we were. I don’t know which of us was more shocked. I’ve been getting to know him these past few days even though I didn’t know who he was until a little while ago. I think that’s one of the things I needed to do before I could come to find you.”
The tears continued to come, but Antoinette neither tried to stop them nor tried to wipe them away. “I want to see him.”
“And he desperately wants to see you. He could-n’t come in, though. It seems he can’t do what I’ve just done for reasons I can’t begin to understand. That’s what worries me about all of this – I don’t know if I’ll be able to come to you again.”
Antoinette held their clasped hands to her damp cheek. “Don’t go without me.”
Don nuzzled closer to her. “I’m not going anywhere, Hannah. I’ll stay right here with you. As long as I can, I’ll stay right here. I know what being without you is like now and I never want to go through that again.”
Once more, Antoinette was starting to feel heavier. For a few moments, her body wasn’t weighing her down. But it couldn’t last. Now she found that she could barely keep her head up. “I’m very tired.”
“I know, my love. Go ahead and lay down. I’m not letting go of you.”
Warren watched his mother with a mixture of fascination and aching sadness. She was talking to “Don,” the name she always used when talking to his father. His being Don and her being Hannah was all part of their mythology, one more thing he admired about their romance and that he’d always wanted to experience for himself with a woman he loved.
As she talked, his mother’s voice was thin, her movements labored. It seemed remarkable that she could even conduct a conversation, given how frail she seemed and how much effort every word required. She hadn’t said this much in his presence in more than a month. Of course, the fact that she was saying it to his father, a man who’d been dead for more than five years, cast a melancholy glow over every syllable. When Mom started crying as she mentioned Billy’s name, Warren felt tears come to his eyes as well. Was this an act of wish fulfillment from an addled mind, or had she somehow reached out to Dad and the brother Warren had never known? Was this dearest of her dreams in the process of coming true? Though he couldn’t know for sure, he would allow himself to accept the answer he wanted to believe.
“I’m tired,” Mom said, barely audibly. She had started slumping away from him, and Warren rose to right her. She obviously wanted to lie down, though, so he helped her slide back down to the pillow and he tucked the covers around her. Then he sat next to her on the bed, resting a hand on her shoulder, feeling the faint rise and fall of her breathing.
He looked across the bed. And though he couldn’t see anything, he felt the soothing acknowledgment of gratefulness from a spirit that was definitely there with them. He nodded and then tilted his head back and closed his eyes, taking whatever remaining comfort he could from his mother’s presence.
Will waited in the Camry, parked outside of the assisted living facility. The last couple of hours had been seriously crazy, to say the least. First Joseph had started getting weird on him after they stopped in the park. Then he’d managed to get weirder in the restaurant, saying strange things to the waitress about some food that only he could smell, then taking off for the kitchen, and showing up again at the front door.
As it turned out, that was the most rational part of the day. After that, Joseph was flat-out surreal, talking about knowing exactly where they needed to go and calling him Billy.
Then he dropped the big bomb. Joseph was Will’s father. And, oh yeah, they were dead. According to Joseph, Will had been getting the wrong story from his foster parents all of this time. It wasn’t that his parents had died, leaving him an orphan when he was only a toddler. It was that he’d died at that age and his fosters were serving as caretakers until his parents came to join him. According to Joseph, that was fifty-something years ago, though Will was only seventeen.
All of it was a bizarre jumble of facts that left Will feeling like he’d spent too much time on a carnival ride. Yet he knew it was true. He’d had an idea that he had some connection to Joseph from the moment he found the guy standing on the street across from his house. He’d had a strong desire to help Joseph instantly, and he’d found himself getting more and more caught up in Joseph’s search the longer it went on. Several times, Will asked himself why he was taking this journey so personally. He liked Joseph and all, but his reaction went way beyond that. It was way out of proportion, but it still felt right.
Now he knew. Joseph wasn’t the only one who’d been looking for home.
Their destination was only a short drive away which, considering where they were, made as much sense as anything else. Somehow, Will had the feeling that no matter where they were when the truth exploded on Joseph, they would have only been a short drive from his wife. Excitement slowly replaced Will’s sense of disorientation. He’d spent his entire life wondering about his parents. Then, all of a sudden, one was sitting next to him and they were going to meet the other.
Frustratingly, he couldn’t go with Joseph into the assisted living place. He couldn’t even get out of the car. It probably had something to do with this not being his world, but Will was just speculating. Would he get some kind of guidebook to the afterlife now that he was aware he was in it? He had an awful lot of questions.
It has been a long time since Joseph – should he be calling him Dad? Daddy? Father? Pop? – went inside. He could be waiting a while longer. Who knew how long a reunion like this lasted? He certainly hoped it was going well. Joseph would be a wreck if things didn’t turn out okay.
He really had no choice but to wait, so he figured he might as well enjoy it. He put on the new Warren Zevon album, tilted back his seat slightly, and closed his eyes. He drifted along with the music, allowing his thoughts to settle. This had easily been the strangest week of his life, and it was going to take some time to figure everything out. He didn’t have to figure it all out at once, though. He’d get to it – and he’d have help.
The album ended, he switched the music to random play, and he continued to wait. Patience had never been his greatest strength, but he was feeling pretty relaxed right now.
Maybe an hour or so later, he saw Joseph/Dad walking through the parking lot. Where his father had always seemed confused or at least intense during their five days together, he now appeared content and without a worry.
That probably had something to do with the beautiful woman in her early twenties whose arm was looped around his as they walked toward the car.
TWENTY-FIVE
Community Here
Warren grated lemon peel over the couscous and then sprinkled chopped parsley on top of that. Mom always served this dish with rice, but he was beginning to acknowledge that she opted for rice as her go-to starch far too often as it turned out. Tonight’s meal was Don’s Pucker-Up Fish. Dad loved acidic and briny flavors and Mom loaded them on in this dish. The sauce was a combination of lemon juice, lime juice, anchovies, capers, and salt-cured olives – a powerhouse of flavor that kept the taste buds on high alert for every bite. No one was complacent about eating this stuff.
Dad was definitely not complacent about it. He loved it, and Mom made it for him with great regularity. Warren, though, had always thought it was a bit over the top, though he’d never said as much to his mother. He decided to softe
n the acid content by adding fish stock and butter, and he cut back on the pungency by deleting the olives and anchovies. In their place, he grated some bottarga that he’d bought at a specialty store over the seared halibut after he sauced it. He’d eaten bottarga in Italian restaurants, but he’d had to call a half-dozen purveyors to find someone who carried it.
His mother had died three weeks ago today. She’d outlived her husband, her siblings, and several of her friends, so the funeral had had the potential to be a quiet affair. The people at Treetops had prevented that, though. A bus brought dozens of the residents, and many members of the staff came as well. Warren finally got to meet Keisha’s brawny husband, and even found himself talking to the head cook, who turned out to have the soul of a foodie even though the facility’s dietary restrictions had kept his talents out of the residents’ dining room.
Jan was there, of course. She’d called him at home the night Mom died, after Warren had left Treetops and his mother’s body had been taken away. He learned that Jan had left a message with each of the facility’s shifts to inform her if anything happened to Antoinette. They stayed on the phone for forty-five minutes that night, as she allowed him to cry the tears he thought he’d already cried and to begin to understand how it was possible to feel shock and loss over something that he’d come to anticipate.
Two days later, when he came to bring home his mother’s valuables (Treetops would donate whatever he didn’t take), she helped him pack and then, in a shift from what had become their norm, took him out to lunch. They went to a Japanese restaurant, ate sushi – something his mother neither prepared nor liked – and shared stories. It was here that Warren learned that a man had been writing his mother love letters for most of the year before she began to sequester herself in her apartment. Mom had never mentioned the man or the letters, and Jan made it clear that the interest was entirely unidirectional. Warren felt a little bit of empathy for the man. He had no idea what he was up against when it came to Antoinette’s affections.
After the funeral, Warren found himself suddenly alone. The bus had taken the residents back to Treetops, and the staff was gone, as were Warren’s friends, relatives, and former colleagues. Crystal had come, which he appreciated, but she was gone now, too. Warren stood at the gravesite for several minutes, studying the tombstones of his father, mother, and brother standing together. It was something of a meditative experience, Warren allowing his mind to quiet, attempting to feel some sense of community with the three members of his family who had passed before him. It gave him a strong sense of peace, but a part of him quivered at the thought of being left behind.
However, when he turned, Jan was there, maybe twenty feet away. She pulled him into her arms and held him, letting him know that he had community here as well.
“Do you think you could come to dinner,” he said when he finally stepped back from her embrace.
She smiled at him softly. “Do you really think you’re up for cooking tonight?”
“Tonight? No, not tonight. Pizza, maybe. Or a big bag of Doritos. I was thinking maybe you could come for dinner, though. You know, the way you’ve been coming for lunch? I don’t have the kitchen at Treetops anymore, so – ”
Before he could finish the thought, she took him in her arms again and kissed him. In that moment, he set his sights on the future for the first time in more than a year. He held Jan’s face in his hands and then kissed her again.
“I don’t think I’m supposed to be feeling this way right now,” he said.
Jan kissed his palm. “I think Antoinette would disagree with you.”
Then she reached for him again.
He brought their fish into the dining area of his apartment, vowing once more to get a real table as soon as the money started coming in again. The folding table was fine when he was eating alone, especially since he took most of his meals on the couch anyway, but it just wouldn’t do for Jan.
She’d poured wine and was already seated when he came in. “Pucker up,” he said as he put the dish in front of her.
“If you insist,” she said, pulling him toward her and offering him one of her soft, liquid kisses. Warren never failed to marvel at how Jan’s kisses at once warmed and braced him. He thought he’d been finished with new romantic experiences as he headed toward forty, but he was thrilled to discover that he was utterly wrong.
“‘Pucker Up’ is the name of the fish,” he said, kissing her again.
She gave him the kind of lascivious smile he’d never seen from her at Treetops. “I’m sure it is. Does that mean tomorrow you’ll be making ‘Lay Me Gently on the Carpet Stew?’”
“I can work with that,” he said, his mind reeling, though not with cooking ideas.
She kissed him, and then reached around him for her fork. “The food is going to get cold.”
“Did I mention that it was very tasty at room temperature?”
She gave him a playful push toward his chair. He watched her take her first bite and tilt her head toward him appreciatively, the only compliment he ever needed.
Warren took a forkful of couscous. “Danny called today. He wants me to start on Tuesday rather than Thursday next week. He’s thinking two weeks of training and then he’ll get me on the line.”
Two weeks earlier, the son of one of the residents at Treetops had called Warren from out of the blue. He’d smelled Warren’s cooking when he’d come to visit his father and had inquired of the staff why it stopped. When he learned that Warren’s mother had died and that Warren was looking for work, he offered Warren the opportunity to become a line cook at one of his restaurants. Warren’s first reaction was that he was a corporate guy, not a restaurant guy. However, it only took another fifteen seconds of conversation for him to acknowledge that he’d never felt as much meaning from his work as he’d felt these past few months in the kitchen. His mother had always said that cooking for strangers would be different for her than cooking for relatives and friends. Warren was sure that he’d feel some of that difference, but not enough to make him reticent to pursue it.
“Oh, and I heard from the culinary academy. A new program starts in six weeks.”
“So you’re going to do it?”
“Danny said he’ll work with me. He thinks cooking school is a great idea. He hinted that it was going to be essential if I were ever to graduate from chopping vegetables in one of his kitchens.”
Jan took his hand and brought it to her lips. “Quite the whirlwind, huh?”
Warren sat back in his chair, trying to absorb it all. He had a new career and a new mission. Most importantly, he had a woman in his life who’d given him the most soul-stirring reason to come home he’d ever had.
The thought made him laugh out loud.
Don wanted the Pucker-Up Fish again. She’d made it for him the second day here, but he was so persuasive, and she’d never been able to deny him anything, especially when it came to food. She hoped she didn’t bore the others. They were going to have an eternity of meals together. If they had to have the same thing every couple of weeks, they might get a little tired of it.
The first few days here had her head spinning. Reuniting with her sisters Maggie and Rachel, her sister-in-law Carmela, her brother-in-law Sal, her dear neighbor Ralph, and all the others in that oversized house they all shared. Getting accustomed to her new body, which was really a version of her old body from decades ago. It seemed that when you were here you became an age you particularly loved. Antoinette had started in her early twenties, but Don was in his early forties and the age difference was a bit awkward, even under the circumstances. By the time they’d gone to bed that first night, though, she’d moved up to her late twenties and he’d come down to his mid-thirties. Of course, when they got into bed that night, they were ageless. Time meant nothing when they were wrapped together. It had always been that way and Antoinette knew it would always continue to be that way.
Antoinette still had faint memories of the body she’d left behind, the one that
failed to respond to her commands and that housed a mind that had lost its keenness. Those memories were fading, though. It was difficult to hold on to such thoughts when you felt as spry and sharp as she felt.
She finished putting the fish on a platter and spooning sauce over it. There would be fourteen for dinner tonight. There had never been less than eight and there had been as many as twenty-four when they invited others from the neighborhood. It turned out that, unlike Billy, everyone else in the house had known exactly where they were all along. They could have explained as much to Don when he got there, but they knew even before he woke up that he had to come back for her before he could ever settle. Antoinette and Carmela took turns making the main dishes, with the other providing the sides. Carmela had tended to be a little competitive with her in the past, but here she was very generous. Perhaps that was one of the additional blessings of this place.
The others were in the middle of some kind of boisterous conversation when Antoinette came out of the kitchen. She brought the platter over to Don and Billy to allow them to serve themselves first before putting the rest on the table. This generated jovial protests of favoritism from the others, but Antoinette just smiled and acknowledged that she was very definitely playing favorites.
She sat between her husband and son. Don immediately gave her the comical fish-face kiss he always offered when she made this dish for him. Billy kissed her lightly on the cheek.
“I didn’t know food could taste like this, Mom.”
“You did,” Antoinette said. “You just forgot.”
Billy took another huge bite of the fish before loading his plate with Carmela’s potatoes and vegetables. “I’m glad I’m remembering now. I can’t believe what I’ve been missing. Are you going to be naming more dishes after me?”
The Journey Home Page 13