The Journey Home

by Michael Baron

  “Do you think you could talk me through it?”

  Mom moved to the couch and sat slowly. “I’m not sure I remember.”

  Warren started pulling groceries from one of the bags, placing them on the dinette table across from the cooktop. “Of course you do, Mom. You could probably make this thing blindfolded. I have chicken cutlets, rice flour, cake flour, lemons, olives, plum tomatoes.” He reached for a smaller bag inside the Bed, Bath & Beyond bag. “I have vodka. You always said that Smirnoff was best for this, right?”

  A tick of recognition showed in his mother’s eyes. “Smirnoff is best. The expensive vodkas don’t taste the same.”

  Warren toasted his mother with the vodka bottle, delighted that she’d engaged with this at least a little bit. Maybe he’d be able to pull her toward this gradually. He pulled out the rest of the ingredients before unpacking the skillet and utensils.

  “You don’t have to cook for me, honey. Don’t you need to get back to work? Isn’t your boss going to be upset that you’re taking this much time away from the office?”

  Warren stopped pulling items from the bags and closed his eyes. Did he really think that every problem was going to go away instantly because he bought some food? “Mom, I don’t . . . Don’t worry about my boss. We’re making Chicken Margaret now, and that’s all we need to think about.”

  Mom always named her original dishes after friends and relatives. Warren had a chicken dish of his own in his name, as well as a rice dish and two desserts. All of those seemed a bit beyond his culinary reach at this point, though. According to family legend, Chicken Margaret was one of his mother’s early inventions, created not long after she’d married his father, and named in honor of her beloved sister, who’d served as her maid of honor. It was essentially an amped-up version of Chicken Piccata. Mom always served it with potato croquettes and sautéed broccoli rabe. Rice was going to have to suffice today, though. This was going to be enough of a challenge without adding complicated side dishes.

  Warren washed his hands and then mixed the rice flour and cake flour together in a dish. He realized as soon as he opened one of the few cupboards in the apartment that he’d failed to consider all the necessary implements. He found a couple of bowls and plates there, but he was going to have to use these to prep the meal and then wash them before serving the food. He opened the package of chicken.

  “Season the egg rather than the flour,” his mother said. She’d moved to the dinette table. Her eyes seemed brighter now than they had a few minutes ago.

  Warren put down the cutlet he’d begun to remove from the package. “Egg, right.” He hadn’t remembered to buy any, forgetting that the chicken went from egg to flour twice before it went into the pan. He guessed he could go to the facility’s kitchen to ask for a couple of eggs, though he really didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he was cooking in his mother’s room. “I don’t suppose I could use water, huh?”

  His mother tipped her head to the side as she had when he was a kid. “No, honey. You can do without if you have to. Just dredge the chicken in the flour.”

  So much for replicating his mother’s Chicken Margaret precisely. Warren added some salt and pepper to the flour and then dredged four cutlets, pressing them deep into the flour in hopes that this would fortify the coating in some way. Once he’d done that, he prepared the other ingredients. After he struggled to get the pit from an olive, his mother showed him how to do so with the flat side of his knife. Cutting tomatoes with a cheap chef’s knife turned out to be a bigger obstacle, and Mom could offer him no solution other than to suggest he seek out a serrated knife if he were going to do something like this in the future.

  With everything prepped, he set out to start cooking. He took out the rice to get that started, only to realize that he hadn’t bought a pot to cook it in. Hoping against hope, he examined the cupboards again and found nothing useful. Why hadn’t he and Crystal brought any of Mom’s cooking equipment here when they moved her into Treetops? They’d left her with a number of things from her kitchen for sentimental reasons – the ballerina egg timer, for instance – but they really should have thought to move a couple of pots and pans in with her simply for symbolic purposes. It wasn’t an issue now. What was an issue was that the meal was getting simpler – and less like his mother’s – by the second.

  Mom called out to him as he took the chicken to the stove. “You want nice high heat for this. The cutlets are thin; they’ll cook quickly.”

  Warren cranked the burner toward the high end and added some olive oil to the pan. Judging from how long it took to boil water in the teapot, he guessed that the stove was a low-efficiency model, but he figured he’d get some heat out of it if he waited long enough. Eventually, he added the chicken. It started to sizzle immediately, which he took as a good sign.

  “You’re doing great, honey.”

  “I haven’t really done much yet, Mom.”

  “It smells delicious.”

  Warren wasn’t sure about getting to delicious today. He really just wanted to do better than the diner, figuring he’d set the bar low for himself this first time. When he turned the cutlets and saw that the first side had browned well, he began to gain a bit of confidence.

  All of which he lost quickly when he removed the chicken and added the vodka to the pan. The immediate vaporizing of the first drops caused him to flinch, which led to his spilling the vodka over the side of the pan.

  Which led to the pan igniting.

  Which led to his spilling more vodka.

  Which led somehow to the handle on the teapot burning.

  Which led to a surprising amount of smoke.

  His mother screeched while at the same time repeating “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay” rapidly. The smoke died relatively quickly, but not before melting a sizeable portion of the teapot handle and stinking up the entire apartment.

  The knock on the door came seconds later.

  “Antoinette? Is everything okay in there?”

  Warren, brandishing a towel to shoo away the smoke, answered the door to find Jan on the other side, looking alarmed. “We’re fine.”

  Jan peered toward the stove. “What are you doing in here?”

  Warren waved the towel in the direction of the pan, which had completely stopped sizzling. “I’m making my mother lunch.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jan leaned toward Warren conspiratorially. “You know, we don’t really expect people to cook in their apartments.”

  Warren leaned toward her in the same fashion. “Then why do you put stoves in them?”

  “I can’t really answer that.”

  “You didn’t call the fire department, did you?”

  “I thought I’d check it out first.” She smiled. “One of the attendants is coming with a really big bucket of water, though.”

  Warren looked back at the stove. “Is it okay if I finish this?”

  Jan followed his eyes. “I think only you can answer that.”

  “I mean can we avoid having the authorities come down on us?”

  Jan touched him lightly on the arm and smiled again. She had a great smile. “I’m not going to rat you out, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Warren’s blood pressure was slowly dropping below cardiac arrest levels. “Thanks. Want to join us?”

  “That’s nice of you to ask, but I just had lunch.”

  Warren glanced back at the pan. The chicken just looked soggy and abused now. “You would have said that if you hadn’t eaten in a month, wouldn’t you?”

  “Not a month, no.” She backed toward the door. “Have a nice meal. Maybe a salad next time.”

  Jan left and Warren turned back toward the stove, catching his mother’s eye as he did. “I’ll be ready with this in a few minutes, Mom.”

  “That sounds good, honey. I’m just going to put on the TV for a little while. Let me know if you need me for anything.”

  The rest of the dis
h came together without the intervention of any first responders. In the end it did-n’t taste much like Warren’s memory of Chicken Margaret. He’d forgotten the butter to finish the sauce as well. Mom seemed to appreciate it, but this might have simply been a case of maternal instinct kicking in.

  What was undeniable, though, was that for at least a few minutes, she had seemed genuinely engaged. This adventure in cooking had been, at best, a flawed experiment. But it was an experiment worth repeating.

  TEN

  A Random Channel

  It was past eight when Joseph and Will decided to seek out a hotel. The drive after lunch hadn’t been any more illuminating than the drive that came before it. Joseph tried to make sense of the road signs, but none emerged. He took over behind the wheel about an hour out this afternoon, hoping that some sensation would tell him to take an exit or switch to another highway. All that happened instead was that Will spent considerably more time playing disc jockey. In the end, his driving was a bad idea. Since he didn’t have a wallet, he didn’t have a license. If for some reason a cop pulled him over, how would he explain his situation? What did they do with people who couldn’t identify themselves in any way?

  They chose the hotel based on a billboard they passed a few minutes after they decided to stop. The sign for the hotel sat on a busy commercial street with four lanes of traffic and endless options for shopping. The hotel itself, however, was at the end of a winding side street that left the four-story structure insulated from the sounds of cars and enterprise. Like the rest stop, this had been something of a surprise. A line of evergreens bordered the property, and benches dotted the rolling landscape, creating a parklike impression. The building itself seemed as if it had gone up yesterday, though it had a stone portico that made it feel solid and timeless.

  Joseph’s first thought as they got out of the car was that they’d shot too high with this place. He had a considerable amount of money in his pocket, but he had no idea how long he’d be on this journey. He couldn’t waste his cash on exorbitant lodgings. What was going to happen when they ran out? It wasn’t as though he could borrow from Will. As far as he could tell, the kid had never even had a paper route.

  When they asked for a room, though, Joseph found the rate to be very reasonable. This proved to be even more surprising when the room turned out to have two plush beds with thick mattresses, furniture that looked an awful lot like mahogany, and marble appointments in the bathroom. Maybe they had special rates for people who looked completely lost.

  “Do you have a preference for a bed?” Will said as Joseph put the toiletries they’d bought a few minutes earlier in the bathroom. They’d stopped for some clothes as well, since neither of them had anything with them.

  “None at all.”

  Joseph walked out to find the teen taking a backward leap into the bed closest to the window. “Yep, it’s as comfy as I thought it would be. I could get into living in hotels.”

  Joseph sat on the other bed. “I don’t think most hotels are this nice, though what do I know? I have a feeling that you’d probably start pining for home eventually.”

  Will propped another pillow under his head. “Doubt it.”

  Joseph kicked off his shoes and leaned back. “All right, so we keep avoiding this conversation and now it’s time to have it. What’s the story with your home situation? Were your foster parents trouble?”

  “Steve and Karen? No, they’re great. Really, really nice people. They’ve always made sure I was okay. They keep the house clean, and they haven’t brought in eight hundred other kids like I hear some foster parents do. Just five of us, which is pretty manageable.”

  “Yet as it turns out you’re ready to leave town the first time some stranger comes along with a story about losing his memory and needing to find his wife.”

  Will shifted his head toward Joseph to reveal a sly grin. “Who says you were the first?”

  Joseph threw Will and amused smirk. “My point was that things couldn’t have been so great for you in that foster home if you were so eager to get out of town.”

  “You could give me a little credit, you know. It could be that I’m just this incredibly compassionate guy. I see you looking lost on the street and I decide to give you a hand, even if it means driving with you for hundreds of miles.”

  Joseph scoffed, his amusement draining away and his concern for the boy rising. “Do you always do everything you can to avoid talking about your feelings?”

  Will turned to face the ceiling again. “I was ready to go, okay?”

  Joseph examined the teen’s face for a minute. While Will’s posture suggested that he was done with this conversation, his expression said something completely different. He decided to probe further, hoping that Will would appreciate Joseph’s attempts to draw him out. “What do you remember of your parents?”

  For several seconds, it appeared that Will was going to stay closed on this subject. Then he slowly shifted in the bed. He was still looking upward, but he’d moved a little closer.

  When he spoke, his voice was shallower than it had been before. “I remember what people have told me. I don’t remember anything real. You know how you’ve been doing that meditation thing where you try to get a picture of your wife? I’ve been trying that trick since I was a kid. Best of luck with that one.”

  Joseph had the instinct to reach across to put a hand on Will’s shoulder, but he kept it in check. “How did they die?”

  “Everybody’s a little vague on that one. I’m not sure how many details foster parents get. I’m not even positive that they died at the same time. It might have just been really close together. I’m sure I could dig up the details if I tried. I’m not sure it matters, though. How much of a difference is any of that going to make?”

  Joseph wondered how he felt about that. If he were in Will’s situation, he’d probably want every detail he could get. He’d want a vivid picture of the people who’d brought him into the world and loved and nurtured him in his earliest days. Why wouldn’t Will want the same? Didn’t he know what he was missing?

  “You have kids?” Will said when Joseph had let the conversation rest for a few minutes.

  “Was that one of your tricks to attempt to jog my memory?”

  Will finally turned to face him. “Sorry, I forgot for a second. How cool would it have been if you’d said, ‘Yeah, Tommy is nine and Jenny just had her sixth birthday?’ I’d be a freaking genius.”

  Joseph let the idea rest in his mind for a moment. “No, Tommy and Jenny don’t ring a bell. No one that sounds like Tommy or Jenny, either.”

  “Too bad. Want me to throw out names until something sounds familiar?”

  “Maybe some other time.”

  Will sat up, reached for the television remote, and pointed it toward the TV. “Okay, here’s the deal: I’m gonna turn on the TV and punch in a random channel. Whatever show comes on will give us a huge clue about where you live and where we need to go tomorrow.”

  Without waiting for Joseph to respond, the boy pressed some buttons on the remote. When the TV came to life, he pressed two more buttons. The scene that popped onto the screen was set on the flight deck of a spaceship. A man dressed in silver, who seemed to be in charge, was talking to a hard-shelled magenta alien.

  “Is your car equipped with hyperdrive?” Joseph said to Will as the alien pounded his claw/fist on a console.

  “So much for that idea. Does the name Betsy mean anything to you?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Craig?”

  “There are a lot of names, you know.”

  “Emily? Franklin?”

  Joseph held up a hand. “Let’s just watch some TV. We’ll pick up the search tomorrow.”

  They spent the rest of the night letting the television occupy them. At every commercial, though, Will would toss out a few more names. Will obviously had no intention of pursuing the conversation about his home life further, but he was going to be relentless about getting Joseph
back to his home.

  You had to admire the kid’s effort.

  ELEVEN

  The Other Ninety-five

  “Okay, Mom, I’ve cleaned up and stashed everything away so you’ll be in the clear if the cooking police show up.”

  Antoinette had just settled into bed, pulling the sheets up around her neck. Warren came into the room and kissed her on the temple. “I’m gonna get going. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

  “I’m not poisoning you, am I? I didn’t even think about that.”

  Antoinette huddled into the bed a little more. “Lunch was delicious, honey.”

  “It didn’t taste much like Dave’s Pasta with Shrimp, did it?”

  Antoinette pulled the comforter a little tighter. “It was very tasty.”

  “Hey, at least I didn’t set anything on fire. I’m considering that a huge accomplishment.” He leaned over and kissed her again. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I haven’t figured out the menu yet. Did you ever make cereal for anyone?”

  “Bye-bye, honey. Love you.”

  Warren put a hand on her back for a moment, and then left the room. When she heard the door to the apartment close, Antoinette shut her eyes and let her heart take her where it might.

  . . . She was in Don’s embrace, her head resting on his chest, her fingers toying with the hair on his upper arm. She could tell from the intense relaxation in her limbs and the dreamy wakefulness in her head that they’d just finished making love. As had been the case from their first night together, now eighteen months ago, Don stroked her back softly with his fingernails. This time was definitely not like every night, though. As wonderful as their lovemaking always was, this night was something beyond that.

  She smoothed her hand over his chest. “Do you think we did it, Don? Do you think we started our family tonight?”

  He pulled her a bit closer, though there was already no room between them. “I hope so, Hannah. I really hope so.”

  “Did it feel different to you?”