Jan got up from her chair and began to walk with him down the hall. “I have to tell you that I’ve been jealously smelling whatever you’ve been making for the past hour – some of the residents are starting to get envious, by the way – and when I went to get lunch nothing seemed good to me. That’s why I got the yogurt. I was trying to convince myself that I was getting a treat.”
“Hey, I’ve been there. Did you know you can make popcorn seem like dinner if you sprinkle enough parmesan cheese on it?”
Warren opened his mother’s apartment door for Jan and directed her toward the couch as soon as he realized that the dinette table was too much of a mess to allow two people to eat. He put together a second plate from the various cooking implements and put both of them on the coffee table.
“This looks amazing,” Jan said when he sat across from her. She shifted her eyes toward his mother’s bedroom and her expression softened. “She’s just sleeping through it again?”
Warren nodded slowly. “She always does now. I don’t think I had her for more than five minutes today.”
Jan looked back in his direction. “I spoke to her doctor yesterday.”
“I’m sure what you talked about wasn’t any more encouraging than the conversation I had with him two days ago.”
“I’m afraid not. Sometimes people rally.” Jan pursed her lips before she continued. “It’s not common, though, Warren. I’m not going to try to kid you about that.”
Warren appreciated the honesty, though he really would have appreciated Jan’s honestly being able to offer him a sunnier scenario. “I know. I’m working incredibly slowly toward accepting that.”
“Have you thought about a nursing home?”
Warren cringed. “Have you ever seen a nursing home?”
Jan dropped her eyes. “I know.”
Warren let the thought linger for a few seconds. Then he moved forward in his chair and reached for his plate. “I didn’t ask you here to bring you down. I can mope on my own. This is about lunch.” He pointed toward her food. “Why don’t you give it a try?”
Jan offered him an expression that he interpreted as compassion over the difficult exchange they’d just endured and then picked up her plate and tried the beef. Her eyes grew wide. “This is incredible.” She let the taste linger. “And there’s a whole lot going on here.”
“Mom was shooting for layers of flavor when she concocted this. That, after an immediate punch in the mouth.”
“I definitely felt the punch – and the layers. Is that Anaheim chili?”
“Wow, yeah. Are you a chili head?”
Jan flipped her bangs. “I’m more of an everything-edible head.”
Warren surreptitiously examined Jan’s slim form and wondered how someone who professed to love food that much could be in such sensational shape. “And yet you were going to have yogurt for lunch.”
“I don’t think you heard me. It was banana cream pie yogurt.”
“Does that really matter?”
Jan took another forkful of meat, digging into the plate to get some corn, some pepper, and some rice at the same time. “I didn’t know this was an available option,” she said before putting the overloaded bite in her mouth and pretending to swoon.
“This is always an available option.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Jan said around her food. Very few people looked good talking while they were eating. Jan happened to be one of those people.
“I’m serious.”
Jan met his eyes. Warren’s immediate response was discomfort. He’d meant the comment to be a casual one, but it didn’t sound that way coming out of his mouth.
“I really am serious,” Warren said, deciding to plow ahead. “Look, I think the only thing sadder than me taking two hours to cook lunch and then eat alone is you having yogurt at your desk. I think we have the potential for a win-win situation here.”
Jan seemed to think about this for a while. It dawned on Warren that his offer might have come across as more presumptive than he intended it. Were there even rules that prevented this sort of “fraternization” between staff and the children of residents?
Before he could say anything more, though, Jan said, “Okay” quickly, and then returned to her lunch. She ate several bites hungrily and very fast before she spoke again. Warren found he enjoyed watching her eat, especially since she was exhibiting so much passion for something he’d created.
“You know, we could split my yogurt for dessert afterward.”
“That’s very generous of you.”
She took two more rapid forkfuls and then seemed to realize that she was eating very fast. Her shoulders relaxed and she put the plate on her lap. “Have you been making meals like this every day?”
“I think I hit my stride in the last week. You wouldn’t have wanted to try what I was cooking before then. Culinary Russian roulette.”
“Sounds like it might have been exciting,” she said with a teasing smile. “So what’s on the menu tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. I don’t usually decide until the night before. Do you want me to e-mail you with my decision?”
Jan took another bite and then moved the plate from her lap to the coffee table. “Definitely not. I like surprises. And this has been a very pleasant surprise.”
“For me, too,” Warren said, marveling at the dramatic way his spirits had shifted in the past few minutes.
SIXTEEN
The Other Side of the Glass
The road seemed particularly endless today. Charged by the vision he’d had of his wife’s face, Joseph had had no trouble staying enthusiastic for a long drive yesterday. However, when he woke this morning and accepted that he hadn’t gotten any closer physically to the woman he loved, the weight that had been building on his shoulders as his travels continued returned. There was no possible way for him to mark progress. Therefore, the vision he now had in his head, which he was convinced was the woman he was seeking, was nothing more than an especially beautiful mirage. He even had to acknowledge that this vision could be a matter of his mind playing tricks on him. Maybe the picture he now had in his head wasn’t accurate in any way. Maybe he’d just invented the woman’s face because he desperately needed to visualize something.
When they got into the car, Joseph let Will choose the direction they headed. The simple reality was that his instincts hadn’t helped much. Maybe the boy’s doing the equivalent of flipping a coin would be more useful. Realistically, he couldn’t do any worse than Joseph felt he was doing. Will chose a two-lane road that cut through a collection of small towns. This led them through minor business districts followed by little clusters of houses followed by vast expanses of farmland. At least the view was more varied than it was on the big highways they’d traveled. Under different circumstances, he might even consider this a pleasant little drive.
As usual, Will took charge of the music selection. He’d offered Joseph the opportunity on several occasions and asked for his opinions on a number of others, but Joseph was fine with the arrangement. It was Will’s music, it was Will’s car, and he was doing the driving. Whatever he wanted to listen to would be fine. Right now, Will was playing a rock band named The Raconteurs. Joseph didn’t find the sound very appealing, but Will seemed to love it, elaborately miming guitar playing on the steering wheel. He wished he could be entertained that easily.
Joseph tuned the music out – in Joseph’s mind, the kid’s tastes were wildly inconsistent – and watched the landscape out his side window. Soon, this seemed to disappear for him as well, becoming a blur, though Will was driving relatively slowly.
“I miss you so much. I can’t do this without you anymore.”
The words – from a female voice – seemed to be coming from just on the other side of the glass. His senses alive again, Joseph looked to the front and the back of the car, as though doing so would offer some kind of clue. He even looked over at Will, who was in the middle of a guitar solo and seemed to have hi
s eyes closed while he was doing it.
“I think about you every minute. Where are you?”
Was this another trick of the mind? Was Joseph’s desire to be with his wife so extreme that his imagination was getting the best of him and he was now hearing voices in his head? How much longer would it be before he started hallucinating nonstop?
“I’m right here,” he said tentatively, not sure if he actually spoke the words aloud.
“Really? Is that really you?” The voice went up a register in excitement. “You sound so real.”
“I am real. I’m right here in this car. I’m lost and I’m trying to find you.”
“Come home soon. I need you with me all the time.”
Joseph felt tears coming to his eyes. It was her. It was most definitely her. This was not a mirage. This was not a trick of his mind. It was her voice, she was distressed, and he wanted more than anything to ease her mind.
“I’m trying, but I don’t know where you are. We’re driving all over the place. I had some kind of accident and my memory is gone. How can I find you?”
“I’m home.”
“But I don’t know where that is.”
There was a long pause and Joseph wondered if he’d lost the connection. He searched the landscape, hoping to see her somewhere out there. He hadn’t been this close to her since he woke up in that strange house. He wanted to hold on to this link with everything he had.
When she returned, her voice was thinner.
“I don’t know how to explain it to you.”
“Give me an address. The name of the town. We’ll figure out how to get there.”
Joseph waited for a response, but none came. Maybe they were going through the equivalent of a bad reception area. Maybe she would come back soon. When several minutes passed, Joseph wondered if the problem was that the car was in motion. If she came back, he’d ask Will to stop driving until he finished his conversation.
“I’m still here,” he said, certain now that he was speaking aloud.
He waited again.
“I’m still here,” he said more forcefully, this time banging on the window as if that would help broadcast the message.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Joseph turned sharply toward Will. “No, I’m not okay.”
“You’ve been talking to yourself for the past few minutes. What’s going on?”
Joseph felt the intensity drain from him, replaced by weariness. “I wasn’t talking to myself. I was talking to her.”
Will turned down the music. “You were talking to your wife?”
Joseph looked out the window, then back at Will. “You think I’m insane, don’t you? It was her. I know it.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Did she tell you where she was?”
“She’s home.”
“We kinda knew that already. Did she happen to mention where home is?”
“She said she didn’t know how to explain it to me.”
Will watched the road for several seconds and then tilted his head back in Joseph’s direction. “Did you at least get her name?”
Joseph felt himself drain further. “No, I didn’t.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah.”
Joseph rested his head on the side window.
“You’re connecting with her, though. First that thing with her face yesterday and now this thing with her voice. That’s gotta mean something, right?”
Joseph didn’t answer. Instead, he hoped against hope that he’d hear her voice again.
SEVENTEEN
Tired
Antoinette awoke with a start, her vision blurred, her senses rattled. She was so frustrated to find herself back in this bed that she wanted to scream.
Suddenly Warren was at the door. “Mom? Mom, are you all right?”
Antoinette didn’t know how to explain it to him. She didn’t know what to say. Everything was always so confusing these days. Nothing stayed in one place for long.
He was at her bedside now. Taking hold of her hand. Helping her to sit up. Why did he think she wanted to sit up?
“Are you in pain? I’ve never heard you scream like that before.”
Pain? She didn’t notice the pain she felt the same way anymore. It was always there, but somehow she couldn’t really touch that, either. Everything was vague. Her entire existence was vague.
“Are you hungry?”
Antoinette looked at her son, unsure how to say what she wanted to say, how to tell him what she really wanted. “A little thirsty,” she said thinly.
Warren left and came back a minute later with some juice. She took a few sips, which felt better than she thought it would.
But why couldn’t she stick with anything? Why did everything float in and out? If she knew where she wanted to be, why couldn’t she stay there?
Her son held a plate in front of her. “I made Ellie’s Chicken Pie today. I think it turned out okay. Do you want to try some?”
Her eyes went to the fork in his hand, but she made no effort to move. The idea of eating confused her now.
“Let me give you a taste. I did a couple of things differently from the way you did it, but it’s basically the same thing. Ellie probably would have liked it.”
He scooped some food with the fork and brought it to her mouth. Antoinette opened slowly and allowed herself to taste the food. Like the juice, she enjoyed this more than she expected. She remembered Ellen, the babysitter who came on Saturday nights when Warren was little. He always called her “Ellie.”
She swallowed. She felt a little more awake now, a little less agitated. She still wanted to go back to sleep, but she wasn’t as frustrated with being up as she had been.
Warren gave her another bite of the chicken pie. Did he say he made this? When did Warren start cooking?
“Is it good?”
Antoinette nodded and sipped some more juice. When Warren brought another fork full of food to her lips, though, she turned her head away.
“Do you want to get up for a while?” he said, putting the plate on her nightstand. “I think Password Plus is on in a few minutes.”
“I’m tired.”
“You’ve been sleeping all day, Mom. It might be a good idea for you to get around a little.”
Antoinette slipped back down into the sheets, closing her eyes. She hoped Don would be there to welcome her.
EIGHTEEN
Running in the Red
“I’ve gained three pounds since we started doing this,” Jan said as Warren put the plate in front of her. Today’s dish was Sole Vanessa, named after his mother’s niece who was more than twenty years older than Warren. He’d simmered the fish slowly in clam broth, preserved lemon, and pink peppercorns, and then topped it with a puree of piquillo peppers and parsley. On the side, he had Brussels sprouts roasted with bacon and almond wild rice.
“It must be three pounds of muscle,” he said, sitting down across from her.
“I wish. I think you’re bad for my health. This looks delicious, though.” Jan took a taste of the fish and sighed appreciatively. “Yum. This is a different flavor profile for you.”
“It is. Not that I ever used the term ‘flavor profile’ until recently. Did I tell you I’ve started watching the Food Network at night? Do you know anything about chayote? Someone was doing something with it on one of those competition shows last night and I thought it looked interesting. Anyway, I realized that I’d been tending toward my mother’s more muscular dishes, probably because those tended to be my favorites. I thought I’d go for something a little subtler this time, extend my range a bit.”
Jan took another bite and then tasted the Brussels sprouts. “Delicious.”
She raised her water glass toward Mom’s room. “Antoinette, another winner!”
“She always loved this one. I think she liked it even more than Vanessa did. You know, it dawned on me the other day that I haven’t eaten some of these dishes in more than a decade. What
I didn’t think about until today is that it has to have been several years since she ate any of them. Once she stopped cooking, no one made them for her.” He sipped water and looked down at his plate. “And now she won’t ever eat them again.” He felt the wave of emotion that always came to him when he talked to Jan. He really didn’t want to get maudlin right now, but he didn’t seem capable to avoiding it.
Jan put down her fork and reached across the coffee table to squeeze his hand. Though she’d touched him before, it was the first time she’d ever done anything like that. Surprisingly, it made him sadder.
“She didn’t recognize me when she woke up this morning,” he said. “I let myself in, as I have been doing for a while, and I started prepping lunch. When I heard her shifting around in bed, I went to say hello. She seemed very nervous about having a guy in the apartment with her.”
Jan tipped her head toward him. “She may have just been disoriented.”
“No, it was worse than that. I tried talking to her and she remained very uneasy. Then she just went back to sleep. Is such a sharp decline common?”
Jan took a few moments before answering. When she’d done this in the past, he was never sure whether she was trying to think of an answer or trying to find the best way to spare his feelings. “It’s not unusual. Especially when there are physical problems and mental problems at the same time.”
Warren turned toward the bedroom door. He’d found himself staring at it regularly the past week, as it was the only form of communication with his mother available to him. “This has just been the worst freaking year,” he said, still looking in that direction.
“You seem to be going through an awful lot at once.”
Warren turned back toward Jan. Her eyes captured his instantly, as though she’d been standing beneath him with a safety net. He found unusual comfort there. It had been a long time since someone had been able to soothe him with a glance.
“Yeah, you could say that. Crystal, the job, my mom. It’s not like I couldn’t handle any one of those or that any of them were a surprise. Crystal and I hadn’t been working for a while, the company had been running in the red for the past few years, and Mom started showing signs of her age seconds after Dad died. It’s the confluence that makes this so tough.”
The Journey Home Page 9
