The Journey Home (9 page)

. . . 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?”

She felt the gentle rise of his chest as he chuckled. “You know me, darling. No matter what I'm thinking about when we start, I'm completely consumed by you within seconds.”

She hadn't expected this response. “You mean you weren't thinking the entire time about our making a baby?”

He lifted his head and turned it toward her. “You mean you
were
? A guy could get a complex about that sort of thing.”

She kissed his shoulder and propped herself up on one arm. “I was swooning, of course. I'm sure you
noticed
that
. You never, ever, have to worry about it. But a baby, Don. A baby!”

Don smiled at her and ran his fingers through her hair. “You're not going to give this child
all
of your attention now, are you?”

“Only ninety-five percent.”

He grinned at her slyly. “Do I at least get the other five?”

She pecked his cheek. “You get the other
ninety
-five. That's how this works.”

“If I did the books in the office that way, I'd go to jail.”

She settled back down on his chest. “This is not about offices, Don. And it's definitely not about calculations. It's about magic. Family magic. Don't you think?”

Don pulled her closer still. He was always doing this, as though the only way they could truly be near enough would be if they were in the same body. She loved it. “I do think so, darling. I think we're going to have a magical family together.”

“Does three still sound like a good number to you?”

“I'm not sure,” he said slowly. “Are we talking about the numbers the rest of the world uses or your magic numbers? I just want to make sure that I'm not agreeing to have eighteen children.”

She pinched his side. “Just three, Mr. Smart-Aleck. Two girls and a boy.”

“Unless it's two boys and a girl.”

“Or that.”

“Or three boys.”

She let the idea percolate for a moment. “If we have three boys you're going to have to hire a nanny for me.”

“As though you would let anyone else take care of your kids.”

Antoinette giggled and then rose up and took Don's head in both of her hands. “Isn't this exciting?”

She kissed him quickly and he pulled her back to him for a longer, deeper kiss. “I love you, Hannah.”

She kissed him again. “I love you, Don.”

He held their heads close together. “You know it might not have happened tonight, right?”

“I know. And if we have to try several times before it happens, I'll be fine.”

She settled in his embrace again. “But it did happen tonight.”

Warren had hoped that the cooking aromas would draw his mother out of her room, but she stayed there instead. Over the past few weeks since he'd started making these daily lunches, her strength seemed to be flagging. He was relatively sure that there was no direct connection between the two events – in fact, only the food seemed to jostle her at all – but it was still disappointing that his attempts to draw her back into the world had so little impact. It seemed that she was walking slower than ever, and she always appeared to be tired. Warren had discussed this with the doctors at the facility, but they seemed unmoved. Their unspoken message was “She's old; what do you expect?” Warren assumed that they saw the kind of mental and physical decline she exhibited with numbing regularity; but this was a singular event in Warren's life. Dad had gone in an instant – he had driven to a Senior Citizens function the day before a heart attack felled him. He wasn't going to trivialize this, no matter how “circle of life” the Treetops staff got with him.

The dish he was preparing today was Ralphie's
You-Must-Be-Kidding Pork. Mom had created it for a neighbor so obsessed with pig meat that he'd insisted his wife have their kitchen painted pink. At a casual dinner party with Ralph and his wife, Mom presented a pork loin wrapped in bacon and stuffed with kielbasa, ham, and sweet Italian sausage, served with a sauce flecked with prosciutto. The way she told the story, she'd intended it as somewhat of a joke, but everyone at the table enjoyed it so much – especially Ralph, who by some reports wept – that it made regular appearances at large gatherings.

Making this meal was definitely pushing Warren to the edges of his nascent cooking skill. He'd convinced the butcher at the supermarket to butterfly the pork for him, which was a big help. Warren did-n't want to think about how many pigs might have died in vain if he'd attempted the exercise himself. Still, the stuffing required significant preparation. The pork products needed to be chopped or removed from their cases and then mixed with minced onion, sage, rosemary, egg, and just a tiny bit of bread-crumbs. He then needed to roll and tie the pork, drape bacon over the entire thing, and roast it.

The makeshift kitchen seemed to grow daily as Warren contemplated new meals. He'd brought the one good pot he had at his apartment, along with a cutting board, a knife, and a few other utensils. When he went to Crystal's to sign their long-negotiated divorce agreement, he told her about his cooking exploits and she suggested that he take some of the pans they'd saved from Mom's house. This morning, he was already in the Treetops parking lot
before he realized that he didn't have an oven in which to roast the pork. Another trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond – his fifth in three weeks – netted him a portable brick oven. It was an extravagance, especially since he was no closer to landing a new job than he had been four months ago, but it seemed in the right spirit of things.

The roast was now in the oven while Warren sautéed spinach with garlic, and boiled potatoes for mashing. His mother had taught him years ago that every entree should include a green vegetable and a starch, and now that he was feeling a bit steadier about cooking, he stuck to that with these meals, even though it meant eating a far larger lunch than he normally ate, and even though his mother only grazed through bits of it.

When he was done with the sides and while the pork rested, he contemplated the sauce. Beyond the prosciutto, he had no idea what went into it. He'd never seen his mother make this dish. Deconstructing the pork was easy, especially since the primary ingredients were the stuff of family legend, but the sauce was a complete mystery. She'd long lauded shallots, so he minced one and threw it into the pan where the prosciutto had been sizzling. Then he added some chicken broth, which certainly made the sauce liquid, but didn't come close to the right consistency or flavor. He let the sauce reduce while he considered other additions. A tablespoon of butter made it thicker, but nothing else. He was getting ready to punt. Maybe he didn't even need a sauce.

“Apple jam.”

The voice startled Warren. He'd been so focused on the pan that he hadn't even realized his mother was awake.

“You finish the sauce with butter and apple jam.”

Now that Warren thought about it, he could remember a slight taste of apple in the sauce cutting through the mountain of pork. If he'd really concentrated, he probably could have figured that out. Of course, he never would have guessed about the jam part. He didn't even realize you could make jam out of apples. Applesauce and apple butter, sure. Apple
jam
?

“Um, I don't have any of that.”

Mom patted him on the arm with an understanding smile and moved him away from the pan. She looked in the apartment's small refrigerator and found the remains of a bottle of orange marmalade that Warren had used a few days earlier.

“It won't be the same, but it'll work,” she said as she added a few spoons of the marmalade to the pan and stirred it with a whisk.

She turned to face him, satisfied. “Just let that simmer for a minute. Is everything else ready?”

He laughed, thinking about how easily she'd solved a problem that had him befuddled and thinking about how great she looked with a whisk in her hand. “Yeah, just about.”

They sat to eat a few minutes later. The sauce wasn't what he'd remembered, of course, but the orange did a decent job of balancing the richness of the pork, and the pork itself had a ridiculous amount of flavor.

Though her “closer” act had been impressive, Mom ate her usual birdlike quantities. Warren had been taking the leftovers home and eating them for the next night's dinners, but even the small pork roast he'd gotten left him with a considerable amount of meat. When his mother retired to her bed about a half hour after lunch, he made up a plate and headed to the office Jan shared with the other nurses.

“I thought you might be hungry,” he said as he laid the plate on her desk.

She looked up at him with an appreciative smile. “How did you know I didn't get a chance to eat lunch today?”

“I could hear your stomach rumbling all the way down the hall.”

She looked down at the plate. “This looks great. What is it?”

“It's pork roast stuffed with three different kinds of pork with a prosciutto sauce on top.”

“You must be kidding.”

“How it got its name, actually.”

She put the napkin he'd provided on her lap and then tasted the pork with the knife and fork he'd also brought for her. “You made this?”

“Well, my mother needed to come in at the last minute to save the sauce from complete failure, but I cooked the rest of it.”

“Wow. I'm skipping lunch daily from now on.”

“There's plenty of room at the table.”

Jan tried everything and then nodded admiringly. “Did you just say that Antoinette gave you a hand with this?”

“It was another one of those moments where the decades just disappeared. She came in, fixed the sauce, and then went back to being a frail little old lady.”

“That's exciting.”

Warren tipped his head to one side. “It was temporary. But we've had a few of these moments. I'm thinking of putting them in a curio cabinet.”

Jan reached for his hand and squeezed it, a gesture that caught him off guard completely. It took him a split second to squeeze back.

“Can you sit for a while, or do you need to get back to your mother?”

Warren pulled over a chair from another nurse's desk. They were alone in the office, the first time he'd ever seen it this quiet. “She's asleep already.”

“That's good. Not the part about your mother being asleep, but the part about you having a few minutes. I hate eating by myself.”

“Then come join us. Really. We have a seating at 12:45 every day. Except for the days when I make a huge mess of things.”

“Yeah, maybe I'll take you up on that.”

Jan ate appreciatively and Warren recounted the apple jam/orange marmalade in detail, presenting it the way someone on
SportsCenter
might. Minutes later, a crisis involving Mrs. Blake pulled Jan away and Warren headed back to the apartment to clean up.

Mom was deep asleep at this point. She didn't even budge when he kissed her good-bye. They'd had a moment, though.

“Let's get off at this next exit,” Joseph said as they approached a sign for a town named Vista.

Will looked over from the driver's seat, eyes wide. “You recognize something?”

“No, sorry. We've just been driving for most of the last two days. I need to get out of the car for a while. Maybe walk around a town a little. We haven't tried that yet. It could help.”

The expectation on Will's face dimmed. “Sure, what the hell.”

The kid took the next off-ramp and then drove left at Joseph's direction. Joseph didn't have any particular reason to make this suggestion, just as he had no particular reason why he wanted to stop in Vista, but he figured any action was better than no action at this point. Any decision, regardless of how randomly chosen, could lead to a breakthrough of some sort.

For a mile or so, this didn't seem to be a particularly fruitful choice. There had been a couple of fast-food restaurants near the exit, but the road turned
residential quickly, lined with ranch-style houses on modest plots of land. Six houses in a row were painted various shades of light blue.

“We could be driving right past my home,” Joseph said as they stopped at a traffic light. “My wife could be sitting right there in that kitchen right now telling someone how worried she is about me.”

“You'd know.”

“Would I? Why would I know?
How
would I know? The fact is, my house could have been down the block from where we started and we've just been driving farther and farther away all this time. Either that, or it could have been two exits back. What was the name of that town? Oh, yes, Greendale. Maybe I live in Greendale and my memory is just too shot to help me out in any way.”

“You'd
know
.”