The Journey Home (17 page)

“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.

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 soften 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.”