The Journey Home (7 page)

Warren gave her a quick bow with his head. “Fair enough.”

Antoinette's plate came at that point and she tasted her eggs. At least she thought she tasted them. She couldn't be certain because they didn't seem to have any flavor.

“Honey, could you pass me the pepper? You'd better give me the salt, too.”

He handed both shakers across the table. “That yummy, huh?”

“Just like home.” She grinned. “At least, just like Paul Feinberg's home.”

Warren laughed like Antoinette had just told the funniest joke in the world. She liked that she could get that kind of reaction from him. Maybe letting him get out with her wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Warren seemed to like his potpie a little more than he liked his soup, and Antoinette seasoned her eggs further in an attempt to coax some flavor out of them. You had to
try
to make eggs taste this bland. Since she wasn't particularly hungry anyway, though, she gave up after a few bites. When Warren finished his lunch,
they ordered coffee and chatted. Antoinette asked her son about his wife and his job, which seemed to fluster him for some reason. She wondered what was going on. It wasn't like him to be so closemouthed. Warren had always been very willing to talk to her about what was going on in his life. Her friends had often marveled at how candid Warren was with her. It seemed that once their children became teenagers, they wouldn't tell their mothers much of anything. Maybe her son had just figured out that he was supposed to act this way as well.

In all, in spite of Warren taking her to a strange place with bad food, it had turned out to be a very pleasant way to spend the time. At least it was until they got ready to leave.

“Let me handle the tip,” Antoinette said when Warren reached into his pocket for some money to pay the check.

“No, I've got it.”

Antoinette reached for her purse. “Don't be silly. You don't need to pay for everything.”

That was when she discovered that her purse wasn't there. She looked on the floor to see if she'd accidentally knocked it over, but it wasn't there, either. Her blood boiled instantly.

“She took it.”

Warren removed his napkin from his lap and was sliding to get out of the booth. “Who took what?”

Antoinette nodded toward the waitress. “That woman took my purse.”

“No, she didn't, Mom.”

Antoinette stood, checked her seat again, and then pointed toward the waitress. “That woman stole my purse,” she said loudly enough to draw the attention of people across the dining room.

The waitress was delivering a plate to another customer when she looked up to see that Antoinette was pointing directly at her. She pretended to be confused.

“You!” Antoinette said. “I know it was you!”

The woman stood stock-still, obviously horrified that Antoinette had caught her. Warren came over to take her by the arm.

“Mom, you're being a little loud.”

“You don't think I should be loud about this?”

“Mom, the woman didn't take your purse.”

“Then who did? It had to be her.”

Warren tried to move her out of the restaurant, but Antoinette wouldn't budge.

“Mom, no one took your purse.”

Antoinette turned her fury on her son. She couldn't believe he was going to let them get away with this. “MY PURSE IS GONE!”

Warren used a little more strength and pushed her toward the door. “Mom, quiet down. Everyone is looking at us.”

“They shouldn't be looking at us – they should be looking for their purses. This restaurant is a den of thieves.”

The hostess came toward them as Warren continued to manhandle her out of the place. “Is there a problem, sir?”

“There's no problem,” Warren said apologetically.

Antoinette couldn't believe what she was hearing. “How could you be such a wimp? You're letting them steal from me!”

Warren applied more pressure to her arm and practically threw her out of the diner. In spite of her aching legs, he scurried her along and didn't let go of her until he'd forced her into the car.

When he came around to sit in the driver's seat, she glared at him. “You disappoint me,” she said severely.

“Mom, the woman didn't steal your purse.”

“Then who did?”

“
No one
did. You didn't have it with you.”

Antoinette threw her hands up in the air. “Well, that's just ridiculous. I always have my purse with me.”

Warren took a deep breath, and Antoinette could practically see his mind working as he tried to come up with a response.

“You haven't used a purse in more than a year. I don't even know if you have a purse anymore.”

“Well, you should. I use the leather purse that you gave me for Christmas.”

Warren shook his head slowly. “I gave you that purse ten years ago. We gave it to Goodwill when we moved you out of the house because you'd replaced it with the black one with the gold clasp.”

For the first time since this incident started, Antoinette felt confused. Why would Warren tell her that he'd given her the purse so long ago? She
remembered that Christmas vividly. Don had teased her about all the stuff she was moving from her old bag. The waitress was probably just going to throw that stuff in the garbage after she took her money.

Ten years ago
. Why would Warren say something like that?

Her confusion fogged her anger. As Warren drove her back home, she stared out the window at the unfamiliar landscape.

She felt very tired.

The episode at the diner had confounded Warren more than any previous event with his mother. It wasn't simply that she'd become so irrational about the purse, though that was harrowing enough. What truly upset him was the juxtaposition of her fury against the pleasantness of the conversation they'd been having earlier in the meal. This spoke volumes about where things were going.

When they'd been joking about the diner's mediocre food and reminiscing about his mother's cooking, Mom had seemed more alive than she had recently, and he'd found that extremely encouraging. When she started deconstructing his soup and analyzing its shortcomings, it was as though he was a teenager and she was in her fifties again.

Regardless of how much he'd read about his mother's disease, he continued to be mystified by the processes of the human brain. She looked at a town that she'd lived in for decades as though she'd never seen it before, but she could call up her cooking knowledge without a hitch. This had to have something to do with the way these things were imprinted
on her mind, but Warren knew that the nuances of how this worked would always elude him. One thing was certain, though: his mother might have lost touch with most of the world around her, but she still felt some connection to food. Since taking her out to eat was probably too risky to venture again, Warren decided he would bring food to her in a way she never could have anticipated. He would cook for her.

Warren had grown up loving food. It was impossible to live in his home and feel differently. Something always seemed to be on the stove or in the oven, and the aromas always seemed seductive. While he attached to the family passion for dining very early, he never connected with his mother's excitement for making meals. They'd spent some enjoyable times in the kitchen when he was younger, and even when he was older he'd help her chop vegetables from time to time, but the end product was always much more appealing to him than the work involved in getting there. When he moved out, he cooked at home maybe a dozen times a year, always keeping it as simple as he possibly could. Crystal enjoyed cooking a little, so she made the meals when they weren't eating out or taking in. Since he'd been living on his own again, he'd done little more than toss some pasta with olive oil on occasion.

Now, though, that was going to change. He'd stopped at a local supermarket on the way to Treetops to buy the ingredients necessary to make one of his mother's classic dishes. He'd eaten it so often growing up that he knew the components by heart. He'd seen his mother prepare it numerous times.
What made the dish so delicious was its simplicity, a point that Mom had reinforced every time someone complimented her on it. How hard could it be for him to prepare this for her?

He could do this one on a stovetop, which was important, since her apartment only had those two open-coil burners to work with. He bought the necessary groceries and drove out of the supermarket parking lot toward Treetops. That was when he remembered that his mother no longer owned any cooking tools. A quick stop at Bed, Bath & Beyond for a skillet, some tongs, and an inexpensive chef's knife addressed that.

Laden with packages, he simply smiled at Keisha as he entered, choosing not to engage in their traditional faux flirting today. He didn't even stop for a visitor's pass. The staff certainly knew who he was by now. Some of them probably even thought that he lived here, though of course he was at least twenty-five years younger than the youngest resident. He used a free knuckle to knock on the door of his mother's apartment, so caught up in his mission that he didn't anticipate the sudden dread he felt at wondering who she would be when she answered.

Fortunately, the woman that received him today was the gentle, smiling one. “Warren, honey, how are you? Do you want some tea? I was just about to make some.”

Warren kissed his mother on the cheek and put the bags down on the floor near the cooktop. “Maybe later, Mom. Hey, I've decided to make us lunch. I
thought I'd try my hand at making your Chicken Margaret. Sound good to you?”

“Chicken Margaret,” Mom said wistfully. The expression on her face seemed a mix of confusion and melancholy. Warren had anticipated the former, but not the latter. He certainly hoped he wasn't going to wind up upsetting her with this. It was so difficult to know what her triggers were now.

“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.