The Journey Home (15 page)

“I think it's pretty close.”

“That says a lot.”

“Is this going to be another stinky joke?”

Jan smiled and sat back in her seat, her eyes sweeping him up, as they so often did. “I was going to say that I could taste your mother's love for you in it.”

The comment affected Warren especially strongly. Since he'd begun replicating the food Mom served, he'd thought about the fun she had creating these culinary monuments to family and friends. Now, though, he flashed back on the look of excitement in her eyes when presented his plate and told him the name, or the pleasure that she reflected when he would subsequently request the dish. She desperately wanted him to love this food, because if he did, he was accepting much more than nourishment from her.

Surprisingly, he felt his eyes get misty. He lowered his head and attempted to blink this away.

Jan reached across the table and took his hand. She didn't squeeze it or pat it. Instead, she just held it. “You must have been such a gift to her, her only child coming at that stage in her life.”

Warren looked up at Jan and then down again at their entwined hands. She was reaching across the table, which had to be uncomfortable for her. While he didn't want to let go, he squeezed her hand once and then released it. Jan smiled softly and then picked up her fork.

“I wasn't her only child,” Warren said.

Jan's fork paused in midair. “You weren't?”

“I had a brother. He died a long, long time before I was born. He was only a little more than a year old.”

Jan looked over Warren's shoulder toward his mother's room. “That must have been terrible for your parents. Was it some kind of accident?”

“Tuberculosis. I heard the story from my mother and father so many times that I feel like I was there. There was less than a week from the time they found out he was sick to the time he died.”

Jan put a hand to her mouth and shook her head slowly.

“I showed up seventeen years later.”

“Wow. You really were a gift.”

“I'm not sure they felt that way when I entered puberty.”

“Try that line on someone who hasn't known your mother for a few years. My guess is that she
always
saw you as a gift.”

Warren ate some more pasta, savoring it with newly tuned taste buds. “I hope so. My brother was a pretty cute kid.”

“Was he?”

“Yeah. They had pictures of him all over the house. Everything from my mother bringing him home from the hospital to him taking his first steps only days before he got sick. He was adorable, though I probably wouldn't have thought so if he were beating me up all the time.” Warren pointed toward a sideboard under the window that held a number of framed photographs. “That's him over there all the way to the right.”

Jan went over the sideboard and bent to get a closer look at the photo. Then she looked at the photo next to it.

“Is this your baby picture?”

“Yes, it is.”

“You were cute, too.”

“Please. I was a late bloomer. At that age, I looked like my Uncle Sal. Some people were convinced that I could fly by flapping my ears.”

Jan giggled. “You're going to have to bring in more pictures tomorrow.”

“We could pull out my mother's photo books. I'm amazed she never forced you to sit down with them. She did it all the time when she was still in her house – the neighbors, relatives, the UPS guy.”

Jan returned to the couch quickly, her face blooming with excitement. “Let's do it now.”

Warren held up a hand. “No, I'm afraid that's not going to happen,” he said with mock sternness. “We're going to need a little
quid pro quo
here.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you want to see more of my childhood pictures, I'm afraid you're going to have to bring in some of your own.”

“No, no, no. That's not a good idea.”

“Come on! Don't tell me you're self-conscious about them. You were probably this supernaturally beautiful child that caused people to run into walls when they saw you.”

Jan's eyes grew big and she blushed. Thinking about what he'd just said to her made Warren blush as well. Unfortunately, getting up for more red pepper wasn't an option, so he was just going to have to play this out.

“Okay,” she said with an exaggerated tone of
concession. “I'll bring in a couple tomorrow. A couple of
very carefully selected
pictures.”

“Then we have a deal.”

Jan had to get back to work a few minutes later. Before she left, she kissed him on the cheek and thanked him for the lunch. She'd been doing that for a while, but something felt different when their faces touched this time. Her skin felt warmer; he suddenly realized how intimate it felt to have her this close. And as he started to clean up, he couldn't help but notice the sense of lightness that accompanied his movements.

As he started to remove the leftover chicken from the skillet, an idea stopped him. Rather than putting the chicken away, he added some water to the pan and turned the power back on. The intense aroma of the food had been comforting and maybe even a little incantatory today. He wasn't ready to let go of it yet. He had his computer with him and he didn't need to be anywhere this afternoon. He could do everything he needed to do from here. He'd let the chicken simmer a while longer, casting its distinctive scent throughout the apartment.

When he finished cleaning everything else, he visited his mother's room. As had been the case the last time he checked on her, she seemed deeply indented in the bed.

He kissed the cool skin of her forehead. “Hey, Mom. I have some of my chicken cooking.” The smell of the food had gotten stronger even in the minute he'd been there. “I love that you were thinking of me the first time you made it. Let me know if you want some.”

Joseph kept glancing over at Will as they drove. Since they'd left the playground, he'd been contemplating a scenario so disconnected from his instincts that he couldn't even think of addressing it aloud. So little of it made sense, and like the majority of his thoughts since he'd awakened without his memory, all of it was hazy. He was still chasing after moments of clarity. Something would sharpen for an instant, but then very quickly become lost in murkiness.

One notion had continued to grow stronger since they'd watched the toddler in the park taking his first steps: Will was not simply the helpful stranger Joseph had been assuming he was the past five days. They had a very different relationship, one that Joseph couldn't fully identify and of which even Will might be completely unaware. While Joseph was now convinced of this much, the murkiness made it impossible for him to see it any better than that.

Joseph didn't realize he'd been staring at the boy until Will turned to him and said, “What's up with you? It's like you're trying to burn a hole into my head with your eyes.”

Joseph looked away, setting his sights on the road instead. They'd come to a large commercial district, stopping at traffic lights every thousand or so feet. “I was just admiring your handsome profile,” he said, attempting to be casually jovial. “Is that a problem?”

“Well, yeah, actually it is. That's also
not
what you were doing. You're thinking about something. What is it?”

“I was thinking you should change the music. This stuff is awful. Put on that Ari Hest guy again.”

Will didn't touch the music, which meant he was-n't buying this at all. The teen focused on his driving, and for the next ten minutes, neither of them spoke. Then, still not saying a word, Will turned into a strip mall and parked the car.

“I'm getting hungry,” he said, pulling his keys from the ignition. He removed his seat belt and Joseph did the same, moving to open his door. Before he could get out, though, Will shifted toward him and spoke again.

“Look, Joseph, we're partners in this thing. I'm not driving you all over the place because I didn't feel like finishing a science project in school. I know something's going on in your head. I've seen you do this before. You kinda owe it to me to tell me what it is.”

Joseph had marveled at the teen's commitment to this quest before, but this was the first time he'd heard Will say anything about their being “partners.” This jogged his mind a little further – but still not enough to discuss the wild notions that were going through his head.

“You're right,” he said. “I am thinking about something and I owe you an explanation. But this isn't like the woman in the store or the conversation I had with my wife. I think it's bigger than that, but it's also much more vague. I can't talk to you about it until I figure out a way to put it into words.”

Will seemed satisfied with the explanation, though it sounded like empty evasion to Joseph's ears. The teen studied Joseph for a few seconds and then turned toward his door and got out of the car.

Will had pulled up to the equivalent of a diner, even though it wasn't a freestanding building. The interior looked like a luncheonette from the early fifties, complete with Formica countertops and waitresses in crisp black uniforms. Joseph had been to places like this before, though of course he couldn't remember a single one. It looked like the perfect restaurant for Will to get the simple food he seemed to prefer. Joseph had tried to challenge the kid to eat something with more flavor, but he'd been entirely unsuccessful. By this point, Joseph figured he'd just let Will eat whatever he wanted. Will was a big boy and he certainly didn't need Joseph standing over him telling him to eat his vegetables or try something exotic.

As expected, Will did a quick scan of the menu when they sat down and then turned his attention to the tableside jukebox.

“Let me guess: mac and cheese?”

“Burger and fries,” Will said, intent on the song choices available. “You have a couple of quarters I can use?”

Joseph reached into his pocket and gave Will the coins, then perused the menu looking for anything that suggested a personal touch from the chef. Even places as simple as this sometimes had a specialty of some sort. As he searched, a powerful cooking smell seemed to rise out of the menu. Joseph looked up from his reading, now noticing that the smell seemed to fill the entire restaurant. It was intense, bordering on overpowering, but it also awakened his appetite in a surprising way. There was garlic – quite a bit of it, it seemed – and something smoky. And some kind of meat; maybe pork, maybe chicken.

Joseph hadn't been particularly hungry when he got out of the car. Now, though, he definitely wanted to order whatever was filling his nostrils. The only problem was that the item didn't seem to be on the menu anywhere. There was no shortage of choices – sandwiches, meat loaf, roast turkey, Salisbury steak, and many others – but absolutely nothing that suggested the intensity of that aroma. Nothing sounded anywhere near that good.

“What do you think that is?” Joseph said to Will, who'd made his music choice and was tapping out his accompaniment on the jukebox.

“What do I think
what
is?” the boy said absently. He obviously had one more choice left for his money and he flipped through the available selections.

“That smell.”

Will raised his nose to the air and then shrugged. “Diner smell?”

“Have you ever smelled anything like this in a diner before?”

Will smirked. “Only in every diner I've ever been in.”

Frustrated, Joseph turned back to the menu. When the waitress came, he asked her to tell him what was cooking in the back. She looked at him blankly, and Joseph attempted to describe the aroma to her as clearly as he could. Like Will, she didn't seem to smell it. He asked her to go in the kitchen to find out if the cook was doing anything special, maybe trying out something a little different, and she laughed, saying, “Mister, we haven't had something ‘a little different' in here in fifty years.”

Joseph wasn't satisfied with this answer and the waitress's casualness miffed him. The scent had awakened something in him that went beyond hunger or simple interest in a new taste. He didn't just want to try this food; he wanted to
experience
this food. If the waitress wasn't going to help him – and it was obvious that she didn't intend to do so – he'd help himself. He stood up and headed toward the kitchen. This caused the waitress to call out after him. Ignoring her, he went through the double doors that separated the kitchen from the dining room.

On the other side, three men in white shirts stared at him simultaneously. One was frying burgers on a grill. Another was chopping up vegetables for a salad. The third had been pulling plates from a dishwasher. None seemed to be associated in any way with the smell that had driven Joseph here. He took another step toward the flattop, hoping to spy something that he couldn't see from the entrance to the room.

A woman came around the corner. Like the others, she was dressed in white. Though she was dressed the same, she carried herself in a way that made it obvious that she was in charge. “Can I do something for you?”

He walked over to confront the woman. “You're cooking something.”

She put a hand on her hip and gazed at him blankly. “That's very perceptive of you.”

Joseph ignored the sarcasm. “You're cooking something that isn't on the menu. I'd like to order that, but I don't know what it is.”

The woman looked at him as though he were talking another language, then turned to the other men. Then she faced Joseph again.