“What about me?”
“What did you think married life would be like?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I never thought about it. All the women I knew got married because that’s what you did to have children and to be considered a woman. Your grandmother made sure I knew I had to have daughters, and back then, it didn’t occur to me to do it without a husband.”
“Do you regret it?”
“I could never regret anything that brought me you and your brother.” Her answer is swift and fierce.
Despite what she said earlier, I notice she says nothing about love. I ask the question no daughter wants to ask her mother: “Why are you still with Dad?”
At first, I don’t think she’s going to answer. Then she says, “I stayed for you and Eric. I thought it was better for children to have both parents.”
“You fight all the time.”
“I didn’t have a father growing up,” she says.
I’ve never thought about how this might have affected her. Mom not having a father was simply a fact I knew without thinking too deeply about it. There’s no point in telling her I would have preferred a split house than one filled with arguments or the frigid aftermath. Who’s to say that would have turned out any better? Mom made the best choices she could, and it wasn’t all bad. Eric and I saw flashes of what a loving marriage was like, and I choose to believe those infrequent moments were better than none.
“We’re grown now,” I say, eyes trained on the wall because this is my mother I’m speaking to. “You don’t need to be with someone who doesn’t respect what you do or who you are. You don’t have to be miserable.”
“Mmm.” That’s all she says.
Rafe was right about me running. I’ve held on to my hurt for too long, the way Mom held on to a marriage that didn’t work. I don’t want it anymore. Leaning in to Mom, I imagine the pain like a ball and mentally throw it away. A small tendril of happiness curls around my chest. It’s time for a whole new me, and I know where that begins.
“I want to start working on my moli,” I say.
She stills. “What changed your mind?”
I shrug and don’t say anything.
“Tomorrow morning,” she says. “We’ll try again.”
That’s it—a simple acceptance of victory. I wait for theI told you soorI knew you would come around. She doesn’t say any of that, and I gradually relax when I realize no fight is going to result from this. I let my shoulders drop from where they inched up, and my neck feels longer and straighter. I made the right decision. I made it for me, but I also made it for her and for my family. Duty won out, but I feel content with my choice.
The atmosphere is light enough that I start thinking about other scents and what I can make tomorrow. It occurs to me I never asked her about Luling33.
“My last birthday perfume,” I say. “Did you mean for it to be blank?” I’ve been thinking about this since I sprayed it.
She looks confused. “Blank? It was a green citrus.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says. “It’s grapefruit and tomato leaf with musk. I would never send you an empty bottle.”
“I’ve got it here.” I leave her drinking her tea to rummage through my closet for my Luling scents. Her gigantic rollie is in the way, so Iyank it out to grab the plastic tub. There’s a clink of bottles when I lift the suitcase, and I wonder if Mom brought some of her own fragrances. Curious, I unzip the bag and see the bottles at the bottom. Strange, those aren’t the squat Yixiang bottles. They’re slender glass.
Ile de Grasse bottles.
Suspicious enough to not care about Mom’s privacy—and it’s not like I’m going through her purse, which is completely verboten—I pick one up and see the huo symbol stuck to the side. The other has one as well. There’s no question that I’m going to smell them, although I know what I’m going to find the moment my fingers lift the cap. I’m right. The first is the fragrance I brought to Vancouver as my proof, and the second, the warm incense Mom insisted I make.
Both bottles are half empty.
As if on autopilot, I walk back out to the living room holding them in my fists like dumbbells. I don’t bother with unnecessarily redundant preliminary questions, likeWhat is this?There’s only one thing I need to know, and I cut right to it.
“What have you done?”
Mom has been sitting with her eyes closed, and she opens them to see me in front of her with the perfume bottles.
