I change out the scent ball and ring her up, throwing in a few refills. Ms. Kang thanks me again, and I walk them to the door and watch them go. They stand so close together they merge into a single figure as they move away.
Then I sit back at my counter. Ms. Kang seems happy with her life and her daughter, although I failed to bring her true love. Is that right? She seemed to think it had worked for her. Did she meanHollywas her true love? Her daughter and not a lover? None of the otherfifth daughters mentioned such a thing. I can’t shake the feeling there’s something in what she said. I get up to serve another customer who comes in.
Perhaps I can find it in Mom’s chapter.
34
Hua Xinyue
Qing dynasty. Xinyue was obsessed with Kunqu opera and often attempted to sing arias as she worked, to the dismay of those in earshot.
Heart note //Call true love
Base note //Sandalwood
Although I spent most of the day thinking about reading Mom’s chapter, once I get home, I make something to eat and take a lengthy shower before cleaning the kitchen, putting in some laundry, and tidying the place. Then and only then do I sit on the couch with the register.
It takes me a long time to open the book.
“Get it together,” I say to the empty apartment.
Without letting myself think, I flip to Mom’s chapter and start reading before I can find another excuse not to. I’m not sure what to expect, but the first pages follow the same general template as those of the other women. After a quick calculation, I see her first entry is a week after her twentieth birthday, and includes her birth date, place of birth, her moli, and her favored scent. Her writing is bigger than the small, tidy characters of the later pages, as if reflecting the exuberance of the younger woman.
I read each word so carefully that at first I pay more attention to the sentences than the content and have to go back. Mom’s voice is in the writing, her matter-of-fact perspective visible in the bullet lists and simple language used through her chapter. Not for her was the gushing eloquence of Dongmei, whose prose was like poetry and whose poetry was like a painting. Mom’s goal is to write down her life and experiences as objectively as possible.
The strange thing is, this distance in her writing gives the emotional moments more prominence. My brother’s birth lists all the facts that would take up the first page of a baby book—weight, length, and so on—but she’s added an exquisite sketch of him sleeping, the lashes long against his full cheeks and his chubby hands pressed to his chin. Mine is the same, but the sketch is of me awake, my toothless mouth open in a joyous laugh.
I didn’t know she could draw like that.
The notes on formulae or Yixiang are interspersed with the occasional sketch of Eric or me. In one, we’re in the lab, laughing over a vial. I remember that. We were competing to see who could make the nastiest scent. Eric was always good at that, and his vial smelled, somehow, like fish. I keep going until I get to the year I turned twenty, then steel myself to learn her perspective on my lack of moli. There will be anger, I’m sure, and disappointment. Instead, I find another sketch, this time of me in the robe. She’s used pen to draw it, and my face is as detailed as a photo. She added the little gap in my front teeth as I smile at the perfume bottle in my hands, and the gold hoops she’d lent me for luck dangle from my ears. Every freckle is documented. There’s only one line.
We must be missing something, and Luling is taking it hard. Her greatest desire is to find her moli.
The subsequent entries make no mention of my moli. Instead,there are quotes from reviews of my perfumes, and a list of every place I’ve worked and scent I had for sale. I knew she paid attention to what I did, but I always took it as monitoring my actions, judging my decisions. The register makes it so obvious she did it out of loving pride I’m ashamed to have missed it.
Then I find the list of birthday perfumes, every single one she made for me since I was five. I check Luling33—just as she said, grapefruit and tomato leaf. This doesn’t make sense. Curious, I rummage through the box and find it again, sniffing it for the slightest whiff of freshness. I was right—there was nothing.
Huh. Looks like Mom can make a mistake after all.
The list of translated terms, annotated with my mother’s writing, slips out, and I smooth it with my hands, frowning as I think. Mom told Ana we needed a vocabulary for what we did, a scent glossary to help us translate what we wanted to create into the world around us. The register in front of me is another translation, but it’s not of words or fragrances. It’s of emotions. I look at the sketch of me as a baby again. Mom had been speaking to me in her own language all this time, and I have been using the wrong dictionary. Finally, I have the correct one, and the truth of her love pours out from the page into my heart.
I was so sure my view was the true version, and now it’s like I’ve been part of a psychological test about perspective. What else have I been wrong about in my life? What else have I misjudged or misinterpreted?
Exhausted, I put the book aside and lay my head back on the couch to think about what I read. She thought we were missing something about my moli. This confirms the strange feeling I had in the shop after Ms. Kang’s visit.
Her greatest desire is to find her moli.True love. Desire. Ms. Kang’s joy in life is her daughter, not romance.
I get out my laptop and settle in for some epic googling. I only have to shut my eyes to recall the three names in Mom’s notebook.
Evelyn Choo. My first search ends with her obituary, which is not the start to this journey I expected. Wait, I have the wrong person. Three minutes later, I find a recent media release announcing a new collaboration between a big tech company and a climate change nonprofit. There’s a quote from the tech CEO, Evelyn Choo. “Syntex has been looking at partners for a while, and it’s time to act. The $50 million we are contributing to help shift the trajectory of climate change is only the beginning of what we’re doing to help save our world.” Another more human-interest story outlines Evelyn’s volunteer work with climate change boards, which she called her life’s passion.
I move on to Henry Lai. According to his social media, he suddenly moved to live it up at an Italian villa he bought for a dollar. I flip through the selfies of him beaming as he holds a glass of Prosecco on the patio of his villa, which he’s already renamed Sogno del Cuore and plans to turn into a bed-and-breakfast. At Waipo’s funeral, he was a gray man working in advertising, who barely looked up from the floor.
The last is Xiaolan Roberts. I remember her. Her family was an old client and, like us, her family fortunes were whittled away over the years. Though she must be in her fifties, I find a photo of her standing in a plane with a parachute strapped to her back, of all things. The caption reads, “Finally had the courage to take risks. Here’s to my new freedom!” All the comments are congratulating her on her new life, along with a snide note from someone who looks to be her ex-husband that simply says, “You’ll be back.”
None of them have found their true love.
Yet all of them have found something theytrulyloved.
