“Eventually. So I’m told.”
***
This time I tell Mom I’m coming to Vancouver and what flight I’m arriving on. I do it via text, however, and right before I get on the plane, so I don’t applaud my courage too much. To my shock, I hear my name as I’m coming out of arrivals. It’s Mom. She looks calm, but when I smile at her, I can see her chest rise as she takes a deep breath.
“Hello, Luling,” she says. “Good flight? How is Ana?”
Thank God for Ana, who from the other side of the country canprovide enough conversational fodder to get us to the car and about halfway home. Updates about Jayne take another few minutes, and then Mom says in a careful tone, “I was surprised when you said you were coming back.”
Talking in the car is less stressful than at a table. It could be because we’re facing the road instead of each other. “I want to talk to you,” I say.
“Then we should wait until we’re home,” she says firmly. “So I can focus on the conversation and not the drive.”
Damn, there goes that. “How’s Dad?”
“On a work trip. He’ll be sorry to have missed you.”
It’s quiet until we pull into the driveway and I take my suitcase into my old room, which smells fresh and clean. The bed is smooth and newly made, and I want to burrow inside instead of talking to Mom, who is making tea in the kitchen. I linger over washing my hands and undoing my suitcase, but then tell myself to stop being a wuss and to go out there and say the things I came to say.
In the kitchen, I put down the bottle of Aiai, this one “magicked up,” as Ana would say. Mom looks at it but waits for me to talk.
“How’s Eric?” I ask instead, catching sight of a photo of Sophie and Owen on the fridge.
“I don’t know. He’s not talking to me.”
“Oh. I talked to Kelsey.”
“Is she well?”
“She blamed me for her marriage ending.”
Mom sighs. “You were right. I should have kept quiet. I should have been more welcoming to her.”
“I’m not the one who has to hear that,” I point out, although I’m surprised to hear Mom admit she was wrong. She’s never wrong. About anything. Apart from sending me a bottle of perfume for my birthday with no actual scent, but I keep that to myself.
Mom doesn’t say anything, but looks at the bottle. “What’s this?”
“I made a perfume.”
She gives me a questioning look and reaches for it when I nod. “This is good, Luling.” She smells it again. “Very good. Extraordinary in its simplicity. I’m impressed. Did you come all this way for me to smell it?”
“No.” I take the bottle back. It’s cool in my hand. “I call it Aiai.”
“I saw the label.”
“It’s for you.”
Now her thin eyebrows rise high. She plucked them out when she was younger and they never grew back. She had them tattooed back on when I was eleven. “For me?”
“For Yixiang. It’s a moli scent, and I’m certain of it.”
Her hands jerk enough that she nearly drops the bottle. “What are you saying, Luling?”
“I’m saying you don’t have to write my chapter for me anymore.” I hand her the register and flip to the very last pages.Hua Luling, it reads, in both English and Chinese. Her eyes widen as she scans what I wrote about my discovery before I passed out in the store last night.
“Talk to me about this,” she says when she puts the book down.
“I know why my moli wasn’t working the way we expected. I’m not sure if it’s only me or if this is true for all the fifth daughters, but my gift isn’t to call true love at all.”
