“Sure,” I say. No matter which it is, I need to get to know him again before we can move forward.
We decide on a few days from now, and then Rafe leaves, pausing to wave through the window from the street. I swipe my finger along the last bit of icing on my plate, smiling at my new plant and feeling good for the first time in ages despite my earlier moli failure. It’s like rediscovering Rafe has taken some of the sting out of it. He was always the sugar to get down the medicine, and it seems he still is.
I should have known this buoyant feeling wouldn’t last, becausewhen I get home, a package waits for me in the mail room. The second I’m in my apartment, I throw it on the sagging couch like a hot potato at a child’s birthday party. I know what it contains, because every March for the last twenty-eight years, my mother has created a birthday perfume for me. When I was younger, I used to make requests.Make it smell like the sky, Mommy. Cats, cats, cats! I want a unicorn.The last was an effervescent cotton candy that somehow was exactly how seven-year-old me had imagined a unicorn would smell.
In what is rapidly becoming the closet of monsters from my childhood nightmares—the werewolves and ghosts transformed into more adult fears about duty and obligation—sits a plastic tub holding twelve identical bottles to the one I know is wrapped up and lying on that couch. They’re labeled Luling21 to Luling32 and I’ve lugged them through multiple cities and living arrangements. I could have shipped them with my other perfume stuff, but despite never uncapping the bottles, the idea they could be lost in transit devastates me.
I grab a glass of wine before I reassess and take a shot of tequila. It’s medicinal, like field surgery in some old war.
When the phone rings, it disturbs the hush of my dark apartment and startles me so much I drop the shot glass into the sink. The phone rings twice more before I manage to pick it up.
“Happy birthday, Luling.” Despite our distance and the push and pull of our relationship, my mother’s voice settles deep into my bones, then travels up to form a lump in my throat.
“Thank you for the perfume. I was about to call you.” It’s a lie I’ve offered so often it feels like truth.
“Did you like it?”
“Of course.” Another lie.
She pauses. “Ah. Good. I’m glad.”
Our conversations usually follow a format as strict as a nun’s schedule. From Mom’s comments about what I’m eating or have eaten or am going to eat, it moves to my day and then straight into something thatwill irritate me. The last topic changes, but in the past has included: my love life (lack thereof), how I run my shop and why it should be more like hers, the weather, and any mention of Vancouver or coming home. The breadth of potentially dangerous topics is wide-ranging and capricious enough that a tone is enough to set us off. Or, more accurately, set me off.
Today, though, Mom deviates from the routine. “I started cleaning out Waipo’s rooms.”
“Oh.” Waipo lived in an annex off my parents’ house for the last few years. Remorse jabs another bruise on top of the others it’s left around my heart. I should have known my mother would be trimming the threads of Waipo’s life. I should have asked.
“There’s more to do, but I’m putting some boxes aside for you to go through when you next come home,” she says. “Keepsakes. She didn’t have much. She gave you the thing she valued most.”
“The register?” I ask tightly. “I said it belongs with you.” We still haven’t addressed the fact that she ignored me to send it back to Toronto. There’s no point.
“Waipo thought not, and I can’t debate with a dead woman.”
I recoil at her harsh tone. My gaze lands on the anodyne pastel landscape that came with the apartment and the small table under it that should be covered with framed family photos. It’s where I put my junk mail.
Instead of fighting back, which is my first inclination, I take a deep breath. Neither my father nor my brother would have offered to help sort through the room. One of the terrible consequences of a death is filling garbage bags with the remains of a life, and Mom had to do it alone.
I don’t want to fight, not when Mom is dealing with Waipo’s things and it’s my birthday. I muster every ounce of kindness I can excavate from my soul to say, “Thank you for keeping some of her things for me.”
“Of course, Luling.” She sighs. “I should go. I’m closing the store. Take care of yourself.”
This is brisker than usual, and when she hangs up, I stare at the phone, almost hurt. I’m the one who hangs up first, and this reversal unsettles me.
I pluck the shot glass out of the sink and check it for cracks before washing it and putting it away where it belongs. She said she was closing the store. Why those words? Not “I’m closing up the store,” or “I’m getting ready to go home.” I weigh the pros and cons of texting Eric. Pro: Finding out what’s going on. Con: Listening to him crow over knowing more about Mom’s business than I do. It’s an easy enough choice.
I shut the cupboard to go slump at the table and decide how to spend the rest of my special birthday night. I can watchMy Neighbor Totoro, my comfort movie. I can take outAnne of Green Gables, my comfort read and the only book I’ve allowed to get dog-eared from use. I can have a bath laced with sandalwood, my comfort smell. I can work on my new autumn line or some of my commissions, my comfort coping mechanisms. I can go to bed, since it’s already after ten, although that will bring no comfort.
None of the options are appealing because of those bottles lined up in the cheap dollar-store container in my closet.
Ah, goddamn it. I haul myself up from the chair and pour a second shot of tequila before shuffling back to the bedroom to stand in front of the closet again. The earthy smell wafts up from my glass, laced with honey and citrus. I finish it before snatching out the container, putting it on the bed, and sinking down to the floor so the bottles are at eye level.
Why have I never smelled Mom’s birthday creations? Does she know? I’m punctilious about my thanks—truly the least I can do—but I never give her details of what I think about them. What secrets am I about to find that she assumes I know?
I drag the box down to the floor and pull out Luling21. It arrived at my studio apartment in Halifax, which was about as far away as Icould get from home without landing in the Atlantic. The bottles are the classic Yixiang design, created by Hua Zhengyi in the early 1900s, a low, wide bottle reminiscent of old incense censers. The designs etched on the side all feature peonies, but subtle changes in the way the flower is depicted indicate which fragrance family the scent falls into: floral, ambery, woody, leather, chypre, or fougère. When I was younger I wanted to simplify it to amber, floral, woody, and fresh, the more modern standard scent families, but Mom refused.
“This is our tradition,” she told me firmly. Waipo agreed, and as head of the family, her decision was what mattered most. I took my defeat gracefully because I was nineteen, with no reason to think I couldn’t make the changes when Yixiang inevitably passed down to my stewardship.
I lean over to grab some blotters from my dresser drawer, settle back down, and give the black cap a slight twist.
