Northern Song dynasty. Refused to trade in her beloved incense clock for a mechanical one.
Heart note //Call true love
Base note //Sandalwood
I stand in Toronto’s Terminal 3, poking through some unappetizing sandwiches with limp Boston lettuce leaves hanging over the edges of the bread. By the window, a pair of bald toddlers in matching overalls stare at the planes that sit on the tarmac like gigantic birds. They break into gasps when their father points out one lifting off in the distance.
I told Ana I had a family emergency, which was true enough, although I felt a little bad for the way she fussed over me. Rafe wanted to know if everything was okay when I canceled our planned dinner, but accepted without question that I needed to go home. He’s texted twice to check on me, and I fought the urge to tell him what’s happened. That would be wrong; Mom has the right to know first.
My flight is full, but luckily I have an aisle seat next to a teenager who doesn’t bother to look up from their phone and keeps theirelbows and knees tucked into their space. It’s the second-best-case scenario for flying. I stuff in my earbuds and listen to the soothing sound of British men talking about fast cars going around glamorous locations until a bump wakes me up. I’ve slept through the whole flight. Excellent for my nerves, since I didn’t have to spend five hours worrying, but now I have a limited amount of time to come up with the correct wording that will tell Mom what she needs to know without me getting messily and unacceptably emotional in front of her. If I break down, it will confirm how badly I wanted this. The years of me pretending to her that I didn’t care, necessary to save my own heart, will be proven useless and I’ll have no choice but to fully acknowledge what I suspect she already knows.
Thanks to a delay at the gate in Vancouver, which sends a repeated chorus of grumbles up and down the plane as people hover in a half crouch over their seats and glare at the lucky few standing in the aisle flexing and stretching, I’m running later than I planned when I get a cab and head downtown. Although the first Yixiang Parfums was established in Chinatown—for safety and convenience, because at the time most of their customers were Chinese—Waipo moved the store to what she considered a fancier location on Burrard Street, betting on my fifth-daughter income to eventually make it worthwhile. Looking at the buildings as we pass, I wonder if Mom regrets the move. Chinatown rents are some of the cheapest in the city, and the big Tiffany and Hermès showrooms are indicators that Burrard is definitely not.
The boutique is a gem, though. The shiny brass Yixiang Parfums sign sits in a clean sans serif font over the door. It gives the impression of a stylized art deco Chinese gate, with a dragon and a crane edged in bronze, surrounded by peonies. The storefront is perfectly symmetrical, and each of the display windows features thick jade-green velvet swathed around perfectly lit perfume bottles. There’s not a mote of dust in sight, and the entire vibe is one of deep luxury. I stand acrossthe street in the fading Vancouver sun and watch the store. I can’t see inside, and no customers go in as I wait. It’s close to six, my mother’s usual closing time on weekdays, when I finally roll my bag across the street.
I haven’t been in the store since I left home, limiting my visits to the lab in the back, and entering Yixiang now is like walking into my childhood merged with an alternate future I never had a chance to experience. I look around with greedy eyes. Here are my family’s perfumes, arranged in elegant collections through the store. Small signs sit near each bottle to list the notes and the scent story, and a brass plaque tells an abridged history of Yixiang. The entire store is designed to delight Asian customers with the details while ensuring others are confident enough to come in and buy. As my mother cynically points out, it’s exotic enough to be exciting but comfortable enough to not scare people off.
I note every change with a faint sense of disapproval. That chair in the corner is new, as is the floor. Before, it was gold-and-red carpet, with swirls that looked like clouds, and now it’s a dark-brown wood. Not a single footprint mars the shine.
While I’m looking at the floor, my mother comes out of the back with a smile on her face. “Welcome to… Luling?”
As well as never seeing my mother cry, I’ve rarely seen her shocked. Her hand flies up to her chest. “What are you doing here?” she asks, her eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to tell you something,” I say.
It says much about my mother’s self-control that her only reaction is to nod. “Let me close the store first.”
She hands me the mop, and I do a quick wipe of the already spotless floor as she locks the door and closes out the cash register.
Then she takes the mop, not having said a word the entire time, and leads me to the back. Unlike the hodgepodge room at Auntie’s Closet / Ile de Grasse, my mother’s break room is orderly and clean. Boxessit on proper storage shelves, and there’s a spotless mini-kitchen with a small table and chairs. No food smells permeate the air, nor does a dish sit in the sink. Mom is as exacting about the appearance of her personal spaces as she is about the store.
“Tea, Cloud?” she asks. I look closely at her. She’s more tired than at Waipo’s funeral, and I think she’s thinner. Although she might have celebrated this in the past, I worry about the way her clothes hang off her. Mothers aren’t supposed to waste away. They should get more solid with time.
“Where did that come from?” She hasn’t called me that since I left, and curiosity distracts me. “The nickname. Cloud.”
Mom smiles. “It’s from when you were a little girl.”
“How old?”
“Five? Six?” Her voice gets the faint exasperation that always appears when there’s something she thinks she’s supposed to know and doesn’t. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”
“Yes.”
“You wanted the smell of clouds, for some reason. You had something in your head, and nothing I created matched. I tried pine. I tried my favorite aquatic accord. Your grandmother tried.” She pauses. “One of the mods ended up being the foundation for Mist, by the way. One of our most popular scents. Very profitable.”
“Yeah, glad you could monetize a gift for your daughter so it wasn’t wasted.”
Mom sighs. “You should be proud you were the reason it exists, not angry we sold it. Do you want to hear the rest of the story?”
I nod, clinging to it as a way to procrastinate telling her my news a bit longer, while I can still pretend she’ll hug me and be proud, instead of the response I know I’m going to get.
“You insisted on doing it yourself, so I took you to the lab and had you smell things until you had three you wanted.” She gives a small laugh. “The strangest things. Lilac. You always loved those, and in thespring I’d find you hiding under the tree, behind the lowest branches. Then mint, but you called it gum. Peppermint, not spearmint. You were firm about that.”
“What else?”
“Cucumber.” She smiles. “You took the pipettes and kept adding drops until you had the smell you wanted.”
“Did it smell like a cloud?”
