“I suppose. The oil is somewhere in the vault. She never let me smell it.”
“Did you open it after she passed?” I ask.
“No.”
Mom doesn’t say anything as I pick up the second box. It’s much smaller and rattles when I open it. No surprise, because inside is a handful of vials, each labeled with my own laborious child’s writing, complete with the little circles I used to dot my I’s.
I examine them closely as the memories resurface. “I did these when you were teaching me how to mix accords,” I say. It took me a while to understand how several notes could combine to create a new smell. I didn’t play any instruments, so Waipo’s attempts to explain it through musical notes didn’t help and led to an argument between the two women on why I hadn’t learned piano. It was Mom who finally figured out how to explain it to her food-oriented child. She brought me to the kitchen and pulled out ingredients. “Look, Cloud,” she said as she mixed. “Eggs, flour, and sugar are their own things. When we combine them what do we get?”
“Batter?”
She poured a circle into the greased pan, then handed me a blueberry before tossing some on top. “Pancakes. A new flavor from many different ones.”
I thought about that as I ate, and after, Mom set me up with two notes in the lab, jasmine and tuberose. She told me to begin with a 1:1 ratio, then to keep adjusting until I had something that smelled new. The results are in this box. I unscrew one of the caps and take a sniff at the faded scent. “Too much jasmine,” I say.
Mom watches me. Then she says, “I’m coming with you to Toronto.”
I nearly drop the vial. “What?” In a thousand years, I never would have anticipated this. “You can’t come to Toronto. What about the store?”
“I’ll put a manager in charge.”
The words pour out. “Where will you stay?”
“With you.”
“I only have one bedroom.”
“You have a couch, I’m sure. Or we can pick up an inflatable bed.”
That I will use, because although I’m a rotten daughter, I’m not low enough to force my mother to sleep on the floor.
“What about Dad?” I don’t know if I’m trying to throw up obstacles or get information.
Mom turns to reorganize the boxes so I can only see her back. “What about him?”
“What does he think about you going to Toronto?”
“I’ll put meals in the freezer for him to heat up.” She puts a bottle down with more force than necessary. “I already booked the flight. We can go together.”
“How? You don’t know which one I’m taking.”
She gives me a withering look. “Of course I do. You hate getting up, so you wouldn’t book early, and you want to get home at a reasonable time, so you wouldn’t take one in the evening. I’m on the ten-thirty flight with you.”
That is, in fact, my departure time, so I move on. “Why do you need to come back with me?”
She folds up the box, tucking the top flaps into each other to close it. “We know nothing about what’s going on with your moli. You refuse to talk to me. You refuse to engage with me to discover a solution. You won’t move home and come back to Yixiang. You’ve left me no choice.”
“You have a choice! The choice is to not follow your grown daughter like a stalker! You could leave it alone.” As always when I get upset with Mom, my voice reverts into a high-pitched almost-whine.
“No. I will not.”
“We can talk now,” I say.
“There’s no time. We will talk and work when we are in Toronto.”
That’s all she says about it. After that declaration, she looks around the room. “Finish packing,” she adds. “You know I like to get to the airport early.”
***
