Rafe looks at me. He’s not done. “You’re making the same mistakes.”
“The same mistakes,” I say. “What same mistakes? What?”
“When you get overwhelmed, you leave,” he says simply. “You always have. When you were younger, it only meant you went home. Now it means you move across the country.”
“I think this is the opposite,” I say, shifting in the canvas chair as the metal support bar digs into my thighs. “I’m staying here. It’s the opposite of running.”
He sighs. “It’s not literal running. You’re avoiding your problems.”
I’m done with this conversation, so I stand up, feeling dizzy. “I should get home.”
Rafe pauses for a moment, looking up at me before he shakes his head. “Sure.” He stands too. “Let’s go.”
32
Hua Yuanyang
Qing dynasty. Yuanyang refused to convert to Catholicism when her husband chose to.
Heart note //Limit shame
Base note //Verbena
We don’t talk much on the way home, and Rafe leaves me at my door with a touch on my hand. Mom is out having dinner with a vendor, and that old familiar emptiness rises from the apartment. I forgot how pleasant it was to come home to another person who could validate your existence. When I was a kid, I thought people disappeared the second a door closed on them, to the extent that I had fits if my parents tried to shut my bedroom door at night. Sometimes I wonder if a bit of this has accompanied me into adulthood. That could be why I feel faded the second I walk in.
Mom’s notebook is on the counter, and I glance at it as I make some tea. There’s a list of names. Evelyn Choo. Henry Lai. Xiaolan Roberts. It looks like Mom brought in some commissions for Yixiang. They must be recent, because she usually jots down a few ideas of what could work as soon as she talks to the client, but these have no details.
Mom comes in and I close the notebook, surprisingly happy to see her. “The water is still hot,” I say. “Do you want some tea?”
“Lemon.” She goes to change as I grab the tea bag. Like me, Mom hates wearing outdoor clothes in the house. She comes out and I bring the tea over to the couch, then give in to what I want and curl into her side. I used to sit next to her all the time at the end of the day, sometimes talking about nothing in particular, sometimes simply absorbing her presence. Perhaps it was good she came to Toronto. I got this back at least.
She lets me stay, and I listen to her breathing with my eyes closed, smelling her faint iris under a soft mix of scents, until I finally gain the comfort I’ve been missing for so long.
“How was your day, Cloud?” she asks. “Did Ana like her present?”
“She loved it.” We sit for a while longer, chatting about what she had for dinner and the scents she tested when she passed the Holt Renfrew on the way to the restaurant. In the new ease between us, I gather my courage.
“Mom, has Dad always disliked what we do?”
Her fingers tighten on her mug before they relax. “What do you mean?”
There’s no way I’m going to bring up that I overheard her conversation. “At dinner, when I was last in Vancouver.”
“Ah.” She shifts on the couch, but we’re both looking at the wall. “That.”
“I went through the register. Very few had a supportive partner.”
She nods. “I noticed the same thing. Your grandfather was a wonderful man, but he died right after I was born.”
“Dad knows better, though.”
“He should.” Mom sounds resigned. “I always thought he would get used to it. I knew it was too much to ask for us to work together like Eddie and Missy Jin, but I thought he would be proud of my work. He never was.”
“Why not?” This is what I don’t understand.
“Your father had an idea of what his married life would be like. He would work, and I would take care of the house and the children as well as my shop. He never understood providing for a family means more than bringing in money.”
Mom is speaking to me like an adult and I’m not sure I like it, although I want to know. “What about you?”
