Chapter Thirty-Nine #2
“I can, and I do. I got excellent earplugs, they can’t fully block the sound, but they allow me to appreciate the music. It’s not to my taste, but they are excellent guitarists, ‘Aces High’ is my favorite. Fortunately, Jasmine is deaf, though I do worry about Chéri.”
Iris had the idea to walk to an ice cream parlor in the neighborhood, which seemed fun until they got there and Rapacine asked to taste eight different flavors. But she was so charming the server didn’t seem to mind. Earl Grey was the winner. Iris got her usual—black cherry.
They sat on a bench outside the parlor and licked their ice cream cones.
“How is it?”
“Delicious. I can taste they make this ice cream the French way, with eggs, so it is more rich. My mother used to make homemade ice cream for us in the summer. She was a brilliant cook, so inventive, she would use flower petals and their essences in her flavoring, roses, or violet, or lavender. The flavor would be so delicate on your cold spoon, but as it warmed on your tongue, the taste would blossom and fill your mouth with such pleasure.”
Iris had never heard her speak of her mother. The memory seemed to bring a melancholy tenderness to her expression, Iris couldn’t tell whether the sentiment was sweet or painful.
“Perhaps I should have warned you,” Rapacine stated.
“About what?”
“The perfume, it can bring difficulties. You are not wrong. Not everyone has Sofia’s happy ending.”
“How many others are there?”
Rapacine waved off the question. “Now, no woman reaches adulthood without knowing the dark side of some men’s desire, you don’t need a perfume for that. That’s not the problem—not the new one, at least.”
Iris listened but didn’t yet follow.
“I told you that my father taught me to be a perfumer.
I was a prodigy. As a child, merely from watching him compose at his organ, I could make accords for myself and my friends at school.
Soon after he began my formal instruction when I was a young teenager, I was creating fragrances that would sell out in his shop.
He was as proud of me as he was jealous.
“My father was a gifted nose, but he was not a good husband or father.
Often unfaithful and ill-tempered with my mother and we children.
He took no responsibility for his actions, if you got hit, it was because you had it coming.
When he was unfaithful, it was because my mother did not take enough care in her appearance to excite him.
If only we were better children, or she a better wife, he would be wonderful and shine some of his magic and charm on us. He convinced my mother of this.
“She begged me to make her a parfum that would reignite his desire and bring him back to us as the loving family man. I was seventeen years old, even at that age I doubted we could change my father, but I loved my mother and I wanted to help her however I could, so I agreed. Because there is no lovelier smell to a child than the arms of her mother, I challenged myself to make a fragrance that would meld with her unique skin chemistry. I worked in secret, experimenting with many formulas, testing them on her arm, until I perfected it. I named it after her, Clémence. On her skin it was transcendent. She wore it every day. People followed her in the street, men, women, everyone wanted to know what it was about her. The priest she confessed to left the parish.” Rapacine smirked.
“For a season, she was the most desirable woman in Grasse. And the change in my mother was glorious to watch. I saw her bloom from a shrinking and apologetic woman to one who laughed loudly, danced whenever there was music, and finally relaxed. I never saw her happier.”
“And your father, did he like it?”
“ Mais oui . He dropped the other women and spent much more time at home.” Rapacine paused, her pale eyes glassy, glinting in the dark. “Three months later, he killed her.”
The words hung in the air like the street lamps, harsh and unblinking.
With a pit in her stomach, Iris asked, “Because he got jealous?”
“Because she left him.” Rapacine sighed, then glanced over and pointed to Iris’s lap.
Iris’s ice cream had melted without her noticing; it dripped over her hand and dotted her legs with cold mauve drops. She wrapped the cone with a napkin.
“Not everyone will like your newfound sense of self, Iris. Someone wanting you does not mean they want you empowered. My mother only thought she wanted the fragrance to keep him, but once she had it, she realized he was no prize. My father was always a danger to her, the perfume did not invent his darkness. He had been psychologically killing her my whole life. She had simply numbed herself to every blow, and so doing, she had numbed herself to every joy and passion and beauty in the world. When you don’t feel what hurts you, you cannot feel what gives you pleasure.
But numbness is not protection, and after the perfume, she could no longer deny the toll he had taken.
The perfume awakened her to the pain he had put her through, how much pleasure she could feel free of him, and how much better she had always deserved. ”
“Do you wish you hadn’t given it to her?”
“No. She and I were innocent. I wish only that he had let her go.” Rapacine shook her head.
“With your perfume, you may learn things about yourself and others, things about the world, that you have not wanted to face. And for all the scrubbing of your skin, you will not be able to forget.” She put her hand on Iris’s forearm and gripped tightly.
“My warning is not to fear that knowledge. My warning is only to widen your feet for when the ground shakes.”