Chapter 24
Hua Changchang
Ming dynasty. Changchang collected porcelain from the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen, and for years sought a gold-gilded cup said to be the only one ever made. She never found it.
Heart note // Boost hope
Base note // Agarwood
The next day is rainy, and Mom decides to stay with me instead of going for a walk. “I have some ideas I want to work on,” she says as we share coffee with Ana. “I’ll stay out of the way.”
I thought Mom’s presence would get on my nerves, but it’s peaceful.
She takes one of my empty notebooks and spends the morning with the concentrated expression I know I also wear when I’m focused on following an idea.
Occasionally, she gets up to take one of my vials, slipping in a blotter and holding it to her nose with distant eyes before going back and jotting more notes down.
If I look at them, they’ll be full of small squiggles and letters, her personal shorthand that I learned to decipher years ago.
Rafe is in another round of meetings but texts me around noon.
Rafe: What do you think about going out for dinner tonight? I understand if you need to put it off because of your mom.
I tell him I want to go. This date has been built up so much in my head it’s almost a relief to simply have it happen.
Although our ongoing text conversation makes me happy because I like talking to him, it’s unsatisfying.
I can admit how hard it was to have him out of my life now that he’s here again.
I want to see him. I want to see his face as he talks and to make up for our lost time.
He suggests a place and time, and is off to another meeting.
The weather keeps all but the most dedicated shoppers away, and by early afternoon we’re alone, with the rain beating hard on the windows. Mom calls us to the back for a tea break. It’s a pleasant, lazy Sunday-afternoon feel.
As Ana sips, she looks around my worktable. “How do you become a perfumer, anyway?” she asks curiously. “Is there a school or something?”
“There are, and there are also apprentice programs with the big fragrance companies,” I say. “Our training for Yixiang is done in-house.”
“In-house?” Ana looks at my mother, who nods.
“The women in our family have always taught the next generations,” my mother says. “My mother and grandmother taught me, and we taught Luling.”
“At first, I didn’t know what Mom was doing,” I say. “When I was a kid, she talked to me about how things smelled to make sure I was aware of scent in my life.”
Ana points at the gardenia I have in the back waiting for more soil. “Like flowers when you went on a walk?”
“That, but everyday things too.” Mom takes an orange from the bowl and holds it out to Ana.
“Take the difference between the oils in an orange peel”—she sinks her nails in and the room sings with zest—“and the orange itself.” She peels into it to reveal the bright pulp, and Ana leans in to breathe deep.
She sits back. “How do you go from that to making perfume?”
“Awareness is the beginning,” I say. “Most people take smell for granted, but by the time I was twenty, I could recognize almost two thousand scents.”
“Are you kidding?” Ana looks stunned. “There are that many smells in the world?”
Mom smiles at her. “Far more. You can’t write without words, and you can’t create perfumes without knowing scents and materials, so you need a vocabulary for what you’re doing. An olfactory library.”
“A library of flowers,” says Ana.
“And spices and herbs and chemicals,” Mom says.
“How do you do that?”
“Practice,” I say. “Lots of patience.”
“I taught Luling to connect smells to memories,” says my mother. “That helps. We process smell in our olfactory bulb, which is connected to the parts of our brain involved in building memory.”
I pull out a vial and dip in a blotter, then hand it to Ana.
“For instance, dihydromyrcenol is synthetic, so it’s not something you can instantly connect to, like a rose.
The first time I sniffed it, I happened to be looking at my grandmother’s purple scarf,” I say.
“Now, in my head, it’s a cool purple scent, and that’s how I remember it. The scarf matched the lavender notes.”
“It totally smells like purple.” Ana looks fascinated as she waves it in front of her nose, then sighs. “I’ve always wanted a signature scent but never found one that matched me.”
“I can make you something, if you want. One just for you.” I can see the kinds of fragrances that will suit her.
Chocolate and red chili, with amber for a scent as expansive as Ana herself.
Creamy balsamic. Or gardenia and frangipani—big, gorgeous blooms that will fill a room if she wants to take up space.
“Really?” She looks thrilled.
“Absolutely. Do you have something in mind or want a surprise?”
She gives me a look. “What do you think?”
“Surprise it is.” I’m a little astonished I know her well enough to say it with such certainty. Friendship was sneaking up on me solely through proximity.
The door bells ring, and Ana runs to the front of the store so fast the socks she’s sorting tumble to the ground. She’s back before we’ve finished picking them up.
“It was only the mail.” She’s obviously upset.
Mom watches her. “Did you want it to be someone else? You look like there’s something on your mind.” I didn’t know Mom’s voice could go that gentle. She certainly doesn’t bother to use that tone on me.
“It’s not a perfume thing,” says Ana.
Mom laughs. “Most things aren’t.”
“You met Jayne, right?”
“In front of the store.”
“I thought it might be her. I like her,” Ana says. “Then I saw her laughing with another woman the last time I went to her bar.” She looks at me. “You know, the one with the crystal store?”
“Krystal, yeah,” I say.
“No, it’s called Karma. Or Karma Gems, I can’t remember.”
“Her name is Krystal.”
“Seriously?” Ana rubs her face as Mom tries not to laugh.
I nod. “She ordered a perfume from me and wanted it to smell like radiance.” I gave her a twist on a classic Chanel No. 5 neroli with sparkling aldehydes to go with the patchouli that permeates her clothes.
“I’m jealous of a woman named Krystal who owns a crystal store.” She groans. “How is this my life?”
“You shouldn’t be,” I say. “Talking doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know.” She frowns as the soundtrack for Amélie plays in the background. Mom has busied herself taking the teacups to the sink, but I can tell she’s listening.
“Ana. Go over there and say hi. You talk to her all the time anyway.”
“Yeah, but now she’s more real, you know?
She’s not going to be this perfect being I’ve built up in my head.
She’s going to have issues because she’s a person, and it’s scary and making me act weird around her.
” Ana starts removing vinyl belts from their crinkly plastic bags.
“What if I end up disappointed? Then I don’t have Jayne and I don’t have the dream of Jayne.
I’ll have nothing. It’s easier not to try. ”
This hits me hard; I know what it’s like to lose both the dream and the reality. As I’m trying to think through a response, Mom answers.
“Disappointment is a part of life,” she says.
Ana looks taken aback, as if she expected some sort of a You got this pep talk.
She doesn’t know Mom. “People will disappoint you in many ways. They’ll make promises and break them.
They’ll raise expectations and dash them.
They’ll leave you wondering what you’ve done wrong when you’ve done nothing at all. ”
Is this directed at me? It must be. Ana’s eyes are wide. “Okay?”
“However, they will also surprise you. We often misread people or project assumptions on them.” Her voice turns thoughtful. “What we see on the surface is nothing like the person below. Much like a perfume, you need to give time and warmth for a person to reveal themselves fully.”
“Even if they end up disappointing you?” Ana’s voice is small.
“Even then, because the risk is worth the reward,” says Mom. “Sometimes that person blossoms for you, and only you.”
Ana wriggles her shoulders as if fighting against the weight of her insecurities. “What if I disappoint her?”
Even I, with my limited emotional intelligence, can jump in here because there’s only one honest and conveniently acceptable answer. “Impossible. She’d be lucky to have a chance to be in your life.”
This is true. Ana is sincere and giving, open in a way that’s totally foreign to me.
“Yeah,” says Ana, neck lengthening like a swan. “I’m a catch.”
“You are,” says Mom.
“I have a lot to offer.”
“Tons,” I assure her.
“You know what? I’m not made for pining. I was forged for action.” She fluffs her curls until they rise in a platinum halo. “I’m going to get my woman.”
Before I can reply, she grabs her coat and umbrella, then leaves. It’s so sudden I expect to see a little puff of smoke where she sat.
“Goodness,” says Mom after a pause. “What an interesting girl.”
The door slams open and Ana comes rushing back in.
“What do I say?” she moans.
This time I almost shove her out the door. “Just make conversation. Like usual, the way you did before you started having this crisis.”
“Right.” She draws herself up tall. “Be cool. I am cool.”
“As ice.”
“Ice.” She gives a decisive nod. “I can get a drink.”
“You can,” says Mom. “You said it was a bar.”
After a little more cajoling, she’s off again.
Mom looks at me, eyebrows high, and I shrug. “That’s Ana,” I say.
“I think a scent with a long sillage would match her,” says Mom, walking to the window. “Very long.”
I trail after her and watch as she adjusts the curtains. “Did you mean what you said about people disappointing you?”
“I was speaking in generalities,” she said. “Do you disagree?”
“I don’t know.” Feeling a little uncomfortable, I turn to my phone and see a new commission has come in. I show the brief to Mom to break the silence.
She reads it over. “All the instructions say is that it should smell like ‘home.’”
They didn’t tick any of the boxes I include to help narrow down their preferences, but wrote a cheery “Dealer’s choice!” in the Additional Notes box, which is less than helpful.
“I’m thinking flowers and apple pie,” I say to tease her.
“Apple pie.” She makes a face at these uninspired choices. “Really, Luling. I trained you better.”
“I was kidding,” I protest. “What would you make?”
She looks at me, and her smile is mischievous in a way I haven’t seen in years. “Waipo and I used to compete over client requests sometimes,” she says. “We’d each take the brief and see who interpreted it better.”
“You want to compete?” This is so not like Mom. Or maybe it is and I’m only just now learning.
“Who can create the best ‘home’ perfume,” she says. “Two hours.”
“You’re on.”
After a brief delay to help a customer who braved the rain because he wanted to surprise his fiancée with matching his-and-hers scents for their upcoming wedding, I pull out my notebook to think about the home scent.
The shop feels calm, but my mind is somehow simultaneously empty and frantic, making it impossible to settle on an idea. It doesn’t help that when I glance at Mom, she looks serene as she pulls the ingredients she needs. Home. Home. Home. The word repeats in my head until it loses meaning.
The strangest thing that happened when I left home was how badly I wanted my mother, who was one of the very specific reasons I was leaving in the first place.
I knew it would be asking too much for her to reassure me I was doing the right thing by leaving—Mom made it crystal clear she thought I was acting like a child and making a huge mistake—but I would have settled for a mom who at least cared enough to check in and shame me out of living from my suitcase for two months because unpacking was too overwhelming.
She never did. I’d thought she would always be there, but once I left, she faded away.
No, took herself away. That upset me, because how could she be the one to separate herself from me?
Only I was allowed to do that.
I sigh and hunker down to my work. I decide on the smell of night in the garden at my parents’ house.
I put in black water and wet sand and rocks, then cover it with the butterscotch of a ponderosa pine.
I consider adding an echo of Rafe’s cologne, that smoky light tobacco that’s nothing like a cigarette and instead is everything sexy.
I find myself reaching for a pristine and chilly iris. Mom’s scent.
She’s writing away on one of the formula sheets. A discarded pair of gloves and a capped vial sit in front of her.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
In reply, she holds out the vial. I exchange it for my own and we dip in our blotters.
It takes me a moment to absorb what my mother has done.
It’s almost identical to my own, minus the iris.
Instead—I close my eyes. Yes. She’s incorporated the Turkish rose note from the scent I wore in high school, a deconstructed version of a high-end perfume that I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on, and over it, a breath of citrus. Waipo’s lemon.
“You did the garden,” she says with satisfaction.
“What night is this?” Because somehow I know her creation is referencing a specific memory.
“It was a Saturday night. You were sixteen. Your brother was out with friends, and your father was on a business trip. We’d spent the day in the lab with Waipo and then went home and ordered a pizza to eat outside.”
“You picked fresh basil from the garden and put it on the top.” I remember that night.
“Always better than what the restaurant uses.” She waves the blotter. “Cheaper too.”
I want her to comment on the iris, or that we had the same fundamental theme, but she says nothing except, “The winner?”
I take her vial. “I’ll send samples of both and let the client decide.”
She puts away the gloves and I watch her. She hasn’t mentioned my moli once today, and I wonder if that was the thing standing in the way of us getting along all these years. If perhaps Kelsey was right and the moli is a curse, at least for me.