Chapter 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?”
“What about me?”
“What did you think married life would be like?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I never thought about it. All the women I knew got married because that’s what you did to have children and to be considered a woman. Your grandmother made sure I knew I had to have daughters, and back then, it didn’t occur to me to do it without a husband.”
“Do you regret it?”
“I could never regret anything that brought me you and your brother.” Her answer is swift and fierce.
Despite what she said earlier, I notice she says nothing about love. I ask the question no daughter wants to ask her mother: “Why are you still with Dad?”
At first, I don’t think she’s going to answer. Then she says, “I stayed for you and Eric. I thought it was better for children to have both parents.”
“You fight all the time.”
“I didn’t have a father growing up,” she says.
I’ve never thought about how this might have affected her.
Mom not having a father was simply a fact I knew without thinking too deeply about it.
There’s no point in telling her I would have preferred a split house than one filled with arguments or the frigid aftermath.
Who’s to say that would have turned out any better?
Mom made the best choices she could, and it wasn’t all bad.
Eric and I saw flashes of what a loving marriage was like, and I choose to believe those infrequent moments were better than none.
“We’re grown now,” I say, eyes trained on the wall because this is my mother I’m speaking to. “You don’t need to be with someone who doesn’t respect what you do or who you are. You don’t have to be miserable.”
“Mmm.” That’s all she says.
Rafe was right about me running. I’ve held on to my hurt for too long, the way Mom held on to a marriage that didn’t work.
I don’t want it anymore. Leaning in to Mom, I imagine the pain like a ball and mentally throw it away.
A small tendril of happiness curls around my chest. It’s time for a whole new me, and I know where that begins.
“I want to start working on my moli,” I say.
She stills. “What changed your mind?”
I shrug and don’t say anything.
“Tomorrow morning,” she says. “We’ll try again.”
That’s it—a simple acceptance of victory.
I wait for the I told you so or I knew you would come around.
She doesn’t say any of that, and I gradually relax when I realize no fight is going to result from this.
I let my shoulders drop from where they inched up, and my neck feels longer and straighter.
I made the right decision. I made it for me, but I also made it for her and for my family.
Duty won out, but I feel content with my choice.
The atmosphere is light enough that I start thinking about other scents and what I can make tomorrow. It occurs to me I never asked her about Luling33.
“My last birthday perfume,” I say. “Did you mean for it to be blank?” I’ve been thinking about this since I sprayed it.
She looks confused. “Blank? It was a green citrus.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says. “It’s grapefruit and tomato leaf with musk. I would never send you an empty bottle.”
“I’ve got it here.” I leave her drinking her tea to rummage through my closet for my Luling scents.
Her gigantic rollie is in the way, so I yank it out to grab the plastic tub.
There’s a clink of bottles when I lift the suitcase, and I wonder if Mom brought some of her own fragrances.
Curious, I unzip the bag and see the bottles at the bottom.
Strange, those aren’t the squat Yixiang bottles. They’re slender glass.
Ile de Grasse bottles.
Suspicious enough to not care about Mom’s privacy—and it’s not like I’m going through her purse, which is completely verboten—I pick one up and see the huo symbol stuck to the side.
The other has one as well. There’s no question that I’m going to smell them, although I know what I’m going to find the moment my fingers lift the cap.
I’m right. The first is the fragrance I brought to Vancouver as my proof, and the second, the warm incense Mom insisted I make.
Both bottles are half empty.
As if on autopilot, I walk back out to the living room holding them in my fists like dumbbells. I don’t bother with unnecessarily redundant preliminary questions, like What is this? There’s only one thing I need to know, and I cut right to it.
“What have you done?”
Mom has been sitting with her eyes closed, and she opens them to see me in front of her with the perfume bottles.
“Testing your moli.” At least she doesn’t bother to deflect with accusations of invading her privacy, but such a straight answer demonstrates a mind-blowing lack of shame. All the intimacy of the evening vanishes.
“What do you mean? Have you been sneaking it to my clients?” I’m not at the point where I can get angry, not yet, but I can feel the first gusts of it on the horizon. “Is that why you liked being at work with me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Luling. Do you think I’d do that after your Kelsey debacle?”
The way she’s minimizing what’s going on causes those winds to strengthen enough for the clouds to come roiling in. “I’m going to ask again, what have you done?”
Her expression remains unruffled. “I asked some of our oldest and most loyal clients if they would test it. I told them the truth, so there’s no need to accuse me of trickery or worse.”
“What truth?” The wind grows to a squall, lashing the waves into small white crests.
“That we didn’t know what was going on and it may or may not summon their true love. Three were willing to take the chance, and I decanted samples from your two fragrances for them to try.”
I’m disgusted my first and most urgent need is to find out the result of this utter betrayal. The look on Mom’s face answers the question that lies between us, and she tells me without waiting.
“None of them found their true love, Luling.”
“That’s impossible.” The denial comes out before I can stop it. “Impossible. Kelsey’s clients did. I did everything I was supposed to. Those are moli fragrances. They might need more time.”
Mom only shakes her head. Her doubt has been proven. I look at her carefully. “Did you give them the samples to test? Or sell them?”
She looks insulted. “I didn’t charge what I would have, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Did you give them away for free?” It’s like all my blood has rushed to my hands, leaving them overheated and heavy, while my starved muscles shake.
Her expression, along with my knowledge of the kind of woman my mother is, answers me.
“You sold them,” I say.