Chapter 33
Hua Jingjing
Qing dynasty. Jingjing traded a moli perfume to Jesuit missionary and painter Giuseppe Castiglione in exchange for a portrait of her daughter.
Heart note // Enhance generosity in others
Base note // Ylang-ylang
“Where’s your mom?” asks Ana when I come in the day after The Fight.
“She had to go back to Vancouver.”
Ana frowns. “Oh, too bad. She was fun. You’re lucky to have a mom who understands what you do. Every time I talk about the store, mine looks like she’s sucking a lemon.”
I give a noncommittal hum and go to the back room, glad my melting mascara gives me an excuse for looking terrible.
It’s raining today, and although I had an umbrella, my feet are soaked.
I should have taken the TTC, but I couldn’t deal with being crammed in with a group of damp people dripping everywhere.
I was in no mood for extra aggravation after seeing Mom off in a cab this morning.
I was rethinking the fight and considering possibly apologizing for my part in it, but she came out already dressed to tell me her flight to Vancouver was leaving in four hours and there was no need for me to see her to the airport.
That was all I needed to know, and it wiped out my regret instantly.
It was clear that without access to my moli—officially—she was done here and ready to go back to her true love, Yixiang.
That was it. No mention of our fight. No resolution or closure. I felt as if I should say something, but I didn’t know what, so I accepted her embrace and walked her out.
She didn’t look back as the cab pulled away, but I didn’t stop waving until it was out of sight.
***
That night I go to Rafe’s place when I’m done working.
I didn’t tell him about Mom when he texted earlier, and kept the chat to small things about the day that had made me feel better, but now I want the big guns of consolation.
I was the one who buried the hatchet with her right before I found out about the betrayal.
I did what he’d thought I should to fix my relationship with Mom and get to the bottom of my moli.
He has to be on my side. After all, she’s the one who left, not me.
Rafe answers the door immediately—do men ever bother with the peephole?—and looks at me with concern. He’s in comfy sweats that make him look cuddly and warm. I want to bury my face in his chest and surround myself with the tobacco smell I always associate with him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Mom.”
He opens the door wider and gestures me in. “What happened?”
My eyes are dry, which surprises me, and I tell him the whole story with the succinctness of an executive assistant reporting to a demanding boss.
My mother’s sneakiness. The nerve of her.
Then the final kicker, that after all that, my moli hadn’t worked.
Would that scene have happened if it had?
I don’t know. I want it to be yesterday, when I was with Mom and felt good for once.
Rafe takes my hand. “Do you think you’re being a bit hard on her?” he asks.
This is so not what I expected that I laugh. “No? She lied to get money for Yixiang when I explicitly said no.”
Rafe moves a shiny black pepper shaker in the shape of a movie camera along the table, brow furrowed as he thinks. “Your mom only wants to help,” he says. “She didn’t go about it in the best way, but she—”
How can he say that? “Stop. Stop now. That isn’t the point. She went behind my back when I told her not to do anything to test those samples.”
“She shouldn’t have done that, but have you considered she had no choice?”
I’m almost speechless, but not completely. “What are you saying? Of course she did.”
“She came here wanting to help you because you refused to talk to her. Then you wouldn’t try to get to the bottom of the problem. You knew how important it was to her and to your family.”
“Rafe, enough. You’re supposed to be on my side.” I glare at him. “Remember? Supportive?”
“This is supportive, because you need to hear this. Your mother is right. She has done everything to try to reconcile with you, and you’re acting like the same child you were when you left, lashing out and refusing to see how you cause most of your own problems.”
I am truly and honestly shocked he’s turned this on me.
“What?” My hand comes up to my throat like a damsel in distress, but I shake it off as my dismay turns to betrayal for the second time in two days.
I was sure Rafe would be on my team, and that finally, he was the one I could count on when nothing else went my way.
“This is your problem, Lucy. Not your mother’s.”
“I came here for comfort,” I say, doing my best to keep calm. “Not a lecture.”
“A lecture might be what you need. You have to stop pushing people away when they try to help.”
“She wasn’t helping! How many times do I have to tell you this? She was doing it for herself. For the money for the store. She lied to me when she said she wouldn’t give people those samples. Not even give them away, but sell them.”
He shakes his head slowly. “You’ve told yourself that story so often you believe it, and now it’s like you can’t see the truth. I don’t know how to talk to you about this. You’re being beyond stubborn.”
Me. I’m stubborn. How can he say that when he’s met my mother? “Sure, I’m the problem. You don’t know what she’s like. She deliberately put you in this apartment so we would get together. She said as much. That’s how much she wants me back, that she thought you would convince me to move.”
“What?” He freezes. “Lucy, you can’t be serious.”
“Why not? You don’t think she could do that?”
“Why would she? That doesn’t make sense. You’ve created this imaginary scenario to get angry about, and it has no basis in reality.”
“You don’t get it.”
“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I thought I was a work in progress, but you’re in tinfoil-hat territory.”
I want him to reassure me, to tell me that I’m being silly. But instead, he’s getting angry. He takes a deep breath. “You need to grow up, Luling.”
Hearing that name again spikes my rage. “I said to call me Lucy!”
My voice echoes in the room, and he shakes his head. “You don’t even see how much like your mother you are.”
He couldn’t have thought of a worse thing to say. It was easier when I was on my own. I don’t want this in my life. I don’t want him. “This was a mistake, to try and be friends again.”
There’s a heavy silence as we both absorb what I’ve said. “Don’t be like that,” he says softly.
My fury at my mother has fully redirected toward him. It’s not fair I’m the only one hurting. “No. You’re using things I told you against me. I trusted you, Rafe, and here you are, trying to tell me my mother is right. That I’m in the wrong.”
When he looks at me, his eyes are tired.
“No, Lucy. I’m trying to tell you that you need to stop thinking of her as the enemy and making up things that let you feel like a victim.
You need to think about what you want enough to fight for instead of running from the people who love you.
You did it with her, and you did it with me. ”
“What are you even talking about?”
“When you left, when you were twenty. Sure, I was a jerk and I didn’t handle what happened in the garden well.
But you didn’t email me, either, and when I came home, you were gone.
You didn’t leave me a note, like I had been nothing to you.
Like I was part of your childhood you abandoned with everything else, like it was worthless.
” He stops talking, both hands pressed flat on the counter. “You ran.”
“Maybe it’s because I know I’m better off alone,” I say.
“That’s what you want? Me out of your life again because you had a fight with your mom?” He sounds disbelieving. “Because you’ve decided I’m some long-con game of hers to get you out of Toronto?”
“I want you out of my life because you haven’t been in it for a decade, and since you came back, I’ve had nothing but problems.”
He rubs his chin, then his forehead, as if warding off a headache. His face looks older, and tired. “If that’s what you think.”
“I do.” I’m engulfed in a hurt so deep it burrows right through me.
“All right.” He doesn’t bother to argue. I can tell how tired he is of me. It’s almost as tired as I am of myself.
That’s it.
He watches me stumble out and shuts the door. It’s not a slam, but it’s firm enough to send its own message to confirm that whatever we had, or could have, is over.
***
The next few days go by as if they were copied and pasted. Each night when I get home, I look down the hall, wondering if I should knock on Rafe’s door. He doesn’t knock on mine, and I decide I’m not going to beg to see him.
Mom doesn’t call.
“Oh, hey, Lucy!” a voice comes from behind me, and I see my film neighbor coming out of the elevator with her arms full of groceries. “It’s been a while.”
I hurry to help her with the bags. “You’re home?” I try not to sound accusatory she’s back in her own place.
“Finally. It’s good to be back.” She smiles at me. She’s changed her hair, and it’s in loose fire-red curls around her head.
“Weirdly, I knew the guy you rented to,” I say as she drops her bags at her door, trying to move the conversation around to Rafe to find out what’s going on.
“No way. Small world, huh? Luckily, the timing worked out for both of us. He had to leave suddenly, and my shoot ended early, so I was scrambling to find somewhere to stay.”
“Well, good to have you back.” My apartment has felt lonelier than ever, so I hesitate and then take the plunge. “Would you like to come over for drinks or coffee once you’ve settled in?”
“Love to,” she says promptly. “How about Thursday?”