Chapter 36 #2
“How about we get all the sharing out of the way first?” She gives me a look. “So no one gets out of talking.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I protest.
“Good. Then go.”
I tell her about Kelsey and Mom and Rafe, and all she does is nod. Then I tell her about the register, and her eyes widen in recognition. “That’s what your grandma sent.”
“It’s a history of my family. I found out something yesterday. About myself.”
She looks sympathetic. “Whatever it is, I can say with assurance I’ll still be your friend.”
“I left home because I thought I didn’t have my power, but I do. It’s not true love I can bring. I can bring someone’s heart’s desire. The thing they want most in the world. It might be love or it might be something else.”
“Holy shit, like a genie?” She looks impressed, and this makes me laugh.
“I guess so, but with only one wish. But I think the thing my perfume summons isn’t what the person necessarily expects to happen.”
“You do a bait and switch?” Her eyebrows rise in disapproval.
“Yes, but also no?” I take a sip of wine. “Like they think they want love, except what they actually want is companionship.”
“They’ve been brainwashed into thinking they can only get that through a romantic partner,” she finishes.
“I wouldn’t say brainwashed, but basically. Or they can’t admit it to themselves for some reason.” I eat some of the pappardelle. “Your turn.”
“Your bit was just getting good,” she complains.
“So was yours.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Ana shrugs. “It’s anticlimactic, but that’s family for you. I know the issues, but I’m stuck. This is why I dumped my last therapist. All she wanted to do was talk, but that didn’t change anything about my situation, only how I viewed it.”
She’s right. “We can’t leave it unresolved like this. Let’s pick one thing we need to address and then tell each other what we’re going to do about it.”
She considers this. “Like accountability partners, but for life instead of the gym. I like it. What’s your thing?”
“You go first.”
“No, you.”
“Fine.” I think of the mess I’ve made of everything. It might be unfair to say, but all this started with my moli. That’s where my answer will begin, although I know it won’t be the end.
Aiai wrote that she’d once asked Empress Wu why only the rich should be able to afford love, and the empress had laughed and called her a village girl with a village girl mind.
Aiai was the one who saw clearly, and like the interpretation of her power, her goals were warped over the years by generations of women driven by fear and perhaps greed, who limited their moli sales to those who could pay the most. I didn’t like that.
“I’m going to make a perfume,” I say slowly, waiting for Ana to roll her eyes and ask how that’s going to solve anything.
She only nods. “I got you.”
“I don’t know how, but it will be a perfume to make a difference,” I say.
“I know it will.”
“What about you?”
She sighs. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Every shift starts with a small decision,” I say. “It doesn’t have to be big.”
Ana chews her lip. “I don’t like it when Mom makes fun of the store,” she says. “I could tell her it hurts my feelings instead of laughing it off like it doesn’t bother me. Why do I feel like a little kid saying this?”
“Maybe because moms kind of make us feel like kids no matter how old we are?” There’s a reason I started with making a world-changing perfume instead of talking to my mother.
She waves her hands. “On today’s episode of what I should talk about in therapy but hate to get that vulnerable about: mommy issues!”
We laugh.
“You could be right,” she says. “When do you think we move past wanting our parents’ approval?”
“Death?”
“That’s depressing.”
“Yeah. It doesn’t mean we can’t move on, though.”
“I can do it,” she says. “I can tell her how I feel.”
“When are you going to do it?”
She glances at her phone. “I’m due there to pick up a package, and I’ve had enough liquid courage that it might be tonight.”
“If you do your thing, I’ll get started on mine.”
She leans over to give me a hug, the scent I made for her birthday puffing out in a breath from her clothes. “I’m glad we’re friends.”
“Me too.”
Ana thinks for a second. “Your witch thing.”
“We call the power moli, but what about it?”
“What if someone’s heart’s desire is, like, a lifetime’s supply of Caramilk bars or Jolly Ranchers or something?”
“Why would that be someone’s greatest desire?”
“I don’t know. People are weird.”
I shrug. “Then I guess they get ready to deal with the cavities.”
Ana looks awestruck. “You truly are magical.”
We laugh, then pay and head out, her to her mother’s and me to the lab, where I poke through my materials. I run my finger along the white label stuck to the iris accord. I need to tell Mom about what I’ve discovered, but much like my other moli news, it’s something I need to do in person.
My hand keeps going along the vials. Tobacco Absolute 10% dil alc. After dipping in a blotter, I pull it out to sniff Rafe.
I miss him. I miss being with him. Here, alone, I can see he was right. I was acting like a child and, like a child, broke the things I cared about because I was hurt and lonely. Unlike a child, I need to find a way to fix this.
Rafe said that moment in the garden when we were twenty had helped him understand he needed to change his thinking. It’s like I’m having my moment now, years later, and I have a lot of learning to do.
I put the blotter aside, then bring it back.
I had a glimpse of what I wanted my new fragrance to be when Ana laughed with me.
Part of what makes joy so precious is the knowledge that it’s fleeting.
I wonder how all those who found their heart’s desire coped with it.
It could never be the perfect happy ending, because there’s always more work to be done and choices to be made.
Yet it’s the work that makes it worthwhile.
I put the tobacco to the side. I’m not going to use it, but it will be my private reminder that a sacrifice can be worth the result.
Time passes. I leave the table to walk around the dark store and then outside to breathe in the night air. I’ve been sniffing and writing notes for at least two hours straight, and I need to rest my fatigued nose.
I pluck a few weeds out of the garden under the streetlights and listen to people walking by on their way home from dinner debating whether or not they could survive a zombie apocalypse.
(Their consensus is it depends on the kind of zombie, but urban areas would be a slaughterhouse.) Then I go back into the store to assess what I have so far.
The lure of working, of creating, is pulling me under, and I gratefully let it happen so I can stop thinking.
This is a gift my mother gave me.