Both Court and his father turn around. Spotting me, Court stops glowering and his jaw slackens.
Mr. Sawyer combs his thick fingers into his hair. “Alice, I’m sorry.” He waves his hand at the mess. “I shouldn’t have smashed it. It was the first thing I grabbed. I just came to see if I could take Melanie out for pancakes. That’s all I wanted to do.”
“Just go,” she says, her voice brittle. “Melanie’s tired anyway. I’ll give her your regrets.”
Mr. Sawyer begins a loud protest, not caring that he has an audience. Kali casts me a meaningful look and clocks her head toward the front door.
“We’ll visit another time,” I say to Alice’s back. For now, I have everything I need.
“Bye, Alice.”
Alice is arguing with her ex-husband and doesn’t hear us. Slowly, we back away from the melee, and fetch our bikes.
“You better PUF that woman soon. She doesn’t deserve more grief,” says Kali once we pass the neighborhood gate.
“I’m working on it.” Pushing Court’s astonished expression out of my mind, I mentally flip through the ingredients I will need for his mother. Alice’s scent contains about a hundred different notes. Just my luck she comes from well-traveled stock. The more genetic variation, the more complex the scent. I already matched the strongest notes, but I will need to sniff around our garden for the others. Any missing components will require a trip to Meyer Botanical Garden, forty miles away in San Francisco, where we can usually find what we need.
One particular heart note I never smelled before. The note is soft and salty, reminiscent of miso soup. Of the eighty-one countries I’ve visited with Mother collecting botanicals, I don’t remember encountering anything like it. While you can sometimes fudge the top notes, the heart notes are essential to an elixir—the secret in the sauce.
That miso note will be a problem.
EIGHT
“WE DO NOT PICK OUR NOSES. OUR NOSES PICK US.”
—Calla, Aromateur, 1866
KALI AND I spend the rest of the weekend raking, composting, and pruning. Whenever Mother’s not watching, I sniff-match, pairing plant smells to the notes I recognized in Alice’s scentprint. I roam our entire three acres for corresponding scents, from tropicals and subtropicals to conifer and deciduous. Since the warm air tends to accumulate in the center of our property, that’s where we nurse the succulents, while evergreens with their sparkling notes crowd the cooler north side. I wouldn’t have to log so many steps if we just kept track of all the notes that went with each plant, instead of doing everything the long way, one sniff at a time.
By the time the sun nestles into the folds of the mountains Sunday evening, I’ve sniffed every note in our garden, but am still short a third of Alice’s ninety-eight notes. I won’t cut anything here until I have the rest of what I need in hand. Plants must be cut close to the time they’ll be used.
I untangle myself from the branches of a hemlock tree and brush cobweb moss off my hair. I’ll definitely need a trip to Meyer Botanical Garden. It’s closed on Mondays, which means I won’t be able to get there until Tuesday.
Remembering one last plant, I take off toward the back of our lot where a natural spring runs down Parrot Hill and collects in a pond. Tabitha the chicken follows me, her salt-and-pepper feathers puffed out around her body. The sky is the color of irises, and a wet chill sits on my skin. I kneel at the edge of the pond and stretch as far as I can toward the water lilies growing in the middle, straining for even a whiff of Alice’s miso note. I should’ve smelled them before they closed up for the night. Under full sunlight, water lily emits a heady, almost rotten perfume, but now I can barely find a thread.
My nose begins to bleed from the strain, both nostrils. It happens, usually, when I’m not getting enough sleep. I pinch its bump between my fingers and fall back onto my haunches. Tabitha scratches at the ground beside me. Mother works hard, but she’s careful never to overwork her sniffer. To do otherwise leads to a headache and nose fatigue. But I’d gladly take those over what will happen if I don’t undo my mistake.
After the bleeding stops, I try again, closing my eyes, and inhaling more gently this time. I filter out the iron scent of dried blood and zero in on the scent of the water lilies. Past the syrupy sweetness to the core, I find a medley of salty-sweet innards, but no miso.
With a deep sigh, I pick up Tabitha and head back to the workshop. I stroke the white plumage on top of her head, soft as a dandelion puff, and it washes away some of my anxiety. Tabitha clucks softly, head swiveling back and forth.