The two gaze at each other, and the moment sparkles with electricity.
Mother quickly rises from her spot next to Alice and waves her hand at the vacancy. “Please, Mr. Frederics, sit here.” She grabs a handful of ylang-ylang blossoms that fell from the tree and crushes them in her palm, releasing the aphrodisiacal scent.
“Mim, pour the tea.” She’s all business now. There’s love at hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if she clapped her hands and a rainbow appeared.
“We shall let you two talk privately. Please enjoy our garden as long as you wish.”
Who knows if they hear her. They’re still staring at each other.
I trot after Mother who surely has her own private talk in store for me, and it won’t be nearly as pleasant.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“A HOT TEMPER CAN WILT PETUNIAS.”
—Kohana, Aromateur, 1728
“WHAT WERE YOU thinking? You must always witness the fixing.” Mother slaps one hand against the other. Her unopened suitcase lies upon her bed. “Always. Now you understand why we have the rules? They’re to keep us from making life-altering blunders.”
“Okay, I’m sorry,” I say for the tenth time. I push aside the antique lace curtains of the turret and stare down at Mr. Frederics, helping Alice into her car one story below. “Their lives turned out okay.”
“You lost your smell! And you should never have called your aunt.”
“Who should I have called?”
“Me.”
“I did try calling you. The circuits were busy.”
She sucks in her breath, then groans. “Well, you wouldn’t have needed to call anyone had you focused on your task, instead of, what’s his name?”
“Court.” Just saying it stabs my heart.
“Yes, him. Is it over between you two?”
I nod.
“Good. Then maybe we can do something about this problem. Do you know how long it took me to make that elixir for Bryony? I had to go to forty-seven countries. Countries, Mim. By the time I got everything together, it was too late.”
I should tell her about Aunt Bryony’s nose returning, but I don’t want to yet.
The Merengue roses and chicory wave good-bye to our clients as their cars ease down the long driveway to the street. Maybe it’s a road all must walk, this margin between bitter and sweet, not just in love, but in life. The driveway tiles form a stony rainbow, which flow into the sweetbriar hedges. Inside the sweetbriar, sprightly dogbane forms an even row, followed by goldenrod, lavender, and so forth. Layers wrapping us tight as an onion.
“What if it’s too late for me, too?” I finally say.
She pulls her hair. “If that’s the case, then all of this”—she opens her hands and sweeps them around the room—“and the garden? A waste.”
“Maybe there’s more to life than just smelling plants.”
“Like what?” Her lips form a tight line.
“Who was Edward?”
She throws her arms to her sides. “She told you about him?”
I rub my finger over one of the bench’s velvet-covered buttons.
“Did you like him?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why do you carry around that bookmark? You must have sort of liked him.”
Her lips unstick. “I may have been curious about certain things that it is natural to be curious over, but I never veered from the course predestined for me.”
I may not have my nose, but I’m discovering there are other ways to tell if someone is uncomfortable, like the drift in the eyes, or the way bare toes can grip at the floorboards. “And anyway, you should be more worried about your nose than my bookmark.” She throws her hands at me. “You’re barely fifteen. Barely even used it. Do you realize you might never smell again. You’d be utterly . . .”
“What?” My throat has gone dry, but I push out the word. “Useless?”
I’m seven years old again, wandering the warehouse of spider plants. Does my mother love me? I didn’t know the answer then, and I was afraid to ask.
Mother lifts her nose a fraction and squints at a spot on the wall. Her silence punctures me like a dart to the heart.
The rumble of car engines fades, and the lovebirds leave us to our strange jungle.
The rounded windows of the turret squeeze around me more tightly than I remember. No longer does the cramped space strike me as a space capsule, but a time capsule, where nothing inside ever changes.
At least for Mother.
She doesn’t say a word as I leave her room, compounding the ache in my heart.
I hike to the farthest reaches of our property, where the plants grow wild and rabbits hop through mushroom rings wide as Hula-Hoops. A cluster of Italian cypresses solemnly commune. I flop down on the ground and stare up at their elfin-hat treetops, rising at least thirty feet.
My dream of going to high school was hatched in this very spot, a dream that I could live more than the odd, hermetical life of an aromateur. Never did I imagine those dreams would cost me so dearly.
Useless.