My mother doesn’t love me. I am like one of her garden tools, and now that I am broken, she no longer has a need for me. For her, an aromateur only becomes great by forsaking all personal attachments, not just romantic ones. Even one’s own flesh and blood.
I pick up a pinecone, and begin to count all the spiral patterns whirling in one direction—thirteen, and then the other—eight. Both Fibonacci numbers. A bitter laugh stalls in my throat. Well, now I have all the time to study as much math as I want. But that isn’t what I want. Suddenly, I’m sniffing, then snuffling, and then the spider thread of my resolve breaks, and I’m weeping into my sleeves.
I will live with Aunt Bryony. Mother can find someone else. My presence will just remind her of my failure, or her failure as she might see it, to safeguard my nose. I nearly laugh out loud. I thought I was choosing my nose, lying to Court about not liking him. But love fell into my path, and I tried, but I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough.
I hike back to the house, passing the workshop. Mother’s form is framed by the window. The sight of her, already back to work, puts a hot stone in my sandal. She’s still young; she could have another daughter if she wanted. Maybe the next one will be a keeper.
The sun has already set. I’m still so keyed up, I hardly feel the drop in temperature. I stomp into the house, and dial Aunt Bryony’s number. She’s probably still in the air, but I’ll leave her a message. Then I’ll start packing.
The phone rings, and then I hear a click. But instead of going to voicemail, someone answers. “Hello?”
“Aunt Bryony?”
“Hi, dear.”
“I really need to speak with you.”
“In person or on the phone?”
“Er, aren’t you in Hawaii?”
“I’m at the bottom of Parrot Hill. I didn’t want your mother to smell me before I could decide whether I wanted to come back.”
She never left. “I’ll see you in five minutes then.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
“WHETHER A PLANT FEELS PAIN WHEN CUT IS
OPEN TO DEBATE. WHAT IS NOT, IS THAT PRUNING IS
NECESSARY IF THE PLANT IS TO THRIVE.”
—Champa, Aromateur, 1778
AS SOON AS Aunt Bryony hauls herself out of the car, I hug her close. “You didn’t leave.”
“I rescheduled the jet for tomorrow. Decided to visit Meyer Botanical. I haven’t been there in years.” She glances at our rounded front door. “And I figured it wasn’t going so well here, but, well, I didn’t want to interfere.”
The door opens and Mother marches out, wearing her dark woolen jacket from Mongolia with the embroidered edging. “You.”
“Good to see you, too, sister.”
They’re so alike, even I would have a hard time telling them apart were it not for the clothes and the opposing gray streaks.
Mother crosses her arms in front of her, as tightly closed as an iris bud. My aunt looks her up and down. “Well, I have a few pounds on you. But a few less wrinkles, too. You haven’t been using the cornflower, I can tell.”
“I’m sorry you had to come all this way to tell me that. Now go back to your tropical paradise and your boatman with the bad hair. I’ve already covered for you with Alice Sawyer, just like I always do, though God knows why. Good-bye.”
“Mother!”
Mother pivots around, but instead of going back inside the house, she marches through the gate to the garden.
Aunt Bryony runs her hand down my bare arm, which has started to goose bump. “You smell like you’ve been hit by a truck of swamp mud and sour strawberries.”
I almost miss the smell of my own anxiety. My throat begins to stick again and I can’t answer.
She puts an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go talk to her.”
Mother’s wearing her Thursday gloves, even though it’s Monday, and pruning a rosebush.
“Put the clippers down, Dahli. I trimmed it yesterday.”
“I can see that. This is not a forty-five-degree angle.” Mother points at one of the clipped branches.
“You’re welcome.”
“For what? For sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”
Aunt Bryony folds her arms. “I have every right to be here. Mother left the garden to us both.”
“How convenient of you to reclaim your interest now, after I’ve spent the last twenty years working this soil by myself.” Mother doesn’t find anywhere to prune so she repockets her clippers. “Where were you that spring when the garden flooded and I had to replant everything? My fingers bled every night for a year.”
I’ve never seen Mother so mad. She’s almost spitting. She sways slightly as she glares through the rosebush. Cursing, she storms over to a basket of tools and removes a shovel. We follow her as she marches twenty paces in another direction.
Mother sinks to her knees, and dirt starts flying.
“I’m sorry,” says Aunt Bryony in a gentler voice.
“You abandoned me.”
“You told me I was useless. I lost my smell, remember?” Aunt Bryony slides her eyes to me. Then she kneels down beside Mother, who’s still flinging dirt.
“I needed my sister,” huffs Mother. “Not a nose. I have one of those, remember?”