Madame Mirabou's School of Love

by Barbara Samuel

  I raised my eyes. “I went to Doherty High School.”

  “So did I,” he said.

  “I know. You played basketball. They gave you a scholarship or something, right? That was the worst year for football, but a great one for basketball, and largely because of you.”

  He half smiled. His best expression, so surprising in that serious face, and it lit up his eyes, gave him a practically mischievous look. “You had your eye on me, huh?”

  “Maybe,” I said. But it had gone way beyond that—God, I’d lusted after him with a kind of narcotic deliriousness I couldn’t admit to anyone. Not then. Not in our school, not a white girl lusting after a black boy. The black girls would have kicked my ass.

  But seeing him again, I remembered it instantly, the way he moved through the halls, taller than anyone, his Afro combed out to twice the size of his head, all fluffy and soft-looking. He carried a comb in his back pocket to keep it neat. It was never squished on one side. He loped, like a tiger or something, and those slightly hooded eyes gave him a faintly dangerous look, as if he were sizing up the prey skittering before him. Everyone got out of his way. He sliced through the halls cleanly, never stopping to chitchat, to smile at a girl, anything. Once in a while, he’d raise his chin slightly at a friend, stop to open a door for a teacher. Only once had he ever spoken to me, when I found myself startled to absolute flustered blushing heat to realize he was right behind me in line at the cafeteria. I nearly couldn’t breathe for the scent of him, cleaner, less spicy than I had imagined, and a thousand times more narcotic. I stared at his giant hands, the clean oval nails, the length of his thumbs, the gleaming red-mahogany shade of his silky-looking skin, and just wanted to faint.

  It was a bad crush.

  He said, “Excuse me. Would you mind handing me that last piece of pie?” His voice was much lower than I expected. His enunciation as precise as his daughter’s would be twenty years later.

  Startled, I looked up at him. Into light brown eyes flecked with gold, looking right down at me. “Pardon?”

  He looked at my mouth. Back up to my eyes, and for the most fleeting of seconds, a boy’s quick peek, to my breasts, unbound as always beneath my seventies peasant blouse, my nipples no doubt perfectly erect, since my ears were as hot as the steam table right in front of us.

  The boy who would become my husband smiled, ever so slightly. “Can you hand me that pie? Unless you wanted it?”

  I swallowed. “Uh. No. Sure.” I reached for it, nearly overturned a line of iced teas, slammed it onto his tray.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Sure.” I felt his eyes on the side of my neck, glanced back up, snared in his eyes for one long, burning, melodramatic moment, and then the woman behind the cash register bellowed, “Next!” and I had to scramble to pay.

  Which is what was in my memory the first night we went out and he’d cleaned his car for me, and worn a sports coat, and took me to dinner, real dinner, at Castaways restaurant. He told me about his dreams, his big plans, his eyes glowing. He wanted to build an empire. I wanted to go to Grasse to study perfume. By the time we headed back out to his car, we were in love. He took me back to his apartment and poured white wine. His hands smelled of the lemons he’d squeezed onto his crab, and his skin was silkier than anything I’d ever felt, and he kissed like he had nothing else to do for the rest of his life.

  We were inseparable afterward, and married almost exactly two years later.

  Thinking of it, so many years later, I could still remember how it was that night. That perfect laughter, that sweet dance. He loved me, almost instantly, and I loved him back.

  And yet, here I was, lying in my bed with a vague hangover, that slight tightness over my brows, and a creeping sense of disappointment in—what? Myself? The world? For a long time, I didn’t move, just laid there, cocooned in my quilts and pillows.

  I could tell the sky was overcast because there was no glare of sunlight against the blinds. Wind blasted against the building, catching a loose piece of shingling that whistled sharply, then abruptly stopping. Between gusts, it seemed almost eerily quiet. No dogs barked. No child clattered dishes in the sink. No voices came from a man on the phone in the other room. No televisions, left on by someone going to answer a phone, played to empty sofas.

  Nothing. Just that wind blasting the windows. I curled up closer under the quilts, realigned the pillows. There was nothing to do today. I might as well sleep.

  But even with a touch of a wine headache, I couldn’t stay there very long. A lark I was born, my mother used to say grumpily, peering at me through eyes smeared with old eyeliner as she clasped her mug of strong, hot coffee; a lark I remain.

  Which is the only thing that has remained the same these days. As I laid there, wishing I had the capacity, like my sister Gina, to sleep through the trials and tribulations of life, I felt an overwhelming sense of disconnectedness.

  Whose life was this?

  How did I end up here? Shouldn’t I be fixing someone’s breakfast? Shouldn’t I be going to a soccer game or washing clothes or cursing the mess someone left in my kitchen or planning what I was going to do with the garden?

  Instead, I was lying in bed by myself in an unbelievably still apartment, with a hangover, and there wasn’t even any sound of traffic outside.

  It finally dawned on me that so much silence was a little odd. I flung back the covers and winced at the soreness in my legs, arms, back—oh, and feet!—as I stood up. My feet might as well have been clubs, and my hips ached as I hobbled across the room. The job at Annie’s was going to take some getting used to.

  Peeking through the slats of the blinds, I discovered there was snow blowing like Antarctica across the deserted landscape. A lone car crawled along the snowpacked street. The parking lot across the way held barely a handful of vehicles, most the sturdy four-wheelers that could actually get through the mess, Outbacks and Jeeps and SUVs. I thought of Roxanne’s plans for a walk in Ute Valley Park this morning and shook my head. We wouldn’t be going anywhere today.

  Not that I particularly felt like it. I hobbled to the bathroom, felt more sore muscles down my spine as I bent over to brush my teeth, limped into the kitchen to make my coffee.

  The sight of all the furniture startled me all over again. The table was littered with the detritus of the night before, glasses with red wine pooled at the bottom in a sticky mass, the empty bottles standing in mute commentary to our wine-soaked musings.

  It depressed me. Terribly. As the coffee brewed, I cleared off the messy table with a sense of displacement. I didn’t belong here! This was not my world!

  But I had no idea what my new life was, where I did belong. The disconnectedness felt like a black hole in the middle of my chest.

  Over the breakfast bar, I could see through the patio windows. To snow blowing hard across the morning landscape, obscuring everything. I would not be leaving, and even if I did muddle out into the blizzard, there would be nothing open, no place to go.

  Trapped! What in the world could I do with myself?

  And into the chaotic, frenetic churn of my thoughts came a word: “perfume.”

  It had been awhile. Something in me broke with the divorce, as if all the things I loved were collected in the same corner of my heart, and it was smashed to bits, along with everything inside.

  But my love of perfume had been there longer than my husband or my daughter. Longer than I could even remember, really. From the time I was small, I noticed the way things smelled. The rubbery burn of tennis shoes in my uncle’s bedroom. The ink and man-sweat of my mother’s boyfriend when he came home from work as a pressman at the local newspaper, which was very different from the delicate soap-sweat tang of my mother when she came in from the garden. I liked a corner of our stairs, which smelled of dust and glue and grass my sisters and I tracked in from the backyard. There was a sharp juniper bush outside my bedroom, a scent I disliked, and I’d close my window on summer days when the sun heated it and burne
d it into my bedroom. I have since learned I was quite ill with the measles the summer I was three years old. I must have wanted to scream, trapped by that smell in that small bedroom, unable to escape. I don’t really remember it. And perhaps it is the memory of illness that I associate with juniper.

  As coffee brewed in the kitchen, I went into the study and pulled out my perfume journal, bound in heavy leather binding with pale green lined pages that gave off the scent of a thousand experiments. Riffling through it, I caught a hint of tangerine, another of musk. It looked like a grimoire, as if it would contain magic spells and potions.

  I’d been writing recipes in it since I was nine, when I received a chemistry set and the journal one Christmas. The earliest entry was a record of making perfume from the chemistry set, which had outlined the need for recording steps and observations.

  Written in a loopy schoolgirl hand, it said:

  PREFUME EXPERIMENT #1

  Ingredints: 1 cup flower bloossoms. 1⁄2 cup alcohol. Cheesecloth. Soak flwrs in alchol overnight.

  Results: I tried to get my mom to take me to Safeway for roses, but she said no, so I used some daisies that didn’t have much smell. STINKS!

  PERFUME EXPERIMENT #2

  Ingredints: 1 c carnations. 1⁄2 cup vodka, cheesecloth. Soak overnight.

  Results: Much MUCH BETTER! My mom suggested putting a drop of vanilla in and it was nice!!

  Reading the early notes always made me feel hopeful, alive. I’d been so heedless in those days, so ready to smell anything. That carnation/vanilla combination was the first one that hooked me, and I’d spent the following summer trying to find the best method of extracting the scent of roses from their petals.

  As I turned the pages, one part of my brain was dancing with the perfume I hadn’t realized I had been thinking about for days, a scent that had gelled last night.

  How could I replicate the poker game with Roxanne and Wanda? Not an actual, specific reproduction, but something that carried the spiritual essence of it? A snowy spring night with wine and women and cards?

  Camaraderie, I thought. The heavy grape smell of wine. A hint of smoke from Roxanne’s cigarette breaks. The lurking promise of snow in the air. Pizza and cheese. The laughter of women.

  And don’t forget Roxanne’s Ode to Penises. Alone in my apartment, I laughed. From the study in the closet, I brought out my perfumery, housed in a wooden box, a miniature version of a perfumer’s organ that opens up to showcase the rows of essential oils, absolutes, tinctures. I keep thinking it’s probably time for a new box, but I’ve had this one for so many years now that replacing it would almost be a sacrilege.

  And, too, Daniel made it for me for Christmas the first year we were married, an act of love that honored my passion. It was hinged, folding out in thirds to reveal the tiers designed to hold the small bottles of common and rare substances required for the perfumer’s art.

  I treasured it even more now, as it had survived the explosion and only three bottles were broken. Me, the perfumery, and the computer were all in the corner of the house farthest from the furnace, and closest to the street. The room survived almost entirely intact, though much of the furniture was ruined by water from the fire hoses or smelled so strongly of smoke they were a complete loss. My laptop computer was knocked to the floor, had been protected by the desk. The perfumery supplies, along with my precious notebook, were tucked in a closet, and fell on a pile of blankets. Only three bottles broke—lime, fir, and a nearly empty bottle of oakmoss. The trio soaked the wood and made it smell of a particularly pungent chypres, which I liked.

  I opened the box on the counter. Within were thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of oils, absolutes, solids, resins. Most of the women I knew in my old neighborhood collected something crafty—fabric for quilts or cross-stitch patterns; yarns and needles for knitting or crocheting; candle molds; or whatever. I never had the knack for needlework, but I had my magical box of potions, and I added to it gleefully as the years of my marriage housed me. Dan always made a comfortable living, even in the beginning, and eventually made quite a lot. There was always enough that he would not notice the amounts I paid out to various markets for my precious supplies.

  And they were not inexpensive. A half ounce of many absolutes ran $20–$40; carnation absolute ran to $100 per quarter ounce, and it was something of a signature note for me. Compared to many of the hobbies of my friends, that was nothing. His prosperity allowed me to amass a top-tier collection of essences, to seek out rare and hideously expensive items, and indulge experiments with beautiful and lovely and odd. Blue chamomile and blood orange and civet. Rose absolutes from Turkey and France and Morocco; patchouli from India; vanilla from Madagascar. There were bottles of lighter notes like lime and grapefruit; florals like orange flower and jasmine; herb and spice essences like tarragon and black pepper and clove.

  Beyond the essences, there were drawers of various sizes to hold other supplies. Glass eyedroppers and small brown glass bottles for mixing; grape seed and jojoba and sesame oils; rubbing alcohol and perfume alcohol; blotter strips for testing; and test tubes. Pulling out bottles of absolutes and concretes from the box, I lined them up on the counter.

  I measured perfume alcohol into a beaker and nestled it securely in its metal stand. Something earthy and female for the base note; twenty-five drops of a custom blend of civet and oakmoss, very strong, even unpleasant until it was mixed with other elements. As the dark essence dropped into the alcohol, it unfurled like a living being, lacing the clear liquid with its power. I inhaled happily, a sense of tension easing away from my neck. Under my breath, I started to hum—the standard perfume sound track, a breathy bit of Bach.

  Into the mix of base notes and perfume alcohol, I added a few drops—a very few—of patchouli, a very dark brown, and let the notes blend for a minute or two. As the elements swirled around one another, I made a cup of coffee, narrowed my eyes, and bent to the beaker to wave my nose over the combination.

  From there it was a very instinctive thing. I had an idea of what I wanted, but opened several bottles and closed them again without using the essences contained within—all too tame. This would not be a simple or easy perfume, and I’d rather ruin one with recklessness than to be too cautious. And for this, yes, it needed to be intense.

  Into a second beaker, I mixed Moroccan rose, a waft of bergamot, and paused for a moment, trying to let my subconscious toss up the element I could almost sense. Grapefruit? Hmm. Not quite. Ylang ylang. Yes. I let them blend a little, breathing in the oxygen and crispness of snowy morning air. Opening to a clean page in my perfume journal, I made several notes on both base and heart notes, then blended the two combinations together in the first beaker.

  I bent in to smell it, and reared back. Whew! Very intense, and not one that would even out easily. Carefully, I added lavender, one of the greatest perfume absolutes of all, for the work it could do— sometimes sweeten something too bitter, sometimes soften a hard-edged scent; sometimes, as in the case of such strong others, it became nearly invisible itself, while illuminating the rest of the blend, like sunlight falling on a forest floor.

  I smelled it. Perfect. I dipped in a strip of blotter paper, noted the change, walked away for an hour, and read a book while it breathed. To finish, I added top notes of spicy clove to give it Roxanne’s laughter, and a splash of ginger. Oddly, carnation asked to be included, and I hesitated, then did it anyway. It was something of a signature, my pleasure in carnation. It was elusive, like memory, not always favored.

  I closed my eyes and breathed it in, smiling at the heady mix. Not just anyone could wear such a perfume. Not everyone would even find it appealing, but I liked its complexity.

  It was also missing something. I sensed it as a hexagon of emptiness near the edges. A top note, then, but though I squinted and thought, smelled it again and tried to let the answer float in, I wasn’t sure. Heaven knew I’d ruined a great many perfumes by adding one drop, one element too much. Not this time.


  Heady, I wrote in my journal. Almost dangerous, like Roxanne. Like drinking three bottles of wine, one for each of us, except I think Wanda only drank two glasses, so how much did we have? A lot.

  For now, I’d let it rest. Glancing at the clock, I noted the time, poured a cup of coffee, and went to check my e-mail. I’d come back in an hour or so and check it again.

  While I waited for the computer to warm up, I drank my coffee and looked at the swirling snow. Amazing. There was probably three feet of snow in drifts across the road, and I knew from experience that once the skies cleared, the snow itself would be melted in a day or two.

  Waiting in my mailbox were six actual e-mails. Three were obvious spam, which I deleted. One was from Giselle, one was from a name I didn’t recognize. One was from my sister Molly in Hawaii, forwarding pictures of my nieces. THOUGHT YOU’D LIKE THESE! said the subject. I opened them and smiled at their freckled noses.

  Eagerly, I opened the one from Giselle, written from her Hot-mail account.

  TO: nikki@scentofhours.com

  FROM: gisellegiraffe@hotmail.com

  SUBJECT: hi from London!!!

  Hi, Mom! Not a lot of time left. I’m writing from a café and Dad’s going to be back to pick me up any second. I’m sitting here listening to all the accents around me and you’d just love it so much I can’t stand it that you’re not here! I’m sending some pics I thought you’d like. London is AMAZING!!!!! I’d like to live here someday, maybe. Thinking of you lots and I’m bringing back presents. Love you!

  Giselle

  I scrolled down to look at the photos. There was Giselle, tall and skinny, her hair as curly as mine and just as unruly, blowing out from beneath a striped hat. She stood before the Tower of London with her father, mustached and looking happy and trim. His new wife must have snapped the picture.

  An unexpected pinch of hatred stabbed my chest, and I clicked the X to close the e-mail before the evil feeling took over my body.