The Perfume

by Caroline B. Cooney

  And Dove, too, had speech! A mouth, lips, tongue, vocal chords, throat. Thank you! thought Dove. Thank you for all the body has and does and is!

  Dove looked down at herself, at the miracle that is the human body. She curled her fingers with ecstasy: The fingers belonged to her, she could control them, they would obey! Dove could not help laughing a little, joy pouring out of her. The body was awesome! To be alive again, to have flesh as well as soul—it was the most beautiful thing on earth.

  I’m okay, she thought, I’m back. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I’m here again. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!

  Don’t think you’ve won, said Wing, fierce and sharp and full of hate.

  Dove was cocky. She had come back in time. And why not? she said snippily to Wing. I have.

  You’ve won this time. But not the next.

  You won’t be coming back, said Dove. I’m too strong. Too here.

  Yes, I will come back. Hesta still has the VENOM.

  I’m not friends with Hesta, Dove pointed out.

  You’re in class with Hesta, though.

  And you’re not! So there!

  Timmy said, “Dove? Are you okay?”

  Dove froze. Had she been talking out loud? Had Wing been using her mouth at the same time? Had Timmy listened to their conversation?

  Nobody would understand that there were two living in the head. Nobody would be sympathetic.

  She stole a glance at Timmy. He looked freaked.

  Which of us is the freak? thought Dove. Am I so far gone that I can’t even tell if I’m talking out loud? Have I become one of those weird people sleeping on streets, muttering to myself, and jerking at my hair and my clothes? “I’m fine, Timmy. Just glad we’re down.”

  “We’re not down, Dove,” said Timmy quietly.

  Dove had been so busy smelling and breathing, she had forgotten to look at anything. There was as much sky around her as before. She was as wrapped in blue as if she had been swimming in the Mediterranean.

  Or the Nile.

  Timmy was not looking at her with affection. He was looking at her with anxiety.

  No …

  … with fear.

  Inside the head, Wing laughed and laughed. Timmy half knew, she said. He half realized I was going to push him. He can’t quite believe it. But he can’t quite unbelieve it, either. Look at his eyes, Dovey. See how wrecked they are. He’s scared, Dovey. Of us.

  Wing reveled in it. She had scared somebody within an inch of his life and it had made her happy.

  Only pushing Timmy out would have made her happier.

  When they finally landed, and the family in whose yard they landed came running out, thrilled to see their first hot air balloon, telling Timmy of course he could use their phone to call the truck to come get them. … Dove knew that Wing had ended the tiny romance.

  Timmy was afraid of her.

  Timmy—whose hand she wanted to hold, whose lips she wanted to kiss—Timmy kept carefully to the far side of the room, and the far side of the truck cab that carried them back to the fairgrounds, and when they were going home, kept also to the far side of his car.

  Neither person said a word the whole drive back to Sky Change Hills Condominiums. Radios are so useful. The noise, the patter of the deejay, the melody and the percussion and the synthesized chords. These took the place of romance and conversation. The radio played on and on.

  Timmy dropped her off in front of the complex.

  “Wouldn’t you like to come in?” said Dove. She tacked a nervous smile on her face. “I mean, we left so early for the liftoff that it’s not even noon yet. Let’s have a sandwich.”

  Timmy tacked a nervous smile on his face, too.

  “No, thanks,” he said. Politely. Much too politely. “Got to go home and mow the lawn.”

  “Oh, I forgot lawns,” said Dove. “Living in a condo complex, you forget stuff like that.”

  “Yeah, you do,” said Timmy. He kept both hands on the wheel. He was waiting for her to get out and shut the door so he could drive away.

  Please don’t let this be over! thought Dove. Let me think of something interesting to say, something that will make him laugh, and like me again! She swallowed. Some of the thoughts in her head belonged to Wing. Oh, the unfairness of it! She did not even dare to speak, lest Wing’s words emerge, lest Wing’s terrible personality come out of Dove’s throat like tainted water.

  Timmy sat very still.

  She put her hand on the door handle and pulled the small metal lever toward herself, and the door opened and the automatic seat belt slid neatly away from her chest. Timmy said, “Well, thanks for coming. Have a nice weekend. See you around.”

  She got a grip on her thoughts and her mouth. With great care she kept Wing from speaking for her. “Thank you for asking me,” Dove said. “It was very exciting.” Please, Timmy, look at me? See Dove in this body and not Wing? Please?

  But he did not look up and he did not see Dove. He drove away with controlled care, as if revving the motor or shifting gears too fast would form a net around him, condemning him to the personality he had felt in the wicker basket.

  Dove stood on the sidewalk outside the complex.

  She was exhausted.

  Her cramped, crowded, aching head felt alone. She did not have the slightest sense of Wing. Am I alone in here after all? thought Dove. I don’t feel occupied. I don’t think she’s in there.

  Dove was so tired she felt as if Wing must have taken all the energy when she left. She dissolved again, thought Dove, she’s vanished a second time. I wonder where she went.

  Timmy’s car turned the corner. He was out of sight now. There was hard-packed earth between him and the girl who might—he half believed—have tried to toss him out a thousand feet above the ground. Timmy shifted almost violently into third, tires crying out against the hot pavement, then wrenched the gears into fourth, gravel flicking up from under his tires. Dove could hear the pebbles dancing, long after Timmy’s car was gone.

  She dragged herself into the complex.

  The rows of apartments seemed terribly far away and small. They might have been built of Legos. She might have been a plastic doll with plastic legs with only a fraction of the necessary joints.

  She trudged into her own house. It was cool and quiet. The soft gray colors and carpets made it seem more like a hospital or a rest home. Her parents’ various means of communication were flickering: red lights on the answering machine, paper gently drifting out of the fax machine. A note from each parent lay on the stairs so that she would be sure to see the messages on the way up to her room.

  Hope you didn’t fall out of the balloon or anything! said her father’s note. I went golfing with a client. Home around dinner. Love you.

  Hope you had a wonderful time, darling, said her mother’s note. I went in to work today, will be home around dinner. A friend of yours dropped off a package for you. It’s on the kitchen table. Love you.

  Dove perked up a little. She loved the word package. It sounded secret and special: brown paper hiding a treat. Perhaps she would go into the kitchen, make herself something yummy to eat, and open the package.

  She was disappointed to see that it was not a real package, with tape and twine and extra postage, but a brown paper lunch bag, twisted at the top. It had fallen on its side and whatever was in it had spilled.

  Venom.

  Chapter 16

  IF ONLY HESTA HAD NOT brought the bottle of Venom to the house!

  If only it had not tipped over and spilled.

  If only …

  But you could go on forever with your if only’s and none of them would change the fact that Wing was back, with a leaden permanence that Dove could not combat.

  Wing was rude to Mother and Father. She played upon their weaknesses and their worries, and easily punctured their pride and joy. For fifteen years Mother and Father and Dove had led a quiet existence, speaking little, hugging less, and yet fond of each other, in their separ
ate ways.

  Wing laughed at Father, trying to learn languages in the car. “You work for a stupid telephone company,” she said, “in the billing department. You will never earn enough money to travel. So what is with this pretense that you’re learning Japanese and German? You know ten words in each language.”

  Wing punctured Mother, whose magazines invariably featured articles like “Does Mother Damage Her Children by Working?” “If you weren’t so focused on your pathetic little fax machine,” said Wing, “and your grubby little clients, you’d know a little more about me. If anything goes wrong with me, you know, it’s your fault.”

  Wing began addressing Mother and Father as Maternal Body and Paternal Body. She would laugh and taunt them when she did it, and Mother and Father would cringe and flinch. They did not yell back, or scold, or punish. They did not really know how. It had never been necessary before.

  Wing’s eyes, backlit with hatred, scared them.

  “Dove,” Mother would say helplessly, “why are you so angry at us?”

  “Dove,” Father would say anxiously, “what happened to our sweet dear daughter? Where does this hostility come from?”

  How ambivalent these word wars made Dove. Her parents missed her. The twin they had wanted to have was home, and they didn’t like it. That felt good. But her parents were hurt, crushed, frightened. That felt bad. It was as nauseating to swing between good and bad, as to swing from earth to sky, upside down in a roller coaster.

  As Dove grew smaller, her fighting spirit lessened, until it was just a spark, impossible to light from within. She made occasional token protests, but mostly Dove let Wing go her way.

  “It would be pleasant to destroy any of your friends,” said Wing. “It’s a matter of deciding which one. Connie, of course, is vain and self-centered, and probably easier to damage than Luce, who is energetic and will be harder to pierce. But Luce would be more of a challenge. It’s more fun to destroy a virtuous person than a bad one. After all, a bad one is going to self-destruct one day anyhow. So probably I will ruin Luce.”

  “Please, Wing. They haven’t done anything to you.”

  “What does that have to do with it? They are victims waiting to be taken.”

  Victim. What a dreadful word. Somebody selected to be damaged. “Wing, tell me why anybody should be a victim?”

  “I want revenge.”

  “For what?” cried Dove. “If you have to take over my body and my life, why can’t you just enjoy it?”

  Wing did not seem to know the meaning of the word enjoy.

  They arrived at the school.

  Mr. Phinney was just going in the west entrance. He waved and yelled but was too far away to hear Wing’s terrible answer. That’s the revenge, thought Dove, understanding a little bit. Mr. Phinney was just absent; for him the perfume was no different from the stink of locker rooms; it didn’t touch him at all. He had no vanished twin waiting to emerge.

  Venom didn’t get him. Wing didn’t get him.

  Which meant that Wing would want to get someone else.

  Connie and Luce waved and headed Dove’s way. Of course it was not Dove, it was Wing; and Wing had no use for conventions like saying hello or answering questions. Wing simply moved on into the building discussing which victim to take.

  “Timmy was fun,” said Wing. “I loved scaring him to death. I think that was more fun than actually doing him to death, you know.”

  Dove didn’t believe that for a minute. Wing would have pushed Timmy out if Dove had not managed to return. At first, Dove had dreamed endlessly of returning again. Now she hardly ever thought of return. It seemed so unlikely that the antidote to Venom would drift her way again, or that she would be awake enough, or determined enough, to snatch it.

  To be without a body, the ultimate prison, was a form of death.

  “I think,” mused Wing, “that I will return to Timmy. Danger is intoxicating and although Timmy is nervous now, he is also drawn. The unbelieving half of him is in the ascendant.”

  “What horoscope are you talking about?” said Connie, puzzled.

  Wing continued to address Dove. “Timmy has overcome the handicap of being ugly and turned it to an advantage. Male movie stars often do that; I can think of several TV series in which the star is ugly, and yet he manages to be sexy and attractive, too.” Wing smiled. “Yes, I believe I will ruin Timmy. That would be satisfying.”

  “Dove, what are you babbling about?” said Luce. “You sound awful.”

  Dove was merely resident in the brain, like a parasite. She could not talk to Luce, nor explain, nor change voices. She did not even feel particularly emotional; Wing, whose emotions, like hate, were as strong as crimson and blood, had swamped Dove’s sweet, soft, pastel emotions.

  Connie kept trying to get Dove to talk to her. Through Wing’s eyes, Dove watched Connie’s mouth flap. Wing was not interested in Connie and remained silent. It was Hesta with whom Wing talked.

  Connie was hurt. She looked from Dove to Luce, hoping for an explanation but none came.

  “Let’s go shopping after school, Hesta,” said Wing.

  Although she had always despised Dove, Hesta took this in stride. Hesta accepted the new personality completely and eagerly. Connie did not. Eyes full of pain, Connie stared beseechingly at the girl she thought was her friend. I’m sorry, thought Dove helplessly, but it isn’t me. It’s Wing.

  Luce said, “Dove—aren’t you sitting with us at lunch?”

  Wing laughed.

  “I’ve come to my senses, dumbo,” said Wing.

  Luce and Connie were out of Dove’s vision but she heard their voices: “Is Dove on something?” whispered Connie, weeping at the back of her voice.

  Luce said, “She’s just being rotten. Forget her.”

  Forget her.

  A sort of terror spread through Dove—whatever relic of Dove remained now. Her two best friends would forget her. How easy it would be for them, because Wing was not going to leave a single trace of Dove.

  Wing dismissed Connie and Luce as if she were brushing ants off her food at a picnic, and went with Hesta. Hesta disdained cafeteria food; it was too disgusting for her to consume. But Hesta would never bring lunch with her, either, because that was too common. Hesta got a candy bar, a soda, and a bright red apple out of the vending machines and linked arms with Wing and they went outside together to talk about pitiful rejects like Connie and Luce.

  “Oh, give me a break!” Wing said. “Can you believe I used to hang out with them? Please!” Wing and Hesta laughed hysterically, looking back at Connie and Luce, and laughing even more.

  Don’t say things like that out loud, thought Dove. I have to come back here, you know. What will I do for friends when it’s my turn again?

  It won’t be your turn again, you fool, said Wing. I am here, and I am here to stay, and I am going to make good use of your body.

  It won’t be my turn again? thought Dove. She stared out the narrow opening of Wing’s eyes. There was nothing to see but Hesta, and Hesta’s mean superior crowd, and Hesta’s big grabby hands.

  I don’t want to look at this, thought Dove. She tried to close her eyes, but that was not within her control, and she was stuck there, watching, unblinking unless Wing chose to blink.

  “Among other things on my agenda,” said Wing to Hesta, “such as skipping Luce and Connie, and destroying Timmy, and acquiring a new wardrobe, is getting a new name.”

  Hesta cocked her head, very birdlike. But not dovelike. She was a crow, perhaps, pecking at a roadkill. “Dove is a pathetic excuse for a name,” agreed Hesta.

  No, thought Dove, don’t rename me! Nothing will be left of me.

  “I’ll think up a perfect name,” said Wing, “and well inform everybody what they’re going to call me in the future.”

  Hesta and Wing went to the mall in Hesta’s car. Hesta had a wonderful car; at any other time Dove would have been awestruck. Now she just wished Hesta would have an accident. Hit a slick place on the road. T
ake Wing with her.

  But if there was an accident … and this body I used to own got killed … what would happen to me? What is a soul? How much does the body really matter? Are Wing and I two? Or have we completely merged? Are we one? Were we always one?

  I didn’t ask for this and I don’t think it’s fair, God, thought Dove.

  Wing said irritably, “It’s extremely fair. Think how you locked me up for fifteen years, Dove.”

  “I love the way you do that,” said Hesta.

  “Do what?” said Wing.

  “Talk to yourself like that. As if Dove were somebody else.”

  “She is,” said Wing. “Here, let’s go in this store.”

  Ragged Rock. The store for strange clothing: clothing with rips or fringes, shimmering mirrors or rusted metal strips, Indian beads, clashing colors or amazing neon brilliance.

  Nothing would have made Dove touch any fabric in Ragged Rock. She sank into the bottom of the mind. She didn’t want to see these clothes draped over her body.

  “Look down there,” said Hesta suddenly, pointing over the mall atrium and down into the lower level. “There’s your mom.”

  “No,” said Wing.

  “What do you mean—no?” Hesta pointed again. “Next to the Kitchen Shoppe. See? It’s your mother.”

  “No. It’s the maternal body. It’s Dove’s mother.”

  Hesta giggled. “I love it when you talk like that. ‘The maternal body.’ As if all it did was give birth. That’s how I feel about my mother.”

  It’s not how I feel about mine! thought Dove. I love my mother.

  Hesta and Wing leaned on the glass balustrade and looked down into the atrium.

  Dove’s mother switched packages from one hand to the other and walked, without ever looking up, into the department store and disappeared behind the perfume counter.

  Perfume.

  Memories of perfumes once sniffed were as strong as memories of Christmas mornings once unwrapped.

  Mother! thought Dove, wanting to go home, and be little, and be safe.

  Wing trembled. Dove felt it long before Hesta saw it: a queer shudder in every cell of the body, a rippling of thought and molecule. Wing tipped back, staring up into the glass pyramid. The yellow sun shone down into her eyes with such ferocity that Dove felt herself turning gold.