The Perfumery

 When I was young, it always amazed me how effortless my Dad’s life seemed.  I remember we’d go for long hikes in the woods, on those mornings I’d walk downstairs to see him making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the trail.  I never saw him pack anything else, but somehow our bags were always ready for us.  Dad loved adventures, and that meant going off path.  When we inevitably got lost, I’d miraculously find homemade trail mix, a flashlight, and a map in my kit.

On our way back Dad would pick wildflowers for Mom.  Dandelions and bluebells, foxglove and lavender.  Afterwards, he’d wash the empty jelly jars and fill them with our wild bounty.  The house was always strewn with them, a cacophony of scents and colors.  Dried leaves piled on the floor and on windy days I’d open the door to watch them blow through the hallways.  It was as if we were locked in an eternal autumn.

He hasn’t had to make me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in years, not since I started my own family, though that hasn’t stopped him from trying.  Whenever I visit he’ll shuffle into the kitchen and break out the jars, but his memory isn’t what it used to be.  Sometimes I’ll walk in and see him frozen mid-scoop, his mouth open like he’s forgotten something important and is trying to remember.  I’d gently take the butter knife from him and he’d turn around to look at me.  For a split second it’s like I’m a stranger, but then he’d become lucid again.

“Hey bud, you want a PB and J?”

“It’s ok Dad, why don’t you come sit down and tell me about your day?”

Then we’ll go back to the living room and he’ll be his old self again, sprightly and sharp.  He’d ask me about the grandkids, whether they’re excited about going to Disneyland next month.  I’d say to him “That was last year” and he’d brush it off.  Of course, he just wanted to know if they’d enjoyed it.  I’d tell him again that they loved it, just like I tell him every other time he’s asked.  I try to see him once a week but work gets in the way, or the kids, it seems that lately I’ve had more and more excuses not to go.

Today was Christmas though, and that’s always been special.  It’s cliche, but we used to sit around the tree on Christmas morning and open our presents.  Afterwards, we’d go to Fair Oaks to visit Pops and Granny.  I hated it as a kid, spending Christmas walking through the snowed-in cemetery and watching Dad talk to their headstones.  We drove into a snowdrift once and afterwards Mom made sure there was always spare gas, blankets, and road flares in the trunk.  I keep the same in my car now, especially since I started driving us to see Mom at Fair Oaks too.  As a child, it had never occurred to me that she was the reason Dad’s life had seemed so effortless.

Dad always brings a vase of flowers to visit Mom, it’s one thing he never forgets.  I don’t know where he gets them in the winter.  Snapdragons and hyacinths.  We’ll visit Mom first, sometimes Dad’s energy flags and we have to skip Pops and Granny, but that day he seemed in good spirits.  When we neared their plot we saw that someone had left a present on Pops’ headstone.  A small red ring box.

I picked it up, it jingled.  Dad’s name was written on it.  I looked around, there were no footsteps in the snow other than ours.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.  It’s for you.”

I handed him the box and he opened it.  Inside was a set of keys and a slip of paper with an address.  24 Anamnesis Lane.

“What is it, Dad?”

“An adventure” he said, smiling “let’s go.”

We dropped everyone off at home and drove to the address, just Dad and I.  It was an old warehouse.  It looked like part of it had been once used as a shop, the sign out front had long ago rotted away but the word “Perfumery” was still barely legible.  The wooden steps creaked as we approached the entry.

There were deep gouges in the door like someone had tried to break in, but the glass was still intact though covered in dust.  I cupped my hand over a dirty window and looked inside, too dark to see.  We tried the handle, it was unlocked.

Stepping inside, I expected the musty smell that comes with abandonment but it was surprisingly neutral.  Immediately we saw rows of glass fronted wood cabinets.  I opened one, inside were bottles in all different shapes and sizes.  Perfume decanters with glass stoppers and handwritten labels that matched the paper in the ring box.  No two were alike, so I picked up a couple to inspect them.  They were in a foreign language: Tramonto Sul Mare, Le Dolomiti, Festa.  Italian?  Must have been a fancy perfume shop, but I was surprised that they’d just been abandoned.  I picked up the one named “Festa” and pulled open the glass stopper.

Barbecue with rosemary, garlic, and tomatoes.  Baked bread and the smell of fresh pasta.  The sweetness of limoncello on the front of my tongue.  I felt the air around me filled with warmth and familiarity.  It was oddly familiar yet also entirely foreign, like I was a peeping Tom looking into someone else’s life, but a life that I had simply forgotten.  What kind of perfume shop was this?

I put the bottle back into the cabinet and gently closed the door.  A sign nearby said “Office”.  Dad was perusing some other bottles in the cabinet next to me.

“Hey Dad, let’s go see if we can find out what’s going on.”

He nodded and we made our way towards the back.  It was a cavernous space, the cabinets were endless.  There were no lights in the ceiling.  Every so often the dark rafters of the roof yielded to boarded up clerestory windows, cold winter sunlight streamed through the slits between the boards just enough to light our way.  Eventually we found a small partitioned off area, that must be the office.  Inside was a desk and some chairs, everything covered in a layer of dust.  There was a collection of books labeled “Directory”.  We each flipped through one, it was a list of cabinets.  I looked up the one where I found “Festa”.  Enrico Vitale, 1880.  In the same row were more cabinets.  Gio Vitale, 1899.  Vincenzo Vitale, 1923.  Teresa Vitale, 1924.  It kept going.  Relatives?  A customer list?  This place must be ancient.

Dad was looking through another one of the directories.

“Hey kiddo, take a look.  Here’s your grandpa!”

I snapped my directory closed and got a facefull of dust.  I looked where he was pointing.  There it was indeed.

“Let’s go see.”

We roamed the corridors and finally found it.  Another cabinet with perfume bottles.  These were in English.  Engine Oil on the Chevy Fleetline.  Milkshakes at the Stop-In-Go.  First Kiss.  The Machine Shop.  Utah Beach.  I picked that one up.  Weird, Utah was landlocked, there were no beaches there.

“Hey Dad, check this one out.”

He didn’t answer, I looked around and saw him staring off into space at the cabinet next to mine.  Maybe it’s time to get him back, he’s had a long day.  First though, curiosity got the better of me.  I pulled the stopper off and took a deep breath, it was not what I was expecting.

First was ocean spray, the cold sea air making me gasp.  There was iron, like how your hands smell after touching an old railing.  Unwashed bodies, a long journey.  A rich scent of steak and pork chops, a last meal.  Then it changes, the ocean becomes stronger, undertones of diesel and vomit.  Ash, gunpowder, cordite, and woodsmoke infuse with an industrial taste.  Fear, blood, and piss.  A slight taste of salt on my tongue along with copper and dirt.  Finally kerosene and fire, a charnel house of burning flesh and hair and clothing exposed to intense heat.  

My lunch rose up in the back of my throat.  I bent over involuntarily and dry heaved, spilling some of the bottle’s contents.  The smell became overwhelming.

“Dad?  Dad!  We have to go!”

He looked at me, his mind reaching for recognition.  I grabbed him as I passed, that brought him back.

“What’s goin’ on, kiddo?”

“We have to go, I’m gonna throw up.  We need to go NOW.”

He saw the panic in my face and didn’t argue, but as we drove away I saw him look longingly back at the warehouse.  He’d visit it frequently afterwards, spending long stretches there.  Some days I’d call his house with no answer so I’d visit to find it empty, and I knew he was back at the perfumery.

He got worse quickly.  If he wasn’t at the warehouse then he would just sit in his chair, catatonic.  Food in the fridge would rot.  He’d go for long stretches without eating and showering, there were times I’d walk in and find that he’d soiled himself.  He’d look at me, bewildered, and I’d bring him to the bathroom to clean him up.   Sometimes he’d cry and apologize, mostly he just stared into space.

It felt to me like that building was feeding on Dad and slowly eating away at his mind, but I searched for a rational explanation.  Maybe it was some kind of chemical?  Asbestos?  Radon?  What could cause cognitive degeneration?  There was probably a good reason it was abandoned, probably unsafe.

I had to get him out of there, I drove to it one day to hold a single-person intervention.  I took some things from my car and dropped them just outside the door; an insurance policy.  The entry was unlocked as usual, and I found him at the cabinet next to the one for Pops.  The remains of Utah Beach were gone, only a stain where it had seeped into the floorboards.  Dad had a bottle open and so close to his nose he might as well as have been drinking it through his nostrils.

“Hey Dad?  We should go, I don’t think this place is good for you.”

He didn’t answer so I tapped him on the shoulder.  He flinched and looked at me.  His gaze was glassy and unfocused.

“Hi, can I help you?”

“Dad, it’s me.  I’m here to take you home.”

He nodded, puzzled.  Then emptiness again.  He smiled and turned back to the bottle, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply.  I sighed, this was going to be one of those days.  I looked inside the cabinet.  First Kiss.  Wine on Date Night.  Bluebells and Foxgloves.  Windy Days.  Eternal Autumn.  Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches.  Doctor’s Office.  Chemotherapy.  St. Joseph’s Cathedral.  Snapdragons and Hyacinths.  I Love You Always.

It was the last bottle that he was holding on to, his eyes closed in bliss.  I grabbed his shoulder firmly.  He opened his eyes and looked at me, no recognition but instead a look of annoyance.

“Hey, get off me!  What’s the big idea?”

“Dad, let’s go, we’re leaving.”

“You got me mixed up with someone else, I don’t know you, sir.”

My patience wore out, I’d had it.  I grabbed the bottle and stopper he was holding but he held on with surprising strength.  Wrenching back, I took it from his hands and he swung at me growling with anger.  It was so unlike my dad, the loving man who walked me through the woods, that it took me off guard and I dropped the bottle.  My stomach contorted as I watched the bottle fall and shatter into a kaleidoscope of glass shards.

I smelled our old kitchen, grilled cheese and steak nights.  Clean cotton from the laundry basket at the foot of the stairs.  Mom’s lotion as she laid a cold hand against my feverish forehead.  The inside of our old Volvo in the August heat.  Her perfume as she picked me up from school.  Summer in the woods around the lake.  The leather of her purse as I searched for candy.  A dry wine and my parents dancing on the back patio.  My Dad as he lunged at me in a dark warehouse.  Was that a memory or is that the present?  I couldn’t tell anymore.

Mom applying sunscreen at the beach.  The pungency of sweat as I ducked and grabbed Dad around the waist.  Woodsmoke from the fireplace in winter.  Desperation as Dad struggled and clawed at me like a feral animal.  I got behind him and shuffled us away from the spill, the memories faded.  He was surprisingly strong but in the end he was frail and he’d been skipping meals, it was difficult but not impossible.

We reached the front door but it was shut, I tried the handle and it wouldn’t budge.  I kicked it, nothing.  All the time Dad was fighting me, struggling and yelling obscenities.  This place felt sinister, like it was consciously holding on to him.  Let’s test that theory.  I looked at the nearest cabinet and rammed it with my shoulder, all the time still holding on to Dad.  The bottles clattered.  I did it again, timing my pushes till eventually the bottles toppled out of the cabinet and burst on the ground.

Fresh bread and horse manure.  Candlewax and incense.  Spring rain.  Sulfur, stewed tomatoes, burnt rubber, coffee, a potpourri of scents overwhelms me.  I grit my teeth and try the door again.  Still it doesn’t budge, stubborn.  I shuffle us towards a different cabinet, this time pressing my back against it and pushing with my legs.  It leans then falls and slams into the one behind it and the one behind that.  They fall like dominoes.  The air becomes even thicker with memories that aren’t mine.

I’m crying now, tears streaming down my face as I drag Dad towards the next cabinet.  I steady myself again ready to push when the doors slam open.  I rush us outside and Dad rewards me with an elbow in my eye.  I see stars and I feel an intense pain in my nose, there’s wetness and the taste of copper.

As we get outside I see my insurance policy.  One kick from me topples the large red can and its contents spill out.  The smell of gas, real this time, not a memory.  I flick the car blankets onto the growing pool with my foot and then readjust my grip on Dad, freeing one hand to ignite the road flare before I throw it inside.  It catches, blue flames dancing and noxious smoke pouring out of the doorway.

I drag Dad away from the searing heat and we collapse on the ground, I wrap myself around him like a backpack.  He can’t do anything but sit and watch the inferno.  Eventually he stops fighting and I hear sobs, his body shakes and trembles.  I realize I’m crying too.  I let go of him and we sit in the snowy field, our butts cold but our faces warmed by fire.

To this day I’ve never been as scared as when he turned to look at me.  His eyes empty and glassy, the sooty landscape of his skin carved by rivulets of tears, his lips tight and pale.  It frightens me that someone so vigorous and sharp could become like this so suddenly.  I wondered if one day I’d visit his grave and also see the same red box.  24 Anamnesis Lane.  A gift from our family tree.  I try to tell him this but he just stares.  After a while he raises a hand and points silently at the warehouse.  I nod and hug him, then gently hold his arm so I can help him stand.

“I know, Dad.  I miss her too.  Let’s get you home ok?”