Making Scents of It All

The kitchen air kissed her cheeks. Warm. Cosy.

She swept her hair up into the claws of a large black clip and rolled her sleeves, so they sat snug in the crooks of her elbows. Oven mitts. Check. Heat mats. Check.

She squatted, hunched over, sending up a “desperate” prayer. She stared through the grimy window of the oven door. The baking tray stared right back. The gentle wrinkles at the corners of her eyes crinkled further. More cringe than smile.

Her hand moved, before she could reconsider. It swung the oven door down by the steel handle. She shut her eyes against the steam which burst forth.

There.

The smell of baked wheat. Vanilla. Sweet, but not too sweet. Lies and truth and magic. Creation in the palm of a five-year-old.

Playdough.

Her eyes began to water.

She’s crying. She’s bawling. The old man is snoring. He went to bed. But she bumped her head and couldn’t get up in the morning.

“Katelyn? Katelyn! Look, look, look here. Aw Katie. Hush, hush, shush, it’s okay, you’ll be alright – Daddy’s here, dada’s –”

Katelyn saw her father’s feet first. Bare feet. Short nails. Her head felt as if those nails were clawing through the backs of her eyes, rather than being in front of them. Then she was scooped up and being hugged. Snugly in a field of flowers. Or rather her dad’s exuberantly floral dress shirt.

She raised her muddy brown eyes only to meet worried grey. She began to sob all over again. Big hiccoughing melodrama. Her father’s brow smoothed, and he smiled toothily at her. He plucked, seemingly out of thin air, a small blue figurine and placed it in Katie’s chubby palm. There. The smell of baked wheat.

“One little monkey jumping on the bed…”, he began wisely.

“Daddy you have to start with five of them.” Katie protested through another sniffle. Vanilla. Sweet, but not too sweet.

“Oh, 100%.”

He pulled three more playdough monkeys out. Katie saw him take them from his breast pocket this time.

“Aw. One monkey short… can you make one more for me sweet?”

“Mhm…”

“We’ll make the dough from scratch…? I’ll let you mix”, he dragged out the word mix, as though it would make the offer all the more enticing.

It did.

“Yeah! Yeah, I really want to mix. And add the blue too? Please?”

“Obviously.”

The thundering of feet down the staircase forcefully catapulted Katelyn back into the reality of her cramped kitchen. She blinked away the remnants of her recollection as she wiped away her tears. Her eyes were just watering from the heat of the oven. They were.

“Mum! Is something burning?! Are the cookies okay?”

The stream of profanity which poured forth from Katelyn’s mouth was a little beyond the PG-13 household her children were used to. Fortunately, they were seventeen and fifteen, respectively.

Moments later the three of them found themselves, on squashy living-room couches, with warm mugs of milk and crunchier than crunchy cookies.

“Tastes… alright. If only you took them out in time…”

“Jeremy! Don’t be rude to mum – seriously what’s wrong with you?”

“What? I’m only saying…” Jeremy protested weakly.

“Yeah? Well, maybe don’t. Just don’t you fu –”

“Stacey.” Katelyn barked out warningly.

“Sorry.” Stacey murmured back.

Silence. It would have been comical had there been crickets, but instead it made Katelyn squirm. She was a middle-aged woman who could not lounge in the silence of her own home. She could not hold a conversation with her own kids. It was for lack of trying. She was not trying. At all. She just slumped away into a pool of her own discomfort. No eye contact with anyone. She nursed her mug, wishing it were a pint, or at least filled with something more fun than milk. Feeling shackled to nothing and caged by no one and yet shackled and caged all the same, she downed her a milk and stood stiffly.

“Going for a smoke.” She told no one in particular.

No one in particular replied.

Her cigarette was lit and between her lips before she even shut the screen door. She imagined she seemed like a dragon. All scaly and old and shrouded in smoke; tired eyes and big teeth beacons in the fog. She breathed out a cloud. Let it surround her. Not vanilla. Still sweet, but not sweet. It was in the pleasant haze of nicotine and night air that she thought she saw him. Saw him sitting on the porch swing. Not really sitting. Not in the present tense. He sat? He used to sit?

He was a memory after all.

Her dad would smoke on the porch. In the backyard. He would drink till he was childish enough to sit on the swing. Then he would smoke there too.

He used to call out to her. He’d cackle about being a dragon. Called her a princess. Dragons kidnapped princesses usually, but they were family. She was his dragon princess. He was drunk. So drunk he was practically pickled. He was a living-breathing bottle of vodka. Lies and truth and magic.

“Bad habit. Nasty habit.” He would grumble the next morning. He would drag out the ‘y’ in nasty to make it seem worse. It did.

Yet, he drunk on. Again, and again. Nasty night after nasty, bad night.

Until he didn’t.

Katelyn stubbed out her cigarette, almost violently, almost as if she could snuff out a memory the way she could snuff out a smoke. Bad habit, nasty habit. She wasn’t sure what habit she meant. Smoking? Remembering? Both?

She slunk back inside and poured herself more milk. She sunk into a lumpy armchair and tried to think about nothing. Nothing. At. All.

Yet, as she dozed her mind wandered down an alleyway. Dingy. Dim. The lighting yellowing everything it touched, like plaque on teeth. She felt sore. Tired.

Her teeth fell out and were on the ground, rolling about in some absurdist pinball game with the trash cans. She observed them till her stomach could no longer bear it. Then the air changed. It brightened. Shifted. Stretched and warmed and –

There.

The smell of baked wheat. Vanilla. Sweet but not sweet. Lies and truth and magic. Creation in the palm of a five-year-old.

Playdough.

She began running. Feet pounding pure air. The alleyway melted into nothingness. Darkness pooled inky and hideous around her. It did not frighten her. She kept running. She turned in accordance with where the smell was coming from. A donkey chasing a carrot on a stick. She was about to stop and reconsider her direction when everything exploded.

The black depth beneath her erupted with emerald grass and the void above her cracked and crumbled into velvety violet sky. The grass twisted into towering trees as she ran into a cave. She inhaled deeply. Here. It was here.

She wandered the cave aimlessly. The smell was everywhere. It was wonderful. Her eyes were watering from it, the air was so heavy with it. She simply breathed. Massive, all-consuming breaths which made her belly blow out to the size of a small watermelon. She lifted her arms so she could breath in more. More. More.

Through a veil of tears, she saw it.

Bare feet. An exuberantly floral dress shirt. She almost called out but stopped herself in time. It was irrational, but she almost felt like she might scare him away. She approached almost reverently. Her heart was in her mouth, her palms felt cold and hot all at once and she wished she had found him sooner. Before she was weird. Before she became bad at talking.

She could finally sort of make out his face in the darkness.

Muddy brown eyes stared back at her.

She was barefoot. In a floral dress shirt. Her fingertips grazed the mirror in front of her. She pressed her palm against the cool surface. She rested her head there and let herself cry. The tears did not roll down her cheeks, but rather, fell directly to the cave floor as if her eyes were indoor storm clouds raining grief upon the stalagmites.

She needed a tissue. Or something. She needed to stop. She rubbed the front her shirt against her sniffly nose and crusty eyes. As she finished cleaning up, she realised there was something in her breast pocket.

She plucked, seemingly out of thin air, a small blue figurine and held it in her palm.

“One little monkey jumping on the bed…”, she croaked out.

Creation in the palm of a five-year-old.

Or rather a forty-five-year-old.

With that, Katelyn fell into a deeper sleep.