The Secret of a Heart Note

by Stacey Lee

  Mother stops kneading her palm and folds her hands in front of her, back in charge of the situation. “The heart remembers. It’s perfectly possible to fall back in love with Mr. Frederics again, all by yourself.” She slits her eyes at me. “Or have I mentioned that?”

  “You said the heart was like a balloon,” Alice volunteers.

  “Ah, yes, I did.” Mother sends me a withering glance.

  Tabitha the chicken flies under the teakwood table and starts pecking at my shoes. “As, er, you explained, a PUF just tugs the balloon back to earth. Maybe Alice just let go of the string?” I glance at Mother for confirmation.

  Her sigh is loud enough to have its own echo. “Yes, it’s very possible for you to fall in love with him again on your own. I should have mentioned that.”

  Alice pats a stray hair back in place. “But I didn’t even see him after you puffed me.”

  “Something must have reminded you of your feelings for him,” says Mother. “The PUF doesn’t take away memories.”

  Alice wraps her cashmere sweater more snugly around her. “He let me borrow his coat during the homecoming game. It’s still hanging on my coatrack. And it smells like him.” Her worried eyes follow a trail of scarlet runner beans. “So I am in love with him. For real.”

  “Seems that way,” says Mother. “Let me add, and hopefully I’ve mentioned this before”—another glare at me—“how sorry I am that this happened.”

  Alice shakes her head and studies the ground.

  “I’m sorry, Alice,” I say. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She looks up, and I realize she’s not frowning, but smiling. “Honestly, I wasn’t that surprised to learn I had been fixed. I didn’t think I could love anyone again. But now that I know my balloon can still float away, I think I’ll be fine, even though I’m not the one Franklin wants.”

  Mr. Frederics suddenly appears from behind the shrubs, bearing a tray. The china clinks.

  “Let me take that from you.” I set the tray on the table.

  He rubs his hands together as if trying to get them warm. “Alice, I know it’s none of my business why you’re here, but I pray you’re not ordering an elixir.”

  Alice drops her gaze demurely to her hands, twisting at a ruby ring around her finger. “It isn’t easy for an old divorcée like myself. Why are you concerned?”

  He blushes and straightens his tie, the same way he does before he explains corollaries. “You see, well, I bought two tickets to see the Austrian Ukulele Orchestra.” His crinkly brown eyes lock on her mascaraed blue ones.

  “You did?”

  “I sure did. Had to snap ’em up before they sold out.”

  “But, but how would your lady friend feel about that?”

  “Lady friend?” His eyes uncrinkle. “I don’t have a lady friend.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  Both Alice and Mr. Frederics look at Mother, who in turn passes them to me. Everyone’s wondering what the heck everyone else knows and only I can enlighten them.

  I straighten my throat. “I, uh—” My voice comes out too high. Tabitha continues pecking my leg. “I accidentally—very accidentally—put your elixir, Mr. Frederics, in Alice’s Starbucks. Ms.—er, the target was never fixed.”

  Mother’s shoulders slump, even though she probably figured out most of it.

  “Well, I’ll be,” says Mr. Frederics.

  I hang my head. “I’m really sorry.”

  Tabitha starts clucking. When I look up, I realize it’s not my chicken, but Mr. Frederics laughing. “I’d say that’s your best mistake ever, and you know I’ve seen a few of them.”

  A dimple appears in Alice’s cheek, the same spot as her son’s. She glances up at Mr. Frederics, still standing beside her bench. “Oh, Franklin.”

  The two gaze at each other, and the moment sparkles with electricity.

  Mother quickly rises from her spot next to Alice and waves her hand at the vacancy. “Please, Mr. Frederics, sit here.” She grabs a handful of ylang-ylang blossoms that fell from the tree and crushes them in her palm, releasing the aphrodisiacal scent.

  “Mim, pour the tea.” She’s all business now. There’s love at hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if she clapped her hands and a rainbow appeared.

  “We shall let you two talk privately. Please enjoy our garden as long as you wish.”

  Who knows if they hear her. They’re still staring at each other.

  I trot after Mother who surely has her own private talk in store for me, and it won’t be nearly as pleasant.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “A HOT TEMPER CAN WILT PETUNIAS.”

  —Kohana, Aromateur, 1728

  “WHAT WERE YOU thinking? You must always witness the fixing.” Mother slaps one hand against the other. Her unopened suitcase lies upon her bed. “Always. Now you understand why we have the rules? They’re to keep us from making life-altering blunders.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” I say for the tenth time. I push aside the antique lace curtains of the turret and stare down at Mr. Frederics, helping Alice into her car one story below. “Their lives turned out okay.”

  “You lost your smell! And you should never have called your aunt.”

  “Who should I have called?”

  “Me.”

  “I did try calling you. The circuits were busy.”

  She sucks in her breath, then groans. “Well, you wouldn’t have needed to call anyone had you focused on your task, instead of, what’s his name?”

  “Court.” Just saying it stabs my heart.

  “Yes, him. Is it over between you two?”

  I nod.

  “Good. Then maybe we can do something about this problem. Do you know how long it took me to make that elixir for Bryony? I had to go to forty-seven countries. Countries, Mim. By the time I got everything together, it was too late.”

  I should tell her about Aunt Bryony’s nose returning, but I don’t want to yet.

  The Merengue roses and chicory wave good-bye to our clients as their cars ease down the long driveway to the street. Maybe it’s a road all must walk, this margin between bitter and sweet, not just in love, but in life. The driveway tiles form a stony rainbow, which flow into the sweetbriar hedges. Inside the sweetbriar, sprightly dogbane forms an even row, followed by goldenrod, lavender, and so forth. Layers wrapping us tight as an onion.

  “What if it’s too late for me, too?” I finally say.

  She pulls her hair. “If that’s the case, then all of this”—she opens her hands and sweeps them around the room—“and the garden? A waste.”

  “Maybe there’s more to life than just smelling plants.”

  “Like what?” Her lips form a tight line.

  “Who was Edward?”

  She throws her arms to her sides. “She told you about him?”

  I rub my finger over one of the bench’s velvet-covered buttons.

  “Did you like him?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why do you carry around that bookmark? You must have sort of liked him.”

  Her lips unstick. “I may have been curious about certain things that it is natural to be curious over, but I never veered from the course predestined for me.”

  I may not have my nose, but I’m discovering there are other ways to tell if someone is uncomfortable, like the drift in the eyes, or the way bare toes can grip at the floorboards. “And anyway, you should be more worried about your nose than my bookmark.” She throws her hands at me. “You’re barely fifteen. Barely even used it. Do you realize you might never smell again. You’d be utterly . . .”

  “What?” My throat has gone dry, but I push out the word. “Useless?”

  I’m seven years old again, wandering the warehouse of spider plants. Does my mother love me? I didn’t know the answer then, and I was afraid to ask.

  Mother lifts her nose a fraction and squints at a spot on the wall. Her silence punctures me like a dart to the heart.

  The rumble of car
engines fades, and the lovebirds leave us to our strange jungle.

  The rounded windows of the turret squeeze around me more tightly than I remember. No longer does the cramped space strike me as a space capsule, but a time capsule, where nothing inside ever changes.

  At least for Mother.

  She doesn’t say a word as I leave her room, compounding the ache in my heart.

  I hike to the farthest reaches of our property, where the plants grow wild and rabbits hop through mushroom rings wide as Hula-Hoops. A cluster of Italian cypresses solemnly commune. I flop down on the ground and stare up at their elfin-hat treetops, rising at least thirty feet.

  My dream of going to high school was hatched in this very spot, a dream that I could live more than the odd, hermetical life of an aromateur. Never did I imagine those dreams would cost me so dearly.

  Useless.

  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?”

  “What about your daughter?” My voice comes out small and unsure.

  Mother notices me, holding my elbows. “Of course I—” She pulls her shovel out of the dirt and gestures with it at my nose. “Don’t try to sidetrack me. What happened between your aunt and me has nothing to do with you and me. You withheld vital information.”

  “Maybe she wouldn’t have if she wasn’t so scared you’d seal her in a cave.”

  “And you’re the Miss Nose-It-All now. Seal her in a cave, my foot.” Her eyes slide to me. “For heaven’s sake. I would’ve understood the error.”

  “Yes, because you’re a fount of blue thistle,” mutters Aunt Bryony, referring to that foggy note of empathy.

  “Oh, you’re one to talk about blue thistle. You weren’t exactly brimming with blue thistle yourself when you left me BY MYSELF.”

  “It’s not just that.” I hear myself say. My ears ring with the noise of their dispute.

  “What is it, then?” Mother snaps.

  I gather the fibers of my courage before they fly away. “Sometimes it feels like the only thing you care about is my nose. Like, you never ask me about how school is going. You didn’t even know I aced my Spanish test. Or that I fell on my face in Cardio the first day. It’s like you forget I’m a human being.”

  Mother’s nose reddens and her face looks on the verge of crumpling. “Is that what you think, Mim?” Her small hands grip the edges of the shovel.

  Aunt Bryony tries to take it from her. “I dug up the oca tubers yesterday.”

  Mother won’t let go of the shovel, and the two wrestle with it. “How did you know I planted oca tubers here?”

  “I smelled them, of course.”

  “Smelled them?”

  My aunt flexes a thin eyebrow at me, and I hug myself tighter. “Aunt Bryony’s smell came back. It was the seawater. There is no jinx.” I almost tel
l her about the falling hearts, too, but decide she’s had enough surprises for one day.

  Mother’s grip on the shovel weakens. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Fine, don’t.” Aunt Bryony gets to her feet, and her nostrils twitch. “But you might want to take care of that spurge weed growing in section D. It’s going to sprout soon.”

  Mother also gets to her feet. She sniffs, then her mouth splits open. “How did you . . .” Her voice grows weak. “It can’t be.”

  “I always told you our mother loved William.”

  My skin tingles. “The groundskeeper?”

  Aunt Bryony gives me a solemn nod. “He was your grandfather. They loved each other for fifteen years before our mother sent him away, and her nose was legendary.”

  Mother snorts. “Then why would he leave?”

  “Because even love witches have love problems.” She slips her hands into the pockets of her red traveling cloak. “Of course you wouldn’t understand that.”

  Mother points the shovel at my aunt. “You sure waited a long time to tell me.”

  “You would’ve known earlier if you’d read my letter.” Aunt Bryony’s earrings swing.

  “I threw it away.”

  “Why?”

  “Some things can’t be fixed with pen and paper.” Mother’s voice is getting hoarse. “Anyway, something so important, why couldn’t you tell me in person? You have a Cloud Air card, too. At least, let your fingers do the walking.” She makes a phone with her hand and holds it to her ear.

  “I did call you after you threw away my letter, but you never answered. And anyway, don’t take your anger out on poor Mimsy.”

  “Mimosa is none of your business.”

  “I called her,” I pipe up. “Aunt Bryony came to help me.”

  Mother throws down her trowel and climbs to her feet. “I don’t believe this. Was she here to help when you were born?” Yanking off her scarf, she shakes the bundle at my aunt. “Imagine nursing a baby and weeding at the same time.” Back to me. “Did she watch you take your first smells? Nope. Send any birthday cards? Ha! It’s not like she forgot the address.”