by Warren Adler
“I wish it would go away,” Rachel told him with increasing frequency, meaning the smell. “It’s here in this apartment. I know it is.”
“That’s what you said when we lived in Gramercy Park.”
“Okay, so it’s a coincidence. But it's here, Larry. I can smell it.”
Larry checked with the management of the apartment house to see if anyone else complained about the smell. No one had. Larry reported to Rachel what he had learned.
“Would I complain if I didn’t smell it?”
He couldn’t argue with that, and he tried his best to be patient and sympathetic. In the end, when their lease was up they moved to the West Side to a brand-new apartment complex that was being built overlooking the Hudson River. The view was gorgeous, and there were wonderfully exhilarating breezes that floated over the river and reached their terrace on the thirtieth floor.
“I’m so sorry, Larry,” she told him after they had lived in that apartment for a month. “I can still smell it.”
“What is it like?” he asked, determined to be patient.
“Like the same as it was when I first smelled it right after 9/11.”
“Be more specific.”
“Like dead people, I think.”
“Have you ever really smelled dead people?”
“Not really. But it is what I imagine they might smell like.”
Of course, he had asked the question before, but he was beginning to think it might be a physical thing, something that had to do with complex biological factors having to do with the sense of smell. Although he had earlier suggested that she see a shrink, he decided to offer a less threatening alternative.
An ear, nose, and throat specialist declared, after various tests, that everything appeared normal.
“I suppose that’s a relief,” Rachel said after they had received the test results. “Except that I can still smell it.”
Finally he was losing patience with her insistence. It was having an effect on their relationship. She was getting more restless, sleeping less, tossing at night and inhibiting his own sleep patterns. Sometimes they would discuss the problem of the smell long into the wee hours.
“I smell it now, Larry. Believe me.”
“You’re imagining it.”
He had taken refuge in that idea, since any other possibility was unexplainable.
“Even if I was imagining it, I can still smell it.”
“All the time? Is there any time when you don’t smell it?”
He had asked that question repetitively, as if it might keep hope alive that she was afflicted with the odor at ever-diminishing intervals. Unfortunately, the answer was also repetitive.
“It never leaves me, Larry. But it is most intense at home. Maybe when I am thinking of other things at the office, I can ignore it although it doesn’t go away, but when I get back to our apartment it is constant. No matter what I do here in the apartment it is always with me.”
In time, it became for her a dominant obsession. It seemed to pervade everything she did and he sensed that she was growing more and more desperate about the affliction, although she appeared fearful of mentioning it. He could tell it was on her mind by the way her eyes drifted and her nostrils twitched.
Finally, almost in desperation, she consented to a visit to a psychiatrist. She had contemplated going by herself, but she decided that since Larry was the most affected by her affliction, he was entitled to a psychological explanation, if one was available.
The psychiatrist, a pleasant and patient middle-aged man, offered an assessment that was highly technical. He referred to that section of the brain that dealt with the sense of smell, the “smell brain” he called it, and went through a series of possible physical and psychological factors that dealt with trauma and the effect it had on memory.
He had asked her many questions about her childhood. Had she experienced any childhood traumas? Did she have nightmares? What were her principal fears? Had anything happened to her in her lifetime that suggested some relationship with fear and smell? As to the phenomena of the terrorism threat, he was more than curious.
“Are you afraid that another attack is imminent?”
“No more than anyone else.”
“Do you panic when you ride a bus or subway or go on an airplane?”
“Acceptance. Not panic.”
“Do you have nightmares of death?”
“If you mean death caused by a terrorist attack the answer is no.”
“Do news reports of terrorism attacks bother you?”
“Sure they do, but not to the point where I get too upset to function.”
“Are you afraid to live in New York?”
“Of course not. I’m here aren’t I?”
His diagnosis was understandable and logical, and he did offer her some hope.
“It could be,” he explained to both of them after her session when they met in his office, “that your fear of this terrorist danger is so palpable, so intense, that the odor associated with that tragedy continues to dominate your smell brain.”
“But as I told you, I don’t obsess about a terrorist attack,” she said. “I fear it, sure, but I don’t dwell on it.”
“Not consciously,” the psychiatrist said. “It is an evolutionary theory that the sense of smell was the principal defense mechanism of our ancient forebears. They could sniff danger from predators and poisons. It was their most powerful sense and is still powerful in our smell brains.”
“And this explains why I can still smell debris?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Have you seen other people like me?” Rachel asked him.
“Yes, I have. Fear is very disruptive to one’s mental health.”
“But I don’t think about it much.”
“Except when the smell reminds you of it.”
She shook her head, rejecting the notion.
“So you imply that it’s because the fear in my subconscious is too intense that it induces this sense of smell.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Psychiatry is not a pure science. It deals with clues, assumptions, and interpretations.”
His explanation struck both her and Larry as less than helpful.
“It feeds on itself,” the psychiatrist told them. “The smell induces memory, like a chain reaction. Have you ever read Proust?”
Rachel and Larry looked at each other and shrugged. Neither he nor Rachel had read him.
“The smell of madeleine cake when he was a child,” the psychiatrist went on, “induced in him a lifetime of memory and served as the trigger to motivate him to write his masterpiece spanning multiple volumes, all because of the memory of that smell.”
“So what can I do about it?” Rachel asked him. “Write a book.”
He laughed politely.
“I’m going to prescribe a medicine that has worked in cases like yours. It was originally used to stop nausea in pregnant women.”
“I’m not pregnant, not yet,” she said, looking at Larry.
“It may not work,” the psychiatrist said.
“And if it doesn’t work?” Rachel asked.
“Find a way to live with it,” he said. “Like titinnitis, a hearing difficulty that is rarely cured.”
“That it?” Larry asked, after exchanging troubled glances with Rachel.
“One day it might simply disappear,” the psychiatrist said. It was a very unsatisfactory diagnosis.
“It’s already been more than four years,” Larry said.
“I wish I could be more helpful,” the psychiatrist said.
“So do we.”
For the next few months in their new apartment, they tried to lead normal lives. Nothing changed. The pills he gave her did not work. Once again, she began to make noises about the apartment being a place where the smell became worse.
“Where can we go, then?” he challenged. Clearly, he had been patient, understanding, and cooperative, had done ever
ything possible to help her cope with the situation.
“Maybe if we moved upstate. Somewhere in the Hudson Valley further up the river,” she suggested.
“It’s something inside you Rachel, not in the apartment. Will these moves go on forever?”
“I hope not.”
He felt deeply sorry for her affliction. Love, he sensed, was turning to pity and compassion. They slept less and less, engaging in long, nocturnal conversations. They made love less often and when they did it seemed routine, not spontaneous as it had been at the beginning.
But he agreed to look for a place farther up the river, vowing to himself that this would be the absolute last time they would move. Moving was an exhausting process and was financially draining as well. Nevertheless, he was determined to help Rachel.
“We’ll have to commute by train more than an hour to get to work,” he told her.
“I’m willing if you are.”
“Maybe if we went up there and you sniffed around. You know what I mean. Trees act as filters.”
“That would be wonderful.”
They drove farther up the Hudson Valley, past Peekskill, but she could still detect the smell.
“Does it seem less so up here?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Nevertheless, they contacted a real estate broker and rented a nice house in Hudson, with a garden, surrounded by trees, and the air, to him at least, seemed fresh and clear.
It didn’t help. She could still smell it.
“I’ll never move again,” he told her. He was beginning to see how this mad affliction was chipping away at their relationship. He tried to rationalize his situation by characterizing her as “handicapped.” If she was “handicapped,” he reasoned, he would stand by her no matter what. “In sickness and in health,” the marriage vow decreed. Taking refuge in the idea, he felt ennobled by his sacrifice. It was a sacrifice.
She had given up her job and was working as a freelancer, doing her work at home. He couldn’t, as he was needed by his colleagues in face-to-face situations. The commute was exhausting him, making him irritable and depressed. Of course, she was well aware of what was happening but was helpless in the face of what was assailing her.
One day, he came home and she was wearing a surgical mask obviously impregnated with heavy perfume, which smelled like lilacs.
“Does it work?” he asked.
“Only when I keep it on,” she said, her speech muffled by the mask. She took it off only to eat and drink and when she talked on the telephone. She began to sleep with it. The odor of lilacs was so intense it was giving him headaches. When he complained, she changed the perfume to other flowered scents, but nothing worked as well as lilacs.
“I can’t stand the smell of it,” he told her often, trying valiantly to live with it, feeling guilty, finding it more and more difficult to cope with the smell.
“Now you see what I mean,” she said.
“It’s driving me crazy.”
“For me, it’s either that smell or the other. At least the smell of lilacs doesn’t remind me of the other, the horror of it.”
As time went on, he rarely saw her full face. Her speech behind the mask was muffled and, at times, he found it difficult to understand her words. The house was inundated with the smell of lilacs. It permeated everything, even his clothes. His co-workers would comment about it and after awhile he noticed that they preferred to keep their distance. He was too embarrassed to explain what it was all about.
Finally, his boss called him into his office.
“What is it with you, Larry? You stink of perfume, smells like lilacs. It’s making some people around here nauseous. Are you wearing this scent?”
“Actually no,” he responded. “It’s my wife’s. It gets into my clothes.”
“You’d better get rid of that stink, Larry. Really, it's upsetting people. It’s too heavy. Yuk. I’d prefer if you left my office now.”
As he began to leave the office, his boss called out.
“It’s either my way or the highway, Larry.”
At home, he tried sleeping in another room and double-washing his shirts and underwear and sending his clothes to the cleaners very frequently. Nothing helped. He explained the situation to Rachel.
“I may lose my job,” he said.
“Over the smell of lilacs? That’s ridiculous.”
“No it isn’t,” he acknowledged. “It’s driving me crazy as well.”
The boss kept his word and he was fired. In some ways it was a blessing because it forced him to confront his situation. She couldn’t stand the smell of the World Trade Center aftermath, and the lilac scent was the only palliative that worked for her. And he couldn’t stand the smell of lilacs.
He tried working from home, but it was impossible to live with the scent. By then, love had disappeared, although he did feel deep compassion for her problem and a new emotion—guilt—was beginning to take hold. As a temporary solution, he took an apartment in Manhattan and came up on weekends. Sometimes, she greeted him without the mask, but the smell of lilacs had seeped into the atmosphere of the house. He could barely wait out the weekend.
“I can still smell it,” she would tell him when the mask was off and the lilac scent did not help.
Finally he could stand it no longer.
“We’re both casualties of 9/11, Rachel.”
She agreed and they got a friendly divorce. It took him months to get rid of the smell of lilacs. He called her on the fifth anniversary of 9/11.
“I can still smell it,” she told him.
A Dad Forever
by Warren Adler
Jack Spencer observed his fifty-year-old son across the table at Michael’s, a celebrity haunt in Manhattan where Henry was a regular. Noting that his son’s eyes swept the room with eagle-eyed intensity, nodding here and there to others in the crowded dining room, Spencer said, “You seem to know lots of people, Hank,” with a touch of pride. Henry was the creative director of an important advertising agency.
“I guess,” Henry shrugged, offering his father a shining, bright smile, certainly a cosmetic spruce-up. He was handsome, with big brown eyes behind high cheekbones like his late mother’s. In fact, he looked so much like Dorothy that Spencer felt a pang of deep sentiment and had to squelch a sob, disguising it with a cough.
Henry had certainly enhanced his appearance since Spencer had last seen him two years ago. Apparently there had been an eye job, which eliminated the bags that were a family affliction on Spencer’s side of the family tree. Spencer had never corrected the bags under his eyes. And there was the touch-up of Henry’s sideburns, once graying.
They did speak periodically on the phone. Their conversations had become, over the years, more like short news bulletins from New York than real dialogue. Spencer defined it as perfunctory, obligatory, and dutiful, but feared to protest its lack of real intimacy. He was well aware that his expectations exceeded the reality. But at seventy-five, he supposed, he was more tolerant of disappointment and more willing to accept small victories. Even lip service had its attractions.
The fact was that hearing his son’s voice was comforting, validating the existence of genetic tissue between father and son. Lately they had communicated more by e-mail, enhancing the news bulletin definition. Like any report from a faraway place, all it lacked was a dateline and audio input.
“You look great, Hank,” Spencer said with sincere admiration. His son’s success was a source of pride, and he acknowledged it frequently in their telephone conversations and e-mails.
He had long ago made peace with the knowledge that his son was gay. There was, of course, only one answer to that dilemma, and he and Dorothy had confronted it when it became apparent, then finally admitted. Parental aspirations had little to do with reality. When one truly loved one’s children, the only option was acceptance.
Henry’s sister, Carol, had provided them with two grandchildren, which filled that void. Not that he and Dorot
hy had been professional grandparents. Carol lived with her husband and the kids in Los Angeles and Spencer got to see them twice a year. Thankfully, he had had his busy practice as an internist in Chicago to keep him occupied and able to cope with the physical loss of his wife, three years ago.
He was semi-retired now, which enabled him to, as he put it, smell the roses, which was more of an excuse than a necessity. Tomorrow he would board the gargantuan Queen Mary for a trip across the pond with a group of Chicagoans to visit the literary sights of the United Kingdom. English literature had always been his hobby and private joy, especially the Victorians, and he had had a lifelong passion for Shakespeare.
“It should be fun, Dad,” Henry said as they dipped into their Cobb salads. “I’m glad you’re getting around more.” They were silent for awhile as Spencer surreptitiously inspected his son. He felt clandestine, as if he were spying. Actually he was remembering how it had been in their early years, the joy of his son’s birth, the homecoming, the upbringing, all the things they did together as a family, how wonderful it was.
Family and work. He loved both aspects of his life then. His children were the central fact of his and Dorothy’s life, and everything they did was to enhance their lives, contribute to their happiness.
Memories crowded his mind as he sat facing his firstborn, once his and Dorothy’s fervent and loving occupation from sunrise to sunset and certainly in their dreams. They had marveled at the miracle of making this little boy. Surely other progenitors must have felt the same way. Family was the cornerstone of living in those days before mobility and ambition upset the balance. His and Dorothy’s parents had lived in Chicago all their lives and so it had been with them. He knew, of course, when displacement had begun and, he supposed, it was partially his and Dorothy’s fault.
