Fragrance: a Memory

 

If you go down the stairs in my house, there is an empty level with a guest room, a bathroom, and a room I call the movie room because it has two La-Z-Boy loungers in it and a large television. This floor is clean, airy, and quiet, but it has a sacred place inside a closet inside a cloth bag. There is a memory. This memory is of fragrance. This memory of fragrance is from my daughter who wore the dress I think only once or maybe twice. I bought it for her in London at a very fancy store and she took a very long time trying to decide whether she should agree with me and let me buy it for her. She was like this as a child as well. She never wanted toys or new clothes like my other children and the standard five and dime was of little interest to her. What she wanted was a regular supply of books and of course I was happy to provide those to her. Before she died, she asked me to bring her some books and I did. The books made her angry because they were violent books and she accused me of not understanding what she had been through. She was right. She was right all the time it just was hard for me to see it. Life for my daughter was filled with pitfalls and misjudgments and disappointments and great talents and a brilliant mind and a beautiful face. She loved many times and lost many times. She would come home after these losses, but eventually, I would let her down in some way. Anger is a frightening torrent, a downpour that I try to get out of anytime.

Downstairs in the closet on the lower level of my house in the bag is a dress and the fragrance wraps itself around the dress, the fragrance of my daughter.

Every couple of years I tread on tiptoe down the stairs, and I open the door to the closet, and it makes the same noise like a heavy clicking of a tap shoe. There is the bag, and I carefully unzip it from bottom to top and lift the shoulders of it off and rest the bag on the back of the dress and then I move my face closer and closer to the white lace where her neck would have been.

I press my nose into the dress, very gently as one would press a nose into a soft flower to find its fragrance without stealing it. My daughter smells of musk and the paper of old books. She smells of frozen dreams and a sweet happiness. I am careful not to open the zipper of the dress bag very often because I do not want to lose this bit of fragrant memory of her breath of her heart beating of her laughter, I want it to last as long as I do.

It’s enough sometimes to lie on my bed and think of what is in the closet on the floor beneath me. The fragrance is elusive, but then so is life. Knowing that the dress is there and that it contains her memory comforts me. It is as if I have not lost her completely though I know I have.