“The Perfume” Stephen Rubin

1 THE PERFUME

Stephen Rubin | 1st Place

When I was young, my father owned his own chrome plating company and was very successful selling to customers like Schwinn Bicycle. We lived in a large, two-story house flled with nice furniture; my parents each had a new 1955 Cadillac, and we went yachting in our 36 foot Rammer Cabin Cruiser. I had all of the building blocks, Lincoln logs, plastic soldiers, and Tonka trucks a kid could want. I remember Dad had planted roses along the verge of the back patio. But then one night his business caught fre and burned to the ground. This was before business insurance existed, so we lost everything. My grandmother provided us with a place to live, a third story apartment in the building she owned. My grandfather had purchased it just before the war. We had three bedrooms, a small dining room and kitchen, and a single bathroom with a free standing bathtub on claw feet. We took with us some pictures, a few of my toys, and an upholstered sofa and chairs that were very uncomfortable as they were always wrapped in a heavy clear plastic. Everything else was left behind, victims to repossession and foreclosure. My older brothers shared a bedroom with bunk beds and a closet too small for their clothes. My bedroom had a window where I often sat looking over the fat roofs of the two story apartment buildings that lined the street. I could see the people in their apartments and would make up stories about them. This room served as my bedroom and the family television room as well. My bed was a vinyl sofa. I felt no sense of shelter in this place except when I was in my room with the door shut. The kitchen was at the back end of the apartment where the back door opened to a small wooden landing and the wooden stairway that led down to the second foor landing and from there down to the ground and back yard. I remember the mornings that time of the year in Chicago when windows and doors were left open, a time before air conditioning. The warm breeze entered our kitchen blending with the scent of reheated cofee and the odor of cold cigarette stubs. Every morning, when I came downstairs, my mother would be sitting in her corner where the end of the kitchen table adjoined the wall, clutching at her housecoat below her chin as if chilled, her thin body buried in its wrapping. Her posture was brittle and rigid. She raised the cup to her lips and blew across the surface of the hot cofee as she cautiously sipped from the rim. Then she tapped the pack of Chesterfelds in her palm, pulled out the last cigarette, and put it between her lips as she crumpled the empty pack and dropped it in the wastebasket at her side. A double row of amber medicine vials lined the sill ordered according to their timing and frequency. She raised the Zippo in front of her face, and her lips adjusted the end of the cigarette to the edge of the fame. She took a slow deep drag closing her eyes as she leaned back as if swooning, her cheeks hollowed by the drag that pulled the orange glow up the cigarette. I watched as the thin column of smoke purled up from a lipstick-stained butt, her last smoke among the others piled in the Bakelite ashtray.

She then returned to her muttering and the relentless voices only she heard. Her raspy words spoken too soft and rapid to be understood were what I always heard when frst entering the kitchen. Her familiar quarreling seemed to never stop. Often I created images for her voices, animated persons with whom she carried on her endless conversations, voices that were her sole possession that maybe had some similarity to someone she knew and who was familiar with her past. I observed her distantly as an acquaintance, like that kid I saw daily from the opposite side of the school playground, the kid with whom I rarely spoke. We sat in the room’s sudden silence which was heavier, denser, more absolute than when we spoke. Though I had just entered the room, I felt a I dreaded stepping hurried panic to leave. Time moved too slowly when we were together, and I dreaded stepping into one of into one of her private her private fantasies that took us anywhere but here. fantasies that took us anywhere but here. I shifted uneasily. The vinyl seat pulled at my bare calves, each new position more uncomfortable than the last. I felt a sudden alarm in her silence, and my heart began to kick with the sharp cloying in my gut. Her face held an obsessed, vacant expression bordering on a trance. She turned to me, her noncommittal eyes seeing something beyond me as she robustly exhaled. Her mind was held captive in memories she believed had occurred but likely hadn’t. Most often, she remembered herself as the leading character in a scene from one of her favorite television dramas, which she believed she had actually lived. Her words meant little to me, but it was her facial expressions that were impactful. It was how she contorted her face that hinted at what could come next, as if she were in the throes of losing control against me. “You know,” she said, pausing. “You were due on Mother’s Day.” I saw the beginning of a smile tremble briefy on her lips before it vanished. She squinted and took another drag. Again, we sat in silence, an hour in a moment, my mind fumbling in need of a response. “Uh huh,” I stammered. “You know what today is, don’t you,” she said. “Of course, you do. You wouldn’t forget.” “Sure,” I muttered defensively. “Sure, I wouldn’t forget.” I had begun my shopping that Saturday back in April when I rode my bike to the Five and Dime and spoke to the old lady at the cosmetics counter. She had that grandmotherly patience with a small smile that ended in commas and pufy powdered cheeks with a smudge of pink rouge brushed across the ridge under her wet looking green eyes. “Hello there, young man. How can I help you?” she asked “How much is that perfume?” I asked, pointing to the display behind her

where they kept the good stuf because it was so expensive. “Which one? There are several here,” she said, turning toward the bottles like one of the models on a television game show elegantly gesturing at the prize to be won. “That one, on the top, the big one, please,” I said pointing. “Oh, you have good taste. That’s the best one of all. It’s made of real lavender. Here, smell.” She pressed the silver bulb on a tasseled spray atomizer. The aroma took possession of me. Yes, this was the one. “How much does it cost?”

“This one is quite expensive. It’s ten dollars,” she said. “Thank you, Ma’am.” I choked with disappointment as I knew I couldn’t save that much on my allowance of a quarter each week, and certainly not in the limited time I had. “That’s more than I can save before Mother’s Day. Which one can I get if I have, say, seven dollars?”

When I went back to the store, I stopped my bike several times on the way over to check my pocket to make sure the money hadn’t fallen out. Everyday when I got home from school, I’d go into the bottom drawer of my dresser and take out my cigar box where I kept all my special processions including the money I was saving, counting and recounting to be sure I could aford the seven dollar perfume. It was still expensive but didn’t smell as good as the lavender one. That same lady was there and smiled at me as she wrapped the box in nice gift paper and didn’t charge me a penny extra to do it. I felt awkward by the directness of my mother’s gaze. The skin at the nape of my neck tingled like something was crawling there. I desperately wanted all this mandatory and painful scene to be over, to get away and be alone in my room. She exhaled a stream of smoke, her chin uplifted regal-like. “You were supposed to be a Mother’s Day baby but came a week late. That was a miserable week. I was so big and uncomfortable. But then there you were.” She rolled the ash of her cigarette into her ashtray, took another big drag and smashed it. A slight eddy of smoke rose. She pulled another pack of Chesterfelds from a paper bag, carefully pulled the tiny ribbon that held the cellophane, opened the pack, and lit up. “So you know what today is,” she said. My mind fumbled to fnd a response. “Uh huh. Here, see I remembered,” I said proudly placing the beautifully wrapped gift on the table. “I knew you wouldn’t forget,” she said. “I remembered, and the nice lady gift wrapped it for me,” I said, my voice trembling. I pushed the small rectangular box across the table at her. She let it sit there, making no move to retrieve it.

“Well, that’s so nice of you, honey,” she said. “What is it?” She asked this each year, What is it? And always asking me Do you know what day it is? I didn’t know the right

response, so I stayed silent as she began slowly pulling of the wrapping paper, careful not to tear it.

“You were due to be born on Mother’s Day,” she repeated, more to herself than to me. “But you didn’t come till the following week.” I felt embarrassed and confused that she was repeating this. She extracted the bottle, and aimed a spray between us, waving her hand to fan the fragrance toward her. Her face suddenly puckered into a wince, and then realizing I had seen her reaction, she quickly reshaped her expression into the slender smile. “Why, isn’t this a nice perfume,” she said. “It certainly makes a statement, doesn’t it? I’ll need to put this away and keep it for special occasions.” “Yes, special occasions,” I said, returning an equally insincere smile. “Well, very nice,” she said again, distracted. She placed the bottle on the table and pushed it to the side. “Why don’t you go of and play now?” I went back to my room, closed the door and took a deep breath of relief as I sat down on the foor to play with my plastic soldiers. But my attention was elsewhere. I had anticipated the sweet, candy-like smell from when the store lady sprayed it for me. But it wasn’t that. It was the lavender fragrance of the perfume I couldn’t aford. The ten dollar plus tax one. She wrapped the expensive perfume, and now I couldn’t do anything about it.

The following Saturday I rode my bike back to the Five and Ten to tell the lady about her mistake. Since I had already given it to my mom, I couldn’t bring it back. “I can pay you a little each week, if that’s okay,” I shyly told her. “You’re a good kid,” she said plainly, not talking like a sales lady. “Thank you Ma’am. Here’s my quarter for this week. My dad gives me a quarter allowance each week. So I can bring you a quarter each week until I get to ten dollars. Is that okay?” I was so nervous and had no idea what I could do other than what I ofered. “Oh, there’s no need.” she said. “I forgot all about the special sale we were having that day. So, you were a lucky boy. The lavender perfume was seven dollars for that day only.” She smiled the words at me. I never did smell that fragrance again until that one day Minnie came. She had worked for my mom since my older brothers were little, and then when I came along, she took care of me. I loved Minnie, her soft confdent voice and incredible patience. She didn’t shy away from any question I asked, but she often giggled at my innocence that could have been ofensive to someone else. She felt each question needed to be answered with understanding explanations. “Minnie, your skin is so dark, how do you know when your hands are dirty?” I had asked her one day. “Darlin, it don’t matter what color yo skin to know yo hand’s dirty. I know my hand’s dirty just like yo know yo’s dirty.” She opened the palm of her hand towards me, and I

opened mine next to hers. We smiled at one another. I was with Minnie during each day when she cleaned our house and did the laundry. When I woke from a bad dream, her smiling face was there; her calming voice settled me. She was a master at treating skinned knees and always had a Bandaid in her apron She told me about her grandparents freed from slavery and sang me the songs she learned from them. “You smell so nice Minnie,” I said that day. “Just like fowers.” “Oh,” she said. “Thank you. Your Mama give it to me on Mother’s Day. Wasn’t that sweet? She said she thought it was just what I’d like.” She smiled big like she did sometimes for my mom. I saw how happy Minnie was, but I felt like the breath had been kicked out of me. I thought about all those tense days of saving and fretting about getting my mother her gift. She didn’t just expect it, she demanded it. I had wanted to make her happy, but happy didn’t come along very often. Too young to have the words to describe it, I had already begun to realize at eight years old that my mom and I lived on opposite sides of a thin and impenetrable veil. I knew that trust was dangerous and caring made me vulnerable, a victim to disappointment and ridicule. Except with Minnie. Life is survival before anything else. I left home at about ffteen after my mom slammed my head into the edge of a wall. I walked twelve miles to my dad’s and stepmother’s apartment, and they sent me to a boarding school. I think that I have always been haunted by those years with my family. I had come along ten years after my two brothers, and they and my parents had already bonded as a family. They had very little interest or involvement in what I did, and I grew up among them as a nameless shadow. And having gained no more than an abstract idea of what afection was, I grew my imagination to sustain me with my I grew up among them thoughts, my writing, animals and nature. Looking as a nameless shadow. back, I realize that if the perfume was a gift for the woman who had cared for me and raised me, then it had found its way to the right person .