The Perfume

  I don’t want to be a gray old Dove Bar and blend in with the sky and the soap, she thought. I don’t want to be the kind of girl who can’t even find her own front door. I don’t want to be pathetic.

  Inside the little handbag was her emergency notification card, with her address neatly printed. She was 11844. How could she have forgotten such a crucial thing?

  Her heart double-timed again, and Dove said, “Stop that.”

  A woman Dove had not noticed, stooping over her one blossoming shrub to pluck its one remaining blossom, stared at Dove. “It’s my bush,” the woman said defensively. “I can pick the flower if I want.”

  “I meant my heart,” explained Dove. “It’s gotten away from me.”

  “Hearts do that,” said the woman. She smiled gently, remembering a love of her own.

  But there was no love involved in Dove’s double beat.

  Dove backed up until she found 11844.

  Her key fit.

  She went in.

  Like every other unit at Sky Change Hills, it featured white walls, soaring ceilings, long-chained chandeliers, and layers of narrow balconies.

  The nubbly carpet that covered the five staggered levels of floor and stair was also gray, with black and white speckles. It reminded Dove of parking lots.

  Identical twin couches were covered with white leather. A large low coffee table, like a slab of smooth fake granite, hunched between them. Two long swings of black metal arced over the couches to provide reading lights.

  How neat, how sparse, how anybody this living room was.

  If her family were to move away, nobody would know the difference. They had left no mark. The condo was more like a tin can than a house; any old vegetable or soup could be packaged in it. It could always be recycled.

  She walked as slowly as a burglar wondering what to steal.

  The stairs were a bright, space-taking well of carpeted steps. They led down to the playroom in which nobody played, and down below that, to the garage in which two cars would be parked when her parents got home from work. Up the steps was balcony one, and up more steps was her parents’ suite, then balcony two, and finally her own bedroom.

  She tilted her head to stare up the shaft that was the stairwell and skylight.

  The sky showing in the skylight was blue.

  But—

  Dove turned, frowning, to look back outside.

  Through the narrow, half-tilted window blinds, she could see the opposite matching condos and a long slice of sky.

  Gray, like a flock of lost doves.

  Sky Change Hills.

  It must have meant today. For indigo blue, thick as pudding, filled the sky in the skylight.

  Eyes locked on the blue square, Dove began climbing the stairs to the top. To balcony three, where she almost never went.

  It was supposed to be an “eyrie,” an eagles’ nest.

  She was a Dove. She nested in her own room.

  Her room was pastel: pale chalky hues like lemon and dusty rose. She yearned for as much color as a Hawaiian beach: for gaudy posters, bright scarves, slaps of primary color paint, richly hued sheets, and rows of shoes in purple, yellow, green, blue, scarlet, hot pink, chartreuse. … But she never bought those. They frightened her, as if she would not be Dove any longer were she to break forth in brightness.

  Nothing in Dove’s room matched. Nothing was even. Nothing came in pairs. Nothing was folded with square corners. Identical things were impossible to endure.

  But she did not enter the safety of her own room.

  She went up toward the sky, like a bird about to fly.

  Her heart was going crazy, beating double, supplying so much blood to her system that it was enough for two.

  Balcony three was carpeted in the nubbly gray that waffled up the stairs and balconies, and here at the top, it could not stop itself, but even covered the walls, forming little steplike seats.

  This was a “retreat.”

  Not that anybody had ever retreated there. It was too open. When they retreated—which in her family was always—they went to their own rooms and shut their doors.

  Dove set her book bag on one of the step seats.

  Next to it, she set her package from Dry Ice.

  There was a handle on the skylight. It was a working window. Carefully, Dove released the lock. She put one hand on the handle and turned it easily. One full turn did not move the skylight. A second full turn and the skylight lifted perceptibly. On the third full turn, the glass began to straighten itself and tilt upright, and then Dove could stand and touch the sky.

  The sky that was blue … the sun that was yellow … the air that was warm with spring … on a day that was gray and chilly.

  Her head stuck out of the top of the condo.

  There was nothing in sight.

  Not a rooftop.

  Not a treetop.

  Not a plane or a bird.

  Not a horizon or a view.

  Just blue, blue sky.

  Some other world entirely; some other time and space.

  The bottle of perfume had tumbled out. It lay like a crystal snake on the soft rug. Venom.

  Dove lifted the perfume. The stopper was crystal. A simple cylinder, glittering.

  She rested the bottle against her cheek, and it was dry ice, burning her with its terrible temperature. It branded her face. She yanked it from her skin and held it away from herself, toward the blue, blue sky.

  A warm shaft of wind curled down the skylight. She could almost see the wind: a blue flag wrapping around her wrist. She shook the wind off her arm. But since she was still holding the perfume bottle by the stopper, the bottle dropped, while the stopper remained in her hand.

  The perfume fell gently to the cushion of the carpet, its snake neck curled so that not a drop spilled.

  But its scent … oh, its scent … like the wind, Venom slipped out of the bottle diffused through the air, settled on Dove’s hair, rested on Dove’s hand, filled her body.

  Her lungs and heart and brain breathed Venom.

  As she had almost seen the wind, she almost saw something else, too: almost saw another person, almost felt another life.

  No body. No flesh. No form.

  Invisible as fragrance.

  But nevertheless, it was there.

  And full of …

  … venom

  Chapter 3

  IN THE MORNING, DOVE FELT a flutter inside her head.

  It was a gentle movement, a bird shifting position in the nest at night. She shuddered slightly when the feeling stopped. Stood quite still, not wanting to feel that again.

  She felt it again.

  Something was brushing up against the inside of her skull.

  Dove brushed her hair very hard, to push the feeling away.

  The feeling increased.

  Dove rushed downstairs, hoping to find a parent, but they had left, of course; each had a long commute, in different directions, and they began their days early.

  Dove’s mother, whose car had a telephone and a fax machine, would be putting her lipstick on at the red light and making her first business call of the day at a comfortable sixty miles an hour on the turnpike heading north.

  Dove’s father would be using his time well: This was very important to Dove’s father. He was learning another language from a set of expensive cassette tapes. Dove thought it was Japanese; last year he had learned German. He looked most odd when driving, his mouth curling around foreign syllables, with nobody in the passenger seat to be talking to.

  In the empty kitchen, Dove’s head was full.

  Like a full stomach—as if she had eaten too much.

  But in her head?

  Had she thought too much?

  Studied too much?

  Daydreamed too much?

  Her head was stuffed and cramped.

  Dove suddenly hit the side of her head with the bottom of her palm. It seemed to work. Her mind settled down, like a bed being made: sheets momentarily fluffed and t
hen resting.

  “Oooh, boy, do I need breakfast,” muttered Dove to herself. She fixed something very sturdy: instant oatmeal black with raisins.

  The raisins stared at her like eyes.

  She put a spoonful to her mouth and thought, If I eat this, my stomach will be full of eyes.

  She went to school hungry.

  In school, Dove could see and recognize all her friends. She was able to say hello and respond normally when they said, “Hey, how are you?” But in the thickness of her head she felt cramped and distant, as though she actually occupied some other place, and had to communicate with her friends long distance.

  The flutter in her head got up and looked around.

  Dove wanted to scratch the inside of her brain. She knotted her fingers to keep from ripping out her hair.

  This is how stags feel, thought Dove, when they first get antlers, and have to rub themselves against the trees to get the velvet off.

  What would they do if she rubbed her head against the classroom walls?

  “The brain, you see,” said the biology teacher, “is similar to an onion.”

  Dove detested onions. If you chopped them, your hands smelled. If you cooked them—and the Daniels often did; her father was fond of small white onions in thick white sauce—they were like baby golf balls soaked in glue.

  “There are also many layers to the brain,” said the biology teacher.

  Dove connected with that. Her brain did have many layers. She could feel the flutter inside her head lifting each brain layer, like blankets on a bed, deciding where to rest for the night.

  At the table they shared, Laurence moaned slightly. Laurence was adorable to look at, but tiresome to be around. He had been that way since they were little kids, and was unlikely to change. Girls were always getting crushes on Laurence and then changing their minds. Laurence was proof that looks were not everything. “Wrong,” murmured Laurence. “There is nothing layered about the brain. Convoluted, yes. Layered, no.”

  Dove raised her hand. The teacher, always eager to coach an inquiring mind, recognized her. “Yes, Dove?” he said happily.

  “You know how sometimes babies are born with two of something?” said Dove. “An extra heart or an extra kidney?”

  “An extra eyeball,” agreed Timmy O’Hay, pretending to have one. Timmy was the opposite of Laurence: tiresome to look at but terrific to be around. After a while you forgot that Timmy was rumpled and wrinkled and just enjoyed him.

  The teacher sighed. “I have never actually heard of extra hearts, Dove, but yes, sometimes there are major deformities at birth.”

  “Have you ever heard of an extra brain?” she said.

  “Dove, please. Let’s be logical here. There isn’t room in a skull for an extra brain.”

  “Sure there is,” asserted Timmy. “Take Laurence here. The trick is that both brains are very small, see. They don’t take you very far. Won’t be long, Laurence’s brains will fold up shop. It’ll be an institution for Laurence, a bed with rails and a nurse with injections to keep him calm.”

  “Timmy,” said the teacher tiredly.

  The fluttering had been replaced by footsteps. A second person was walking around inside her head. Insectlike. As if her second person had more than two legs; had eight, perhaps.

  “What if you really did have a second person inside you?” said Dove.

  “If you really did have a second person inside of you,” said the teacher, “you would receive a mental diagnosis. Schizophrenia, perhaps. You would be on heavy-duty, industrial-strength medication, and very probably live out your unfortunate years in the state institution to which Timmy hopes to send Laurence.”

  The class laughed.

  “Oh,” said Dove. She decided against describing what was going on inside her skull. The world did not sound sympathetic.

  Her next class was ancient history.

  It was an elective, for people who had done especially well in American history the year before. She could have taken current world, but since Dove’s family watched the news every night during supper—they never talked; the only talking done in her house was by television commentators—Dove felt too acquainted with the current world already. She opted for the ancient world, and now they were doing Egypt.

  A sharp hard pain began in the exact center of Dove’s skull.

  The second person had taken up residence. The person was hard, like a piece of gravel in a shoe. Just as the biology teacher had said, there was not enough room up there. Dove’s mind was shoved against the wall of her skull, her thoughts pressed closer together, like recycled newspapers jammed into a container on the sidewalk.

  “There is evidence,” said the teacher, “that the ancient Egyptians did brain surgery. Skulls in tombs have been found in which holes were drilled, probably to relieve pressure from brain tumors. Or possibly it was thought that during a psychotic episode, the evil influence could be given an escape hatch. The technique is called trepanning.”

  Dove could visualize this perfectly.

  There would be a surgeon in a white linen skirt and a golden necklace shaped like a scarab. He would have a long drill, which he would hand-turn, and the patient would be fastened down on a board, head resting on a stone pillow, and the Egyptian surgeon would drill a hole into the skull.

  What a relief it must have been to the patient.

  Dove wanted to lie on one of those Egyptian couches and have her head drilled. Get this second person out of her head.

  It would probably be a relief to the second person as well. An escape hatch.

  Perhaps a lid could be put on: a scalp flap.

  No, because then the second person could come back in. The second person would treat the skull like a hotel. Come back when he felt like it and tuck himself in.

  Dove touched her hair, feeling for the soft spot where the hole could be drilled.

  Through the silk of her hair, the rubberiness of her scalp, and the hard bone of her head, Dove felt an answer.

  Dove did not need to drill holes.

  The person inside was going to come out by itself.

  Chapter 4

  NIGHT FELL.

  Where there had been gray, there was black. Where there had been soft edges, there were no edges at all.

  Only darkness.

  Dove was aware of her parents as she had never been before.

  First, there was her mother. Not very old. Thirty-six. As slim and fit as she’d been in high school, Dove’s mother still looked like a teenager. Brilliant in math, she was a busy accountant for a tax firm. How boring and strict the numbers seemed to Dove; how demanding and how dull taxes must be. But Dove’s mother loved her clients, sorting out their business expense problems and giving them better ideas.

  Dove thought that her mother’s brain was filled with numbers instead of words, and that it clicked like an adding machine.

  Dove’s mother detested cooking and rarely did any.

  Her great pleasure was clothing. She had taken a job in a large, polished firm because it was a great excuse to dress beautifully and differently and expensively every day.

  Dove loved her mother.

  Then there was her father. His body had thickened over the years, and he was constantly on a diet. He stuck to each diet by day and caved in by night, when it was nothing for him to consume four or five desserts. He was always joining a health club or starting up a swimming membership, or taking up running, but he would lose interest within a month. He worked for the phone company, and unlike Mother, Father did not like his job. He had never liked his job, and it was a mystery to Dove why he stayed with it. It was a mystery to Father, too, and reaching for that line of desserts seemed to be linked with the eight grim hours of a job he loathed. Dove could not understand why he did not quit and find something better.

  Dove loved her father deeply.

  And yet she was not close to her parents.

  They rarely chatted, or talked of intimate things, or shared stories of what happ
ened that day. It seemed to Dove that her family lay on the surface of family life; they shared a house, a dinner table, and a television screen.

  She did not know who her mother’s best friend was, or what her father did on those days he came home late, or what made them love each other.

  More and more, as Dove grew up, she saw that these parents of hers were not only total strangers to her, they were total strangers to each other.

  That night, she asked for a story.

  Her mother’s elegant eyebrows lifted. “A story?” repeated her mother, amused.

  “About when I was little,” said Dove eagerly. She loved stories about herself. There weren’t many. She had not been an exciting child. “Or when you and Father were in college,” she added, giving them an out. Their own lives would be an easier story for them.

  Her parents sighed slightly, privately. Separately they seemed to remind themselves that every parent must expect to exert him-or herself occasionally. Dove’s mother glanced at her watch. Dove’s father rested his magazine at an angle from which he could still read the large print of the captions, if not actually the articles.

  She knew that they did not think of themselves as Dove’s Mother and Dove’s Father. They thought of themselves as Jan and Rob. Sometimes she thought of them that way, too.

  “Well, of course,” her father began, “we had expected two. They said your mother was going to have twins.”

  The familiar sadness of having disappointed her parents even before birth filtered through Dove. The sadness felt as visible as the vapor from Dry Ice, damp and infinite.

  “Ultrasound showed two,” said her father, smiling at the memory, “and we bought two of everything: two bassinets and a double carriage. It seemed very efficient to have two at a time.” Her father approved of efficiency.

  What had happened to the extra carriage and bassinet? For that matter, what had happened to hers? Her parents kept nothing. There were no keepsakes in this immaculate condominium, no attic, no cardboard boxes of the past, no trunks or forgotten drawers full of interesting memorabilia.