short story - the smell mirror
The smell mirror
The bathroom was a rainbow of smells. Smells and glass and colours. Sharon always thought of her mother and the bathroom as extensions of each other. If she thought about the bathroom her mother was suddenly in front of her. If she thought about her mother, and growing up, the bathroom grew around her.
The walls of the house were thick so the windows were set in deep bays. The bath was under one of these bays, the bay just out of Sharon's reach at five or six, unless she stood on the edge of the bath. The window itself was tall and wide, its glass a shaped forest of leaves to baffle the view in or out. And the shelf, wide enough to sit on, packed with coloured glass bottles. Bath salts, essential oils, bath pearls, perfumes. So much colour and scent, such variety of size and shape, the bottles seemed to shift and shuffle, a crowd of people.
Sharon's favourite-shaped bottles were the little round ones, essential oils. But they were often a disappointing brown or clear glass. Of course the liquid, the light coming through, the sound of the bottles against one another, the cold resist of the glass against her tongue and teeth were what appealed about these. The reds and greens and blues made her happy. Their colours, and when she was older and didn't mind disorder so much, their variety. The different levels of liquid or salts or pearls in each, the differing sizes. The shapes. Square, round, twisted, thin, thick, low. With sloped shoulders, square shoulders or apparently no shoulders. Though none of them seemed to leak their smells mixed and filled the bathroom, a smell like her mother.
As she got older Sharon took more of an interest in the shelf and window frame behind the bottles. The way dirt gathered in inaccessible corners, the way white paint flecked in places to show blue paint underneath. A world of textures and colours. But she was still drawn back to the bottles and their beauty, always attempting to record her fascination in photos and her diary. Without being able to capture the smells it was frustrating, a hopeless effort.
If the kitchen was the family room, all noise and light, and the living room was what Sharon thought of as her father's, darker and quiet, then the bathroom was her mother's. Particularly as a child when her mother would wash her hair and help her bathe. They always talked, Sharon making serious pronouncements, and her mother discussing them with her. Whether flowers could talk, why people didn't use magic anymore, how war was stupid, whether a hedgehog would make a good pet. Once, pouring water from a pan they used in the bath to soak and to rinse hair, Sharon said,
"You smell nicer than grandma,"
She had told her mother before that she liked her smell, that she liked the smell of the bottles. She'd never made comparison with anyone else. She wasn't trying to be rude about her grandma, her mother's mother, Sharon rather liked her smell, it was reassuring. Simply, she preferred her mother's smell.
The previous month there had been a funeral. The elder of her mother's two brothers had died in a car accident. Sharon and her parents drove the hour to her grandma's house the day before the service. The house was full so Sharon, her mother and grandma shared the same bed. The funeral, the events round it, even her mother's sadness didn't mean much to Sharon. Slowly she forgot, except for sharing the bed with the two women. Now it was still fresh, now she still remembered the smells. She'd thought about it for a long time and wanted to talk to her mother about it.
She'd been allowed to stay up later than usual, and because it was a strange room her mother sat with her for longer, reading, until Sharon fell asleep. She woke once in the night, her mother and grandma on either side. The room was white and simply decorated but appeared pink. Streetlights beyond the garden filtered through handmade brown curtains. Sharon had been with her mother when she bought the fabric, scissors hushing and reverberating on the wide table with its fixed wooden ruler. She watched the hems sewn, and the complex ribbon the curtain-hangers were fixed to.
More pink came from a plug-in night-light to help her sleep. She was still afraid of the dark, even in her own bedroom. But lying between her mother and grandma now she felt safe. The large old iron-framed bed had a high square head and foot with vertical bars. It was tall with a deep, soft, sprung mattress, and when Sharon moved tics and creaks ran and faded. By moving her feet she could play simple tunes. When she was still and managed to stop the accidental squeaking she could hear the two women breathing. As she lay, listening, feeling the rise and fall of breath and looking at the unfamiliar ceiling she became aware of smells around her. They weren't nice smells, though not actually bad. Layered, comforting and strange. Warm, sleepy, turning and trying to understand them in her head Sharon fell asleep.
She woke with the sun coming through the gaps and weave in the curtains. The smells now were stronger, organic, animal, unprotected. Now she could make sense of them. The strongest smell was her mother's, she thought of mud and cooking fat, shoes and dampness. Then her grandma, more astringent, like tea and cat's breath. And Sharon herself, the notes between, grass cuttings sat in the sun for days, but not as sweet. Of all the smells she recognised her own the least, only smelled it in relation to the others. She didn't like it much. Her mother's was by far the richer, like a day in the countryside. She loved it and afterwards forever tried to recapture it. A part of it, negligible, could be found in the bottles. But they were more a waking, day smell. This smell, this love is what Sharon was trying to express.
In the bathroom her mother didn't say anything at first, then said,
"Let's wash your hair,"
Sharon scooped up some water in the pan and poured it from as high as she could reach making new bubbles in the water, then handed the pan to her mother. Before filling it her mother said,
"Grandma doesn't smell bad,"
"No," Sharon said, "she smells nice. But you smell better,"
"Tip back,"
said her mother, filling the pan, then running the water over Sharon's head. Cold shampoo followed, massaged in, wiped away from her eyes, hair sculpted into a foamy spike. Before rinsing, her mother asked,
"So how do I smell?"
Sharon thought seriously,
"I don't know. You smell like the bottles. You smell different when you're sleeping. When you're sleeping you smell good in another way,"
"Thank you. Tip back and close your eyes,"
Sharon closed her eyes and counted each panful of water. Three, four, five. Then while her eyes were still screwed shut her face and hair were towelled dry.
Now she could play or get out of the bath. Getting out of the bath meant being cold as the water cooled on her while she was dried. It meant having her hair combed in front of the fire, knots and tangles making her cry, pulling. The longer she could delay the better, so she chose to play. A little extra hot water was run in the bath, and she filled the plastic ducks with water and sprayed it out through a tiny hole where their bottoms should be. Her mother joined in, pushing the two boats into the spray. As they played her mother asked,
"What does daddy smell like?"
"Chestnuts,"
said Sharon. It wasn't quite true, but it was a close as she could get, and it seemed true. It seemed like the right answer. Daddy smelled more like chairs and moss and muddy boots. Her mother held one of the boats underwater with two fingers while she spoke, until she let it go and it bobbed to the surface,
"Chestnuts. Yes. Like the fire. Cooking them. You're a good girl,"
she stopped speaking, then started again, half singing,
"I can tell how I smell because I fell down a well. I can tell how I smell because I fell down a well,"
Soon it developed into a song, and Sharon joined in. In time, over months, other lines were added. It could be sung as a round. Sharon and her mother overlapping. For now they sang the simple beginning together, overemphasising the rhyme. Sharon, engrossed in the new song, hardly noticed being lifted from the bath and dried. She did notice downstairs when the comb was tugged through her hair and seemed to dig in her scalp.
After the combing it was time for a couple of chapters from the book she was being read. She liked daddy to read but he was away with his work. That he wasn't here, combined with a desire to delay, to hold off bedtime as long as possible, meant she felt freer than usual to ask her mother questions,
"Did your boyfriend before daddy smell nice?"
The boyfriend before daddy was mysterious. There was something disconcerting about him, but at the same time it was exciting to talk about him with her mother. Something like a story, an extra dimension to her mother. Something missing from her daddy, even though he had hundreds of funny stories about being young. Daddy didn't know that Sharon and her mother talked about the boyfriend before him. But Sharon knew her mother loved daddy and she was glad. He was nice, and not as frightening as the faceless, nameless boyfriend before.
"Boyfriend before daddy," said her mother, "He smelled nice. His house and his clothes. His hair. It all smelled nice,"
"Did you smell him when he woke up?"
"Yes,"
She waited, but her mother didn't say anything else. Sharon's face and right side were getting uncomfortably hot from the fire, so she shifted, then asked,
"What did he smell like?"
Her mother tapped her gently on the nose and smiled. Then she answered,
"He smelled like trees. Like the woods. It was nice,"
Sharon believed the answer, almost expected it. She wanted to know more. Not about daddy or boyfriend before daddy, but about her mother, herself. About how you came to smell so nice.
"How do you smell yourself?"
she asked. She looked around the room and wondered, why don't I smell everything all the time? The room had a smell, and so did everything in it. The green, heavy velveteen curtains with faded lines. She loved to hold the fabric against her lips. The metal shelves of old and new books. The fire, the coal, the sofa and the leather chair, the rug, the box of games and toys, the window, the floorboards, the stripped wooden door. Her mother's tea, her orange juice. The metal dustpan used for shovelling coal, and for cooking chestnuts on. The firelighters, the chopped wood, the empty plate that had carried toast. Her pyjamas, the talcum powder. It all smelled, but she didn't notice it usually. How do you smell yourself?
"Come here,"
said her mother, patting her knees. Sharon climbed into her lap in the chair, and squirmed to make herself comfortable. Then her mother said,
"You can't really smell yourself. Just like you can't see yourself. You're there. You can see your legs and your arms, but you can't seethe whole of you, or your face. You're inside looking out. You're smelling out," they laughed, "You need a mirror to see yourself, so you must need a smell mirror to smell yourself. You could smell it and all the smells would be in it, even your own. That would be the one that you didn't know, that wasn't all the other smells,"
Sharon nodded. It didn't explain why you smelled of things, of bubble-bath and shampoo during the day, and of yourself at night. It didn't explain how you could smell better.
In a minute her mother began to read, and Sharon watched the soot on the chimney breast burning. It glowed in little orange points like stars. Sometimes they formed an arc and moved quickly, at other times they sat wide-spaced and static. Occasionally they made a picture, like a cat's face, but the pictures quickly distorted and shifted. While she sat listening to the story, listening to her mother's voice, watching the soot burn, she had to remember to blink. Her eyes would feel dry or hot, and she would close them. When she opened them again the room was swimming and out of focus. Part of the way through the last chapter of the night she closed her eyes and tried to smell herself, to imagine what a smell mirror would look like.
It would be like the shelf of bottles, a bustling surface of colours and light. Different lights. The light that glinted and shone on the shoulders and sides of the bottles. The light that cast shadows. The light that showed the thickness and wavy imperfections of the glass, that filtered through the liquids. This light had shadows, but immaterial, suspended in the oils like sun through far away rain clouds. The light that cast coloured projections of the bottles. The light that moved through the day. The light more alive and solid than any stained-glass window. She pictured it and tried to fill it with smells. Tried to remember her smell and work out where it should be, what colours and shapes it had, where it fitted with her mother's. She fell asleep assembling her smell mirror.
Without thinking about it, without planning to, Sharon started to collect coloured bottles of her own. The collection on her bedroom windowsill was never quite as bright and alive as her mother's. The bottles leaked and gathered dust, insects died on the shelf. The smells dispersed. The order and colours seemed more lumpen, less convincing. And yet she grew attached to the messy assemblage, it had a beauty of sorts. While she saw all the imperfections of her little city of bottles others thought it was great. Her friends liked the oils, playing with the arrangement, testing the smells. She sometimes resented this. It felt like her friends didn't appreciate or understand what the bottles meant. At those times her room was private, only for her.
Occasionally Sharon wondered if she was trying to reproduce her mother's smell. It might explain why she felt so sensitive about her shelf, why she felt so exposed when friends took an interest in it. But a lot of the smells were nothing like her mother, nothing like the bottles in the bathroom. And she felt just as vulnerable when her friends took an interest in those. The smells in the bathroom interested her less than they had, seemed old-fashioned, sometimes chemical, sometimes overpowering. The crowd of bottles though, apparently waiting for a sound or sign, remained as exciting as ever.
Her mother liked gardening when she had the time, which mostly meant summer. Sharon wasn't keen but she liked the smells of the herb garden, a small plot in front of the kitchen. Nonetheless she liked to help from time to time, to be close to her mother, to be close to her mother working in the evenings, to be able to smell her. To smell her mother unguarded in the evenings after the day, and after physical effort. Although she would have felt ashamed and weird to admit it, she also liked the sight of her mother those evenings. Her arms redder than usual, in places slightly yellow with the reflective sheen of sweat. The way the flesh of her back and legs, her neck and shoulders looked soft and swollen, animated against the clean precise straps and hems of her summer dresses. The way the dresses seemed made for another shape, at once too big but not concealing enough. The way breasts and armpits and knees refused to accommodate, tried to escape each dress. Her mother's hair was different in summer, less manageable, younger. At times it disgusted her, like her mother was using her hair to flirt, to display herself to men that weren't her husband. Still Sharon liked it if she was working in the garden with her mother and a hair brushed her arm or face. She liked to feel the warmth glowing from her mother's skin. She liked to sit back and watch, wonder if she moved like that, if she'd look like that in twenty years.
In summertime when she'd exerted herself or only just got up or simply hadn't showered or bathed in a while Sharon might catch something of her own smell. It wasn't how she remembered from years before and she didn't like it but there was something of her mother there. A certain foulness a little like sweat-damp sheets that she sometimes thought of as ageing. If she did smell it she'd stop, try and find it again, a reflexive fascination. It was a haphazard process, beyond her control, one that she didn't want to control. At once embarrassing, intimately personal, and wholly enjoyable.
Sharon spoke more to her mother. Or rather spoke to her more like an equal than her parent. She noticed that with her father she was more often justifying herself or trying to win his approval. Her father wasn't forthcoming even when she asked him questions. She knew lots about his childhood, and his everyday trials, but nothing about him personally. She knew this wasn't actually true, but next to her mother he remained distant. Her mother would talk about anything, even without being questioned. It was from her mother she learned how strained her parents' relationship was. When the subject came up Sharon felt conflicted. Part of her wanted to ask questions, to go further into the causes of their problems, to help her mother, her parents. The rest of her found it upsetting and unsettling, made her want to avoid it and move the subject on. Usually she asked innocuous questions to get her mother to talk more about the past. Where she might learn more, or it might be forgotten.
Increasingly there were things Sharon didn't want to talk about with her mother, and things about her parents she didn't want to talk about with her friends. Her boyfriend Mike she kept almost entirely separate from her family for weeks, even though she desperately wanted to share the bathroom's light and colour with him. Especially once they started sleeping together. The first time they had sex neither was particularly experienced, neither was confident with their own body, and each was unknown to the other. For Sharon it was like wrestling an armchair. But in the days following she became much more aware of her body, found her senses heightened. It hurt her wrist to wear a watch, even sleeves were uncomfortable. Her tongue felt huge, her feet bruised, and she felt like she couldn't regulate her temperature. She noticed her breathing. She was aroused easily. Her whole perspective on the world shifted in a way she couldn't describe. She felt visible and easily read but didn't care.
Mike was easy to talk to, and Sharon found herself telling him things she didn't plan to, anxieties she could hardly admit to herself. It was nice to lie next to him and talk. Often she talked, telling him secrets and intimacies, as he slept. She never knew how much he heard or took in but it helped her feel better. He was her boyfriend, they were in love, that gave her actions a meaning. Gradually she introduced him to the house. She wanted her parents to accept him, if possible to not even notice him. More importantly she wanted him to see the autonomous person she was beginning to see in her mother. Behind the familiarity and the role of mother. She wanted him to understand so many things that she wrote them down, a list of everything important to her. She shut out of her mind anything that contradicted her image of him as perfect, as completely aware of everything she felt and wanted. If he was distant or selfish or insensitive she ignored it. Mike found himself the centre of a theatre, a narrative Sharon was making for them. Sometimes it made him uncomfortable.
One night in summer he stayed over. Her parents were away and she'd told them no one would stay overnight and that she wouldn't sleep elsewhere. She was feeling insecure and assured herself that her parents didn't really expect her to keep the agreement all three nights. In the evening she took a bath and lay staring at the visible bits of the bottles. They looked down at her with curiosity. After the bath, after picking up some of the bottles, looking at the light coming through, she dried and went downstairs to start cooking. By the time Mike arrived she was calm, happy.
Sharon invited him after a panic she had four days earlier. She invited him for her happiness and to apologise for subjecting him to a difficult situation. They had been due to meet in town, and while she was waiting Sharon tried to call her mother. There was no answer so she rang her father at work, but he wasn't around either. She tried other numbers she had, of people that might know where her parents were, no one answered. By the time Mike arrived she was crying and shaking with fear. Her mother had left, one of her parents had died, they didn't want her anymore, something bad had happened. She couldn't be calmed, wouldn't be held, she was shaking, too hot, and didn't want to be pacified. They cancelled their plans and caught a bus home. In the next half hour she left two frantic messages on her mother's voicemail.
They arrived at the house but there was no one in, no key left outside, no window open to climb through. They sat in the driveway and Sharon cried and told Mike her fears. And more, her anxiety that her parents would split up, how she hated them for treating her like a child, how she loved her mother, resented her father for not understanding either of them. Mike tried to tell her nothing was wrong, her mother had gone out, maybe to the shops. She'd left her mobile behind, or it was on silent, or the battery was flat. They tried ringing again but they couldn't hear anything in the house and there was no reply.
Around twenty minutes later as Sharon was about to call the police her mother arrived back in her car. Though Sharon was relieved to see her mother and helped her inside with the shopping they started to argue. Her mother said she was grown-up now and ought to act like an adult. Sharon kept repeating she'd been worried, it was natural. Mike stood awkwardly making half-hearted attempts to help unpack the shopping until Sharon stormed to her room taking him with her. As soon as the door was closed she dropped to the floor and started crying, and couldn't be calmed. Over half an hour she cooled from crying to raging at her mother, then saying how much she loved her and only wanted to be loved back, to smoking silently.
In the morning after he stayed over Sharon lay in bed next to Mike resting her chin on his chest and watching the morning sun hit buildings across the road. They were tall terraces with high chimneys and a church, all red brick. The orange sun made them look like they were made of pigment, like a touch would make them crumble to powder. The colour, the visual texture was pleasing, soft fabric sensation. With something so beautiful she was safe. As the light normalised, lost its orange, as the brick stopped glowing, as the view became prosaic her attention wandered. She noticed Mike's smell. He smelled of leaves and sweat and milk and something stale. She was reminded of her father's smell, but this was unpleasant. It fascinated her though, and she began to smell him all over, picking out where the elements came from, finding what was hidden. His nose and mouth, his hair and armpits, his belly, crotch and feet, and throughout he stayed asleep, unmoving. Then because she felt heavy tucked her head against his arm and dozed off.
He was still asleep when Sharon woke a while later. His smell was stronger now. But alongside his smell was another that she knew was her. It was unfamiliar at first, but then she began to remember it. There was a resemblance to her mother's smell though it was recognisably her childhood smell grown up. It had grown more complex, less sharp, superficially less pleasant, and stranger. She found she preferred it to Mike's smell, which seemed almost offensive. She wanted to tell someone about it but she knew Mike probably wouldn't understand, he'd make the right noises but wouldn't know why it was important. The only person she could think of who'd know was her mother, and there was no way it could be shared with her. Sharon lay staring at the ceiling, testing out how she might talk about it with her mother, what it was she wanted to say.
Sharon had been living with her current boyfriend David for almost two years when her father became very ill. At the end of June she visited and stayed for a week. Her father was out of hospital and recovering but still looked sick. His skin was paler, more crumpled than she remembered. What was really upsetting was how slowly he moved and spoke. Sharon spent more time talking to him that week than she had in the previous year. She also spent a lot of time in the evenings reading and eavesdropping on her parents in the other part of the kitchen/dining room. Although they seemed to be close it re-ignited Sharon's dread that they might separate. Each appeared to be having entirely different conversations. Her mother talked about practical things, about Sharon's father getting his strength back, making some day-trips if they could, and getting back to work slowly. Her father talked about not letting it beat him, how he'd take another week or so, then jump straight back in where he'd been. Her mother was outward looking, constantly referring to places they'd been, things they'd seen and done. Her father was more inward, almost closed to how weak he was. For Sharon they looked like people drifting apart, failing to understand one another. She found herself crying with anxiety on a couple of nights.
The fear of her parents splitting up with its implicit rejection of her and the childhood she'd known was persistent. Almost as long as she could remember she hated them arguing, hated any signs they didn't understand each other. It felt like suddenly losing her balance. Now that she was no longer dependent she felt even more vulnerable. She obsessively revisited her favourite, safest parts of the house and garden. A white English rose on the corner of the house, the fireplace she'd sat by so many evenings. And of course the shelf of bottles. Like everything else it was smaller than she remembered, but as she looked its intricacy drew her in. She lost any sense of where she was, how old she was, she simply travelled through its protective landscape.
Because Sharon was aware how changed her parents were, she noticed how they treated her like someone else. She recognised the person they talked to, but she hadn't been that Sharon for a long time. It was difficult, an act of translation. A ghost of who she used to be stood between her and her parents. They spoke to the ghost, and she had to speak through it. She had to fight to keep distant from it, to avoid slipping into a role that wasn't her just because it was easy. Conversations became bizarre negotiations, full of gaps. The misunderstandings between her parents, the difference between Sharon and the person they thought she was, the fears she didn't dare articulate, and silences. Silence was horrible, but sometimes they had nothing to say, were like strangers. She felt as powerless as she had sat in the driveway unable to call her mother. She felt exhausted and sad.
A few weeks later Sharon's mother visited her for two days. Usually both parents would visit, but her father was back in work. On the first day Sharon and her mother went for lunch to a traditional greasy-spoon cafe. One of Sharon's favourite places. As they drank their coffee while waiting for their all-day breakfasts to arrive her mother said,
"I'm starting to feel old,"
Sharon didn't say anything. She remembered how when she was ten or eleven she worried intensely about her parents' health. They were adults, but still young. But if one of them was ill, even with a cold, she became terrified they might die. There was no way to stop her fears escalating, and she couldn't let her parents out of her sight. Then she stopped worrying. The fear of divorce crept back, her parents' health an accepted fact. More recently the white in their hair, her father's illness had changed that certainty. Her mother looked small and Sharon couldn't imagine her young. Even photos from twenty years ago seemed to be another person. Like the bathroom shelf her mother's face had changed so slowly she wasn't aware of it. She said nothing. Her mother continued,
"I love your father. It's just lately he's... with his illness. He smells like an old man. I feel... It's a shock. You probably don't know,"
Sharon knew. Or partly knew. She wanted to ask questions and she knew that today her mother would probably answer. She chose not to ask. It would have been intrusive and wrong. Instead she decided to talk, to tell her mother things she didn't tell other people, to say everything she'd wanted. A large part of her hoped that her mother might answer, might reveal her secrets in response. She told her mother how, though she didn't remember their smells or how she'd smelled them, she preferred her mother's smell above her grandma's and her own. How she seemed to smell more like her mother now. How she'd tried to recreate the smells, clustered memories, colours and physical pleasure in touching of her mother's bathroom shelf. She told her mother how Mike had smelled bad at night, but made her aware of her own smell, and how it seemed acceptable to her. That when she was alone she could only smell herself accidentally and fleetingly. She said that a later boyfriend, Joe, had smelled ok. But whether it was actual or imagined her own smell took on a foul edge, too animal and strong to be enjoyed. She had to sleep apart from him more and more. She told how with David they both smelled bad like anyone in the morning but how she didn't find either offensive. She wondered how much the smells had direct, obvious physical causes, and how much might be pheromones or something more intangible. While she talked the food came and they started to eat. Sharon wanted throughout to stop herself, to stop babbling, but she couldn't until she ran out of things to say.
They were quiet. Sharon found she was looking in her mother's eyes in a way she couldn't remember doing before. She looked at her plate and felt stupid. Her mother looked past her shoulder and said,
"I never liked your father's smell. I've started to like my own smell, but it's not the same now. But he's always smelled bad. Not in the day, in the morning. And he smells old now, and it's not as comforting any more,"
she paused, then as if there were a question said,
"I can't sleep on my own. It's like falling."
Sharon sat staring at a place where the window frame was missing until her questions were quiet in her head. The window ended a few centimetres from the course of bricks below. The edge of the glass, seen from above through the glass itself, was black and green. Except in one place where a bright point of light and a ruffled spectrum broke the pattern. The brick itself was orange, with almost red patches where dirt or damp lined the lettering, and cream lumps of mortar. In the letters and on the edge of some bricks was a thin green lichen, almost brushed on. A slight breeze blew through against her shin.
Matt Dalby
18-26 Dec 2005
5507 words
The bathroom was a rainbow of smells. Smells and glass and colours. Sharon always thought of her mother and the bathroom as extensions of each other. If she thought about the bathroom her mother was suddenly in front of her. If she thought about her mother, and growing up, the bathroom grew around her.
The walls of the house were thick so the windows were set in deep bays. The bath was under one of these bays, the bay just out of Sharon's reach at five or six, unless she stood on the edge of the bath. The window itself was tall and wide, its glass a shaped forest of leaves to baffle the view in or out. And the shelf, wide enough to sit on, packed with coloured glass bottles. Bath salts, essential oils, bath pearls, perfumes. So much colour and scent, such variety of size and shape, the bottles seemed to shift and shuffle, a crowd of people.
Sharon's favourite-shaped bottles were the little round ones, essential oils. But they were often a disappointing brown or clear glass. Of course the liquid, the light coming through, the sound of the bottles against one another, the cold resist of the glass against her tongue and teeth were what appealed about these. The reds and greens and blues made her happy. Their colours, and when she was older and didn't mind disorder so much, their variety. The different levels of liquid or salts or pearls in each, the differing sizes. The shapes. Square, round, twisted, thin, thick, low. With sloped shoulders, square shoulders or apparently no shoulders. Though none of them seemed to leak their smells mixed and filled the bathroom, a smell like her mother.
As she got older Sharon took more of an interest in the shelf and window frame behind the bottles. The way dirt gathered in inaccessible corners, the way white paint flecked in places to show blue paint underneath. A world of textures and colours. But she was still drawn back to the bottles and their beauty, always attempting to record her fascination in photos and her diary. Without being able to capture the smells it was frustrating, a hopeless effort.
If the kitchen was the family room, all noise and light, and the living room was what Sharon thought of as her father's, darker and quiet, then the bathroom was her mother's. Particularly as a child when her mother would wash her hair and help her bathe. They always talked, Sharon making serious pronouncements, and her mother discussing them with her. Whether flowers could talk, why people didn't use magic anymore, how war was stupid, whether a hedgehog would make a good pet. Once, pouring water from a pan they used in the bath to soak and to rinse hair, Sharon said,
"You smell nicer than grandma,"
She had told her mother before that she liked her smell, that she liked the smell of the bottles. She'd never made comparison with anyone else. She wasn't trying to be rude about her grandma, her mother's mother, Sharon rather liked her smell, it was reassuring. Simply, she preferred her mother's smell.
The previous month there had been a funeral. The elder of her mother's two brothers had died in a car accident. Sharon and her parents drove the hour to her grandma's house the day before the service. The house was full so Sharon, her mother and grandma shared the same bed. The funeral, the events round it, even her mother's sadness didn't mean much to Sharon. Slowly she forgot, except for sharing the bed with the two women. Now it was still fresh, now she still remembered the smells. She'd thought about it for a long time and wanted to talk to her mother about it.
She'd been allowed to stay up later than usual, and because it was a strange room her mother sat with her for longer, reading, until Sharon fell asleep. She woke once in the night, her mother and grandma on either side. The room was white and simply decorated but appeared pink. Streetlights beyond the garden filtered through handmade brown curtains. Sharon had been with her mother when she bought the fabric, scissors hushing and reverberating on the wide table with its fixed wooden ruler. She watched the hems sewn, and the complex ribbon the curtain-hangers were fixed to.
More pink came from a plug-in night-light to help her sleep. She was still afraid of the dark, even in her own bedroom. But lying between her mother and grandma now she felt safe. The large old iron-framed bed had a high square head and foot with vertical bars. It was tall with a deep, soft, sprung mattress, and when Sharon moved tics and creaks ran and faded. By moving her feet she could play simple tunes. When she was still and managed to stop the accidental squeaking she could hear the two women breathing. As she lay, listening, feeling the rise and fall of breath and looking at the unfamiliar ceiling she became aware of smells around her. They weren't nice smells, though not actually bad. Layered, comforting and strange. Warm, sleepy, turning and trying to understand them in her head Sharon fell asleep.
She woke with the sun coming through the gaps and weave in the curtains. The smells now were stronger, organic, animal, unprotected. Now she could make sense of them. The strongest smell was her mother's, she thought of mud and cooking fat, shoes and dampness. Then her grandma, more astringent, like tea and cat's breath. And Sharon herself, the notes between, grass cuttings sat in the sun for days, but not as sweet. Of all the smells she recognised her own the least, only smelled it in relation to the others. She didn't like it much. Her mother's was by far the richer, like a day in the countryside. She loved it and afterwards forever tried to recapture it. A part of it, negligible, could be found in the bottles. But they were more a waking, day smell. This smell, this love is what Sharon was trying to express.
In the bathroom her mother didn't say anything at first, then said,
"Let's wash your hair,"
Sharon scooped up some water in the pan and poured it from as high as she could reach making new bubbles in the water, then handed the pan to her mother. Before filling it her mother said,
"Grandma doesn't smell bad,"
"No," Sharon said, "she smells nice. But you smell better,"
"Tip back,"
said her mother, filling the pan, then running the water over Sharon's head. Cold shampoo followed, massaged in, wiped away from her eyes, hair sculpted into a foamy spike. Before rinsing, her mother asked,
"So how do I smell?"
Sharon thought seriously,
"I don't know. You smell like the bottles. You smell different when you're sleeping. When you're sleeping you smell good in another way,"
"Thank you. Tip back and close your eyes,"
Sharon closed her eyes and counted each panful of water. Three, four, five. Then while her eyes were still screwed shut her face and hair were towelled dry.
Now she could play or get out of the bath. Getting out of the bath meant being cold as the water cooled on her while she was dried. It meant having her hair combed in front of the fire, knots and tangles making her cry, pulling. The longer she could delay the better, so she chose to play. A little extra hot water was run in the bath, and she filled the plastic ducks with water and sprayed it out through a tiny hole where their bottoms should be. Her mother joined in, pushing the two boats into the spray. As they played her mother asked,
"What does daddy smell like?"
"Chestnuts,"
said Sharon. It wasn't quite true, but it was a close as she could get, and it seemed true. It seemed like the right answer. Daddy smelled more like chairs and moss and muddy boots. Her mother held one of the boats underwater with two fingers while she spoke, until she let it go and it bobbed to the surface,
"Chestnuts. Yes. Like the fire. Cooking them. You're a good girl,"
she stopped speaking, then started again, half singing,
"I can tell how I smell because I fell down a well. I can tell how I smell because I fell down a well,"
Soon it developed into a song, and Sharon joined in. In time, over months, other lines were added. It could be sung as a round. Sharon and her mother overlapping. For now they sang the simple beginning together, overemphasising the rhyme. Sharon, engrossed in the new song, hardly noticed being lifted from the bath and dried. She did notice downstairs when the comb was tugged through her hair and seemed to dig in her scalp.
After the combing it was time for a couple of chapters from the book she was being read. She liked daddy to read but he was away with his work. That he wasn't here, combined with a desire to delay, to hold off bedtime as long as possible, meant she felt freer than usual to ask her mother questions,
"Did your boyfriend before daddy smell nice?"
The boyfriend before daddy was mysterious. There was something disconcerting about him, but at the same time it was exciting to talk about him with her mother. Something like a story, an extra dimension to her mother. Something missing from her daddy, even though he had hundreds of funny stories about being young. Daddy didn't know that Sharon and her mother talked about the boyfriend before him. But Sharon knew her mother loved daddy and she was glad. He was nice, and not as frightening as the faceless, nameless boyfriend before.
"Boyfriend before daddy," said her mother, "He smelled nice. His house and his clothes. His hair. It all smelled nice,"
"Did you smell him when he woke up?"
"Yes,"
She waited, but her mother didn't say anything else. Sharon's face and right side were getting uncomfortably hot from the fire, so she shifted, then asked,
"What did he smell like?"
Her mother tapped her gently on the nose and smiled. Then she answered,
"He smelled like trees. Like the woods. It was nice,"
Sharon believed the answer, almost expected it. She wanted to know more. Not about daddy or boyfriend before daddy, but about her mother, herself. About how you came to smell so nice.
"How do you smell yourself?"
she asked. She looked around the room and wondered, why don't I smell everything all the time? The room had a smell, and so did everything in it. The green, heavy velveteen curtains with faded lines. She loved to hold the fabric against her lips. The metal shelves of old and new books. The fire, the coal, the sofa and the leather chair, the rug, the box of games and toys, the window, the floorboards, the stripped wooden door. Her mother's tea, her orange juice. The metal dustpan used for shovelling coal, and for cooking chestnuts on. The firelighters, the chopped wood, the empty plate that had carried toast. Her pyjamas, the talcum powder. It all smelled, but she didn't notice it usually. How do you smell yourself?
"Come here,"
said her mother, patting her knees. Sharon climbed into her lap in the chair, and squirmed to make herself comfortable. Then her mother said,
"You can't really smell yourself. Just like you can't see yourself. You're there. You can see your legs and your arms, but you can't seethe whole of you, or your face. You're inside looking out. You're smelling out," they laughed, "You need a mirror to see yourself, so you must need a smell mirror to smell yourself. You could smell it and all the smells would be in it, even your own. That would be the one that you didn't know, that wasn't all the other smells,"
Sharon nodded. It didn't explain why you smelled of things, of bubble-bath and shampoo during the day, and of yourself at night. It didn't explain how you could smell better.
In a minute her mother began to read, and Sharon watched the soot on the chimney breast burning. It glowed in little orange points like stars. Sometimes they formed an arc and moved quickly, at other times they sat wide-spaced and static. Occasionally they made a picture, like a cat's face, but the pictures quickly distorted and shifted. While she sat listening to the story, listening to her mother's voice, watching the soot burn, she had to remember to blink. Her eyes would feel dry or hot, and she would close them. When she opened them again the room was swimming and out of focus. Part of the way through the last chapter of the night she closed her eyes and tried to smell herself, to imagine what a smell mirror would look like.
It would be like the shelf of bottles, a bustling surface of colours and light. Different lights. The light that glinted and shone on the shoulders and sides of the bottles. The light that cast shadows. The light that showed the thickness and wavy imperfections of the glass, that filtered through the liquids. This light had shadows, but immaterial, suspended in the oils like sun through far away rain clouds. The light that cast coloured projections of the bottles. The light that moved through the day. The light more alive and solid than any stained-glass window. She pictured it and tried to fill it with smells. Tried to remember her smell and work out where it should be, what colours and shapes it had, where it fitted with her mother's. She fell asleep assembling her smell mirror.
Without thinking about it, without planning to, Sharon started to collect coloured bottles of her own. The collection on her bedroom windowsill was never quite as bright and alive as her mother's. The bottles leaked and gathered dust, insects died on the shelf. The smells dispersed. The order and colours seemed more lumpen, less convincing. And yet she grew attached to the messy assemblage, it had a beauty of sorts. While she saw all the imperfections of her little city of bottles others thought it was great. Her friends liked the oils, playing with the arrangement, testing the smells. She sometimes resented this. It felt like her friends didn't appreciate or understand what the bottles meant. At those times her room was private, only for her.
Occasionally Sharon wondered if she was trying to reproduce her mother's smell. It might explain why she felt so sensitive about her shelf, why she felt so exposed when friends took an interest in it. But a lot of the smells were nothing like her mother, nothing like the bottles in the bathroom. And she felt just as vulnerable when her friends took an interest in those. The smells in the bathroom interested her less than they had, seemed old-fashioned, sometimes chemical, sometimes overpowering. The crowd of bottles though, apparently waiting for a sound or sign, remained as exciting as ever.
Her mother liked gardening when she had the time, which mostly meant summer. Sharon wasn't keen but she liked the smells of the herb garden, a small plot in front of the kitchen. Nonetheless she liked to help from time to time, to be close to her mother, to be close to her mother working in the evenings, to be able to smell her. To smell her mother unguarded in the evenings after the day, and after physical effort. Although she would have felt ashamed and weird to admit it, she also liked the sight of her mother those evenings. Her arms redder than usual, in places slightly yellow with the reflective sheen of sweat. The way the flesh of her back and legs, her neck and shoulders looked soft and swollen, animated against the clean precise straps and hems of her summer dresses. The way the dresses seemed made for another shape, at once too big but not concealing enough. The way breasts and armpits and knees refused to accommodate, tried to escape each dress. Her mother's hair was different in summer, less manageable, younger. At times it disgusted her, like her mother was using her hair to flirt, to display herself to men that weren't her husband. Still Sharon liked it if she was working in the garden with her mother and a hair brushed her arm or face. She liked to feel the warmth glowing from her mother's skin. She liked to sit back and watch, wonder if she moved like that, if she'd look like that in twenty years.
In summertime when she'd exerted herself or only just got up or simply hadn't showered or bathed in a while Sharon might catch something of her own smell. It wasn't how she remembered from years before and she didn't like it but there was something of her mother there. A certain foulness a little like sweat-damp sheets that she sometimes thought of as ageing. If she did smell it she'd stop, try and find it again, a reflexive fascination. It was a haphazard process, beyond her control, one that she didn't want to control. At once embarrassing, intimately personal, and wholly enjoyable.
Sharon spoke more to her mother. Or rather spoke to her more like an equal than her parent. She noticed that with her father she was more often justifying herself or trying to win his approval. Her father wasn't forthcoming even when she asked him questions. She knew lots about his childhood, and his everyday trials, but nothing about him personally. She knew this wasn't actually true, but next to her mother he remained distant. Her mother would talk about anything, even without being questioned. It was from her mother she learned how strained her parents' relationship was. When the subject came up Sharon felt conflicted. Part of her wanted to ask questions, to go further into the causes of their problems, to help her mother, her parents. The rest of her found it upsetting and unsettling, made her want to avoid it and move the subject on. Usually she asked innocuous questions to get her mother to talk more about the past. Where she might learn more, or it might be forgotten.
Increasingly there were things Sharon didn't want to talk about with her mother, and things about her parents she didn't want to talk about with her friends. Her boyfriend Mike she kept almost entirely separate from her family for weeks, even though she desperately wanted to share the bathroom's light and colour with him. Especially once they started sleeping together. The first time they had sex neither was particularly experienced, neither was confident with their own body, and each was unknown to the other. For Sharon it was like wrestling an armchair. But in the days following she became much more aware of her body, found her senses heightened. It hurt her wrist to wear a watch, even sleeves were uncomfortable. Her tongue felt huge, her feet bruised, and she felt like she couldn't regulate her temperature. She noticed her breathing. She was aroused easily. Her whole perspective on the world shifted in a way she couldn't describe. She felt visible and easily read but didn't care.
Mike was easy to talk to, and Sharon found herself telling him things she didn't plan to, anxieties she could hardly admit to herself. It was nice to lie next to him and talk. Often she talked, telling him secrets and intimacies, as he slept. She never knew how much he heard or took in but it helped her feel better. He was her boyfriend, they were in love, that gave her actions a meaning. Gradually she introduced him to the house. She wanted her parents to accept him, if possible to not even notice him. More importantly she wanted him to see the autonomous person she was beginning to see in her mother. Behind the familiarity and the role of mother. She wanted him to understand so many things that she wrote them down, a list of everything important to her. She shut out of her mind anything that contradicted her image of him as perfect, as completely aware of everything she felt and wanted. If he was distant or selfish or insensitive she ignored it. Mike found himself the centre of a theatre, a narrative Sharon was making for them. Sometimes it made him uncomfortable.
One night in summer he stayed over. Her parents were away and she'd told them no one would stay overnight and that she wouldn't sleep elsewhere. She was feeling insecure and assured herself that her parents didn't really expect her to keep the agreement all three nights. In the evening she took a bath and lay staring at the visible bits of the bottles. They looked down at her with curiosity. After the bath, after picking up some of the bottles, looking at the light coming through, she dried and went downstairs to start cooking. By the time Mike arrived she was calm, happy.
Sharon invited him after a panic she had four days earlier. She invited him for her happiness and to apologise for subjecting him to a difficult situation. They had been due to meet in town, and while she was waiting Sharon tried to call her mother. There was no answer so she rang her father at work, but he wasn't around either. She tried other numbers she had, of people that might know where her parents were, no one answered. By the time Mike arrived she was crying and shaking with fear. Her mother had left, one of her parents had died, they didn't want her anymore, something bad had happened. She couldn't be calmed, wouldn't be held, she was shaking, too hot, and didn't want to be pacified. They cancelled their plans and caught a bus home. In the next half hour she left two frantic messages on her mother's voicemail.
They arrived at the house but there was no one in, no key left outside, no window open to climb through. They sat in the driveway and Sharon cried and told Mike her fears. And more, her anxiety that her parents would split up, how she hated them for treating her like a child, how she loved her mother, resented her father for not understanding either of them. Mike tried to tell her nothing was wrong, her mother had gone out, maybe to the shops. She'd left her mobile behind, or it was on silent, or the battery was flat. They tried ringing again but they couldn't hear anything in the house and there was no reply.
Around twenty minutes later as Sharon was about to call the police her mother arrived back in her car. Though Sharon was relieved to see her mother and helped her inside with the shopping they started to argue. Her mother said she was grown-up now and ought to act like an adult. Sharon kept repeating she'd been worried, it was natural. Mike stood awkwardly making half-hearted attempts to help unpack the shopping until Sharon stormed to her room taking him with her. As soon as the door was closed she dropped to the floor and started crying, and couldn't be calmed. Over half an hour she cooled from crying to raging at her mother, then saying how much she loved her and only wanted to be loved back, to smoking silently.
In the morning after he stayed over Sharon lay in bed next to Mike resting her chin on his chest and watching the morning sun hit buildings across the road. They were tall terraces with high chimneys and a church, all red brick. The orange sun made them look like they were made of pigment, like a touch would make them crumble to powder. The colour, the visual texture was pleasing, soft fabric sensation. With something so beautiful she was safe. As the light normalised, lost its orange, as the brick stopped glowing, as the view became prosaic her attention wandered. She noticed Mike's smell. He smelled of leaves and sweat and milk and something stale. She was reminded of her father's smell, but this was unpleasant. It fascinated her though, and she began to smell him all over, picking out where the elements came from, finding what was hidden. His nose and mouth, his hair and armpits, his belly, crotch and feet, and throughout he stayed asleep, unmoving. Then because she felt heavy tucked her head against his arm and dozed off.
He was still asleep when Sharon woke a while later. His smell was stronger now. But alongside his smell was another that she knew was her. It was unfamiliar at first, but then she began to remember it. There was a resemblance to her mother's smell though it was recognisably her childhood smell grown up. It had grown more complex, less sharp, superficially less pleasant, and stranger. She found she preferred it to Mike's smell, which seemed almost offensive. She wanted to tell someone about it but she knew Mike probably wouldn't understand, he'd make the right noises but wouldn't know why it was important. The only person she could think of who'd know was her mother, and there was no way it could be shared with her. Sharon lay staring at the ceiling, testing out how she might talk about it with her mother, what it was she wanted to say.
Sharon had been living with her current boyfriend David for almost two years when her father became very ill. At the end of June she visited and stayed for a week. Her father was out of hospital and recovering but still looked sick. His skin was paler, more crumpled than she remembered. What was really upsetting was how slowly he moved and spoke. Sharon spent more time talking to him that week than she had in the previous year. She also spent a lot of time in the evenings reading and eavesdropping on her parents in the other part of the kitchen/dining room. Although they seemed to be close it re-ignited Sharon's dread that they might separate. Each appeared to be having entirely different conversations. Her mother talked about practical things, about Sharon's father getting his strength back, making some day-trips if they could, and getting back to work slowly. Her father talked about not letting it beat him, how he'd take another week or so, then jump straight back in where he'd been. Her mother was outward looking, constantly referring to places they'd been, things they'd seen and done. Her father was more inward, almost closed to how weak he was. For Sharon they looked like people drifting apart, failing to understand one another. She found herself crying with anxiety on a couple of nights.
The fear of her parents splitting up with its implicit rejection of her and the childhood she'd known was persistent. Almost as long as she could remember she hated them arguing, hated any signs they didn't understand each other. It felt like suddenly losing her balance. Now that she was no longer dependent she felt even more vulnerable. She obsessively revisited her favourite, safest parts of the house and garden. A white English rose on the corner of the house, the fireplace she'd sat by so many evenings. And of course the shelf of bottles. Like everything else it was smaller than she remembered, but as she looked its intricacy drew her in. She lost any sense of where she was, how old she was, she simply travelled through its protective landscape.
Because Sharon was aware how changed her parents were, she noticed how they treated her like someone else. She recognised the person they talked to, but she hadn't been that Sharon for a long time. It was difficult, an act of translation. A ghost of who she used to be stood between her and her parents. They spoke to the ghost, and she had to speak through it. She had to fight to keep distant from it, to avoid slipping into a role that wasn't her just because it was easy. Conversations became bizarre negotiations, full of gaps. The misunderstandings between her parents, the difference between Sharon and the person they thought she was, the fears she didn't dare articulate, and silences. Silence was horrible, but sometimes they had nothing to say, were like strangers. She felt as powerless as she had sat in the driveway unable to call her mother. She felt exhausted and sad.
A few weeks later Sharon's mother visited her for two days. Usually both parents would visit, but her father was back in work. On the first day Sharon and her mother went for lunch to a traditional greasy-spoon cafe. One of Sharon's favourite places. As they drank their coffee while waiting for their all-day breakfasts to arrive her mother said,
"I'm starting to feel old,"
Sharon didn't say anything. She remembered how when she was ten or eleven she worried intensely about her parents' health. They were adults, but still young. But if one of them was ill, even with a cold, she became terrified they might die. There was no way to stop her fears escalating, and she couldn't let her parents out of her sight. Then she stopped worrying. The fear of divorce crept back, her parents' health an accepted fact. More recently the white in their hair, her father's illness had changed that certainty. Her mother looked small and Sharon couldn't imagine her young. Even photos from twenty years ago seemed to be another person. Like the bathroom shelf her mother's face had changed so slowly she wasn't aware of it. She said nothing. Her mother continued,
"I love your father. It's just lately he's... with his illness. He smells like an old man. I feel... It's a shock. You probably don't know,"
Sharon knew. Or partly knew. She wanted to ask questions and she knew that today her mother would probably answer. She chose not to ask. It would have been intrusive and wrong. Instead she decided to talk, to tell her mother things she didn't tell other people, to say everything she'd wanted. A large part of her hoped that her mother might answer, might reveal her secrets in response. She told her mother how, though she didn't remember their smells or how she'd smelled them, she preferred her mother's smell above her grandma's and her own. How she seemed to smell more like her mother now. How she'd tried to recreate the smells, clustered memories, colours and physical pleasure in touching of her mother's bathroom shelf. She told her mother how Mike had smelled bad at night, but made her aware of her own smell, and how it seemed acceptable to her. That when she was alone she could only smell herself accidentally and fleetingly. She said that a later boyfriend, Joe, had smelled ok. But whether it was actual or imagined her own smell took on a foul edge, too animal and strong to be enjoyed. She had to sleep apart from him more and more. She told how with David they both smelled bad like anyone in the morning but how she didn't find either offensive. She wondered how much the smells had direct, obvious physical causes, and how much might be pheromones or something more intangible. While she talked the food came and they started to eat. Sharon wanted throughout to stop herself, to stop babbling, but she couldn't until she ran out of things to say.
They were quiet. Sharon found she was looking in her mother's eyes in a way she couldn't remember doing before. She looked at her plate and felt stupid. Her mother looked past her shoulder and said,
"I never liked your father's smell. I've started to like my own smell, but it's not the same now. But he's always smelled bad. Not in the day, in the morning. And he smells old now, and it's not as comforting any more,"
she paused, then as if there were a question said,
"I can't sleep on my own. It's like falling."
Sharon sat staring at a place where the window frame was missing until her questions were quiet in her head. The window ended a few centimetres from the course of bricks below. The edge of the glass, seen from above through the glass itself, was black and green. Except in one place where a bright point of light and a ruffled spectrum broke the pattern. The brick itself was orange, with almost red patches where dirt or damp lined the lettering, and cream lumps of mortar. In the letters and on the edge of some bricks was a thin green lichen, almost brushed on. A slight breeze blew through against her shin.
Matt Dalby
18-26 Dec 2005
5507 words
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