The Book of Lost Fragrances

Two

NEW YORK CITY, THE PRESENT

TUESDAY, MAY 10, 8:05 A.M.

When Jac L’Etoile was fourteen years old, mythology saved her life. She remembered everything about that year. Especially the things she’d tried to forget. Those she remembered in the most detail. It was always like that, wasn’t it?

The teenager waiting for her now, outside the TV studio on West Forty-ninth Street, couldn’t be much older than fourteen. Gangly, awkward, but excited and jittery like a young colt, she stepped forward and held out a copy of Jac’s book, Mythfinders.

“Can I have your autograph, Miss L’Etoile?”

Jac had just been on a network morning talk show promoting her book, but she wasn’t by any means a celebrity. Her cable show, also titled Mythfinders-exploring the genesis of legends-claimed under a million viewers, so encounters like this were both unexpected and gratifying.

The town car she’d ordered idled at the curb, the driver standing at the ready by the passenger door. But it didn’t matter if she was a little late. No one but ghosts waited for her where she was going.

“What’s your name?” Jac asked.

“Maddy.”

Jac could smell the light, lemony cologne the girl was wearing. Teenage girls and citron were forever finding each other. Uncapping the pen, Jac started to write.

“Sometimes it helps to know there really are heroes,” Maddy said in a hushed voice. “That people can really do amazing things.”

The noisy and crowded street across from Radio City Music Hall was an odd place for a confession, but Jac nodded and smiled at Maddy in complicity.

She’d known the same hunger far too long.

When Jac first started exploring the genesis of myths-traveling to ancient sites all over the world; visiting museums, private collections and libraries; searching the ruins of civilizations long gone-she’d imagined her findings would entertain and educate. To that end, she sought out and found the facts at the center of the great fictions, looked for and discovered the life-size versions of the giants in legends. She wrote about how celebrated deeds had in actuality been small acts, sometimes even accidents. Jac reported on how rarely the deaths of mythology’s heroes were grand, metaphoric or meteoric, but instead how storytellers had exaggerated reality to create metaphors that instructed and inspired.

She believed she was debunking myths. Bringing them down to size. But she wound up doing the opposite.

The proof that myths were, in fact, based in fact-that some version of ancient heroes, gods, fates, furies and muses really had existed-gave readers and viewers hope.

And that’s why they wrote Jac fan letters and thank-you notes, why Jac’s TV show was in its second year, and why teenagers like Maddy asked for her autograph.

And it was why Jac felt like a fraud.

Jac knew that believing in heroes could save your life but also knew that such belief in grandiose fantasy could destroy it just as easily. She didn’t tell Maddy that. Instead she finished the inscription, handed back the book, thanked her, and then slipped into the waiting car.

Forty-five minutes later the aroma of towering pines and newly blooming redbud trees informed Jac they’d reached the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, nestled in the lush Hudson River Valley. She looked up from her reading just as the looming wrought-iron gates came into view.

As the car passed through the entrance, Jac undid and retied the ribbon that kept the wayward curls off her face. Twice. She’d been collecting ribbons since she was a child and had boxes of them: satin, grosgrain, velvet, moiré and jacquard-most found at antique stores in baskets of trimmings. There had been seven yards of this creamy satin on a water-stained spool stamped “Memorial Black.”

The chauffeur drove down the cemetery’s center road until he came to a fork, and then he took a right. Watching out the window for the familiar granite orb-and-cross rooftop ornament, Jac knotted and unknotted her long white scarf as the driver navigated narrow lane after lane of tombstones, mausoleums and monuments.

For the last 160 years, all of her mother’s family had been buried in this Victorian cemetery that sat high on a ridge overlooking the Pocantico River. Having so many relatives asleep in this overgrown memorial park made her feel strangely at home. Uncomfortable and uneasy, but at home in this land of the dead.

The driver pulled up to a grove of locust trees, parked, and came around to open Jac’s door. Her resolve fought her anxiety. She vacillated for only seconds and then got out.

Under the shade of the trees, Jac stood on the steps to the ornate Greek-style mausoleum and tried the key. She didn’t remember having trouble with the lock before, but there hadn’t been a river of rust flowing from the keyhole last year. Maybe the keyway had corroded. As she jiggled the blade and put pressure on the bow, she noticed how many joints between the stone blocks to the right of the door were filled with moss.

On the lintel were three bronze heads corroded by the elements. The faces-Life, Death and Immortality-peered down at her. She looked at each as she continued to jiggle the key in the lock.

The pitting that had attacked Death had, ironically, softened his expression, especially around his closed eyes. The finger he held up to his lips, silencing them forever, was rotting. So was his crown of poppies-the ancient Greek symbol for sleep.

Unlike his two elderly companions, Immortality was young, but the serpent winding around his head, tail in its mouth, was mottled with black and green deterioration. Inappropriate for an ancient icon of eternity. Only the symbol for the human soul, the butterfly in the middle of Immortality’s forehead, was still pristine.

Jac’s struggle with the key continued. She was almost giddy at the thought that she’d be denied entry. But the tumblers clicked solemnly, and the lock finally yielded. As she pushed it open, the door’s hinges moaned like an old man. Immediately, the chalky smell of stone and stale air mixed with decayed leaves and dried wood wafted out. The “scent of the forgotten,” Jac called it.

She stood on the threshold and peered inside.

The midmorning light that passed through the two stained-glass windows of purple irises saturated the interior space with a melancholy cobalt wash. It spilled over the stone angel who lay prostrate on the altar. Her face was hidden, but her grief was visible in the way her delicate marble fingers hung over the pedestal and how her wings drooped down, their tips brushing the floor.

Under each of the two windows, alabaster urns contained Jac’s offerings from last year: long-dead branches of apple blossoms now withered and dried out.

In the center of the small enclosure, on a granite bench, a woman sat waiting, watching Jac, smiling a familiar, sad smile. Blue light passed through the woman’s form and splashed on Jac’s legs.

I was worried you weren’t coming. The soft voice seemed to come from the air around the translucent specter, not from within it.

She’s not real, Jac reminded herself as she stepped inside, closing the door behind her. Her mother’s ghost was an aberration. A delusion of her imagination. A holdover from her illness. The last relic of those terrible times when the face Jac saw in the mirror wasn’t her own-but belonged to someone unrecognizable looking back. When she’d been so sure the crayon drawings she made weren’t imaginary landscapes but places she’d lived that she went searching for them. When she could hear the screams of the people she saw being buried alive… burned alive… even though no one else could.

Jac was fourteen the first time her dead mother spoke to her. Often in the hours after she’d died. Then daily, then less frequently. But after Jac left France and moved to America, she only heard her voice once a year. Here in the sepulcher on each anniversary of her mother’s internment. A mother who, in essence, had abandoned her daughter too early and with too much drama. Literally in essence-because Audrey had died in the perfume workshop, surrounded by the most beautiful smells in the world. It would remain for Jac, who found her, a gruesome and shocking sensory memory. The scents of roses and lilies, of lavender, musk and patchouli, of vanilla, violets and verbena, of sandalwood and sage, and the image of those dead eyes open, staring into nothingness. Of an always-animated face now stilled. Of one hand outstretched in her lap-as if, at the last moment, Audrey had remembered she was leaving something important and reached out for it.

Still hugging the fresh apple blossoms she’d brought with her, Jac crossed the vault and put down the flowers on the marble floor beside the antique urn. She had a job to do here. As she lifted out last year’s dead branches, they fell apart, making a mess. Kneeling, she used the edge of her hand to sweep the debris into a pile. She could have hired perpetual care for things like this yearly ritual of cleaning up, but it kept Jac occupied and tethered to something tangible and concrete during her annual visit.

She wasn’t an only child, but every year she was alone in the crypt. She always reminded her brother of the date, hoping-but never assuming-that Robbie would come. Expectations lead only to disappointments. Her mother had taught her that, cautioning the little girl not to fall prey to life’s tempting promises.

“Survivors,” she used to tell her, “face facts.” It was a tough lesson-and possibly a poisonous one-to inflict on a child who wasn’t yet old enough to consider from whence the advice came: a woman who wasn’t able to follow her own counsel. You come from a family of dreamers, but there’s a difference between real and pretend. Do you understand? This will help. I promise.

But there was a difference between Jac’s childhood dreams and everyone else’s. Hers were full of nasty noises and ugly visions. Threats that were impossible to escape. Robbie’s were fantastical. He’d believed that one day they would find the book of fragrances that their ancestor had brought back from Egypt, and use its formulas to create wonderful elixirs. Whenever he talked about it, she’d smile at him in the condescending way that older siblings have and say: “Maman told me that’s just make-believe.”

“No, Papa said it’s true,” Robbie would argue. He’d run off to their library to find the antique leather-bound history book that by now fell open to the right page. He’d point to the engraving of Pliny the Elder, the Roman author and philosopher. “He saw Cleopatra’s book of fragrance formulas. He writes about it right here.”

She hated to disillusion her brother, but it was important he understand that it was all just an exaggerated story. If she could convince him, then maybe she could believe it herself.

“There might have been an inventory of the perfumes Cleopatra’s factory had manufactured, but we don’t have it. And there’s no such thing as the Fragrance of Memory. There can’t be a perfume that makes you remember things. It’s all a fairy tale our ancestors made up so that the House of L’Etoile would seem more exotic. For over two hundred years, our family has created and manufactured perfumes and sold them from our store. Just perfumes, Robbie. Mixtures of oils and alcohol. Not dreams. Not fantasies. Those are all made up, Robbie. To entertain us.”

Her mother had taught her all about stories. The ones you made up on purpose. And the ones that came unbidden. “Even when they are frightening and hold you in their grip, you can control them,” Audrey would say with a knowing look in her eye. Jac understood. Her mother was giving Jac clues. Helping her deal with what made the two of them different from the others.

Despite her mother’s advice, make-believe had still nearly driven Jac insane. As bad as her visions had been when Audrey was alive, they intensified with her mother’s death. And there had been no way Jac could convince herself they weren’t real.

After months of doctors who prescribed treatments and drugs that not only didn’t help but sometimes made her feel even crazier, one finally saw inside her and understood her. He taught her to distill the terrors the way perfumers took flowers and extracted their essences. Then he worked with her to make sense of all those droplets of screaming, bleeding hallucinations. He showed her how to find the symbolism in her delusions and to use mythological and spiritual archetypes to interpret them. Symbols, he explained, don’t have to relate to a person’s actual life. More often, they are part of the collective unconscious. Archetypes are a universal language. They were the clues Jac needed to decipher her torment.

In one of Jac’s most horrific recurring delusions, she was trapped in a burning room high above an apocalyptic city. The fourth wall was all windows. Desperately, as the smoke threatened to overwhelm her, she tried to find a way to open the casements. If only she could get out, she knew she could use the great translucent wings strapped to her back to fly to safety.

Somewhere beyond the room, she could hear people-albeit impossible over the roar of the fire. She screamed for help. But no one came to her rescue. She was going to die.

With the doctor’s help, Jac examined her unconscious and was able to identify threads of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus. An important difference-that proved to be the clue to understanding the significance of the dream-was that in her nightmare she was alone. Both her father and her mother had forsaken her. Even if Icarus ignored his father’s advice, his father was there, offering it. But no one was warning Jac not to fly too close to the sun or to the sea. She was abandoned. Imprisoned. Doomed. Fated to burn to death.

Learning about archetypes and symbolic imagery was the first step in a long road that led her to writing Mythfinders and then to producing the cable television show. Instead of becoming a perfumer like her brother and her father and his father before him, Jac had become an explorer, tracing the origins of ancient myths. She brought myths to life so that she could bring them down to earth. Traveling from Athens to Rome to Alexandria, she sought out archaeological landmarks and historical records, searching for proof of the people and events that had grown into myths.

Jac wanted to help people understand that stories existed as metaphors, lessons and maps-but not as truths. Magic can be dangerous. Reality was empowering. There were no Minotaurs. No monsters. There were no unicorns or fairies or ghosts. There was a line between fact and fantasy. And as an adult, she never took her eyes off of it.

Except when she came here, each year, on the tenth of May, on the anniversary of her mother’s death.

The light shifted. Jac knew it was the clouds moving, but the impression it created was that the angel was breathing. How lovely it would be to believe a stone angel could come to life. That there were heroes who never disappointed. That her mother really did speak to her from the grave.

Ah, but I do, came the whispered response to Jac’s unspoken thought. You know I do. I know how dangerous you think it is for you to believe me-but talk to me, sweetheart, it will help.

Jac stood and began to unwrap the apple blossoms she’d brought. She never spoke to the specter. Her mother wasn’t actually here. The manifestation was caused by an abnormality in her brain. She’d seen the MRI on her father’s desk and read the doctor’s letter.

Jac was fourteen at the time-but she’d have to look up some of the words in the dictionary even now. The scan showed what they called a very slight reduction of volume in frontal white matter, the area where evidence of psychotic disease was sometimes found. Proof it wasn’t her overactive imagination that made her feel as if she was going crazy but an abnormality doctors could see.

Although, it wasn’t one they could treat with any certainty. The patient’s long-term prognosis was uncertain. The condition might never become more pronounced than it was already. Or she could develop more severe bipolar tendencies.

The doctor recommended immediate therapy along with a cycle of psychopharmaceuticals to see if it relieved Jac’s symptoms.

Jac tore off the cellophane packaging and crumpled it, the crackling loud but not loud enough to drown out her mother’s voice.

I know this is upsetting for you, sweetheart, and I am sorry.

Once the branches were nestled in the urn under the stained-glass window on the west wall, they began to scent the air. Jac usually preferred shadowy, woodsy scents. Sharp spices and musk. Moss and pepper with only a hint of rose. But this sweet-smelling flower was her mother’s favorite, and so she brought it year after year and let it remind her of all that she missed.

The sky darkened, and a sudden rainstorm beat against the glass. Crouching in front of the urn, Jac sat on her heels and listened to the drops hitting hard on the roof and pounding the windows. Usually she was impatient to get to the next appointment. To change the scenery. Not to linger. Anything to avoid the boredom that invited excess contemplation of the wrong kind. But here, in this crypt, once a year, Jac felt a kind of sick relief in giving in to her fear, grief and disillusionment. Here, in this abyss, in the sad blue light, she could just be still and care too much instead of not at all. She could allow herself the visions. Be frightened by them but not fight them. Just once a year. Just here.

When I was a little girl, I used to believe this light was a bridge that let me walk from the living to the dead and back again.

Jac could almost feel her mother stroking her hair as she spoke in that soft whisper she’d used when putting her to bed. Jac shut her eyes. The sound of the storm filled the silence until Audrey spoke again.

That’s what it is for us, isn’t it, sweetheart? A bridge?

Jac didn’t speak. Couldn’t. She listened for her mother’s next words but instead heard the rain and then the whine of hinges as the heavy wrought-iron and glass door opened. She turned as a gust of wet cold wind blew in. Jac saw the shadow of a man and for a moment wasn’t sure if that was real, either.