Lavender

by amy wentworth

            He would never hide it in his sock drawer, but she looked there anyway, sliding her hand under the garden of socks she’d rolled herself.  Her hands were small and tanned with coral polish.  His track medal from college, the heirloom watch ticking sleepily, and in the far corner, a small pouch, rough.  She poked it and then tried to close her entire hand around it.  It fit nicely in her fist, and around the throat of the pouch was something like satin, a ribbon maybe.  Yes, a ribbon!  She pulled gently and brought the cute thing out from under the socks and onto center stage of the drawer.  In the first instant of its uncovering, at the last tug of ribbon, the pouch opened, and out poured itsy bitsy purple grains and a smell that caught in her like a lullaby.  A lavender sachet from their honeymoon!  She’d thought they were all gone, the smell long dead.  But here was the last one unloosed and roaring back up into her nostrils.    

            Paris.  4:00 in the afternoon.  Sunshine filling the overexposed streets.  She couldn’t read the names of the shops or see into their windows.  She couldn’t remember looking up at Notre Dame, or being inside, but she did remember coming back out into the daylight.  She and Peter were tired.  He had been very quiet all day.  Is everything OK?, she’d ask.  Fine, he’d say.  And then silence would feed her worry, and she’d ask again, rubbing her hands down the sides of her skirt.  Fine, just fine—words that latched him shut.  She plucked his hand out of his pocket and they walked through the whiteness of the day. 

Before them stood a man, or what appeared to be a man but looked more like a boy with a beard.  What color was the beard?  It must have had more than one color in it—brown with glimmers of copper or black with strands of silver hooking out into the air outside of his otherwise simple silhouette.  He did not appear to be someone who had arrived there, and he did not appear to be someone who would leave.  He was not the kind you would see ever again.  He looked baffled by them as they approached.   The donkey beside him did not move, and strung to its body were bunches of lavender bouquets, sachets, and bags of potpourri.  There was such a blur of violet all together and all at once that one easily forgot there was a donkey underneath.  If the pair had come from anywhere, it was long ago.  Or, the mountains. 

The man grabbed a bunch from the donkey’s back and handed it to her.  He looked at Peter as if there was no choice, but Peter was already examining the lavender and tangerine, lavender and clove, lavender and musk.  Peter dangled a sachet in front of her face and then whisked it away and smelled it himself.  They looked at each other.  The man remained still.  The donkey swatted its tail, and lavender buds sprayed out around him.  Paris was gone.  The smell held them there together and climbed higher and higher like a tower.

Merry-go-round music started up somewhere and the moment broke. She got  closer to the donkey and chose 20 sachets or so to take home.  Peter paid the man, and they walked together back into Paris swinging their bags so the lavender drifted up. 

There were times throughout the years when it held them again:  getting dressed for parties together, during a fight when one opened a drawer to ignore the other, and, sometimes, climbing into bed at night, the sheets and the pillowcases reminded them. 

She closed the drawer and went out.  She bought perfumes, air fresheners, soaps, candles, and bouquets.  She filled all the rooms with it and then sank into an armchair and let it slow her, sing its old tune.  When Peter got home, everything would come to a standstill.  They would be two tall sprigs pressed onto the page of their house. 

 

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Copyright © 2005 Amy Wentworth