The Perfume Read online

  “One daughter would be Dove,” said her father. “Soft and gentle and cooing with affection.” He surprised Dove by resting his hand on hers, and for a moment the vapors lifted and she was safe and dry.

  “The other would have been Wing,” added her mother. “Beating free and flying strong.”

  Hard to imagine such methodical people thinking of romantic unusual names. You would have expected them to utilize names like Emily and Mary, which parents had leaned on and been sure of over centuries.

  Wing and Dove.

  Suddenly the two names were horrid. Almost evil.

  A Dove was whole. A complete bird, a complete child. Whereas a Wing—that was just a portion. A limb, so to speak, wrenched off, and lost forever.

  How could they have done that? thought Dove. How could they have chosen such a set of names?

  For how could a Wing be born alone? Fly free and be strong! Quite the opposite. Without its identical match, a Wing was nothing.

  No wonder it wasn’t born, thought Dove, how could it be?

  “I still think about Wing sometimes,” offered her mother.

  This was not part of the story. Because Dove never knew what her mother was thinking, she leaned forward, hoping to catch another molecule of understanding about this unknown woman who had given birth to her.

  “We used to sing to Wing and Dove,” said her mother, smiling now, “your father and I.” She did not look at Dove, but into the past, fifteen years ago. She seemed more interested in Wing, who did not exist, than in Dove, who did. “We were sure Wing and Dove could hear, in utero, so we’d read aloud from important books. We’d play great music on the stereo, and oh! how carefully I would eat! We wanted Wing and Dove to emerge from the womb sophisticated and intellectual and perfect.”

  The order of the names, too … Wing first. Dove second.

  I’m a second, thought Dove. A factory second. Irregular.

  “However,” said Father, shrugging, “Wing split.”

  “Split?” repeated Dove, and suddenly, the familiar story became unutterably horrible.

  She thought of Wing, safe in the tiny sea of their mother’s body, listening to her strange name being called from the other side of the flesh. She heard Wing whisper to herself—No, I don’t think so. I’m not going to be born.

  Splitting. The word was evil.

  “How did you know it was Dove who was still around,” asked Dove, “and not Wing?”

  “Well, it was very strange,” said her mother, “but we never had a question about that. Dove was born and Wing vanished.”

  The phenomenon was actually called that: vanishing twin syndrome.

  If they did not lose interest in the conversation, her parents would move into the biology lecture portion of the story. Twins were often predicted in the first weeks of pregnancy but failed to grow after all.

  Her parents lost interest, as they always did, and sat silently engaged in their own thoughts and television shows.

  The moment of closeness had vanished like the other twin.

  Dove trembled with the heaviness of being alone.

  Do other people feel this alone, even with their families in the room? she thought. Or do I know in my bones that I am missing a sister, and therefore I am more alone than most girls? What would I have done with her if I had had her? What would she have done with me?

  If she never lived, how could she have split?

  Where did she vanish to?

  That night, Dove did not look under her bed.

  All her life, she had looked because the truth of the event was that she knew it was safe to look. There could not really be anything bad under there. Nothing was under any bed except carpet and lost socks.

  But it was no longer safe to look.

  There was something bad under there. There was something bad under her entire fifteen years. Wing.

  By the next ancient history class, Dove no longer believed that Wing had vanished.

  Wing had been there all along, waiting. Incubating like a disease.

  Wing was ready to come out.

  Would she drill her own hole, this twin her mother still thought about?

  Would she slide out of Dove’s head like a breath of air through her nostrils?

  Would she be vapor or would she have a body of flesh?

  Whose body would Wing use?

  Or did she have one of her own stored up?

  Dove saw an unused body under the bed, waiting to be dressed and taken out for a walk.

  “Pyramids, Dove?” said the teacher.

  The unused body seemed to be Dove herself, and she felt herself walking away from herself, like a ghost leaving town.

  Dove wet her lips.

  “For your next presentation, Dove,” said the teacher, with infinite patience. “Do you want to be on the pyramids committee or the Nile committee?”

  “Oh, pyramids,” said Dove.

  Chapter 5

  PYRAMIDS, INDEED, WERE QUITE INTERESTING.

  Dove had known that they were more than tombs—they were houses for the afterlife of kings—but she had not pictured such large interior rooms. Nor had she realized that each cavern full of treasure and furnishing was decorated: zigzag painted ceilings and grape-leaf “wallpaper.”

  All the books on pyramids were wonderfully illustrated: amazing color photographs gleaming in gold and hot with turquoise. She turned page after page, staring at the “house” in which a dead king had lived for five thousand years.

  The person in her head shifted position; it was like gravel spurting out from under car tires. Pebbles shot against Dove’s mind.

  She knocked on her skull as if on a door, as if she could tap out the code for open sesame.

  Was the inside of her own head a sort of round pyramid? The tomb in which this other creature had been kept for fifteen years?

  And what was it like inside, where that second person lived?

  Were the walls painted?

  Were the ceilings interesting?

  Dove clung to her head, pressing down with all ten fingers. Am I trying to extract the second person, she thought, or suffocate it?

  In one of the deepest onion layers of her thinking, she knew that it was Wing in there: She knew she could not bear to acknowledge this, that her own sister had been “camping out” in her brain, a parasite of her head. She could not use the name.

  If I were her, thought Dove, would that make me mad? What can she be like after all this time? Do I want to know? Do I want her out?

  Would I be better off with her living inside me, rattling around like a marble in a wooden box?

  Dove sat on the carpeted stairs outside her bedroom. She liked the open feeling of the condo when she sat there: steps stretching up and down, airy spaces all around. From this perch she could see no floors and no furniture, only white walls and wide windows.

  The sky was gray again.

  Heavy chilled angry gray.

  Solid gray.

  A sky without laughter or relief or softness.

  A sky full of rage.

  And a balcony full of sound.

  Sound rushed through Dove’s head as if she were wearing earphones with the volume up. She could not name the sound. It was not music nor footsteps, not gale winds nor rising tides.

  It’s the sounds of the insides of pyramids, thought Dove, when the priests closed the entrances and the tunnels forever, when the last fresh air went stale and the last fraction of light went dark.

  She stood up.

  The person inside her needed more space, was going to stretch down from her skull into her spine. Into her shoulders and down her arms. Perhaps envelop her heart.

  Now she looked below into the living room, with its pristine tailored gray and white identical twin couches. Did her mother miss Wing right down to the furniture?

  Dove’s heart was not merely doubling now. Not merely having twins. Her heartbeat was tripling. Quadrupling. Giving birth. To what?

  Soundless on the thick carpet
, Dove twisted and turned and stumbled, trying to get free of the sound and the space the person in her head was taking up.

  The person in her head was screaming now.

  Dove could not make out the words, but she could feel the frenzy: Her brain was being kicked, beaten, bitten.

  “Stop it!” screamed Dove.

  The person in her head hurled itself against the prison of Dove’s skull.

  “Stop it!” screamed Dove. She backed into her room, into the soft colors and soothing lights. At the makeup table, she sat panting, staring at herself in the mirror, trying to see if it showed. If there were two people reflected there.

  Not two, but three of her looked back.

  Dove screamed and quite clearly she heard the person inside laughing.

  Dove hung onto the edges of the makeup table, where the ruffled skirt was tacked to the rim. She felt the cotton against her sweaty palms.

  It’s all right, Dove said to herself. This is a makeup mirror. It’s always reflected three of me. I like it that way. Easier to see how I look from the side.

  She brushed her hair to calm herself.

  She brushed on a little more rose blush to calm herself.

  A bit of lip gloss.

  And then her hand lingered over the perfume bottle that lay like a coiled snake between her mascara wand and her crystal earrings.

  The voice of Dry Ice spoke to her, its voice curling out from under the smoke of her thoughts. I’m waiting for you … I’ve always been waiting for you … it’s only a matter of time.

  Time sifted through her fingers like fog.

  Slowly, gracefully, like a ballerina before a vast audience, Dove’s hand drew a path over the bottle of Venom. Her fingers closed on the stopper. Slowly, gently, carefully, she slid it up. It ceased to be a stopper. It was an opener.

  The scent rose in the condominium, a scent as old as the insides of pyramids. A scent as dark and unforgiving as the death of kings.

  Dove breathed it in, and it circled inside her; circled where air could not go; circled through her mind and thoughts as well as her blood and bone.

  Venom.

  The sick tug of gravity, stretching back into prehistory. Ancestors, genes—the hidden evil warped history of herself.

  No! thought Dove, I am a nice person! There is nothing in me that is evil or warped! I am good, I am—

  Dove breathed out.

  A terrible thickness came from her lungs, as if she were exhaling life.

  She tried to cry out, but her lungs were full of something.

  She tried to steady herself, but her hands were fighting off something. The flapping and the fluttering beat against her hearing and her thinking and her breathing.

  She felt as if moths were clustering behind her skin, battering themselves against her brain.

  And then it was over.

  The inside of her head was quiet.

  Spacious.

  Roomy.

  There was nobody in there except Dove herself.

  Wing had emerged.

  Chapter 6

  AT FIRST WING WAS INVISIBLE. Dove kept looking for her, knowing that she was there somewhere. But she could not seem to see her.

  Then Dove realized that Wing was there all right: The problem was that Wing was occupying the only body available. Dove’s.

  Dove was the invisible one.

  It was Wing who dashed down the stairs, leaped from one level to another, bounced on the bed, hurdled banisters like a gymnast, slammed a heavy door, and ran her hands under cold water, flicking the droplets on her face.

  Dove did not feel it. It was her face, her skin, her hands—and she did not feel it.

  “I always wondered how this felt,” said another person’s voice, higher pitched, more fluty than Dove’s. Wing. Wing who now possessed the body while Dove bounced around in the back of the skull.

  Dove had not actually dissolved.

  It was more that she was taking up a different kind of residence. Dove would have to accompany Wing, just as Wing, for fifteen years, had had to go with Dove.

  She could still look out of her own eyes, though; she still seemed to have use of parts of the body. Everything was inside out. As if she was using binoculars backwards, Dove could see a tiny little bed, a miniature desk, and an infinitely small perfume bottle. It was her bed, and her desk, and her perfume, but far far away. Diminished. Unreachable.

  Wing reached out and retrieved the perfume instead of Dove. Dove no longer had hands to do anything with. No, thought Dove, seized with dread. This cannot be happening to me. You can’t go through life without hands. Without a body. Without—

  “I thought you were never coming,” Wing said to the bottle, as if she and the bottle were old friends, had known each other for years.

  Inside the head, Dove whimpered.

  Wing unstoppered the Venom again, waving it gently beneath her nose. Dove drowned in the scent, sloshed in it; it was like a lake and Dove a mere feather upon it.

  Stop! thought Dove desperately. Please stop! I don’t want this. I’m a nice person. Please … stop … p. l. e. a. s. e. …

  At last Wing closed the perfume bottle. “Venom! I am Venom.” Her whisper dissolved in the air as the fragrance had, and diffused throughout the condominium.

  Wing smiled, and through Wing’s eyes Dove saw the smile reflected three times in the makeup mirror, an evil smile.

  Dove shivered.

  “Stop that,” said Wing irritably, hitting her head.

  They had reversed themselves. If she fluttered enough, she could bother Wing. I am the whole dove, she thought, complete, whereas she was only a part. I can bother her much much more than she was able to bother me.

  But Dove was not ready to bother Wing.

  She wanted to know Wing.

  This was, after all, her sister. Blood of her blood.

  I could watch her, thought Dove. I’m safe inside here; I’m a passenger, like a wallet in a purse. But I want to talk to her.

  “We’re both in your mouth,” said Wing. “Although I have no interest in hearing you speak. I’ve gotten headaches from you for so long now. Furthermore you have nothing interesting to say, Dove.”

  So Wing know Dove’s thoughts. Or heard them. Or perhaps had them herself, because perhaps Wing was Dove, and Dove was Wing. Was I always two people? thought Dove. Am I still two? Is there just one of us?

  What is happening?

  Who am I?

  Am I anything at all? I’m not here.

  Dove, looking out through the eyes, tried speaking through the mouth. It worked. “Why are you here?” said Dove. It was her own voice, an alto voice, fuller and friendlier than the sharp soprano Wing used.

  “I am Venom,” said Wing, “I am poison.”

  Dove glanced toward the perfume bottle, but it was not in her range of vision. She could not make the head turn where she wanted: Wing was using the head.

  I don’t have a head, thought Dove.

  She found herself wondering if Timmy O’Hay could still like a girl who did not have a head.

  “You don’t know how I have longed for freedom,” said Wing. “I loathe you, you know. If we had both been born, I would have done away with you.” Wing frowned momentarily. “Of course, I can’t do that now, since we occupy the same body.”

  “You loathe me?” whispered Dove. “But—I’m—I guess I’m—your sister. What’s wrong with me?”

  Wing flung herself backward onto Dove’s bed. Dove felt as if she were in an elevator falling twenty stories. “All those virtues,” said Wing. “You’re so boring. You’re always running around being kind and generous and thoughtful and careful.”

  “I think I’m rather nice,” said Dove timidly.

  Wing laughed, and her laugh was broken cubes, clinking from a tipped glass, spilling on a hard floor. “I’m not. Take away the n of nice. Then you have me. I am ice.”

  Dove shivered again, which made Wing hit her head to stop the fluttering. But the skull was thick,
and the smack simply gave Dove another shiver from the outside in.

  “I was unfit, you know,” said Wing. “The maternal body often discards an unborn that is unfit. The maternal body does not like to spend nine months on a creature whose chromosomes add up incorrectly.”

  The maternal body.

  She means Mother, thought Dove. She tried to keep her thoughts down in the onion layer where Wing would not share them. She had not realized how precious the privacy of the mind is. I’ve lost my mind, she thought. Literally. Somebody else has my mind.

  Dove tucked her thoughts way, way down, and it seemed to work, because Wing went on talking without responding to Dove’s thoughts.

  “There is nothing good in me,” said Wing. She seemed quite proud of this. “Doctors will tell you that miscarriage occurs for biological reasons: The unborn isn’t shaped or built right. What do doctors know? It’s because the unborn …”—and here Wing paused for a delicious shiver of laughter—“… the unborn is a viper.”

  Viper.

  Like Venom.

  The world filled with v words.

  Villain.

  Vulture.

  Vertigo.

  What a harsh horrid consonant v was: It hummed and rang with violence.

  “Are you a viper?” asked Dove. She felt very confused. How could a snake come from a blue sky? But perhaps that other world up in the skylight, the one into which she had stared yesterday, was not sky. Perhaps it was river. The river lined with pyramids. Wasn’t the Nile blue? Didn’t they paint the Nile bright blue on the insides of tombs, where vipers gladly bit a royal princess when she asked for death? Was her ancient history class part of some great master plan over the centuries?

  Dove had forgotten to keep these thoughts low.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Wing. “There is no conspiracy.”

  “What is there, then?” said Dove, trying to understand. She felt less spacious than she had before; the brain was becoming crowded. She elbowed against the gray matter.

  “Just venom,” said Wing sweetly. “Just poison. Some of us are created evil. The maternal body tries not to birth evil, and usually succeeds.” Wing smiled joyfully. “But not always.”

  Dove tried to hide in the back of the mind. But there was no escape from Wing’s venom. It found her out, and hauled her forward, cowering and whimpering, and laughed at her.