Authors: Molly Birnbaum
“I, um . . .” I trailed off. “Well, I . . . I don’t know.”
“Never say that in this room,” he said, suddenly harsh. “You cannot say you don’t know.”
“Okay,” I said, embarrassed, my cheeks red hot.
“Try again. Close your eyes.” His voice was again calm. I took a few deep breaths before I lifted the blotter again to my nose. I reminded myself to relax. I inhaled and exhaled three times over the strip.
“I smell hay,” I began, slowly. “I smell a little bit of wood, some citrus notes. I smell bark and field.”
“Something cool?” he prodded. “Tangy?”
“Yes.”
Inhale. Exhale.
“I’ll give you three options,” he said, “and you decide . . . camphor, mint, wintergreen.”
I seized up. I couldn’t remember camphor. I guessed it anyway.
“No,” he said. “It’s mint. And there’s a flower, too.”
“Violet?” I asked. I detected a cucumber, somewhere to the side.
“No,” he said. “Now you’re thinking too much. You just wanted to smell violet. It’s rose.”
Suddenly it all became clear. “It’s geranium,” I said.
“Good work,” he said. I smiled with relief, my heart still banging away in my chest.
“You
can
smell,” he said, leaning in toward the table, moving Gris a bit to the side. “It’s a confidence thing.” And then he laughed a warm, enveloping laugh. He paused for a moment, and then took a breath. “I could teach you, but I’d have to beat you up a bit. You’re afraid to be wrong,” he said. “You think too much.”
I nodded. I forgot that I was supposed to be interviewing him. I forgot about everything but that moment, the scent of geranium still lingering in the air.
“You can’t hide behind not smelling,” he added, and then smiled.
“Also, you’re full of shit.”
Later, on my way out, Winnegrad handed me a teddy bear—a tiny light brown one, the size of my palm, a tiny orange ribbon tied in a bow around his neck. “This is for you,” he said. “Put it someplace where you’ll see it. So that you remember that you can smell.”
PERFUME SCHOOL HAD CONCLUDED
on a Friday, and for my final day in France, I took the train to Cannes, only a half hour away. The shops and cafés were filled with bikini-clad tourists. I walked through the old section of town and ate a bowl of tart yogurt-flavored gelato on the beach. I entered Taizo, a niche perfume shop recommended to me by Fauvel, around lunchtime and spent a few minutes talking to a clerk, a handsome young Frenchman who had spent some time studying in London.
He asked me what I liked to smell. I thought of rosemary, of neroli, of cedarwood and clove. I told him that I liked woodsy, spicy scents.
He brought me samples from the artfully arranged shelves around us, spraying the perfumes on blotters, and letting me sniff. I was shocked at the complexity of the aromas presented, as I had grown so used to immersing myself in the single note materials of the lab. But in the shop, I smelled many perfumes—rich ones hauntingly so. I smelled bright ones and dim ones, floral and fruity and fine. After a half hour, I had narrowed my favorites down to two: Miller Harris’s
L’air de Rien
and Frederic Malle’s
Noir Epices
. We sprayed one on my right forearm, and the other on my left.
“Come back in a few hours,” he said. “And then you will know.”
I walked along the street in the direction of the water, sniffing one arm then the other. When I got to the beach, which was filled with bronzed vacationers tanning on the sand and small kids with castles, it smelled of Coppertone lotion and the Nutella-filled crepes sold nearby on the street. I continued to place my nose on the warm flesh of my wrists, inhaling over and over. I loved the glowing spice of the
Noir Epices,
and the amber pale of the
L’air de Rien
—“the air of nothing,” I translated in my rudimentary French, and smiled. That’s a scent that I already knew. They both changed, slowly, as the hours progressed. I found myself migrating toward the darkness of the
Noir
and decided that I would buy it. I wanted to remember this moment, one in which I felt so content.
As I returned to the store in the late afternoon, the hot pink of a sunburn just beginning to emerge on my cheeks, I thought of my mother, who had once worn perfume every single day, that lilac scent that I had bought her in Italy as a gift. She had stopped wearing any fragrance at all after my accident. “For solidarity,” she had said. She hadn’t told me that for years, though. She didn’t want me to feel responsible for how deeply my loss affected our family. The
L’air de Rien
on my right arm, with its light, gossamer tone felt right for her.
In the end, I bought them both.
MATT RETURNED FROM AFGHANISTAN EARLY
on a Thursday morning in March 2010. When he arrived, I had been at the airport in Atlanta, Georgia, waiting for hours among a small crowd of military wives and girlfriends, many who held signs that read
WELCOME HOME.
We watched one uniformed soldier after another emerge from the terminal to our smiling crowd, which burst with applause after each entrance. When Matt finally ascended the top of the escalator—looking tired, dressed in his war-worn fatigues—I shimmied under the rope separating the arrivals from the gate and leapt into his arms.
I could feel my fear begin to melt in the soft warmth of touch, of flesh and cloth, of nose against nose. It seemed strange that an event so long anticipated could so suddenly come.
Matt looked different. His face was skinnier, but his torso had a new muscled bulk. His army-short hair gave rise to a ridged skull and his boots were covered in dust. But beneath the scent of recycled air off the long trip from Kabul, I could detect the same Gillette deodorant, the same Dove soap. I inhaled and exhaled, my face scrunched up by his neck. He smelled of sweat, of breath, of the caramel notes to skin. Our kiss tasted of cinnamon gum. Just like before.
We spent the next week in Georgia. Matt had to finish up the stacks of paperwork that were involved in arriving home from war. We stayed together in a nondescript hotel off the side of the highway halfway between Savannah and Fort Stewart. Matt had his evenings free, and we drove a plastic-scented rental car into the city to wander under the soft southern evening light. We poked around antique shops and art galleries. We walked along the river running through town. I slowly grew used to the feel of my hand in his, the low tone of his voice, the slow wheeze of his breath at night. But I couldn’t wait to go home. I couldn’t wait to cook.
I had been thinking a lot about the stove. With the gradual return of my sense of smell, my kitchen skills had undeniably improved. I had cooked many meals for my family and friends while Matt was in Afghanistan—some of them phenomenal, others just okay, but all of them cooked with confidence, consumed with both flavor and, more important, fun. My ability to smell the details of Moroccan mint and lemon thyme arrived accompanied by a renewed use of intuition and improvisation, uncluttered creativity at the stove.
The short time that I had worked at the Craigie Street Bistrot was frequently on my mind. I thought about the hours I spent plucking the blossoms and leaves off fresh stalks of marjoram, wild sorrel, burnet, and a pungent black basil. The hours I chopped
cornichons,
or tiny pickles, into a microscopic mince for garnishes, and the hours I peeled garlic and onions, tears streaming down my cheeks. I thought about the various stages of veal stock, an aromatic pot that had always been bubbling on the back burner, strained and intensified over and over before its flavor was fully deepened. I remembered the rhythm of water and soap as I washed those heavy, greasy dishes at the sink. I remembered the arthritis in my hands. But, mainly, I thought about the woman I was then, five years before. I had been so confident in my future. I had been so sure that I had found my passion, my vocation, myself.
Will you go to culinary school?
I was often asked now, on the eve of Matt’s return. After all, I could smell. I could taste. Why not?
I had thought about it. Originally, I wanted to learn the art of the stove to get at something more, and that desire still held strong. But there I was in Brooklyn, more confused, more haphazard, less sure of everything I once thought I knew. Except for one thing: I knew now that I could cook. Perhaps not in the way I once wanted. I wasn’t sure of the proper technique to fillet thirty pounds of tuna, to julienne bags of carrots, to cure pork belly. But with the concentration and practice that had come alongside my loss and the frustrating pace of my regain, I had learned. I could concentrate on the small things, the living details of our rich sensory world, ones that brought people together over the table, the ones that could transcend culture and time. Perhaps more than ever before. Perhaps I had become exactly what I once wanted.
When Matt returned, on our first night together in my tiny Brooklyn studio, I broke out the sauté pan and chef’s knife. I had been thinking about this evening for months—reading cookbooks and culinary magazines, preparing a menu to impress. I wanted Matt to notice my olfactory training, to notice how much I had improved. He would see my attention to detail, taste my nuance of spice. I wanted Matt to eat and to think:
Wow
.
I would cook scallops—a smooth set of diver scallops, seared on the stove, served with a sauce of tarragon-infused
beurre blanc
. A lemon risotto, luscious with white wine and salty cheese. A shaved fennel salad with green apple, arugula, and lemon oil. A chocolate soufflé. I looked up where I could buy the best seafood, the finest greens. But when I asked Matt if he cared whether or not we had goat cheese or brie with the fig spread from France, he just looked at me silently for a moment. And I immediately changed my mind.
Over the last year, Matt had eaten loveless dinners cooked in bulk by companies contracted by the army—soulless and soggy broccoli, rubbery chicken-fried steak, beef soaked in the sweat of a day on the steam table. Alcohol was not allowed on deployment, and Matt missed the dark tang of his favorite German beer alongside a meal. In Afghanistan, he often ate alone.
I thought of the day that past winter when I had decided to bake a loaf of zucchini bread. I had used a recipe from my stepmother, Cyndi. It was a simple recipe that made a moist, flavorful loaf, one that Matt had once tried on a visit and talked about ever since. I shredded the squash into a thick pile of green, mixed it with flour and sugar and eggs. It came out of the oven golden brown, scented a pale garden-sweet. I let it cool and then wrapped it carefully in layers of plastic and foil. I tucked it in a box, and took it to the post office. When it arrived at the army base in Afghanistan, fourteen days later, Matt told me that it had been marred by a few splotches of mold. But, he said, that didn’t matter. He had shared it with friends and they had finished it in a day. It was the best they had ever had.
“You ate it with the mold?” I asked, a bit repulsed.
“We cut out the most egregious spots.”
Back in Brooklyn, I crumpled up the sheet of paper where I had scribbled my potential menu, thankful that I had not already gone shopping for a pricey load of ingredients. I had recently read
Home Cooking,
a classic book by writer and cook Laurie Colwin, and her words jumped immediately to mind. “When life is hard and the day has been long the ideal dinner is not four perfect courses, each in a lovely pool of sauce whose ambrosial flavors are like nothing ever before tasted,” she writes, “but rather something comforting and savory, easy on the digestion—something that makes one feel, if even for only a minute, that one is safe.”
I decided to roast two sweet potatoes, pricking their skins with my fork and laying them on a piece of foil in the oven. I decided to steam a pile of asparagus, served with butter and Parmesan and a spritz of lemon juice as they hit the plate. I would pound two chicken breasts thin between sheets of plastic wrap, dredge them in flour, and then sauté until golden brown. I would reduce down their sauce with mushrooms and sweet Marsala wine.
In theory, this meal would be perfect. Earth orange, bright green, and golden brown, it would be visually pleasing and texturally warm. It would be simple but beautiful, executed exactly. The flavors would be balanced yet bold. Matt would be impressed with the ease to which I could show my love in food.
Things didn’t go exactly as planned.
I didn’t have a mallet to pound the chicken so I used an empty wine bottle instead, which I had trouble handling, and left the meat stringy and too thin. As I dredged the pieces in a shallow pie plate, I knocked against the table and sent puffy sheets of flour into the room, falling like rain. Distracted, I left the sauté pan with its layer of olive oil on the heat for too long, and when I began to cook the chicken, smoke billowed up, crowding the unventilated kitchen like a cloud of volcanic ash. The smoke alarm began to scream.
As Matt stood on the bed in his socks, waving a towel in the air to quiet its piercing wail, I opened windows and swung a broom with both hands to dispel the smoke. After a few minutes, the alarm grew quiet. But then I turned the chicken too early and it finished with a disappointing, halfhearted shade of brown.
I scurried around to put together my sauce: I sliced the mushrooms, which smelled dark and earthy with that little lichen taint. I peeled open the box of chicken stock—“I would have made it from scratch,” I said by way of apology, even while knowing Matt wouldn’t care, “but I didn’t have time!”—and poured it to deglaze the pan. I stepped back to pick up the Marsala on the counter, but felt my foot slip on the slick, flour-coated floor below. I felt one leg, and then the other, fly high into the air. My body lifted up, my torso hanging parallel to the ground. And then I landed. Hard.
“Shit!”
Matt rushed over to pull me to my feet. “Are you okay?” he asked, hands on my shoulders. “That was quite a fall.”
I nodded. I could already feel the welt blossoming on my right hip—a bruise that would stain my side in neon shades of purple and blue for weeks.