Oranges
Maiko Luckow
For their anniversary, he bought her a bottle
of wine and a bouquet of roses, sweet and fragrant.
He didn’t buy her chocolates because he knew she
hated how chocolate tasted. But he knew she liked
wine, so he bought her wine, and he knew she liked
the smell of flowers. He bought her flowers a lot.
He loved the way different smells remind-
ed him of different things. Lavender was light and
sweet and reminded him of his mother doing laun-
dry on sunny Saturday afternoons, when he would
lie on the grass under the line—she would always
smile and say, “You’re underfoot!” but would nev-
er make him move—and listen to the white sheets
flapping gently in the breeze, lavender wafting over
him. Cinnamon and nutmeg were for Christmas re-
gardless of the time of year he smelled them; their
spiciness drifting in the air would always warm him
on the inside and make him feel like a little kid at his
grandparents’. Occasionally she would make cook-
ies with cinnamon and nutmeg in his kitchen; he
would watch her mix ingredients, barefoot and with
a white apron around her, flour everywhere, and he
would be reminded of the women in his family.
Books were dusty and ancient, with a hint of
his late uncle’s pipe tobacco, dark and woody and
leathery. He remembered his aunt’s library, where
she used to sit with her sharp little glasses perched
on her nose and read old books that he, a child,
hadn’t been allowed to touch because they were so
fragile. The library had seemed so big when he was
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little. He’d gone back after his aunt’s funeral to clear
out the books he hadn’t been allowed to touch, and
he’d found that the library was cramped and tiny,
and the smell of pipe tobacco was stale and bitter.
He’d wondered when he had seen his aunt last. It
had been many years before.
He loved the smell of wine. She liked this
cheap, crappy wine that he couldn’t even stand to
taste—he couldn’t even buy it at a grocery store, for
crying out loud, he had to go to the convenience
store! He hated going there; they always gave him
the dirtiest looks; they all knew he had the nice job
at the factory that they all wanted and none of them
knew how much he hated it. But she always drank it,
and so he went and bought it for her. And because
he bought it for her, it reminded him of her.
He loved the way she smelled: warm and
sunny, her bright blonde hair always lightly citrusy
like oranges with the residue of her expensive sham-
poo. The scent of red wine, spicy and dark and flo-
ral, clung to her. He always drove her places so that
she could have a glass or two of wine. He actually
didn’t like the taste of wine, himself, but he always
wished he could have a vineyard so he could make
her all the wine she could ever want. She’d bought
him a cactus, but it didn’t have a smell, so he wasn’t
sure he liked it. He must have over-watered it or un-
der-watered it or something. It had withered up and
died. He’d kept the pot because he wanted to plant
flowers in it. Something floral and citrusy. Some-