A Death in Paris

Sometimes the only way for me to come to grips with something is to write about it...the cathartic healing process of putting words down on paper and then reading them, is at times the only way I can learn how I really feel....

The smell was the thing. The apartment itself was bright and cheery. The small blue spruce she had no doubt trekked into the woods behind the barn to cut down was artfully decorated with red and green plaid ribbon, pine cones and the last of the delicate glass ornaments that had survived her many moves. Small neat packages wrapped in foil paper and trimmed with bows and candy canes were arranged beneath the tree to camouflage the still full watering tray that held the trunk.
The compact, galley-style kitchen felt used and loved. There were herbs hanging in baskets beside the refrigerator and a baker’s rack filled to overflowing with cookbooks and food magazines, recipe boxes and baking tins. The counter top beside the old cast iron stove was dusted with flour and two loaves of shiny braided egg bread rested on cooling racks.
A small kitchen table with one wooden chair took up what little floor space there was and its surface was strewn with mail, some of it unopened, several packs of nicorette gum, a check book, a small red poinsettia plant, a carton of Parliaments and an empty package of Dramamine.
The “garden room” as she had dubbed it, was over-filled with plants of all kinds. A round wooden pedestal table on which there were succulents of varying size and color, stood in the corner beside the long window that filled the room with sunshine for the better part of the day. Her dining room table, useless here in the tiny second floor flat she rented was covered from end to end with containers of the spring bulbs she had forced into life. The perky paper-whites, yellow and red tulips and grape hyacinth atop their slender green stalks stood in stark contrast to the backdrop of the frozen landscape beyond the window.
The living room was an eclectic mix of favorite furniture from her past and newer pieces she had acquired along the journey here. Every square inch was used to its best potential. An expensive jewel colored Persian rug covered the worn wide-planked pine floor. Her computer sat atop a massive antique desk with heavy brass handles that was positioned at one end of the room in front of a large bow window that overlooked what, come spring, would be the first real incarnation of the English garden that she had toiled on all that past spring and summer. A settee upholstered in soft pale green chenille and garnished with two pomegranate throw pillows took up the entire left wall. The opposing wall was taken up by a large oak entertainment center that held her wide screen television, her Bose stereo, a DVD player and hundreds of music CDs and dozens of framed photographs of her children.
The walls in every room were adorned with framed artwork, from original watercolors of several New England lighthouses to oil reproductions of masterpieces by Monet, Van Gogh and Renoir to framed World War II-era propaganda posters. Her favorite of these was one of “Rosie the Riveter” that bore the slogan “We Can Do It!” under the image of a woman in a bright blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, flexing her biceps. This poster hung over her bed.
The bedroom was large and her modest double bed on a simple metal frame left room for a loveseat in front of another bow window, two night stands and two large chests of drawers and a mirrored dresser. Not one piece matched another in the room. The night stand closest to the bedroom door was littered with cigarette butts and ashes from an overturned glass ashtray. A small tin pot that was no bigger than a coffee mug sat among the debris, its black plastic handle hanging over the edge of the nightstand. A half empty fifth of Vodka, two amber colored plastic prescription bottles missing their white caps, and a well worn copy of Jack Kerouac’s The Town and the City were on the other night stand. The bed had not been stripped. The stain she had left there was visible even from behind the yellow caution tape.

The smell was the thing. Not a sickroom smell, it filled my nose and mouth. It was thick, sweetish and strange. Not like anything I had ever smelled before. For days after that night, I tasted that smell in the back of my throat.