The Smell of Dead Roses
by Gerri Leen
Perrin huddled on the balcony, trying to will herself into invisibility as the fight between her parents raged on. She stared out at the other building, hating that the people across from her might be staring back, might be feeling pity.
"Perrin?" Her sister snuck out through the open door and crawled into her lap.
"It'll be all right."
Nanda was too little to understand what had happened. She'd been bouncing around Perrin all day. Excited to eat Perrin's birthday cake -- cake that was now all over the floor.
It had made a strange sound as it hit, knocked off the table by her father. Not a crash -- it was too soft for that. But not a gentle sound, either. There had been a sucking noise, as frosting met wood, as cake smashed down, causing the frosting to spread out even more. Nine candles had hit first. Nine candles that were broken now and would never be lit.
"Why do they yell at each other?" Nanda asked, scrunching her eyes closed as if that could make the voices stop.
"Because they can."
"But it's your birthday."
Perrin looked back at what had been her pretty cake. It had come out of the replicator already decorated with roses in pink and yellow, just the way she'd wanted it. There'd been little forget-me-nots in light blue, and a long, trailing vine of dark green ivy rambling over the whole cake.
It had been the most beautiful cake Perrin had ever seen. She'd just known it would taste better than any of her other birthday cakes.
"Is it because I cheated?" Nanda whispered. "What?"
"When you weren't looking, I took some frosting. From the back, where you wouldn't see. Is that why they're mad?"
Perrin hugged her close. "No, that's not why."
But Nanda was sniffling in the way that meant she might break into tears at any minute.
"What color was the frosting you tasted?"
"Yellow."
The border had been yellow, all scrolled and thick. "Was it good?"
Nanda nodded. She seemed to relax, crying jag averted.
"I thought it would be." Perrin sighed, and went back to studying the other apartments as the yelling inside her family's went on.
The park smelled like summer, even though it was barely spring. London had warmed early, but the bright sun did nothing to warm Perrin as she walked slowly with her mother. She willed her fourteen-year-old heart to slow down -- or just to stop.
How could anything hurt this bad?
Her mother touched her arm. "Say something."
"Such as?" Perrin knew her mother hated her taking that tone. She'd slapped her for it at other times, had told her to stop pretending she was something other than what she was. To stop acting as if she was better than the rest of them.
Perrin thought she was better than the rest of them, if only because she didn't scream first and ask questions later.
"Don't you care that I'm leaving?" her mother asked, her voice edging toward the dramatic end of the scale. Before too long, she'd be crying.
Perrin hated tears almost as much as shouting -- both were weapons. "Would caring stop you from doing it?"
Her mother swallowed hard.
"You're leaving me with him."
"Things will be better if I'm not there. He won't have anyone to fight with."
She stroked Perrin's hair, and it felt comforting, until Perrin thought about how she wouldn't feel it anymore after today. "You're so calm, Perrin. You never get mad. You soothe him, the way we don't."
We: her mother and Nanda. Nanda wasn't calm. Nanda was quick to anger, quick to yell, quick to rile their father up. It was why Nanda was going away with their mother. She'd earned herself a ticket out of Hell by being a spoiled brat.
Perrin wished she could yell and scream, but it wasn't her way. She was the good girl. The one who stayed calm.
"I love you, Perrin."
Her mother started to cry, and that was the last straw. Perrin ran from those tears, ran hard and fast, knowing her mother would never be able to keep up. She pelted down the path, heading for the rose garden.
It was already in bloom, and there was a large cluster of people to her right, seemingly on a tour of some kind. Perrin turned the other way to avoid them and ran hard into a robed figure. Stepping back, he caught himself, but she fell to the ground and stayed there, more in defeat than actual pain.
"Are you hurt?" His voice was the calmest thing Perrin had ever heard.
She looked up at him, realized he was Vulcan. "I'm sorry," she said, barely able to get the words out.
"You should be more careful." Those words coming from her father would have been followed by a hard slap. Her mother would have turned them into a wounded monologue, the precursor to more accusing words and finally tears. This man just said them. They were just words.
She took a deep breath. "I didn't mean to."
"I hope not."
She realized there was some warmth in his eyes, and a soothing humor that hurt no one as it lay cradled in his air of dignity.
"Sarek, what have you got there?" The voice was melodious, full of good will. A human woman -- petite and smiling -- stepped around the Vulcan. She pulled Perrin to her feet, checking her knees and elbows. "Nothing damaged."
"I ran into him, ma'am." Perrin tried to sound older than she was, wanting this woman to think well of her.
"Did you?"
"I didn't mean to, though."
"I'm sure you didn't, dear." The woman studied her. "What's your name?"
"Perrin Landover."
"Well, Perrin Landover, you just ran into Ambassador Sarek from Vulcan. I'm afraid this may have the making of a diplomatic incident."
Panic rose inside Perrin. To her surprise, the man put his hand on her shoulder -- the briefest of touches.
"I believe I will recover, my wife. I feel only minimal damage from the collision."
It took Perrin a moment to realize they were teasing her and each other.
The woman laughed softly. "I'm Amanda, my dear. Why were you running so desperately?"
Perrin was about to tell her -- even though she never shared her troubles with anyone -- when she heard her mother calling her.
"Your mom?" Amanda asked with a knowing smile.
Perrin nodded.
"She appears to be worried," Sarek said.
"Maybe for her pretty new future." Perrin mumbled it so they couldn't hear.
And Amanda didn't seem to, but Sarek cocked his head to one side, an eyebrow rising slowly as he studied her. Perrin suspected those pointy ears made him hear better.
"I think she is worried, dear," Amanda said, turning Perrin to face her mother. "I know that tone. Now, go on."
Perrin's mother came into sight, waving furiously at the sight of her.
"Go," Sarek said. He and Amanda moved off, and for Perrin, the moment was frozen in a sense of calm and the smell of just-opened roses.
"Wait." She did not know why she called out, and when Sarek and Amanda turned to look at her, she wasn't sure what it was she wanted to say.
"Goodbye, my dear." Amanda smiled at her gently.
They walked away.
"Goodbye," Perrin said, trying to hold onto the serenity she felt from them, but failing as her mother came up, her voice harsh and accusing.
Perrin imagined herself as Sarek, tried wrapping herself in dignity the way he did. She looked up at her mother, letting one eyebrow rise the way his had.
Her mother stopped talking, her angry lecture finding no purchase in a face of stone.
The funeral was crowded, not just humans and Vulcans standing around the gravesite, but beings from all sorts of species. Perrin stood off, near a large mausoleum, and watched the service -- and Sarek. She'd followed his career, and sometimes, once she'd come to San Francisco for school, she'd even followed him and Amanda around town. She'd noticed over the years, since she'd first run into them at the park, that Amanda had seemed to be getting weaker. And one day, Perrin had only seen Sarek walking, his face unreadable, but sorrow evident in the way he took his steps, in the set of his shoulders. Amanda had never come out with him again.
A few days ago, the newsvids had announced that Amanda had died. That kind, gentle woman was gone, and Perrin felt more grief than she had when her own father died, beaten to death in a barroom brawl on the darker side of London's East End.
Perrin's mother had been wrong. Perrin's ability to soothe her father had been short lived -- or perhaps he'd just lost the urge to even try to be decent about things. He'd yelled and slammed things around. And once or twice, in a fit of drunken rage, he'd hit her.
Each time he'd done that, she'd run to the park, trying to call up the calm she'd felt that day with these two strangers. Each time, it had almost worked.
Now Amanda was gone, and it was easy to see that Sarek was in pain, even if he hid it. Grief didn't spill out of him the way her mother's had been wept out at her father's funeral. And for no reason other than her mother's love of drama.
Sarek stood straight, his son on one side, a woman that had to be Saavik on his other, as his wife was laid to rest. Perrin slid farther back behind the building, leaning against marble kept cool by the temperate San Francisco weather. Since she'd met Amanda and Sarek, Perrin had made it her business to discover as much as she could about them. And Spock was famous. She'd known about him earlier, of course, but had never connected him to the man she'd nearly mown down in the park.
People started to wander off in groups of two or three, and Perrin realized the funeral must be over. She clutched the rose she'd brought with her, a rose she'd grown on her little balcony. She'd learned to find solace in flowers long ago, when her mother and sister had left her to face her father's anger alone.
Her mother was remarried -- another stormy relationship. She'd come to San Francisco a few weeks ago, looking for a place to stay for a while.
Perrin hadn't handed her the keys to the kingdom.
"You're hard. And unforgiving." Her mother had cried...
