By Beth Ayotte
When I was a girl, there was something magical about waggling my tongue in the cold air and catching a snowflake or two whenever it snowed. Every time the dark sky split open and the big flakes started to fall, I made a wish for as much snow as possible.
By the time I was a mother with a full-time career, a snowstorm meant interruption of daycare, road closures, even becoming stranded overnight at the hospital where I worked. The white stuff had gone from friendly comrade to merciless tyrant.
After a big dump of snow in the winter of 2016, I was stuck inside for multiple days, bored, and wanting to get out of the house. The chill factor in Maine where I lived was somewhere down in the ‘ridiculously cold’ range, so I wasn’t pumped to snowshoe in the hip-deep snow blanketing the neighborhood. I grabbed my sneakers and drove to the nearest mall to get my body moving.
I exited my car and crossed the icy parking lot to the entrance of the Maine Mall where the glass doors slid open and a warm gush of air welcomed me inside. Passing through Macy’s, I was in a hurry to reach my walking route at the mall’s center when I glanced to my left and noticed the bold black shoulders of a bottle of Drakkar Noir. The long-forgotten men’s cologne was corralled within the gleaming openwork rails of a lustrous silver tray along with a half dozen other fragrances for men. The sight of the distinctive bottle caught me off guard.
I didn’t stop. I told myself to focus on the here and now and forge ahead; I concentrated on planting one foot in front of the other. I didn’t get very far because as soon as I reached the handbag department, I had an uncontrollable urge to return to the display. Completely derailed from the path I had taken, I turned around, retraced my steps, and snatched the vessel up. I was instantly transported back to the time in my son Sam’s life when the Eu de Toilette was his signature scent.
I caressed with affection the bottle’s elliptical contour, its sleek metallic exterior still as satin soft as Sam’s newborn bottom. A memory of the fragrance and of my infant son Sam’s stinky poo rattled my brain. Isn’t the reality of being a parent remarkable? I remembered having mixed feelings about the fragrance’s name back then because it had a similar sound to Dracula, the fictional vampire known for his seductive cruelty. The name Drakkar is derived from the archaic Norwegian word drekar, a type of Viking longship, invoking the virility associated with Viking warriors.
No longer able to put off taking a whiff of the potent smell that awaited me, I lavished five or more splashes in the air. In my exuberance to experience once again a glorious waft of the cologne once worn by my teenage son Sam so long ago, I went big and accidently drenched the entire countertop. I was in heaven as a profusion of memories overwhelmed me like the scent itself.
Using my fingertips and a tissue I found at the bottom of my purse; I failed to sufficiently clean up the glistening puddle, so I swept my whole hand across the area. Ah, yes, there really can be too much of a good thing. I laughed out loud when I recalled smelling the pungent sticky pine sap smell for the first time on fifteen-year-old Sam. He was marinated in Drakkar Noir like I am now. I often said to him, “Dab, don’t douse. Overkill kills the mood.”
There were two other boys similarly swathed in Sam’s fragrance who visited our house regularly. When they were there, their voices overlapping during a raucous baseball card trading session in the kitchen, it felt like I’d just placed not one, but two or three of those deep reaching flea bombs in the same room at the same time.
The marketing for Drakkar Noir focused on themes of masculinity, sensuality, decadence, darkness, and lust. I was not surprised when Sam told me he discovered the scent in a TV ad featuring a muscular boxer and his girlfriend, the supermodel Stephanie Seymour. He made no secret of the fact that he’d first marveled at Stephanie Seymour in the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. There was no doubt in my mind that Sam got his hands on the magazine while working part-time after school at Uncle Tom’s Market.
By the time Sam asked Molly, a co-worker of his at Wendy’s, to the junior prom, he hadn’t toned down the number of spritzes he applied. One day when I popped into Wendy’s unannounced, Sam’s face turned the color of the bright red apron tied around his waist. I confess I covered up the real reason for my visit which was to meet Molly by telling Sam I stopped by to sample the salad bar.
I breathed a sigh of relief when Sam’s mouth opened into a wide grin and he said, “Molly, this is my mom.”
Molly’s eyes went soft for a moment, she shook my hand and said, “Glad to meet you.”
Molly quickly redirected her keen eyes and nimble fingers to the cash register. After I spilled my plastic container of Caesar salad dressing on my way out the door, I decided that Sam was probably embarrassed because I’d never seen him flipping burgers while wearing a hairnet.
Later that week, Sam asked me to help him pick out a corsage for Molly. We rented a fancy tuxedo and made reservations at a Chinese restaurant for their pre-prom dinner with another couple. Sam usually wore untucked flannel shirts that fit like potato sacks over saggy denim jeans that were at least two sizes too big. In contrast, the sleek cut of the well-fitted black tuxedo hugged the curves of his trim physique. Even though I was afraid that Sam’s cologne would be the thing that took Molly’s breathe away, my heart swelled with pride as Sam drove out of sight.
Ten minutes later Sam was back. I cleared up his confusion over the directions to Molly’s house which she’d scribbled on a Post-It note. His heart intent on his mission, he got back on the road. I thought to myself, “Atta boy.” He was good at scaling a rock wall or solving a calculus problem; but he’d never escorted a girl to a prom.
A little before ten o’clock I heard the characteristic clacking sound of Sam’s diesel car, a clunker that his dad had salvaged, pulling into our driveway. This car had picked up various door dings and other dents and scrapes, but it always started.
“What now Sam? Is everything alright?”
“Mum, one of Molly’s friends showed up stag at the prom. No date, no problem, but after Molly’s friend joined us at our table; I couldn’t get a word in edgewise because all night the two of them made fun of their friends and how they looked on the dance floor. I had no clue what to do until they came back from visiting the rest room and Molly told me her friend would be driving her home. That’s when I left.”
Did my darling King of Cologne’s fondness for perfumery put Molly off? I knew that the manager at Wendy’s where they worked did not allow his employees to wear cologne in the workplace.
In response to my questioning look, Sam said, “Molly and I aren’t in a relationship, Mom. That’s how it works.”
Back at Macy’s, I was so overtaken by sniffing the elixir, it took a while before I realized I’d made my overgrown bangs sticky to the touch with the cologne. I tried to rub them dry with a fresh Kleenex when I noticed the salesclerk approaching. I stuffed the Kleenex up my sleeve, trying to hide the evidence. After she took her place behind the counter opposite me, I straightened my glasses square on my face before I asked if I might spray a paper test strip with Sam’s go-to scent so I could take it home with me.
When the salesclerk obliged me with not one, but three strips, I became weak in the knees. The pleasure of closing my hands around those strips laced with Drakkar Noir made my head swirl. I blurted out how it was twenty years ago when my son Sam wore the scent. Blubbering uncontrollably, I shared with her how, just last year at thirty-five years of age, my Sam veered off a closed ski course, tumbled seventy feet, and died instantly of a broken neck while participating in the 12th Annual Wild Cat Mountain 100,000 Vertical Foot Challenge, a charity event held by the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
I smiled through my tears, relaying that since Sam had a tendency to over apply his fragrance of choice; sometimes the odor was so strong I could taste it. It occurred to me that while the cologne stood on his bureau during that phase of his life, I never indulged myself in the same manner as I did today. With her hand on mine, the benevolent woman assured me that I’m welcomed to stop by anytime for a whiff. I left the store wondering whether or not to return and buy a whole bottle.