Remembering Smell (25 page)

Becky Phillips hasn't stopped hoping that her nose will recover. She couldn't stop hoping and still go on living happily, she said. Just as I'd embarked on a quest for answers through science, she'd set about deconstructing the old Becky, the queen of ambiance. She believed that by reactivating the still-intact (not
anosmia-destroyed) portion of this person, she might retrieve a semblance of her once cheerful and independent self. After careful thought, she concluded that the still-intact piece was her love of ritual. Planning a party. Preparing food. Drawing a bath. Knowing that for an hour or more her time and thoughts were booked. Nothing else mattered but what she was doing then. Fragrance had been a way of getting to a place where time stopped and all the things she worried about just vanished.

"When I cook now, I slow way down. I make a ritual out of the steps and focus on each one of them. I enjoy the shopping, selecting ingredients. I bought a set of very fancy and beautiful knives that make chopping and slicing a tactile and a visual pleasure. I take a lot of time setting the table, arranging the food on the plate. I found that my taste buds are good for something. I like Indian and Mexican dishes and I season everything way more than I used to."

She reminds herself of the tradeoffs, and her belief that the good outweighs the bad. At the top of the good list is her husband. Joe lost his first wife, who was Becky's best friend, to a stroke the same year Phillips was hurt. The three had been close since childhood. Becky and Joe were drawn to each other by the enormous loneliness they were each coping with, and by the affection that had taken root in empathy, a shared appreciation for what the other had lost: Becky a cherished part of herself and Joe his spouse, who also happened to have been Becky's closest friend. "We both needed healing. We healed each other."

She closed our conversation by telling me she had shopping to do. She was going on a diet. This meant restocking the refrigerator. Ritual, she said, will help with the "satiety" problem. She's developing an act five. Snuff out the candles and clear the dishes. Arrange them neatly on the counter. Fill the sink with
the detergent that used to delight her with its fragrance. Focus on its texture instead and on the warm suds. Remove the remains of dinner from each lovely china plate, towel it dry, put it away in a clean, orderly cupboard.

When she's done with the dishes, she will leave the kitchen (instead of hanging around watching TV and snacking on leftovers), turn out the light, and join her husband in the living room. If she's lucky he will have put on some music and built a fire.

I was an editor for years before becoming a writer. Deanne Urmy, who bought this book back in 2006 after reading my brief proposal, taught me what brilliant editors actually do. The experience has been humbling, to say the least. Deanne kept the faith as I balked once it dawned on me what I'd gotten myself into and tried to sell her a memoir instead of the science book she'd commissioned. She helped me find the book's elusive structure and protected my credibility as a narrator who fell back on "the yucks," as she put it, when I didn't believe in the importance of my own story. She is a perfectionist who is passing on her habits to future editors, like her assistant Nicole Angeloro, who also helped me enormously. Even in this time when books are declared an endangered species, tenacious editors like Deanne who live and die by excellence in literature are making sure that the written word will never fall out of favor, become irrelevant, or go extinct.

Deanne sent the book to Tracy Roe to copyedit. Tracy is a physician and a copyeditor who lives in Richmond, Virginia.
Breathtaking
is the only word I can come up with (Tracy would have a better one) to describe her consistently spot-on sugges
tions, not to mention the compassion expressed in happy faces she sprinkled through the manuscript. She was as concerned about my feelings as she was about getting the book right, down to the last semicolon.

My husband and daughters, as well as my siblings, kept my spirits up as I worked my way through the anosmia and then through the book I felt compelled to write about it. My sister, Judy Titcomb, read various drafts and offered excellent advice, as did my brother Bruce Leslie. My brother Frank Leslie always knew when to ask how the book was coming and when not to bring it up.

I'd also like to thank the many scientists and science writers who made this book possible. Richard Doty, Matt Ridley, Yilad Goav, Gordon Shepherd, Don Wilson, Chandler Burr, and Jonah Lehrer responded to the pleading e-mails of a writer who didn't know a gene from a cell (or a cell from a dahlia tuber, for that matter) when she embarked on what turned out to be a ludicrously ambitious project. The warm welcome I received at Richard Axel's lab at Columbia University is described in the book. Many, many thanks for a most memorable morning, Dan.

Two longtime writer friends also lent a hand. William Swanson, author of
Dial M: The Murder of Carol Thompson,
and William Souder, whose most recent book is
Under a Wild Sky
and whose next book is a biography of Rachel Carson, both made thoughtful suggestions that gave
Remembering Smell
a new lease on life when I was at my wits' end.

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