I was just 4 years old the night of the masquerade, but I can still picture it vividly.
My parents were the golden couple - my mother was the world's most famous flapper, and her husband Scott, my father, was a part-time writer but a full-time drunk.
Mother looked beautiful dressed in a fringed white gown. A peacock mask covered all but her blue irises. Her hair was smoothed at her forehead then puffed in curls by her ears, which, in the dim light from the hallway, gave her the appearance of a halo.
But it was the perfume she wore that made me swoon: gardenias, musky burnt leaves, and the indescribable scent I can only sum up as that year's model T.
Thinking me asleep, she bent lower to kiss me goodnight, but I inhaled deeply.