We pulled into the driveway of the Emerald Isle rental at 4:47 p.m. Saturday, the twins were already half-out of their car seats, and the first thing that hit me when Garrett opened the front door was a wall of what the listing photos had described as ‘a fresh coastal welcome.’ That is a marketing term. The actual term is Glade PlugIn Scented Oil in ‘Coastal Linen,’ and there were eleven of them. I counted before I let a single child past the entryway.
Two in the foyer. One in the half-bath off the foyer, which I want to be clear is the size of a coat closet. Three in the open-concept kitchen-living area, including one plugged into the outlet directly behind the toaster, which is its own conversation. One in each of the three bedrooms, at toddler face height. One in the laundry room. And one — I am not making this up — plugged into the GFCI outlet on the screened porch, outdoors, where it was simply scenting the Atlantic Ocean.
I want to say I handled this calmly. Garrett would say I did not. What I did was set my purse down, walk the perimeter of the house with a Trader Joe’s tote bag, and harvest every single one of them before a suitcase came inside. The bag went into the trunk of the car. The car got moved to the far end of the driveway. The twins got herded onto the porch with watermelon while I opened every window the rental agreement would let me open.
Here is what ‘Coastal Linen’ is, according to a woman named Daphne in Fragrance-Free Families of the Carolinas, which is a Facebook group I joined the night Lainey was born and have not regretted once. It is a proprietary blend, meaning the company does not have to tell you what is in it, meaning it is at minimum a cocktail of phthalates, synthetic musks, and what Daphne calls ‘the linalool family,’ which sounds like a sitcom and behaves like a respiratory event. There is no linen in it. There is no coast in it. There is, per the SDS sheet Daphne posted, something called ‘Hexyl Cinnamal,’ which I cannot pronounce but which I can tell you my body does not want.
I texted my sister-in-law Whitney, who works the front desk at a pediatric allergy office in Raleigh and has watched Dr. Pemberton diagnose enough kids to be, functionally, a nurse. Whitney’s response was three words and a skull emoji. The three words were ‘pull them all.’ I had already pulled them all. Whitney and I are simpatico in this way.
Garrett, bless him, made the case that we are here for six nights, that the house is otherwise lovely, that the owner — a woman named Cheryl whose VRBO profile photo shows her on a paddleboard with a labradoodle — clearly meant well, and that perhaps I could ‘try to enjoy the trip.’ I told Garrett that Cheryl had plugged a fragrance-emitting device into the outlet behind the toaster, which is a heat source, and that this was not a difference of opinion, this was physics. He went to get groceries.
I did message Cheryl, politely, through the app. I said the diffusers had been temporarily relocated for the children’s comfort and that I would reinstall them at checkout. Cheryl wrote back within nine minutes, and her message contained the phrase ‘I get them at Big Lots, four for ten dollars.’ I have read this message six times. I cannot decide if it is a confession or a brag. Whitney says both.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure: I did bring my own diffuser. It is a ceramic ultrasonic unit from a small company in Bend, Oregon, and it is currently running a blend of organic lavender and Roman chamomile in the primary bedroom because the twins will not sleep without it and because that is a real essential oil, distilled from a plant, not synthesized in a New Jersey lab to evoke the concept of a beach towel. These are not the same thing and I will not pretend they are.
The kids fell asleep in fourteen minutes last night, which is a vacation record. Garrett admits the house smells better. The Trader Joe’s tote in the trunk is, in his words, ‘humming a little,’ and I have asked him to stop opening it. We have five nights left. Cheryl, if you are reading this, your toaster is fine. Your outlet is fine. The ocean, against all odds, smells like the ocean again.