Paper Bag
1. Suppose she were to fall in love with a color. Suppose she were to speak this as though it was a confession; suppose she shredded sharp-edged paper with cold, guilty fingers. It began slowly. A half-modeled thought, an idea. Then, one day, it became more serious.
Suppose she had fallen in love with not only one color, but a thousand. As many as she could hold in her head. And a technicolor world, a gilded obsession. A spell, one she fought to stay under and get out from under, in turns.
A sky so luminous it colored the world. Stars like sparks. Catch one. And no feeling, no history or memory, just color and freedom.
Suppose she were to describe a life on drugs. Suppose she were to describe a life without.
Color was a high.
2. Christmas alone — without Derek, without Ryan, Christmas with no one. Should there be a tree? Seattle was cold, there should be a tree. In case they came back. They'd want Christmas with a tree. And lights. People like lights, we like things that shine and sparkle.
She's been taunting herself with this one, this bottle of rum in the bottom cabinet. She's told herself she wouldn't touch it, and that's what's been holding her in one piece. She's got the chips in a small coin bowl on the kitchen counter, like pistachio shells at a bar. Thirty days, sixty days, thirty days, sixty days, ninety days.
She pours some rum in a glass, not a fancy one. It's got flowers across the side. Old —there's more clear glass than petals. Tosses it back. She wants to laugh, or cry, but she can't decide which to do first. She laughs, pours another, warmth in her veins.
It's Christmas Eve. She needs a tree.
3. She doesn't want a Holly Jolly. She doesn't want a Very Merry. It was only seven o'clock and she had the whole night to get through. In Los Angeles people would be sitting down to turkey dinners and shlogging eggnog till they puked. Amelia puts the car in reverse and backs out of the driveway, gravel scratches at the wheels, two stones bounce off the back bumper.
She puts on the radio. Someone's singing about Santa. She changes the station. Now it was The Smiths, they were doing that one about light. People like light. Light that would never go out.
Driving into town she feels like an escaped convict. Someone must know. Who would out her? Her fingertips, those steady neurosurgeon hands, were tapping the steering wheel nervously, her whole being consumed by adrenaline. Rule breaker. Runner. This light would never go out.
And even as she drove into town, looking for one of those Wal-Marts that sold trees in the parking lot, her eyes itched with stubborn tears she wouldn't let out. They stung like soap. What a rule breaker. What a runner. Suppose she were to describe rebellion, suppose she were to describe sin.
But where was God in all this? She had a night of rum and soap tears ahead, a pine-scented night of shame and glory.
4. She found a lot between the Korean market and a CVS with two sad parking spaces worth of trees. The sort you'd expect to find on Christmas Eve. The scraggly unwanted trees already browning at the branches. There was a two-child family come for a tree, and a gangly teenager in low jeans and a dark jacket that looked like a hand-me-down. He had come alone. He drove a red Volvo.
Amelia wanted the saddest tree. She wanted the one most likely to be passed over.
"Can I help you?" A middle-aged man had approached her as she began to sort through the wrapped trees. She looked into his dark eyes, crinkled at the sides, he had led a life of smiles and laughter. She was going to be sick.
She shook her head. Gestures were easier than words. It was cold now and she looked down. Loose cotton pajama bottoms and a navy t-shirt. She found the perfect tree. It was small and curved like a banana. She bought it for fifteen dollars and watched the happy man strap it to the roof of her car like a dead deer.
The perfect family had found theirs. A less sad, less abandoned last minute excuse for a tree. And the parents looked happy, and the kids were clapping and jumping up and down, excited. She wanted rum.
She wanted Derek back, she wanted it all back. She wanted Meredith, even though they weren't friends. She wanted a family. She wanted to shove two fingers down her throat and pretend that the rum hadn't ever happened. She wanted the opened bottle to disappear off the kitchen counter by the time she got back with the sad, sad tree.
She wanted lights.
5. No one inside the CVS wanted to be there. They had homes and lives and friends and family to get to tonight, they had stockings to fill. Here were the mothers buying last minute Hershey's kisses, cheap stuffed elves, wrapping paper.
Amelia grabbed the last box of holiday lights, the multi-colored ones she hated. A bag of silver-wrapped chocolates. Her eyes stung like bleach as she reached for a bottle of whisky and she realized she was crying. Loneliness was thick in her throat like oil. She returned the bottle.
There was the boy from the Christmas tree lot. He was holding a pint of cheap eggnog and a five dollar bill. He was looking at her uncertainly, as if she weren't real. A smoke-shadow of a woman. And Amelia realized she'd resected the boy's sister's tumor last month.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Do I look all right to you?" She didn't have a free hand to smear the tears across her cheeks. The boy blinked. She scared him. "Do I fucking look all right?"
6. The tears had stopped now. The radio was on again. Dylan was singing "Hurricane".
A/N: Bear with me, I know this is a little bizarre. It's really hard for me to get inside Amelia's head, so this sort of came out of nowhere after I listened to Paper Bag by Fiona Apple. I've been trying to come up with some kind of Amelia fic, so there might be a continuation of this if anyone's interested. No idea where it could go. I hope this piece doesn't come off like I've been snorting oxy. Let me know your thoughts!