Title: Snapshots: Amy DeLuca (1/1)
Summary: Random glimpses into Amy DeLuca's life.
Rating: PG?
Disclaimer: WB. 20thC Fox.
Date: Feb. 16, 21 2001.
Note: Snapshots is a series of unrelated fics I'm writing in different
fandoms. They came about due to snippets of ideas about characters that
weren't large enough to hold a story by themselves.
Thank you to those who answered my infoquest.
There is an alien in her living-room. It is on top of the small table next to Amy's favourite armchair. It is the twin of every other man-made alien in Roswell: small bodied, spindly arms, a giant head and long, glistening black eyes. Amy has dozens like it in her shop. A dozen blank sets of eyes stare at her from the shelves which house the dolls as she works.
The people of Roswell, those who know enough about her to think of her at all, think that Amy is... odd. They say it like that - a pause, struggling for the appropriate word. Odd, a short explosion of breath, finality. Not that she isn't respectable. Not that many of them don't make a living off of aliens and kitsch.
Amy DeLuca never used to think of aliens, never dreamt that she would struggle to make a living by selling them to tourists. There are a lot of things that she never thought about that she has to deal with now. The things she used to think of have no room in this life.
She used to dream of being an artist.
Now, she's peddling plastic aliens.
She still has her sketchbook, some of her paintings. They are tucked away in the back of her closet, hidden behind toppled shoes and the sway of blouses and dresses. Amy doesn't look at them, but every time she had moved, she brings them with her. She remembers the feel of them, the passion and agony and triumph that breathed within her creations, glimmering pieces of her soul passed onto canvas and paper as she strove to make imagination real.
There was a time when Amy dreamt of leaving Roswell, small-town nowhere, and living and learning somewhere fast and fierce and new and exciting. She had wanted to learn among other artists. Amy knows now the difficulty of making a living through art. She remembers that doing so is precisely what she wanted to do. There are times when she still regrets, when she hates Roswell and life now as fiercely as she did as a young woman with dreams and hopes checked by reality.
Her family has lived in Roswell for years. She was born here, schooled here, married here, bore her first child here, and doesn't doubt that she will die here, her body laid to rest beside her parents. There are pieces of her, phantom-Amys who watch her from the places that were and are. Those phantom-Amys shake their heads in disappointment at her, and she glowers back at them. She has a child and a job and bills to pay and she refuses to be shamed by figments of her imagination.
She sees herself as she was. Seventeen years old, passionate and pretty and determined to change the world. And she sees Carl. He was intelligent and charming, kind and considerate and... no, no, Amy shakes her head and sighs. She was seventeen years old. Carl was seventeen years old. He was handsome and wild and had thick hair that Amy's fingers couldn't stay away from.
They got married when they found out Amy was pregnant. It was a small ceremony - she remembers her parent's faces, solid and disappointed. They found an apartment, she and Carl, small and suffocating. Amy hadn't wanted to get married so soon. She'd dreamt of seeing things, doing things, of getting married when she was full of life and experience. She stopped painting. She vacuumed and washed and cooked and waddled off to work to pay for their box of a home. Carl was handsome and wild and had thick hair that Amy loved to touch. And none of that mattered anymore.
Maria was such a darling baby. Amy would leave her sleeping in her crib, go into the bathroom, slide down to the floor with her head between her knees and try not to cry. She loved Maria with an intensity that surprised her. And she worried that she wasn't a good enough mother, that she wasn't providing a good enough life in which to bring up her child. She rocked Maria against her and felt ancient.
She knows that Carl loved Maria, too. He came home tired, and his face and voice would soften when he looked at his daughter. The past flickers around Amy, joy and sorrow twisting together. He came home tired, and Maria would be crying as her father slammed the bedroom door shut behind him, his face set in anger and frustration.
Seven years, and when he left, Amy wept into her pillow every night for a week. She was tired and wrung out and worried and next to broke. Maria burrowed against her, warm and small and helpless, and Amy pulled herself together. She stopped crying. She was strong and smart and she refused to sink into misery.
She walks a fine line now, talking to Maria about Michael. Amy says that she doesn't want Maria to have the same kind of life she had, and tries to make sure that Maria doesn't misunderstand the role of her own birth in Amy's life. Amy isn't sure how well she does. She looks at Maria carefully, and sees the web of fine cracks running across the surface her daughter presents. Fragile, no less now that she's old enough to understand. Maria tries so hard to be strong, and she's desperate for acceptance and love and validation.
Amy stepped into her daughter's room one morning to find Maria wrapped around a boy. And her heart nearly shattered. Maybe Maria thinks she loves Michael. And maybe he's handsome and wild and makes Maria's fingers twitch to touch him.
...~*~...
Amy likes Jim Valenti. She isn't sure if it's love. But she knows that she feels comfortable and charming and feminine around him. And her fingers twitch when she sees him. She sees passion in him, determination, compassion. She likes the fine undercurrent of weariness in him that she sometimes sees. He has lived and suffered and she thinks he knows what struggle is, what it feels like to at look oneself and recognize that one isn't what they wanted to be.
Maria is odd around Jim. She doesn't dislike him, Amy is sure. Maybe she's being a bit territorial, protecting her mother and her space from outsiders. Amy thinks it's a bit more than that. There is tension there. Amy can't think of why. But then, she can't understand much of what lays beneath Maria's words and voice and expression these days.
Jim doesn't treat Amy like she's a flake. He knows that she reads her horoscope every morning in the paper, that she consults psychics in times of stress, that she swears by aromatherapy. Amy likes that he understands. Not everybody does. Most people probably don't. But horoscopes and psychics and aromatherapy bring her a sense of security. They give her a sense of power - of foreknowledge, of the ability to monitor and soothe her own emotions and health and life.
She knows that people in Roswell think that Jim is odd, too. They know and whisper of his father, of him, of aliens and promising lives driven into the ground by obsession. Amy gave Jim a vial of her favourite aromatherapy oil meant to soothe and an alien figurine for his birthday. He looked between them long and hard before laughing. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and settled a soft kiss against her forehead.
...~*~...
Amy and Maria have a routine. Amy wakes up before Maria, makes breakfast and calls for her daughter. They sit together at the kitchen table. They always mock-fight over the comics, and Amy always lets Maria win. Maria will read the strips she finds funny aloud, and mother and daughter will smile at each other over their respective sections of the paper.
They do the dishes together, a modest amount of plates and silverware. Maria will hurry to dress and wash for school or work. Amy dresses as Maria fills the bathroom with sounds of running water and vigorous scrubbing. They switch positions and emerge on the landing at approximately the same time. Maria will twirl for Amy, and Amy for Maria, and they will declare the other to be the ultimate example of beauty.
Amy looks at her daughter, and thinks that maybe she has done all right with her life after all. She listens to Maria sing, and sees Maria struggle to break free of the trap Roswell is to her. Amy sees herself in Maria, and that is sometimes a terrifying experience.
Maria has friends who help settle her. Liz and Alex and Maria, tight and fierce together against the world. They come over every year on Maria's birthday, and Amy serves them chocolate cake spotted with candles. They laugh and talk and the candles flicker out when Maria makes her wish.
Amy remembers her childhood best friend with a smile and a distant tinge of sorrow. She remembers she and Emily in the park when they were young, flipping through fashion magazines when they grew older. Emily didn't understand life when it became more than giggling conversations, schoolwork and boys. She didn't know what husband and child, home and bills forced one into becoming. They grew up, grew apart, and Emily lives at the other end of the country now. They used to send each other Christmas cards.
She met Karen at work. They go out together every now and then. They'll make their way to the classiest restaurant they can afford, sit at a neatly arranged table and lean back in contentment as food is delivered to them. They laugh and talk and have a wonderful time. Being a grown-up can be fun sometimes, too, Amy thinks towards the mourning Amys-who-were.
Her life has settled. She regrets, sometimes. She rages, sometimes. But for the most part, Amy thinks that she is happy. She comes home each night, hugs her daughter and feels grateful. She goes to bed, listening to their home creaking around her. She falls asleep easily and deeply.
~end~