Fruit in Winter

2024 9th - 12th Grade Prose Winner

     Apples and oranges. There are simple things, small things like these that one can choose
to occupy her time with. There are some people in this world who are so particular about their
fruits that they can spend hours choosing between the two. There are little girls who delight in
deciding between the two fruits. There are even people who derive pleasure from picking the
kind of apple they might want. They all have beautiful names, of course, almost like the names
of paints—Golden Delicious, Macintosh, Macoun, Lady Alice.

     And think of oranges. Think of the gooseflesh on their skin, the way they must be peeled
to be eaten, the explosion of sweetness when you split the film of resistance with your teeth.
Oranges have names too. There is Valencia, and Hamlin, and Ambersweet.

     But you must be careful not to think of apples and oranges too much. You could be
caught dreaming of the color of a particular shade of apple, or turning the word “Ambersweet”
over and over again in your mouth like the name of a lover. And this is how you fall into the trap.

     You can think of the names of apples and oranges, and you think of the names of paints,
and you can think of the word apple, and you can think of breasts, and you can think of women
like Lempicka, the Polish portrait painter. And suddenly they sound less like the names of paints
and more like the names of strippers. And then you can start to think about the state of the world,
and the state of women, and the state of the skin of the oranges. And suddenly you don’t believe
in fruit.

     I am a painter. I believe in things like Naples Yellow and bad breath and shoelaces. But I
do not believe in love. Tamara de Lempicka wasn’t interested in apples and oranges. She was
only interested in tobacco and opium and women, and not love. She liked colors, she probably
took her drinks shaken and her nights dark and hot. She was Russian and she was Polish and she
was disciplined. But she was no fool.

     My mother always believed in coincidences. But of course she did. She was a Catholic, a
Catholic of the very worst kind. She believed in fate and love and fruit and not in women. Of
course, as a lover of apples and oranges, she naturally picked her confirmation name to be
Agatha, the one whose breasts were chopped off for some reason or another. But my mother
liked coincidences, and she didn’t like me. But today is one day, and don’t ask me tomorrow,
because I won’t be saying things like this tomorrow—today is one day I wish that I could talk to
her.

     I woke up early this morning, when the birds weren’t even out. It’s so crisp and dark
these days, you can hardly tell night from day from dusk. But I woke up when the sky was
blushing a damask rose, dappled with Cadmium Red. And I decided to go for a walk.
But as soon as I set foot outside my apartment, something hit the back of my neck. It felt
like an angry raindrop, or a penny from the woman downstairs who would eat my guts for
breakfast. So I whipped around, but all I could find was an orange seed. And, of course, I am so
over apples and oranges. So I kept walking.

     The sky was ripening to a Raw Sienna, which of course reminded me of the oranges. But
I soldiered on, forcing one foot in front of the other, thumbing the jagged edge of my key and
trying to focus on the sting of the morning wind on my cheek. I reminded myself of the paints to
mix, the canvases that needed stretching. I pondered my next stroke on the knuckle of a portrait.
And then the cobblestones evened out, and I knew I had arrived.

     The park, this wonderful park, is really just a tiny secret garden. No one knows about
it—I only came across it through careful search, evaluation and introspection, and you certainly
don’t know it. And of course, usually, there isn’t anyone else in my park. But this morning, when
my feet sighed as they pressed into the familiar stone path, I stopped in my tracks. There was a
couple there, dressed in all red and orange, making a scene and making an absurd fool of
themselves, existing in such a way that one could not tell whose limbs were whose. It was really
still just the morning, and the sun’s light was sweet and thin. But somehow, they had found my
park, all by themselves. And somehow, my park had allowed two fools like these—fools who
clearly believed in the weak joke of love—to enter its sacred walls. Well, that was okay. I would
just have to keep walking.

     I summoned up my parts and continued down the path, bathed in orange glow, trying not
to let these fools ruffle my feathers. I reached my favorite spot in the whole park, the foot of a
great oak tree. I settled in, reclining into a gap in the roots and breathing in the frigid air. But
something seemed amiss; I could not shake the feeling that there was someone watching me. I
carefully scanned the horizon to no avail. Perhaps I had just imagined it.

     But suddenly, a figure approached me. I don’t know where they came from or where they
went after that. All I know is that as soon as I saw this person, I felt something prick at my ribs,
and sting my lips the way the pesticide on apples does. Was it a man? Was it a woman? I could
not say. All I could say is that I felt something glowing, something scary, and something perhaps
a little good, in the pit of my stomach. And I was scared. I shook the way an old house shakes in
a hurricane. I did not understand what was happening. I don’t even remember what the person
looked like. All I remember is what they seemed like—dark and sweet, and mysterious, like the
autumn breeze, like the sapling from an apple seed. And I remember gazing at them, and finding
it difficult to look away. I looked so much at them that I began to feel a little sick. I do not know
what happened after that—I do not know where they went, or who they were, or how I found
myself suddenly at home just a few minutes later. But with this lingering strange feeling, a kind
of warmth despite the freezing winter cold, I had some faith, almost like my mother, that I would
see them again.

     When I got home, I didn’t paint the knuckle I’d pondered. I didn’t paint a landscape, or
prime the new canvases. I attempted to paint this strange feeling. And in attempting to put the
feeling to canvas, I found myself with a mess of reds and oranges, of things round and tender and
sweet and messy and sticky. I had painted apples and oranges.

     Now, a few hours and a few mugs of tea later, I have thought this feeling over, the feeling
that still sits heavy in my stomach. I have looked at my painting, and I have thought about
Lempicka. Perhaps Lempicka liked painting portraits beyond the colors and the strokes—perhaps
passion wasn’t such a bad part of her story. I am sure that amidst the smoky dream she lived, she
indulged in apples and oranges. Maybe Lempicka has had this feeling too—the feeling of sickly
wonder, of golden need that I feel today. This feeling, I think, is something akin to what little
girls feel when deciding between apples and oranges. And perhaps there is nothing really wrong
with apples and oranges—their sweetness, their forgiving tenderness, their color. And perhaps
there is nothing wrong with love.