Colors Run

Macy’s is a multinational corporation with locations on six continents. It boasts endorsements by Santa Claus and Snoopy. It acquired rights to the red star formerly owned by Communism. Macy’s can overnight you a lumberjack shacked, a fifty-five-gallon drum of Eternity, or a pair of trousers with the word TASTY stitched across the seat. Someone is embroidering the word TASTY right now.

Macy’s does not belong to my ex-husband, whose holdings are limited to three flavors of Hot Pockets, lighters with skulls, and shelf-stable malaise. But when you have signed an exclusive partnership to love someone, they have stock options on your trust. They can purchase your blankets at one hundred percent off retail price. If they tell you they own Macy’s you will believe.

I was thirty-six when we married, but in stuffed animal years that is only six. I had always appreciated Macy’s. I liked the pants that proclaimed truths about my posterior. I kicked along with the Rockets in the Thanksgiving parade. I discovered something called “teddy bear fleece” and clothed myself like a glamour Muppet. I did not know that I was doing Macy’s incorrectly.

I did not know that Macy’s was not meant for jollity. I had not read all the terms and conditions of our contract. I did not know it was possible to cry in Macy’s. It is possible. It can happen if you admire a flamingo brooch the size of a human head. It can happen if you defend the color yellow on the escalator between Young Men and Home Comforts. It will happen if you decline to try on age-appropriate pants made by some Calvin you do not trust.

I do not blame Macy’s for selling garments that restrict movement. There may well be customers who don’t evaluate apparel on the dual priorities of iridescence and amenability to high kicking. I do not judge women enrobed in oatmeals, nor men whose spectrum runs from beige to beige. Macy’s is big enough for Muppets and mathematicians. Our Constitution enshrines the right to fluoresce or to favor the color of cardboard.

No covenant would strip a soul of this sovereignty. No contract is worth the price of prison clothes. The dressing room walls caved in. He kept the pockets and the malaise, and I took my fleece and feathers. I stopped in the children’s section on my way out, to purchase perfume called “Buttermuffin.” I did not return to Macy’s for four years. There was a hostile takeover.

I wish I could tell you that Santa Claus sat me down, or the Rockettes pulled me into the line. But the thing that got me back to Macy’s was paper towels.

If you are looking for a novel way to earn money, you should develop a comprehensive philosophy of paper towels. This will position you to make entire dollars answering opinion surveys. I discovered this after my contract became confetti and I had time and closet space to spare.

I was astonished. There are companies that will pay to hear how you feel. They fill your inbox with questions. They wait for you to answer. Their controlling interest appears to be paper towels.

In the time I saved on sniveling, I answered hundreds of surveys about paper towels. I promised impeccable sincerity. I sat back to contemplate concentric perforations and the graceful genius of select-a-size. I signed non-disclosure agreements promising not even to tell my mother about the test towels that came in the mail. I wrapped commercially unavailable Bounty around my neck like an ermine stole and confirmed its excellence.

I was offered payment in Macy’s gift cards.

I stared at the screen

In four naked years, you forget what you knew by heart. I tried to recall what Macy’s smelled like. One overachieving neuron remembered an extravagance of Estée Lauder, swirled like sangria with butter from the pretzel vendor one shop down. My nose refused to board the time machine. It was still running.

I pecked out M-A-C-Y-S on my keyboard, attempting negotiations in two dimensions. The red star rose. Hot Pockets scalded the inside of my nose, and old scolding thundered my ear canals. But before I could click away, colors clasped my hands and tucked my head on their shoulders. There were paisleys and unrepentant yellows. Fleece caroled in chartreuse. Peace doves came in cheetah print. Hibiscus and olive conspired to bewilder.

My knees began to twitch. I had one hundred Star Points and enough paper towels to make a porous wedding gown. I looked up the name of the store manager. It was not my ex-husband. It was one Eugene Buddle-Lubbers. That was a name I could trust. I wondered what the trousers were saying these days. Four years was long enough to embroider new words. I zipped up my teddy bear fleece and made way for the parade.

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Angela Townsend (she/her) is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and seven-time Best of the Net nominee. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, Pleiades, SmokeLong, and West Trade Review, among others. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College and writes for a cat sanctuary.