Swetha Amit: PAINT AND SIP • Cleaver Magazine

Flash by Swetha Amit
PAINT AND SIP

At a paint-and-sip studio, my daughter and I are painting a bottle tilted mid-pour into a wine glass on our canvases. My husband did not join us this time. Our fingers clutch the paint brushes, and the acrylic paint carries a sharp, chemical-sweet smell. Around us, adults lift real glasses. Wine is for those twenty-one and over. My daughter is eleven—she wants to add years the way she adds layers of paint.

“Just one more decade,” I tell her.

She asks what it tastes like, her brown eyes brimming with curiosity.

“It depends,” I tell her. “Sometimes dry, sometimes sweet. The taste changes over time.”

She turns to her canvas, dragging a streak of crimson too fast, too thick. I show her how to slow the stroke and let the color breathe.

We paint in companionable silence: red for the wine, black for the outline, and green for the bottle. Our brows knit in unison. Every so often, she glances sideways—at my painting, at my glass—and I pretend not to notice.

At home, he’s been drinking more. Ever since the promotion slipped by him, he pours one glass, then another, then another, the television flickering long past midnight.

I used to think we held each other steady, like my hand holds this brush. I think of the flu that attacked him, how I brought him tomato soup and sat by his side. I think of the months after our daughter was born, when I moved through a fog I couldn’t make sense of, and he supported me without complaint.

We were good at blending then—at finding the right balance, and the right mix.

I’m not sure when it became harder.

My daughter frowns at her canvas beside me. The colors have bled into one another, red swallowing green, black muddying everything. She presses her lips together, then her eyes suddenly brim over.

“It’s ruined,” she wails.

“It’s not,” I tell her, but a tear rolls down her cheek and slips into her mouth. She winces. I set my brush down and pull her close, careful not to smear paint on her shirt.

“Wish Pa were here to help,” she sniffles.

I take her canvas and begin working with what’s already there. I deepen the red, sharpen the glass’s edge, and let the bottle fade slightly into the background so the motion of the pour comes forward, clear and bright.

“See?” I say. “You don’t have to fix everything. Sometimes you just…shift the focus.”

She watches, still sniffling, as the image emerges—imperfect yet alive.

I take a final sip from my glass. She watches me, her eyes brimming with concern this time.

“Are you going to have any more?” she asks.

The Tempranillo’s dry taste lingers on the back of my tongue. I look at her and smile.

“Nope. I think I am done.”

She points to her painting and hugs me.

“I am glad. It’s looking much better,” she says, wiping away her tears.

When we finish, we set our canvases side by side and wait for them to dry—the paint, glossy and uncertain, still settling. My daughter leans against me, her head warm on my shoulder. We sit there in silence, watching the colors dry, hoping they will last.

Swetha Amit holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco and is an active member of the Writers Grotto, where she chairs the Literary Salon series. She has authored a memoir and three chapbooks. Her stories have appeared in Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, McNeese Boudin, Gone Lawn, and others. Her works have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions.