Papa's Got A Brand New Bag (To Put A Gift In)

Next, Old Alben and The Ghost Of Christmas Presents Past found themselves in a sparse bedroom, decorated in the styles of yesteryear. On the floor sat a boy of about seventeen who Old Alben recognized instantly as a younger version of himself. He was struggling to wrap a gift.

“Do you see why I brought you here?” asked the Ghost.

“Yes,” said Old Alben, his voice quivering with excited sadness. “I know exactly the reason. It was the year I’d spent in courtship with Antonia Marlanes, the only woman I ever loved. We used to visit the potato vender on our way to skip stones and pick wild flowers. We’d say, ‘extra butter, please,’ and he would shake his head in wonder at the brashness of youthful arrogance. Only once did he give us that for which we hungered and so we’d laughed all the way to the river bank, where we proceeded, as if it were not a potato but the finest of truffles, to feed each other bits of the butter-saturated root. That was when the river was the shining jewel of our town, before the algae brought the fish sideways to the surface and wrecked the paddle work of the mill. The building still stood, of course, like a rash on our community’s dignity, but all who worked there lost their jobs, including Mr. Marlanes, Antonia’s father.”

Alben pointed to the gift his young self wrapped.

“That was the last Christmas gift I ever give her. But it shan’t have been. Out of work and with empty pockets, Antonia’s parents turned to her for help. Now that she was eighteen she could marry, they said. They begged her to choose a wealthy man, one who might support the three of them. She did as she was told. She accepted an engagement offer from Mr. Earnest Horlorn, a quietly cruel man who, though just six years her senior, looked as if he could be her father’s age, and from whom hung always the acrid stench of the whale oil produced in his many factories the world over. The night before her wedding, she came to me, and said, though it would bring great shame to her already shamed parents, she would run away with me, if I just said the word. But I was too scared. For many years, I tried to amass a fortune equal to Earnest Horlorn’s, which I did, but I also gained something else: a shell of bitterness through which the light of love could nary be seen. Yes, my ghostly friend, I see exactly why you’ve brought me here: to show me a version of myself before I became the penny-pinching despot that stands before you today.”

“Um, no,” the ghost said. “That’s not what I wanted you to see. Seriously, look: we’ve been here five minutes and young you is still wrapping that one present. You should’ve used a gift bag.”

“Oh, right,” Old Alben said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Gift bags. I’ll keep that in mind. For next time.”