Master Button Pusher
I have dinner almost ready when I realize there is nothing but water to drink and I also need bread. I walk to the buffet in the dining room. Me putting my wallet in my back pocket and sliding into some shoes catches Danny’s attention.
“Where are you goin’ Dad?”
“I’m going to the Conven… “
Just the two syllables send the child into a sort of panicked tailspin. He runs. He darts and zigzags. He races down a hallway. He dashes back.
“Where’s my shoes, Dad?”
Dan is 3-and-a-half-years-old, and he loves Convenient Food Marts. These are little gas stations and stores that have sprung up on every corner in our city. They stay open 24 hours a day. And more than Disney World, more than boats or blue vans like Papaw’s, Danny loves Convenients. He calls them “The ‘Benient.”
“Listen to me, Danny. I’ll only be gone for like five minutes. I’m going to run straight in to the store and then back out. You stay here with Eric.”
“Stay here? No, Dad! Please! I need to go with you, Dad.” Danny spots a shoe under the couch and dives for it. “Dad, WAIT! Don’t! Wait, Dad!” Dan hurriedly slips on the shoe.
“I don’t know why you’re looking so hard for your other shoe, you’re not going with me.”
“Not going with you? Dad, I need to go with you. I have to go to the ‘Benient with you, Dad. I have to.”
An amused Eric listens and watches from the couch.
Danny’s panic increases as I move toward the door. “DAD! Wait… please… “ My child’s voice is muffled before he tears out of a closet carrying his other shoe.
“I need to go with you, Dad,” he says, beseechingly. “I need to go to The ‘Benient with you.”
I shake my head no and step onto the porch but then I can’t shut the door because my son’s little bare foot is in the way.
“Dad, you’re not letting me explain how I need to go. You’re not letting me tell you everything I need to tell you.”
I shake my head. This child breaks my heart. I love him so much I think I’ll bust sometimes and right now I can see myself in his dark green eyes, literally.
“Danny, I don’t want you to go with me. Not this time. Stay here and be good. I’ll be right back. Five minutes. I promise.”
“I love you, Dad, and I need to go with you. Please let me go with you. PLEASE! I need to go with you to The ‘Benient.”
Danny’s little foot is still stuck in the door and he’s still holding his other shoe.
“I love you too, Danny, but I need you to stay here.”
“No, Dad. Dad, you said you like me more than anybody and I like you more than anybody, so why can’t I go?”
“I don’t have much money, Snake. I have $10 to my name. And if I let you go you’re going to want one of those damn $1.79 toys that’ll be broken before we even get it home.”
Danny is holding a finger in the air, like, I want to say something when you’re finished.
“Danny, no. I’m broke and I don’t want to deal with you and cheap-ass toys tonight.”
“I won’t aks you for nothin’, Dad. I won’t. I won’t aks you for one thing. Not one. Let me go with you, Dad. I won’t aks for anything. I know you think I will aks you for somethin’, but I won’t. I won’t aks. For nothin’. Let me go. Please, Dad. Let me go with you.”
The boy is wearing me down. There’s such pleading in his voice and he’s inconceivably cute and his blonde hair sticks up on one side and his knees are fat and he’s wearing red shorts and a yellow “Hulk” T-shirt and the shoes he’s located are little black and white checked sneakers.
“Danny, I know how you are. Listen, I get paid tomorrow. I’ll take you to the Convenient or K-Mart or anywhere you want to go.”
“I don’t care about going no place tomorrow, Dad. Let me go to The ‘Benient with you now. Please, Dad,” he whimpers. “PLEASE!” he says desperately. “Dad, I won’t aks you for nothin’. If you’ll just let me go with you, you’ll see I won’t.”
I look at Eric. Beautiful, young, blonde Eric. “I’d let him go,” Eric says. “That first ‘I won’t aks you for nothin’’ would have convinced me.”
“You’re a lot of help,” I tell my, um, friend.
Eric shrugs.
I give in.
“Put your other damn shoe on,” I tell Danny.
Danny falls onto his butt and pulls his shoe on.
“I love you bigger than the sky, Dad.”
“I love you bigger than the sky, and Texas and California,” I tell my son. “But, so help me, Danny, if you ask me for so much as a stick of gum I’m gonna take your pants down and spank your little bottom right there in the store. In front of everyone. Do you understand me?”
“I do, Dad, and you won’t have to spank me, ‘cause I won’t aks you for nothin’. I won’t.”
My son jumps up and takes my hand. “I’m going to the ‘Benient with my Dad,” he tells Eric.
Eric chuckles. “Do you think you’ll ask for anything while you’re in there with him?”
Danny shakes his head. “My Dad don’t have much money,” he says. “I won’t aks him for nothin’.”
“Hey Sport, I can’t ever remember. There on your shirt, that Hulk… what kind of Hulk did you say that was again?”
“It’s a ‘Credible kind of Hulk.”
Eric nods. “I see. Like on television?”
Danny nods.
“Well, I guess I’ll see ya in a bit. You have a good time.”
“I will. It’s The ‘Benient,” he reminds Eric.
I walk to the car with my persistent son. This is back in the good old days, before Ryan Seacrest and terrorism and mandatory seatbelts. Dan crawls up and onto the front seat. I close his door and make sure it’s locked. I go around, open the driver’s side door and slide in under the wheel. My boy scoots over and crams his small body into mine. I start the car and back out of the lot. I straighten the car and accelerate.
“Oh shit, Danny! Listen.” I turn the radio up.
“Oh shit, Dad!”
Music swells.
“You ready, Snake? Are you ready, Boy?”
“Yes Dad, I’m ready”
“You gonna sing with me and Gloria?”
“I am,” Dan says excitedly.
“But, will you sing with passion?” I want to know.
“YES!” Dan leans forward. “Here we go, Dad.”
Dan’s little hand squeezes my arm, I light a cigarette and Gloria Gaynor shares: “At first I was afraid… I was petrified… kept thinking I could never live without you by my side… but then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong… and I grew strong and I learned how to get along… ”
My son and I know every lyric and, stopped at the light just before the turn into the Convenient, we sing with Gloria.
Danny throws his head back. “Go on now go… walk out the door.”
I laugh and sing with my boy Danny and with my girl Gloria. I turn into the Convenient store lot and park but we’re all still singing. “I will survive… ”
“Man! You sang that that with much verve,” I tell my son.
“I felt verve, Dad.”
“Good. Okay let’s go. You remember our deal?”
“Yep. I won’t aks for nothin’, Dad. I won’t. Nothin’.”
“If you do, Danny, I’ll do what I told you I’d do.”
“I know you will, Dad. I won’t aks for nothin’, Dad.”
“Okay.”
Danny scrambles out of the car and we go in.
The goddamn Convenient people place wire racks that have 30 or 40 $1.79 toys pinned to them right in front of the door. Where kids can spot them immediately. Danny, right away, walks to and stops in front of the rack of toys. I go to the back of the store and pick up a two-liter bottle of Pepsi and then in an aisle to my right I snatch a loaf of bread.
Thinking to myself, “If that little shit asks me for anything, I’m going to keep my word to him,” I move through the store.
I get in the checkout line behind a pretty girl. She smells like Ambush perfume and wears the tightest Jordache jeans I’ve ever seen. I look over and see Danny still standing at the toy rack. He gets on tiptoes and reaches for something, he turns and walks slowly toward me. I shake my head.
The child is carrying a blue, soft plastic gun that shoots Ping-Pong balls when you squeeze it and he’s wearing this “I’m an abused orphan look” on his face. I can’t believe his nerve. The cashier gives the pretty girl her change and watches Danny’s approach.
There’s a quarter-size wet spot in the front of Danny’s shorts that breaks my heart a little, but only a little.
“See this pop gun, Dad?” he asks.
“I see it,” I say warningly.
Danny takes a huge breath and sighs. “This is the toy I’m not gonna aks you for,” he says pitifully, and then turns to take the popgun back.
“Put the damn thing up here on the counter!” I say through clenched teeth.
Again on tiptoes Dan puts the toy beside my Pepsi and bread. He pulls at my shirt.
“What?” I ask him.
“You can’t be mad at me Dad ‘cause I didn’t aks you for it.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I tell him.
On the way back to my apartment Danny takes the popgun out of the bag. “I love you bigger than the sky, Texas, California and the Empire State Building, Dad.”
“That’s a lotta love,” I tell Danny.
“It’s true, Dad.”
I park in front of my apartment. Danny gets out of the car and runs ahead of me. When we step inside and Eric sees the popgun he turns away so Danny doesn’t see him laughing. I look at my (very on the down low) boyfriend.
“What can I say? He’s my little boy and he knows how to push every button I got.”
“You know it’s not entirely bad that they’re pushable,” Eric says.
“Hey, Buddy, come show me how that thing works.” Eric takes Danny’s hand and they go into the living room while I set the table.
“If my Dad had more money, he probably would have got some ice cream at The ‘Benient too.” I hear Danny tell Eric.
“I think I got a few bucks, Sport. What kind of ice cream do you like?”
“Bernilla.”
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