Persuasion

This is a sensationalized story based, quite tragically, on a funny/not funny true occurrence.

****

“Running out to buy juice.”

“You just bought juice yesterday. Try again.”

“What can I say? The boys like-a the juice, eh?” Silence; yet another Saturday Night Live reference —and a pretty good mimic at that— wasted on the ignorant. The kitchen sink’s faucet disguises the glug! as I pour out the remaining juice. “Think I’ll get some more Eggos while I’m at it.”

“There are three boxes in the freezer, cupcake. Maybe say you’re getting something we need. Like, therapy. Get us some therapy.”

“Eggos’r cheaper than therapy, and you’re right: three boxes,” I call into the freezer, “though lookee here: pizza rolls?” I take out the empty box and turn it upside-down. “Now, who do you suppose would leave an empty box of pizza rolls in the freezer?”

Silence. I walk into the living room to see our youngest son, Jack, tottering around the coffee table. “Where’d Mommy go, Jack?”

“Mommy go fart.” Jack throws a teethed-copy of Goodnight Moon at the television.

“Truer words have never been spoken.”

I pick up my saggy-trousered toddler. “Wanna go to the store for pizza rolls and juice?”

“Daddy go fart.” He taps my nose.

****

So, mid-conversation, she’d just up and gone somewhere with the other two boys —a walk, presumably, as her car is still in the drive— which was rude and not at all indicative of healthy communication, for I was attempting to create a grocery list; and, here’s my third son, unattended and defacing literature and witness to her snark, which are all justifiers for my abrupt, very necessary departure for pizza rolls and juice…with said third-born, of course, because I would never leave my toddler unattended.

As sheer coincidence would have it, the liquor store’s OPEN sign illuminates as we turn into the strip-mall parking lot. Looks like Beverly’s behind the counter. I like Beverly.

I like Beverly because Beverly, unlike Gladys, minds her business. Gladys gives me that over-the-glasses, eye-brow-raised glare, like, in the morning, You DO know you’re always the first customer, yes?; or, later in the day, You again, so soon? But Beverly is all smiles, all the time, without judgment: How’s them boys doing? Growing up, I’ll bet.

Beverly knows I have children because we’ve engaged in conversation; or, rather, I’ve engaged her in conversation to purposefully lighten the mood, to groom her inference that I am not an alcoholic, no way, not with how responsible I sound. How fatherly; how…articulate.

I stop by the liquor store first because that makes the most sense: any domesticated male knows that one should never keep refrigerated or frozen items as juice or pizza rolls in the car for any unnecessary length of time.

A child, though, is okay, and I turn around to Jack. “Gotta run in here for a sec, big guy.”

Jim Beam is in the first row, mid-shelf, halfway down the aisle; I’m paying cash, and I have the exact change. Thirty seconds, tops, though even at nine o’clock the heat index is soaring, so I’ll leave the car running, crank that A/C. This fleeting thought process that tugs at the hem of guilty irresponsibility is assuaged by Jack’s reassuring, nubby-toothed smile.

****

I make my concern about leaving my child unattended in a running car obvious to Beverly, “Bev, gotta run, got my kid in the car,” to send the immediate signal there’d be no catching up today about them fast-growing boys. I unfold and press my bills and requisite change on the counter; she, though, cannot seem to locate the key for the register to ring me up, and she needs to call Carl, who closed last night.

“You might need to come back, Shug.”

Beverly has no idea what it took to get here in the first place.

“Can’t you just…look, Bev, it’s there. Exact change.”

“You might just need to come back,” she repeats, slowly and without the “Shug,” and I wonder where the love has gone.

“Bev, where’s the love?” She gives me a look over her glasses that reminds me of Gladys, the Look of the Discerning Broker that must have been taught during their training orientation. I lick my lips, which are now dry. I feel exasperated, anguished, like I’m about to miss my flight.

I am starting to shake a bit as well, which is a sign of a) a diabetic reaction; b) multiple-sclerosis; c) lead poisoning; d) alcohol withdrawal.

“Bev, look. I am certain the ABC Liquor Board would not smile upon a customer being turned away because—”

—but my rhetoric is cut off by the resounding blare of a familiar car horn. I look out the window to see Jack standing in the driver’s seat. He lays on it again, an extended drone this time: Get a move on, buddy, we’ve got things to do.

****

The owner of China Wok is on her doorstep, shielding her eyes from the morning glare. “Why you reeve boy arone?” Her name is Fang, an unflattering name which complements her often-scowling disposition. I know this because I am a frequent patron of China Wok and I’ve tried to engage her in conversation, but (despite her name) she doesn’t bite.

MSG marries well with liquor. I think if I owned a Chinese restaurant, I would plant it right next to a liquor store. In fact, doesn’t that already seem to be the case? Think I’m onto something here. Anyhow:

“Sorry, Fang…I was just running in to,” but my needless explanation is cut short by my backwards stumble to the pavement from my yank on the door handle that is now not part of the door. Lying on the pavement, I have the disembodied door handle in a tight grip, the back of my head sonar-pinging from its collision against that pavement, my child still sounding the horn.

Fang is now hovering over me. She is waving one of those foldable fans at my face. “You buy cheap car,” she says in commiseration of my plight.

****

Jack is holding the steering wheel with both hands and he is jumping on the seat like he’s trying to pound it into the car’s undercarriage. The windows reverb with loud bass; he’s ten-dialed the radio.

He is pounding that horn now seemingly in time to the reverbed ghetto bass.

And, as told by the handle which I’d tossed to the curb, he has locked the doors.

The shoe-and-fine-apparel store fronts —for this is not a seedy strip mall— now have the expected gathering of female lookie-loos (a redundancy, and I’m not being misogynistic because let’s be honest here), whispering and pointing at the guy pantomiming and shouting at his car window, PUSH-THE-BUTTON-JACK-LIKE-THIS, attempting persuasion through a charade which, upon closer examination, is being mimicked by the giggling toddler inside, a mimicry which is, quite obviously, sending our local jester into a magnificent tailspin.

JACK-I’M-BEING-SERIOUS-RIGHT-NOW-STOP-LAUGHING-AT-ME-TAKE-YOUR-HAND-LIKE-THIS-AND-JACK…JACK-YES-JACK-GOOD-BOY-THOSE-ARE-THE-WIPERS-NOW…NO-JACK-NOT…THAT’S-THE-CELL-PHONE-JACK

“Here.” Liquor Store Beverly has materialized to my left. She is holding out a phone. “It’s for you.”

“It’s for me?”

“I think it’s your wife. You want me to call the police?”

“On her?”

“What?”

“Never mind.” I take the phone. “Hey hon, what’s up?”

****

So apparently, what had happened was one of the gossip girls called my wife, saying something that probably began with, “Hey gurl, I know it’s none of my business, but”; and she, my wife, called the liquor store, having failed to reach me on my cell: the one Jack had apparently answered, the one that inadvertently informed her of the glitch through my muffled yelling and pounding on the window, the one that is now lying on the floor flashing CALL ENDED.

She had called the liquor store, saying, “Hey Bev, it’s,” for, as it also turns out, she and Beverly have been in cahoots, on a first-name basis even, for quite some time, me being the liquor store’s platinum customer and all. All the perks.

It isn’t until much, much later that I learn all this, though, for the moment I hang up with her —having patiently (diaphragmatic breathing here) explained to her that, NO!, I hadn’t left just for pizza rolls and juice, or the bourbon (“I was going to use it for a new chicken recipe and I don’t appreciate the sarcasm”), but for her dry cleaning, and her prescription (“and no, I don’t recall picking those up last week”) —is when the police arrive, the silent blues and whites…

****

…and ask that too-familiar first question, “Sir, have you been drinking this morning?” when I attempt to explain the situation, which is such an irritating question because the present perfect form implies that I am still drinking, now.

Grossly contrary to plan, I am not drinking now; though if they have to ask, they already know (something), so I say: “I had been drinking, but this is the Jim Beam mint you smell.”

“The mint?”

“Yeah. It has no alcohol, just the smell. Beverly gave me one, said it’s a sampler.”

“A mint.”

“Right.”

“Hey Jimmy.”

“Yeah?”

“He says he’s been sucking on a bourbon mint.”

“A mint. It have menthol? Or that Retsyn shit?”

“Doubt it, Jimmy. Just smells like bourbon.”

“Hmmm. Let’s see what he blows, tell how strong that ‘mint’ is.”

The problem with drinking bourbon for breakfast immediately prior to taking a drive (with your toddler) for juice and pizza rolls (and more bourbon) is a) metabolic absorption process; b) increasingly impaired judgement; c) both a) and b). Because of the latter, I did blow into their device, thinking no way; but, due to the former, my caustic exhalation yielded a .13.

“Good thing I haven’t been driving,” I said after I was informed of the blow, throwing their present perfect irregular verb back at them. Suckers. “That could have been bad.”

“True, true. Hey, Jimmy.”

“Yeah.”

“Says he hasn’t been driving.”

“How’d he get here. His kid drive?”

“Naw. I just think our boy’s got a problem with the perfect tense verb.”

****

No, I was not arrested for DUI, but I was for child endangerment, “a felony in some states” informed Jimmy. After I was processed and bonded, I asked him for a lift back to my car.

He paused in his tracks and looked around, like this was some covert operation. “You sure about that?” Officer Jimmy whispered. He was smirking.

“One hundred percent.” I then thought. “Is my kid still in the car?”

Officer Jimmy Coltrain gave me a you-shouldn’t-be-allowed-to-breed look. “Your wife rescued him. You okay to drive?”

“One hundred percent.”

“Alrighty then.”

He drove me back to my car. “Be sure to lawyer-up for that summons,” he advised in parting.

“Plan on it.”

Officer Jimmy then drove away with a toot of the horn and a wave, and probably a wide smile, for he'd left me in a parking lot beside the car in which I had locked my keys five hours ago, keys that I never got back. That sumbitch. I went to pull the door handle, see if it was unlocked.

Oh, yeah. That had happened.

The neon sign in the tinted window said OPEN and Gladys was behind the counter.

Glad it’s not Beverly.



Then: I’ll bet the cash register’s open now, too.