Others like this
- - Stray Light
- - Commissions
- - Vulture
- - Mr. Button-Eyed
Mr. Button-Eyed
WHEN THEY FIRST FOUND HIM, he was a mess of mix-match fabric, stitched pieces, and button eyes. They fixed him up with loving hands, passing him back and forth, but when they got to the eyes, Dana asked, “Are we sure we want to change them?”
Her boyfriend, James, looked at her curiously. “Button eyes?”
“Yeah.” She smiled and pointed to them, one purple, one brown. “I think it adds character.”
James picked up the teddy bear and held it like a bomb. “What kind of character?” He laughed. “It’s falling apart.”
“I like them,” she said definitively.
And that was that.
“Dana?”
James looked at her from across the room. She bit her lip. “Sorry. What did you ask me?”
“Do you want the record player?”
She frowned and came over. “What? No. You love that thing.”
“So do you.”
“I think you should have it.”
“Why me? You use it more.”
“You like it more.”
“How do I like it more if you use it more?”
James sighed. “I want you to have it.”
Dana grit her teeth. He never listened to her anymore. “Okay. I’ll take the stupid thing.”
He frowned, and she wanted to apologize.
“Okay, well, what about this bookshelf? We got that together.”
He shook his head and sat on the couch between the mess of boxes. “I don’t care about the bookshelf.”
Tense silence sucked the air out of the room. Dana was suffocating. She looked to the bookshelf, the grains in the wood and the scrapes on the floor from where they dragged it to its spot. Dana cried over the ruined floor. They laughed about it the next day. Things always had a way of being okay with James, always a way to keep going. The end blindsided her so much because with James, things only seemed to continue.
She sat beside him with the photo now crushed in her fist. “This isn’t easy.”
James looked to her. He ran his hands through his short hair. “Yeah.”
Her eyes welled up. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But…”
She trailed off as she noticed something behind a box, forgotten in the couch. She pulled it out and James laughed, teary.
Dana stared down at the patchwork bear. She broke down, then, tears wracking her body in silent sobs. James looked away, trembling. He was crying, too.
“What do we do with Mr. Button-Eyed?”
The silence was going to kill her. She just wanted answers, could someone please give her some fucking answers?
“What should we name him?”
Dana stared at the finished bear, their first couple’s project. He was beautiful. Fabrics that normally clash in a perfect collage of mess, stitches dramatized and contrasting the color beneath them, and two button eyes.
“Mr. Button-Eyed.”
He grinned. “Yeah?” Coming closer, he wrapped an arm around her waist. “That’s cute. It’s pretty much the only part of him we didn’t alter.”
“Exactly.”
James reached out and took the bear. His tears fell on Mr. Button-Eyed’s face. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Dana. I just don’t know.”
They finished sorting the house. It took way too long, a painful and slow death, constantly arguing over who gets what and why and how and when. By the time they finished, it was nightfall.
“So… this is it, I guess,” James said.
Dana sniffled and wiped her nose. “Yeah.”
“I love you, Dana.” He gripped her shoulder, and it hurt in her palm. “You’re gonna kill it at this new job.”
She cried through her words. “And you’re going to do great down there in your apprenticeship. I… I love you, too. Good luck, James.”
Dana went home. She cried. She smoked. She cried again. She smoked and went to sleep.
A few months later, she went to the thrift store for clothes. She was looking through the racks when she overheard a conversation.
“I want it to be something… different.”
“Different how?”
“Something weird.”
A man laughed. “Like you,” he teased.
The other man laughed, too. “Cute. Ooh, what about a stuffie?”
>Curious, Dana peeked around the rack to see the two men go into the toy section. Her heart stopped. Mr. Button-Eyed stared at her from the pile of stuffed animals. She couldn’t believe her eyes as the brawnier man gasped and ran for it, his friend following.
“This.”
“That’s the one you want?”
“Yes! Isn’t he so cute?”
He took the bear and flipped it all over, taking in each detail. “Wow. Yeah, he’s pretty cute, babe. What better gift?”
They checked out. Mr. Button-Eyed, now with a new name, stared at Dana through the bag as he left, off to his new life.
And Dana to hers.
