Then I turned toward him.
“Here’s the rule.”
He waited.
“Tonight, if you point at something you genuinely want, we buy it.”
His mouth dropped open.
“Anything?”
“Anything legally sold inside that store.”
“So not a car.”
“Unless GameStop’s business model has changed dramatically since Tuesday.”
He smiled.
Then the smile disappeared.
“Mom, are you mad?”
“Yes.”
“At me?”
“No.”
That mattered.
I unbuckled my seat belt.
“And listen carefully. We are not doing this because expensive gifts make you special.”
He nodded.
“They don’t.”
“I know.”
“I’m doing it because somebody just used gifts to make you feel small. Tonight I want you to experience what it feels like when that message stops having power.”
He looked at me for several seconds.
Then nodded.
Inside, I expected him to race around like a contestant on a game show.
He didn’t.
Noah is not built that way.
He spent eight minutes comparing two controllers because one had better grip texture.
He picked up a gaming headset.
Checked the price.
Put it back.
I put it into the basket.
“Mom.”
“You pointed.”
“I was putting it back.”
“Your finger made contact.”
“That’s not how pointing works.”
“Tonight it is.”
He laughed.
That sound was worth more than anything we bought.
He chose a console bundle he had been talking about for months.
Three games.
An extra controller.
The headset.
A charging station.
Two Pokémon card boxes.
A retro handheld system.
One ridiculous floor gaming chair I knew would become a dust collector by Easter.
Several gift cards.
Then he picked up a small plush character.
“For your desk,” he said.
I looked at the price tag.
“Twenty-seven dollars?”
“It’s small.”
“That appears to be the problem.”
He started putting it back.
I dropped it into the basket.
“I survived commercial radio during an election year. I’ll recover.”
By the time the employee rang everything up, the total was just over two thousand dollars.
I stared at the screen.
The employee stared at me.
Noah stared at me.
“Still okay?” the employee asked.
“No,” I said.
Then handed him my card.
“But run it.”
Noah laughed so hard he had to lean against the counter.
I paid with my money.
Not a family account.
Not borrowed funds.
Not anybody else’s credit card.
Mine.
We loaded several bags and one absurdly large chair box into the Subaru.
On the drive home, Noah fell asleep with the twenty-seven-dollar plush toy against his chest.
At a red light, my phone buzzed.
Then again.
Then six times.
Family group chat.
I ignored it.
At home, Noah helped carry everything upstairs.
We left the gaming chair in the hallway because righteous indignation is apparently not an approved lifting technique.
He went to brush his teeth.
I sat at the kitchen table and opened my phone.
Thirty-one notifications.
Jason:
Where did you go?
Mom:
Please tell me you’re not driving angry.
Brooke:
This has gotten completely out of proportion.
Jason:
Call me.
Then Elise:
I’m sorry.
That one bothered me almost as much as the others.
I stared at it.
Then photographed the GameStop receipt.
I sent it to the family chat.
Underneath I wrote:
Noah got everything he pointed at. Merry Christmas.
Then I put the phone face down.
It started ringing immediately.
Jason.
Decline.
Brooke.
Decline.
Mom.
Decline.
Jason again.
Dad.
Brooke.
Mom.
At 9:42, I switched the phone to silent.
At 10:15, Noah came downstairs wearing dinosaur pajamas.
“Why does your phone keep lighting up?”
“Apparently your new headset has destabilized several adults.”
His eyes widened.
“Am I in trouble?”
“No.”
“Are you?”
“Possibly.”
He climbed onto the stool across from me.
“Did Dad text?”
Noah’s father, Aaron, and I had been divorced for five years.
Ours was the kind of divorce people don’t make movies about because nobody threw a lamp.
We had loved each other.
Then gradually became two exhausted people working opposite schedules who were much better at co-parenting than being married.
Aaron lived twenty minutes away.
He had remarried two years earlier.
His wife, Kim, was kind to Noah and smart enough not to compete with me for anything.
I had texted Aaron from the Bellini’s parking lot.
His first reply had been six words.