Small Mercies

by Joyce, Eddie

  “Useless. Utterly useless,” Dominic said with a wink, and then opened the door.

  The assembled litigation partners rose to cheer Peter and welcome him to the partnership. A flute of champagne was placed in his hand. Dominic hugged him, kissed his cheek, and whispered in his ear.

  “Congrats, Petey. It took me twenty-five years, but I finally got another paesano in here. You got the world by the balls now, kid.”

  Peter felt like he was in GoodFellas, like he was becoming a made man, being welcomed into a Mafia family. Dominic released him. The partners had formed a makeshift receiving line; ninety-odd men (and ten women) in five-thousand-dollar suits, their stern, workplace demeanors temporarily discarded, all waiting to shake his hand. Peter worked his way through the line, shaking hands and swigging champagne. After a half hour of backslapping and congratulatory handshakes, Peter looked around the room at his new partners. Bow ties and braces, cufflinks and horn-rimmed glasses. An entire room of consiglieres, if you thought about it. Not to Mafia dons. To captains of industry, to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, to the people who called the shots in corporate America, who controlled the peaks and valleys of the stock market. The most powerful people in the country came to the partners at this law firm when they needed advice, when they had a crisis.

  From a few seats down, Dominic caught his eye, raised his glass. He was a little drunk, the old hardscrabble litigator from the Bronx. On champagne and on his protégé’s success. Peter raised his glass in return, smiled.

  No, this wasn’t GoodFellas. This was much, much better.

  * * *

  He staggered back to his office an hour later, euphoric and exhausted and more than a little tipsy. He shook hands with well-wishers as he went. Word had spread. Maureen was waiting for him and she hugged him, real tears in her eyes.

  “Congrats, Peter. I’m so happy for you. You deserve this, you deserve this.”

  Maureen had been his secretary for the past three years; she was competent, had a good sense of humor. She was also in her midfifties and reminded Peter of his mother. Dominic had once told him to never have a secretary who was better looking than his wife. Peter heeded the advice, as he did most of Dominic’s counsel. Maureen lived deep in Brooklyn—Marine Park or Mill Basin, he could never remember which—and had lost a nephew, also a firefighter, on 9/11. She felt a kinship with Peter, relished his successes in a way that his own mother couldn’t. By dint of working at this firm for so many years, Maureen understood what his making partner meant; his mother wouldn’t, couldn’t. Not entirely.

  The hug drifted toward an uncomfortable length. He tried to ease out of it, but Maureen kissed his cheek and whispered in his ear.

  “I’m sure your brother is looking down right now, very proud of you. Very proud.”

  Peter smiled and stepped away.

  “Thank you, Mo.”

  He paused to allow the emotion to dissipate. Phones rang in other offices. Pages belched out of printers. Maureen wiped her eyes, sat down at her station.

  “There will be another reception at five thirty, for the whole litigation department.”

  “More champagne?” he asked, added a dramatic groan for Maureen’s benefit.

  “Even I may stay late, on a Friday no less. I know it’s tough, Petey, all the champagne, everyone wishing you well, but try to make the best of it.”

  “That’s the Mo I know and love.” He walked to the door of his office. “I’m gonna make a few calls, tell Lindsay and my family, so try to make sure the peasants don’t come knocking on my door.”

  “Yes, sir, Your Highness.”

  “Thanks, Mo.”

  He closed the door behind him, surveyed his wreck of an office. Piles of paper everywhere. Boxes of documents on the floor. A handful of black stress balls with the Lonigan Brown logo on the floor under his desk. He exhaled, let the weight of this shift, from a burden on his shoulders to a glow in his gut. He had calls to make, but they could wait. He wanted a few minutes to himself, to let his head steady and clear. He was alone and his mind was unoccupied, and when that happened, he usually thought about Bobby. He walked to the credenza and picked up the picture.

  In it, Bobby was holding Amanda and his head was tilted down in a cooing gesture. Amanda was born on August 21, 2001. The picture was taken that day or the next. It was the only picture that Peter had of the two of them: his brother, his daughter. The only picture he would ever have. Three weeks later, Bobby was dead. Peter looked at him now, imagined the words on his lips.

  Fuck ’em, bro, they don’t know.

  That’s what he said.

  Fuck ’em, bro, they don’t know.

  Years ago, when Peter was a summer associate at the firm, he’d gone to dinner with a group of summers and young associates. Everyone was talking about where they were from, some girl with a weird J name—Jordan? Jade? Jenna?—who’d grown up on Central Park West, laughed at him when he said he was from New York.

  “Staten Island, uhh, that’s not really part of New York. You know that, right? I wouldn’t walk around the firm admitting that, Pete. They’ll think you’re support staff. That’s bridge-and-tunnel country.”

  Try the ferry, you stuck-up bitch, he thought but didn’t say. No, instead, he turned quiet. His face went hot with embarrassment. He told Bobby the story a few weeks later at the Leaf. Bobby listened intently, his fingers peeling the label of a beer bottle, then rendered his judgment.

  Fuck ’em, bro, they don’t know.

  Peter’s hands started to shake. How could Bobby be gone?

  Three years on and he still experienced a moment of murderous rage whenever he considered the incomprehensible horror of how his brother had lost his life. He imagined his fingers curling around guilty throats or squeezing triggers to propel bullets into the heads of responsible parties. He had thoughts that scared him, that convinced him he was capable of monstrous reciprocities.

  And then the absurdity always hit him. He was a lawyer, not a soldier or vigilante. He went to work in a suit and tie, sat behind a desk, spent countless hours trying to lessen the already insignificant travails of his corporate clients, was paid handsomely to do so. Litigators routinely used the jargon of warfare; they spoke boldly of “going to war” and “skirmishes” and “battles,” of “bodies” and “strategic maneuvers,” of breaking out the “big guns” or needing “ammunition.” They spoke without irony, without self-awareness. Some of them even believed that their personal fate hinged on whether this or that motion was granted or summary judgment was awarded or the SEC decided to close its investigation. The truth was that these things did matter, but not nearly as much as everyone believed they did. Real thoughts of physical violence, like the ones Peter experienced every day, had no place in this arena. They belonged to a different world, one that reached the courtroom only as a shadow of its true self.

  And even then, it reached different courtrooms, filled by different lawyers.

  After the anger leaked into absurdity and the absurdity drifted into numbness, there was a hole. He looked at the phone. He wanted to pick it up and call Bobby, wanted to tell him that he’d done it, that they’d done it, that they were going to Luger’s for steak and bacon and enough beer to drown a small village. He wanted to tell him to bring Franky too, because, fuck it, things were too good to be petty. All three of them should enjoy this together. He could almost hear Bobby joking that he was gonna get left behind again, like that time down at Gateway, only this time it would be with a seven-hundred-dollar check in a place that only took cash.

  Fuck ’em, bro, they don’t know.

  He came back to work the Monday after Bobby was killed. Dominic walked into his office, closed the door behind him. He told Peter to go home, to take as much time as he needed, take the rest of the year if he needed, to be with his family.

  “He’s gone, Dom,” Peter replied, his voice hoarse. �
�He’s gone and he’s not coming back. And I can’t sit at home and think about it because I’ll go fucking crazy if I do. I want to work. I need to work. Put me on as many cases as you can.”

  Dominic didn’t try to change his mind. He knew the narcotic power of intense industry. He did as Peter asked. Peter had always worked hard, but after Bobby was killed, he became a machine. He billed 2,700 hours in 2001 despite everything. In 2002, he came up just shy of 3,000 billable hours, the holy grail of large-firm insanity. He was on pace to break that barrier this year. Work had always been an ocean—vast, bracing, capable of overwhelming—but instead of trying to reach an ever retreating shore, Peter stopped struggling; he simply ducked his head below the surface and surrendered to its numbing infinitude.

  His weight fluctuated: ten pounds down, twenty up, fifteen down. He barely slept. His eyes sagged and his hair started to thin. He checked his BlackBerry incessantly, spent the few dinners he took Lindsay to with it tucked below the table, fingers tapping, scrolling through his inbox to make sure nothing demanded his immediate attention.

  He woke up one day and Amanda was walking. He came home from a business trip to Houston—six weeks reviewing documents in a windowless conference room—and she was talking.

  He gave Bobby’s eulogy. He sent Tina money. He held his dead brother’s son when he was a screeching purple newborn. He took calls from his mother late at night, listened as she cried softly into the phone while his father snored in the background. His eyes ached expectantly, but he would not let the grief win. The work was always there, waiting to be done, welcoming him back without judgment.

  Lindsay pleaded with him to cut back his hours, to take some vacation, to spend more time with her, with their daughter, and he told her he would. As soon as he made partner. When that happened, he promised he would slow down and take a breath. Not a moment before.

  Fuck ’em, bro, they don’t know.

  He thought of that snotty bitch Jordan/Jade/Jenna and her long-ago dismissal of his borough. Where was she now? Not here. Not a partner at Lonigan Brown. But he was. The donkey dago from Staten Island had made it, not the privileged debutante from the Upper West Side.

  He’d done it, climbed to the top of the mountain, had the world by the balls. He’d made partner at one of the most prestigious firms in the country.

  And Bobby was still dead.

  He picked up the phone, dialed his house. Lindsay answered on the second ring.

  “Hey, sweetie.”

  “Linds,” he managed to get out, his throat clotted with emotion.

  “Pete, is everything okay? Are you okay?”

  “We did it,” he said and then started sobbing.

  * * *

  The New York offices of Lonigan Brown occupy the uppermost twenty-five floors of a nondescript fifty-seven-story commercial building on the corner of Fifty-fourth and Park. When Peter enters the building at quarter to eight, the lobby is a swarm of unhappy office workers, heads down as they swipe through security monitors and head for the elevator banks. Peter isn’t even sure what other companies share the building with his law firm. Hard to imagine he could spend so much time in relative proximity to a mass of people and know nothing about them, but he does. Everyone in New York does.

  Peter walks to the last elevator bank, lets a group of women take the first available car, slides into the second unoccupied one, and presses fifty-five. A small screen scrolls through the day’s news: market turmoil because of Greece’s debt, three cops killed in a shoot-out in Cleveland, the impending March Madness tournament.

  Jesus, was it already the middle of March? He doesn’t even know who’s good this year, hasn’t watched a basketball game since last year. Bobby would be disappointed.

  The elevator doors open and Peter steps into another lobby. This one is spacious and airy, not cramped and claustrophobic like the one downstairs. The firm’s name is emblazoned on the wooden reception desk in deep crimson. These are the Lonigan Brown colors: deep crimson over chestnut wood. Crimson details that not so subtly evoke Harvard, at which most of the founding partners undoubtedly matriculated. The design serves a purpose: clients can see the stolidity of their counsel, can sense the venerability and stalwartness of this firm.

  We have seen your problems before. We will handle it.

  Even now, Peter feels the smallest ease in his uncertainty as he drinks in the familiar surroundings. In terms of pure hours, he’s spent the lion’s share of his waking adult life in these offices. This place is going nowhere. If there is a nuclear holocaust, Lonigan Brown will survive, if only to handle the ensuing litigation.

  Peter’s wingtips clack on the marble floor as he leaves the lobby. For all the hours they work, big-firm lawyers aren’t keen on early mornings. Most associates arrive after nine thirty, the partners after ten. The tardiness is heightened on Mondays because everyone’s grumpy, either because the weekend is over or because they never had one in the first place. Other than the two security staff who sleepily man the Lonigan Brown entrance, the place is quiet, unoccupied. He hurries down the hallway to his office. He removes his suit jacket and closes the door.

  This has been his practice for the past few months: arrive early, see as few souls as possible, keep the door closed, the head down. Lose yourself in the work. Wait for the day to end. Slither out after the sun falls and everyone’s gone home. But that’s impossible, because no matter how late he stays—11, midnight, 2 a.m.—there are always bedraggled associates sitting in their cubicle offices when he leaves, soul-sucked eyes drifting up to him as he slumps past their doors. He can feel their hatred rising as he passes because he is the reason they are stuck there at that ungodly hour. Maybe not him in this particular instance, maybe not even in most instances. But he is a partner, making money from their misery, and they hate him for it. He knows they feel this way. He sat in those seats once himself.

  The hate doesn’t bother him. It is temporary and, as Dominic once expressed to him, even necessary. The hate will drive them, Peter; most to leave, but a few to stay. You hated me once. Don’t bother denying it. No, the hate doesn’t bother him. But lately the hate is mingled with contempt or even snide bemusement. He’s become a joke among the associates, a laughingstock. He can even deal with that. These associates will be gone in a few years, replaced by younger, equally qualified versions. From the same schools, with the same grades, on the same law reviews. The new ones will know about his recent disgrace, but in only a vague, urban-legend fashion, like the way he “knows” that Debby Forsythe, a corporate partner, used to orally pleasure a senior partner back when she was an associate. Or the way he “knows” that Lou McBride, the bankruptcy partner who’s making the firm a small mint these days, brings a companion with him on business trips. A companion who is not only not his wife but not a woman.

  Gossip has a voracious and varied appetite; it cannot survive on the same meal for long. The smug glances from disgruntled associates will fade.

  But the disappointment that sits behind Maureen’s eyes?

  Crushes him every time he sees her. She tries to hide it, but she can’t. It is precisely the look his mother would give him if she knew: a mix of incredulity and disapproval. Makes him feel hollow, like a grave that’s already been dug. He avoids Maureen because he can’t stand that look. He’d hoped that maybe the story wouldn’t make its way to her, would maybe die on the associate vine, but that was a hope beyond foolish.

  Everyone knows.

  Peter jostles his mouse, bringing his computer back to life. He checks his schedule, looks over some notes he jotted to himself on a call on Friday. He tries to engross himself in work, to submerge himself the way he used to, but he can’t even do that these days. Work drugs you only if it’s keeping you away from something: like grief or your life. Once it’s not keeping you from something, it’s just work. Drudgery. Peter has nothing to look forward to but Alberto’s couch. Work will not
anesthetize such a meager expectation.

  His phone rings, startling him. Only someone who knows he’s here at this hour would be calling. Or maybe someone who wants to leave a message. Maybe Lindsay. He checks the caller ID. Looks like an international number.

  “This is Peter Amendola,” he says uncertainly.

  “Peter, how are you, my friend?”

  A moment passes before Peter recognizes the voice: Alberto Veras, the man whose apartment he’s crashing at. Alberto’s a corporate partner, spends most of his time in South America. He opened the firm’s office in Buenos Aires two years ago. They were barely on a first-name basis before all this.

  “Menzamenz, Alberto. Some days are better than others.”

  “Yes, well, that’s understandable. Better days ahead, I’m sure of it.”

  Peter laughs.

  “Well, that makes one of us. How’s Argentina?”

  “Busy. Unbelievably busy. We should have opened an office here ten years ago. We need another ten lawyers at least.”

  Each word is spoken with the practiced enunciation of someone who has mastered a language that is not his native tongue. Alberto’s voice could soothe a lunatic.

  “Wow, that’s great.”

  “Tell my wife. She’s used to not seeing me when I’m in New York, but she was hoping it would be different when we opened the office down here. Now, she’s telling me to go back to New York so at least she won’t have to do my laundry. I didn’t think it would be prudent to point out that she doesn’t do the laundry.”

  Peter winces at the discussion of day-to-day domestic jostling. If only he and Lindsay could go back to minor squabbles.

  “Probably not.”

  “Well, in any event, Peter. She’s getting her wish. I’m coming back to New York for a month.”

  “Oh. When?”

  “Next week. Coming in Monday night. Now, if things still haven’t worked out, you could certainly stay on the couch for a few days, if you like.”