Small Mercies: A Novel

by Eddie Joyce

  A natural pause in the process. Maria ushers Gail to the new table, a housewarming gift from her and Enzo. She tears an end from a loaf of bread, dips it into the sauce, and hands it to Gail. She breaks off another piece for herself. She removes the cork from a half-full bottle of homemade wine. She ferrets out two glasses from a cabinet, pours a few mouthfuls of wine into each. She sits at the table, in a full sweat. Gail can smell her, an earthy funk, under the heavenly aroma of the sauce. Gail takes a bite of the soaked bread. The sauce hasn’t simmered long enough yet, but somehow witnessing its construction makes it more delectable than usual.

  “Delicious.”

  “Grazie.”

  Maria pushes the glass of wine across the table at Gail, raises her own.

  They haven’t told his parents yet, haven’t told anyone yet. Michael is superstitious, wants to wait until she’s three months along. He allowed her to tell her mother to explain the move and she didn’t even manage to do that. And it doesn’t seem possible that something is growing inside of her. She could say that she didn’t feel like a glass, that she didn’t drink in the afternoon, that she wasn’t feeling well. She could even take a sip, couldn’t hurt, and Lord knows she needs it. Maria holds her glass out, waiting. Gail pushes the glass away.

  “Maria, I shouldn’t. I’m . . . we’re expecting.”

  A quizzical look. She doesn’t understand. Gail thinks of a dozen euphemisms to explain, but none will help here.

  “You know, I’m pregnant.” She points to her stomach. “With baby.”

  Maria’s expression changes. She understands. She removes her glasses, puts them on the table. She stands abruptly, spilling a little wine. Gail stands in response, uncertain. Are they going to hug? Maria walks in front of Gail, grips her arms. She kneels on the floor and kisses Gail’s stomach very gently. Twice. When she looks up at Gail, her eyes are brimming with grateful tears.

  And suddenly the pregnancy feels very real to Gail.

  * * *

  After Peter is born, Maria comes every day. She doesn’t need to be asked. She knows Gail is overwhelmed, that Gail’s mother will give no help, that her own son is working most of the time and trying to sleep when he isn’t. She knows that tending to infants is tedious, endless work: they eat, they sleep, they shit, they cry. She knows that the tender moments of immeasurable joy are surrounded by hours of frustration and anxiety and uncertainty. She knows that the soft purple of a newborn’s closed eyelids makes every mother think of death and drives her to do the silliest of things: wake a sleeping baby. She knows that caring for an infant requires the energy of the young and the patience of the old.

  She also knows that Enzo will grow impatient with driving her to Michael’s house every day, so in the winter months before Peter is born, she forces Enzo to teach her how to drive. They practice on the street in front of Gail’s house, the car drifting into snowbanks. Gail stands and watches from the kitchen, her hands snug around the ball of her stomach. She sees Enzo’s frustrated gesticulations in the passenger seat, Maria’s shoulder shrugs in response. She tries not to laugh. Maria is learning how to drive so she can come help Gail. When she thinks about this, her eyes well up and her chest throbs with gratitude.

  When she’s not learning how to drive, Maria teaches Gail how to cook. Sunday gravy, eggplant parmigiana, chicken cacciatore, osso buco, a lentil stew with sausage. Gail picks up a little Italian, surprises Maria a few times with a few words or a phrase. They develop a language, a means of communicating: some Italian, some English, a few hand gestures. In the quiet moments, Maria kisses her own hand, reaches over and touches the bulge of Gail’s stomach.

  A host of incremental improvements occur in the run-up to the baby’s arrival: Gail’s cooking, Maria’s driving, the state of the house. Michael and his friend Dave Terrio, who everyone calls Tiny, work on the house on the weekends. They finish the baby’s room with two days to spare.

  The tiny, spattered, shrieking pink wonder that Michael lays in Gail’s arms has a shock of black hair.

  “He looks like a Peter,” Michael says, and Gail agrees.

  * * *

  Gail stands at the kitchen window, holding Peter in a swaddle and waiting for Maria. The black car staggers to a stop. Maria gets out and struggles up the front steps, trays of food balanced on her beefy forearms. She kisses Gail, lays the trays on the counter, and takes her grandson. Gail goes for a walk, gets some fresh air, runs some errands. When she gets back to the house, Peter is asleep and Maria is cooking. They sit at the table and eat. A few soft whimpers from the nursery upstairs crescendo into a wail. Maria stands, but Gail waves her back into a chair. She wants Maria to climb the stairs as little as possible. Something in Maria’s gait is off; there’s a flaw in the ambulatory machinery, one that she manages to hide unless she’s climbing stairs. Gail glides into the nursery, eager to see her baby boy. He smiles up at her with marble eyes, the tears already drying on his cheeks.

  They become a well-oiled machine, the two of them: a cooking, cleaning, baby-tending machine. They spend every day together, for months on end. At night, Michael teases her.

  “How is your new best friend?”

  “She’s a lifesaver. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  “What do you talk about all day?”

  “We don’t talk.”

  “You don’t talk.”

  “Not really. A little bit here and there, but it doesn’t matter. It’s nice between us.”

  “Good. I’m glad,” he says through a yawn.

  “Michael, what’s the matter with your mother? The way she walks, something’s not right. I think it’s her hips. Has she had them checked out?”

  “She’s always been like that. She doesn’t talk about it. I think it’s her back. She had an operation once when I was a kid. I don’t really remember why. Just remember my father taking me to visit her in the hospital.”

  “How is your dad? Must be nice spending all this time together at the shop.”

  “Nice?”

  “Yeah, isn’t it?”

  “Standing behind a counter all day with a man who can’t speak English, cutting pork chops, grinding meat? No, nice is not the word I would use.”

  “Jesus, Michael, he’s your father.”

  “Would you want to spend every day with your father? Or, better yet, your mother?”

  “No, but your father is nice. Pleasant.”

  “So everyone tells me.”

  There’s something off between Michael and his father, something missing. They love each other, but it’s almost like Michael is embarrassed by Enzo. Enzo is a simple man, sure, but then so is Michael. Gail doesn’t quite understand their relationship. It is clear that Enzo loves it when Michael works in the shop; it is also clear that Michael hates working in the shop. Gail has no idea why things are this way. In her mind, a job is a job, and selling meat is a lot less dangerous than fighting fires. She wishes Michael would follow his father’s path, but even as a young wife, she knows that trying to change him is futile. He loves being a firefighter.

  “Anyway, it helps pay the bills right?” Michael says, eyes closed.

  He yawns again and this yawn reminds Gail that she’s exhausted as well.

  * * *

  The days are long, but the years fly by.

  Another saying of Maria’s, roughly translated by Gail. She agrees with the first, is unsure of the second. But sure enough, days turn into weeks and weeks into months and months into a year. They celebrate Peter’s first birthday in the newly cleared-out backyard: Michael and Gail. Enzo and Maria. Tiny and his new girlfriend, Peggy. They sit at a red picnic table that stands in the shadow of the house. A dusty patch of newly seeded dirt leads down to a crumbling wooden fence that divides Michael and Gail’s property from the house behind theirs. The weeds have been pulled, the decrepit shed removed. An adolescent red oak tree s
tands on the line between their property and the Greeleys’. Michael talks about a space to grow tomatoes, maybe a chain-link fence to replace the wooden one. Gail brings out a platter of roasted lamb shoulder with potatoes, carrots, and onions. The compliments flow in Maria’s direction. She shakes a finger at the rest of the table, points it at Gail. Enzo laughs and slaps Gail’s back. Michael smiles, inebriated and proud. Gail blushes. She wants to hold onto the moment in all its messy splendor.

  A birthday cake is retrieved from the fridge. Enzo sings “Happy Birthday” in Italian. His voice is obscenely bad. The whole table laughs when he’s finished. A man wanders around the side of the house, looks a bit unsteady. It’s a bright windy day, everyone squints in the sun. Gail brings a hand above her eyes.

  “Mr. Greeley?” Michael says. They invited a few neighbors over for cake. “Where’s your wife?”

  “Goodness,” Gail’s father says, his reddened face coming into view, “where’s that grandson of mine?”

  * * *

  Her father, Sean, sleeps on the couch, his head thick with Enzo’s wine. In the morning, Gail cooks him bacon and eggs. He eats with alacrity. Gail pushes more bacon onto his plate.

  “You learned to cook, huh?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Nice place you have here.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Tommy turned up.”

  “I heard.”

  “He was in California, in San Francisco. Brought a girl home with him. She’s up the pole. Your mother is tickled.”

  “Is she now?”

  He sighs, pushes away from the table. The corners of his mouth are yellow with egg yolk.

  “I have an idea, Goodness.”

  He reaches into a pocket, pulls out some change. He flips through the coins, finds a quarter. He holds it up to her between his index finger and his thumb. She takes a good look at him. The booze has finally caught up. His eyes are runny and his chin trembles; the skin on his face has a purplish hue, like the veins are trying to escape his slowly drowning skull. She fights off the thought that her child could be infected by his sickness.

  “You remember this game, Goodness. Heads, you stay here. You don’t come see your mother or Tommy or his new wife. But if it’s tails, you come back with me today and you let this go. We put it behind us. Okay?”

  He pushes his plate aside. His fingers have lost their dexterity. After a few failed attempts, he gets the coin spinning. When he does, Gail swings her hand down on the table, covering the quarter with a resounding slap and startling her father. He looks up at her confused, like she’s a bartender who’s cut him off for no good reason. She doesn’t bother pretending to look. Her eyes blaze down at the withered shadow of her father.

  “It’s heads.”

  * * *

  She gets pregnant again. Exhaustion is this pregnancy’s song. Peter’s newfound ability to walk exacerbates her fatigue. Maria picks up the slack. She sends Gail to the couch for naps, occupies Peter, keeps the refrigerator stocked.

  Tiny proposes to Peggy. She starts coming around to visit Gail. She’s a little chatty for Gail’s taste; she’s flighty and lovesick. But like Gail, she’s another Irish girl, soon to be married to an Italian. She grew up in Woodside, knows all about those melancholy apartments with their booze-soaked lassitude and the silences that leak into decades. And like Gail, she can’t believe her luck in exchanging that world for this one.

  Michael is skeptical.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “What do you mean? She’s nice.”

  “Tiny’s always had an eye for the cheerleaders, the prom queens. It doesn’t figure.”

  “Why, because she’s a little chubby?”

  “She’s a little chubby, she’s not much to look at, she talks too fucking much, she’s Irish.”

  Gail flicks his ear with her middle finger.

  “Hey, that hurt.”

  “Good.”

  She turns away from him in mock anger

  “How could I not love the Irish? My son is half Irish. And my other child.”

  He slides a hand around her, rests it on her protruding abdomen. The baby kicks and the flesh on Gail’s stomach ripples. They giggle together.

  “Boy or girl?” she asks.

  “Girl,” Michael says. “A feisty girl. Just like her mother.”

  * * *

  Francis arrives in a February snowstorm. Colicky, more fussy. Difficult from the start. He doesn’t sleep for more than an hour at a stretch. When Michael works nights at the firehouse, Maria stays over and helps Gail. Their exchanges grow testy in the wee hours when exhaustion and the oppressive neediness of the infant conjure moments of pure insanity. They apologize to each other in the mornings and laugh at their lunacies. Reconciled, they savor together the sparse smiles and gurgles and coos given by the reason behind their nocturnal bickering. They mark the progress of his older brother with wonder: the vocabulary, the awareness, the intelligence.

  “Speciale, intelligente” proclaims Maria about the precocious young Peter. Gail has no way of knowing, no point of comparison. Her firstborn seems bright, but she’s sure every mother thinks that way.

  * * *

  She gets pregnant a third time, a mere five months after Franky is born. When she miscarries, Maria is the one who drives her to the hospital. Maria is the one who calls Peggy to come watch the two boys. Whenever Gail cries in the months that follow, Maria hugs her and cries with her. Some days, Gail catches Maria crying by herself, dabbing her eyes with her sauce-stained apron. When Gails asks her about it, Maria simply says nulla, nothing, and smiles.

  Michael is an only child.

  One day, that thought floats into Gail’s head while she watches Maria struggle to make it up the front steps.

  * * *

  More birthday parties are held. Tiny and Peggy buy a brand-new house seven blocks away. Other neighbors drift into their lives: the Grassos, the Landinis, the O’Tooles, the Dales, the Hudecs. Joe Landini is a cop; Sal Grasso is a transit cop. Mike O’Toole is a firefighter. Tom Dale works for sanitation. Terry Hudec is an assistant principal at a school in Bed-Stuy.

  None of the wives work, except Jenny O’Toole, who works two days a week at a hairdresser on Hylan Boulevard. There’s always someone to drop in, always someone to watch the kids in a pinch. They all have children as well, mostly young. It’s a good block; when Mrs. Greeley passes away, all the wives take turns dropping in on Mr. Greeley with a tray of food and a six-pack of Schaefer. He complains about the fuss, but he’s too grief stricken and lonely to refuse the hospitality. They were two months away from their forty-seventh wedding anniversary.

  “I never ate this good when Sandra was alive. Strictly meat and potatoes in the kitchen, God rest her soul. Where’d a blue-eyed colleen like you learn to cook?”

  “My mother-in-law, Sam. I married Michael for his mother’s cooking.”

  “Thatta girl. I’ll tell you something.” He beckons her closer with a conspiratorial gesture. “Yours is the best. You got those ginny girls beat on the food.”

  “Nice of you to say.”

  “But Diana Landini wears them low-cut blouses, so she’s my favorite.”

  He winks. She laughs and shakes her finger at him.

  * * *

  A year later, Gail and Michael are sitting at the kitchen table on a crisp spring morning when they hear a shrill shrieking. They look at each other confused until Diana Landini comes tearing out of the Greeley house and runs across their front lawn. Michael is up and out the door in a flash. Gail watches as he passes Diana and runs into the Greeley house. The quickness of his actions shocks Gail, thrills her. She often forgets that her husband is a man of action.

  Diana is out of breath and pallid. Her breasts heave with exertion, threatening to slip out of her blouse. Her dramatic entry frightens Franky, who immedia
tely melts down, and his meltdown, in turn, upsets Peter. Gail tries to calm the three of them. She fetches Diana a glass of water, lifts Franky to her hip, and slips Peter a cracker. Diana finally gets the words out.

  “Mr. Greeley, I think he’s . . . I think he’s . . .”

  “The kids, D. The kids. It’s okay. I understand.”

  Gail looks toward the house. Michael has already seen a bit of death, she knows he has. In Vietnam. In burned-out buildings across the five boroughs. He’s carried dead men, felt the weight of their forfeited hopes. He will do what needs to be done.

  They sit there, wordless, until a fire engine thunders down the street. An ambulance follows shortly after. Neighbors step out of houses, wander over. Michael talks to the firefighters, leads them inside. When he walks back to the house, Maria comes limping across the front lawn. She had to park down the block because of the commotion. Michael walks up to her, explains what happened. Gail watches her make the sign of the cross as she stares at the house. They come inside.

  Michael smiles at the boys and says simply, “He’s gone.” Diana starts sobbing. When Peter asks who’s gone, Michael kneels down and hugs him.

  “Mr. Greeley’s gone. He went away, to a better place.”

  Michael retrieves a bottle of whiskey from the basement, pours a small measure for himself, Gail, Maria, and Diana. When they finish it, he walks Diana home.

  In bed that night, he tells Gail that he found Mr. Greeley in his ugly brown chair, mouth agape, an uneaten plate of ham steak and fried eggs in his lap. He was already gone by the time Michael got there.

  “Heart attack.”

  “It’s terrible. So sad.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. To go suddenly, no suffering, at seventy-four? While staring at Diana Landini’s tits? I’d sign for that.”

  She hits him and he laughs.

  “Pig.”

  She’s wanted to crawl into bed with him all day. The only meaningful protest to death. She climbs on top of him and lets go of her dark thoughts. When they finish, Michael spoons her from behind, whispers in her ear.