Small Mercies: A Novel

by Eddie Joyce

  She picks up the phone, dials his house. Straight to voice mail. She leaves a message, casual and nonchalant, asking him to call back. She’s still holding the phone when she gets another idea. It’s been two days and she can’t quite shake the defeated look on Peter’s face. Defeated by what? She thinks she knows, but she isn’t sure. She glances at the clock. Not even three. Peter is definitely still at work. She calls his house. Lindsay answers on the second ring. Her voice is neutral.

  “Hello?”

  “Lindsay, it’s Gail. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Gail. How are you?”

  “Hanging in there. Is Peter around? I wanted to tell him about the Cody’s pool. It’s a silly thing, but I thought he’d want to know.”

  “He isn’t here. He’s probably at work.”

  Probably? A little sarcasm.

  “Of course, of course. Getting senile. Sorry. I don’t want to bother him at work. Just have him call me when he gets home.”

  Gail waits for a response. When it comes, Lindsay’s voice is sharp but unsteady.

  “He isn’t here, Gail. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Gail knows what Peter did.

  “I think I do.”

  “Good. Well then, I’ll talk to you soon.”

  Gail’s eyes start to water. Two women separated by a phone line. Each on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And still, they can’t connect.

  “Lindsay,” she says.

  “What?”

  She almost breaks down, blurts it all out. About Tina, Wade, needing to tell Franky and Bobby and not having told them, even about Maria and Enzo and how she named Bobby and her mother and father and even about the stupid fucking pool. She almost says all the things she would normally say to Tina.

  But she can’t. This isn’t Tina. Too much water has passed between her and Lindsay. They’ve never had that kind of relationship and it’s too late to start now. A desperate feeling seizes her. Sunday can’t be just Tina and Wade and her and Michael and Franky. They need buffers.

  “Will I see you and the kids on Sunday?”

  Lindsay sighs.

  “I’m not sure, Gail.”

  “Please, Lindsay. It would mean the world to little Bobby.”

  This isn’t fair, what she’s doing to Lindsay, but she can’t help it.

  “We’ll try . . . okay, Gail? No promises.”

  “Okay, thank you, Lindsay.”

  “Good-bye, Gail.”

  They hang up. Gail holds the phone, contemplates calling her oldest son. She dials the number, is about to call when she changes her mind. She puts the phone back in its cradle, wanders to the kitchen table, and sits down.

  “Oh, Peter.”

  She can see the guilt now, sprinkled throughout their interaction. She would not have guessed it. Peter doesn’t seem the type. Probably isn’t the type, not really. She knows her son. This wasn’t some casual fling, some meaningless rut. There was some heartbreak on his face as well.

  “Peter, Peter.”

  Certain things suddenly made sense, like Peter’s absence whenever Gail called the past few months. He wasn’t living at home. She couldn’t blame Lindsay for that. She would have done the same thing as a young wife.

  And now?

  She doesn’t know, she’s not so certain. These things happen, even in the soundest marriages between the best-intentioned people. Even when there’s love. A long-dormant guilt stirs in her stomach.

  She was so angry. Seething. She has to remember that. She wanted to kill Michael, something every wife says. I could kill him. And she really could have. She couldn’t stand the sight of him. But memory does a disservice to anger. She can’t re-create the feeling. It wasn’t an explosion of temper, the face going hot and the heart rate jumping. That’s easy enough to summon. Christ, an unruly kid in class or an obnoxious driver leaning on the horn can conjure that feeling.

  This was different. Two people sharing a bed and a life, growing distant. The rift feeding on the silence between them. These things happen, people fall into a rut, struggle to get out. Every marriage has its lulls. But then it went to another level. He made a decision, without her input, without consulting her. A decision about their lives, not just his. And he wouldn’t even do her the courtesy of explaining it. It was his fault. Even now she believes that.

  Don’t try to understand everything your husband does. Sound advice.

  But this was beyond anyone’s comprehension, not just hers.

  * * *

  She was thrilled when Michael retired. Twenty-five years served, a good pension and benefits secured. She wouldn’t have to worry anymore, wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night with the flames from a nightmare still dancing in her head. And the timing could not have been better. Enzo was ready to hang up his butcher’s smock, ready to hand a profitable business over to his only son. The place practically ran itself. The same four people had worked at the store forever. Enzo even had a younger butcher who did most of the blood and guts work these days.

  The young butcher’s name? Enzo.

  Only on Staten Island.

  A few weeks after Michael retired, his father came over for Sunday dinner and laid out the proposed transition. He wanted to run the place through December, one last Christmas with his customers. In the new year, Michael would take over. Enzo wouldn’t interfere, wouldn’t stop in every day and look over his shoulder. It would be a clean break; he wouldn’t get involved unless Michael requested. He asked only that Michael keep on his employees.

  As for a price, Enzo said, he was an old man who needed little. He’d saved more than he would ever need. But he didn’t believe in handing things over for nothing, so he wanted something, a token amount, enough for him to take a long trip back to Italy, spend a month in the village where he was born, another month in the village where Maria was born. Michael sat and listened, and when Enzo was done talking, he poured three glasses of wine and they toasted the future.

  She was giddy. A livelihood was being passed on, something that could be passed on again. Maybe Franky could learn the business. Bobby too. They would have something of their own. They wouldn’t need to rely on others, wouldn’t need to run into burning buildings or chase down criminals to earn a paycheck.

  The extra money wouldn’t hurt. They could get a new car, help Peter pay off some student loans, maybe even think about a place upstate, a little cabin to get away from it all. Life would be a bit easier.

  Besides, Michael would need something to fill his days. She knew enough retired cops and firemen to worry about how he would spend his time. A forty-seven-year-old retiree who liked his beers was a dangerous thing.

  He wouldn’t have to rush in. He could enjoy a few months off, golf with his friends. They could take a trip together. Gail had gone back to teaching when Bobby reached high school, but she had her summers off. She’d always wanted to see Ireland and for years Michael had promised to take her. Now they could do it.

  They made love that night. She lay awake afterward, spinning out the possibilities in her head. Maybe she could stop teaching, work at the store. Maybe Franky could start right away, never mind college, which was a waste of his time and their money, if she was being honest. Maybe Peter would get into Columbia or NYU for law school; he could live at home, commute, make a few extra bucks working for his father. She fell asleep thinking they would remember this night forever, the end of one chapter in their life, the beginning of a new one. She would remember it later for a different reason, as the last time she and Michael had sex for nearly a year.

  She woke the next morning with a nervous enthusiasm, a feeling that slowly ebbed over the course of a strange and lonely summer. Peter stayed in Ithaca, got a job as a research assistant for some professor plus a few shifts waiting tables at the local hamburger joint. Franky was supposed to take summer classes at CSI, but one o
f Michael’s old FDNY friends had a landscaping business down the shore in Spring Lake and offered Franky twenty dollars an hour and a bed in a basement.

  Bobby was home, but he was a vagabond, barely in the house, in constant search of hardwood floors or asphalt blacktop. In the spring, he’d had a late growth spurt, three inches in as many months, and become a basketball junkie; he talked about little else, spent all his free time practicing or playing. Last year, he’d been a bit player on the team, inserted into the games sporadically: a minute here, two minutes there. He barely stayed in long enough to break a sweat.

  But most of the key players had graduated and Coach Whelan had dangled the promise of increased playing time under the noses of all the rising seniors as an incentive to make them practice over the summer. Bobby had taken the bait.

  The other boys had played football and baseball, games Gail knew and understood. She enjoyed them, except for the more brutal aspects of football. Basketball was foreign to her, a fast-paced mess whose best players—no point denying it—were inevitably black. She didn’t understand Bobby’s fascination, but there was little doubt that he loved it. And unlike baseball and football, it was his; he didn’t have to toil in the shadows cast by his older brothers.

  He got a job at a local basketball camp, an underpaid counselor to a bunch of fourth and fifth graders. After work every day, he hitched a ride to play pick-up games at P.S. 8 or I.S. 59 or hopped on the train down to Cromwell Center, arriving home every night with a ball in one hand, a half-empty jug of yellow Gatorade in the other and the smell of dried sweat coming off of him. Sometimes, when she stumbled across him in the house, Gail experienced vertigo—he seemed to be bobbing up and down—until she realized he was intentionally rising to the tips of his toes and lowering himself over and over, his calf muscles twitching with the effort and his lips moving in silent count. When she asked him what he was doing, he said, “Calf raises, duh,” like this was a perfectly normal activity that everyone should be engaging in whenever they had a free moment.

  The only consistent time they spent together was in the mornings. She drove him to work and some days she lingered in the parking lot, watching her goofy man-child of a son interacting with his charges, a referee’s whistle hung around his neck, a smile etched on his face. Watching him with the kids was a joy, put her in a good mood that lasted until she arrived back to an empty home, another short note from Michael on the fridge.

  Went golfing. Back later.

  Went to meet Flanagan.

  Went to AC with Tiny. Back tomorrow.

  Back tomorrow?

  She’d expected an adjustment period. The man had fought fires for twenty-five years. He wasn’t used to explaining his whereabouts all the time. He was entitled to blow off some steam. She understood that but she’d hoped that he would spend some of his free time with her. She’d declined the opportunity to teach summer school because she thought they’d spend some time together, maybe take that trip to Ireland. But Michael showed no interest in spending any time with her. When they did interact, he was surly or aloof, always hustling off to do this or that. He suddenly seemed to have an endless list of errands to run and for a while, Gail worried that maybe he was having an affair.

  But when he came home at night, she smelled beer, not perfume, and that was cold comfort. She tried not to think of her father, tried not to think this is how it starts, and for the most part, she succeeded.

  Michael was not her father. Michael was a good man. A good man going through a rough patch, had lost a bit of his identity, was finding his way. Taking over for his father would be a good thing, would give him something to do, a new identity. All would be well in January. She had to bite her lip and let him stumble a bit. He’d earned that much.

  She filled the summer reading books and listening to baseball games on the radio and dropping in on the neighbors, mostly Diana Landini, she of the legendary low-cut blouses. They sat on Diana’s screened-in back porch and played hearts, a pitcher of powdered iced tea sitting on the table to slake their thirst. Gail listened to Diana complain about her husband, Joe, who the entire neighborhood suspected of carrying on a long-term affair. For several years, he had been spotted at various pay phones—in Keene’s Pharmacy, on the corner of Hylan and Richmond—slipping quarters into the slot and looking, for all the world, like a man who was trying not to be seen. If Diana suspected something, her complaints revealed nothing. They focused on Joe’s personal hygiene.

  “The man’s breath always smells like ham, Gail. It’s not natural. He doesn’t even eat ham. And his snoring, dear God, he sounds like a wild animal caught in a trap. It’s no wonder I’m down in the kitchen eating Entenmann’s at three a.m. every night.”

  To accentuate the point, she slapped the mass of exposed thigh that slipped out from her khaki shorts. The rest of Diana’s body had expanded in the years since poor Mr. Greeley had keeled over leering at her cleavage. Everything else on her body was like her breasts now, plump and oversized, but Diana still dressed to draw stares. Men still looked, but their looks were now accompanied by the rueful shake of a head, lamenting what had been. It gave Gail a secret, guilty thrill.

  Gail threw in a few desultory, household complaints about Michael: socks on the floor, dirty dishes in the sink, drops of cold piss on the toilet seat. She took a sip of iced tea. Diana leaned back, her eyes made small by the girth of her cheeks.

  “Jesus, you look great.”

  “Stop.”

  “Really, you look fantastic.” She paused, refilled her glass. “You lucky bitch.”

  Gail rolled her eyes in disagreement, but it was true; she looked better than she had ten years earlier. Before the kids, she’d been skinny, devoid of the curves that turned male heads. And three pregnancies had taken their toll: varicose veins, a stubborn pouch of fat in her lower stomach, a softening and slackening of the major muscles. Any attempts to coax her body back to leanness had always been thwarted by the demands of motherhood. She barely had time to brush her teeth, never mind spend forty-five minutes trying to imitate Jane Fonda doing aerobics in a garish body suit.

  So she spent fifteen years as a frumpy, disheveled mess. Who cared? Not she and not Michael and that was all that really mattered.

  Midway through her forties, her body had coalesced into a curvaceous version of its former self. Her thighs, her hips, her rear were all thicker but contoured; four years of walking at night had transformed fat into muscle. Her small bust had navigated the ravages of time and gravity far better than the showstoppers of Diana Landini and her big-busted cohorts; it was still only a handful of tit, but at least it was in the right place. She was no rare beauty, she knew that, but age, in its fickle generosity, had treated her well. There were a few wrinkles, a few gray hairs, but they conveyed a contrarian idea: well-worn beauty. Beauty that had survived.

  It happened to men all the time—bit of gray or white bestowed an air of wisdom, compensated for any physical decline—but women were stuck with the absurd monotony of male desire: young and thin, except where it counted, thank you very much. Anyway, she’d lucked out. Time had touched her, but gently. And her eyes hadn’t changed at all. If anything, the gleam within had grown more brilliant. In jeans and a sweater—her standard attire—she was pleasant to look at. Maybe even desirable, she allowed herself, on her better days.

  She noticed the looks men gave her. In the supermarket. In the street. Even at school. Mr. Torrenson, the high school baseball legend turned gym teacher, walking past her classroom a few times a day for no reason at all. Mr. Williams, the principal, dropping in on her classes “to observe her teaching method.”

  Right. Observe her ass while she wrote on the chalkboard was more likely.

  Men were so transparent, especially teachers. Last year at the faculty Christmas party, Torrenson, a mess of black chest hair sprouting out of his half-unbuttoned shirt, had put his hand on her ass in a dimly lit corne
r of the school cafeteria. He leaned down, his thick tongue sliding between ruby-stained teeth, and whispered in her ear.

  “Good God, Gail. I’d love to take you to the Victory Motor Inn and toss you around a room for a few hours.”

  Then his tongue landed in her ear, encasing it in warm, brackish drool.

  She reached back, grabbed his meaty wrist, and removed it from her backside. She took a half step away. Her voice was low but firm.

  “Danny, I think you’ve had too much to drink. You’re forgetting about your wife and kids.”

  He grinned, the dopey wide smile of an inebriate, and moved off in the direction of Edna Adelstein, the frizzy-haired music teacher who’d grown accustomed to being his backup plan at such events. When Gail left shortly afterward, Torrenson’s left arm was draped over one of Edna’s ham-hock shoulders, a clear plastic cup holding a pint of thin red wine at his lips.

  Torrenson’s advance hadn’t shocked Gail. Torrenson was a well-known lech. What surprised her was the lowness of it: The Victory Motor Inn? With its room-by-the-hour pricing and pink bedsheets? Quite an offer.

  She never told Michael, couldn’t see any point. Torrenson was a pig, but not worth making a scene. And it was nice, in a way, to be desired. Gail had never encouraged that kind of attention, but it was flattering, she had to admit.

  Maybe she should have told Michael, sparked a little jealousy in him. Let him know that other men had taken notice, even if he hadn’t.

  * * *

  He grew more and more distant as the summer progressed. Something had come between them. It wasn’t a woman, she was sure of that. But what could it be? She didn’t know and not knowing scared her as much as the gulf between them. She wanted the summer to end. She wanted to go back to work, establish some semblance of routine in the house.