Small Mercies: A Novel

by Eddie Joyce

  Another day, infected by all that preceded it.

  Chapter 9

  ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES

  A drizzly Sunday, a day to stay in bed. Michael obliges, but Gail cannot. She has one last thing to do. She drives to the beach.

  She’s been avoiding this all week, sparing herself the anguish. Losing herself in daydreams. She can’t put it off any longer. This afternoon, Tina is bringing a man to her house and she cannot let this man—this stranger—cross her threshold without telling Bobby. He has to know.

  She winds her way through Gateway park down to the little spit of land that juts out into the bay. She parks the car and steps out into a cool spray; the wind pushes rain in from the bay. A bit of fog obscures the water, but she can hear the gentle lapping of the tide. She looks across the inlet to the marina. Boats sway gently in their docks. A few gulls fly idly overhead. Two other cars in the lot, but not a soul in sight. Still places on this Island where you can achieve a bit of solitude, lose yourself.

  She found him here once, red-eyed and furious. A scared little boy. His older brothers played a prank, left him behind. The typical boy nonsense—two older brothers picking on the runt of the litter—but with a hint of real cruelty. It was Franky’s idea, Peter the reluctant co-conspirator. She found him on the beach, crying in the darkness. So angry.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why did they do it?”

  One of those questions. He may as well have asked her about the cruelty of life. And then she realized that he had. She held him and he sobbed into her chest. Held him as some tiny, tender part of him turned to stone. Only a sliver, but still.

  She cleaned him up, took him for a cone, drove him home in the front seat. She told him to slink down in the seat as they pulled into the driveway. A second prank, crueler on account of the prankster. But she had a lesson to impart. She told Franky she couldn’t find Bobby, even though he was safe and secure, giggling in the car in the driveway.

  Wisdom is cruelty, thinly disguised. She often thinks she lost Franky that night. He didn’t stop sobbing for hours, not even when it was clear that Bobby was fine. After that little escapade, Peter kept Franky and his bad ideas at a distance. Drifted away from his brother, as he would later drift away from the whole family. Nothing dramatic, nothing formal. A simple recognition: Franky was an anchor, not someone he wanted to be tied to. Best to leave him alone.

  Bobby, bless him, went the other way. Forgave Franky, almost immediately, and they soon became thick as thieves. Stayed that way, more or less, until Bobby was killed.

  As for Franky himself, it was like she’d alerted him to his capacity for cruelty, alerted him to his true nature. That’s how she thinks of it, never mind that he woke up the next morning like nothing had happened. Went straight back to the same song and dance.

  To be a mother is to blame yourself. Take on their failings so they don’t have to. Her little lesson caused all of Franky’s problems. A fine bit of nonsense. Bullshit of the finest grain. She knows that.

  But the look on his face when she walked in alone . . .

  Damn it.

  She’s getting distracted, excoriating herself over Franky. Wasn’t Peter there as well? He shook it off: took his punishment, apologized, and moved on. Doesn’t matter. This isn’t about Franky. Or Peter.

  She needs to tell Bobby. He deserves this time with her, alone, without his brothers.

  She talks to him all the time. In the house, in the car. Whenever she needs to. Nothing profound. Just a chat, like he was sitting beside her. Sometimes she thinks the words; sometimes she says them out loud, softly. Michael has caught her a few times, in mid-sentence; looked around the room to make sure he wasn’t crazy, that there wasn’t actually someone there he couldn’t see. He never says anything, though. He’s a good man that way, Michael. Respects a person’s right to be crazy in their own fashion.

  Yes, she talks to Bobby all the time. She talks to the infant who slept beneath the sausages hanging in his grandfather’s attic. She talks to the lovesick teenager who bobbed up and down, doing calf raises. She talks to the inconsolable boy she once found here. She talks to all of them. And more.

  But she can’t tell any of them this. She can’t tell them that life is crueler than she imagined, that its cruelties are like the stars: infinite, unfathomable.

  She has to tell the man who is gone. Only he will understand.

  She empties her mind. She flips up the hood of her slicker and cinches it. She starts to walk. The sand is moist, easier to traverse. She exhales.

  Ease into it.

  The mist feels good on her face. Suits her mood, the task at hand.

  Go on now.

  The rain is punitive, restorative. A confession of sorts.

  Nearly there.

  What a day.

  “What a fucking day.”

  Michael is standing in the doorway, eyes closed, drinking in the sun. The phrase strikes her, makes her smile. He isn’t big with the curses, not around her anyway. He looks back at her, winks good-bye. She does not know this yet, but his face will never quite look the same. A blemish of sadness will dot it forever more.

  He is right, though. A beautiful day. Makes the heart ache, how beautiful it is. How blue the sky. Flawless. Spectacular. A cliché. A prelude.

  And the air. Feels like crispness itself, the change of seasons captured in a breath. Invigorating.

  She can’t even enjoy it. She is furious, driving Franky to the train in silence. Living at home again. Another false start into his life. Second day of a new job, secured by his brother, running late already. She can’t even look at him. He sits there, hung over and glum. She can smell the booze on him. She stops at the station.

  “Bobby and I had a nice time last night.”

  Well then.

  She doesn’t answer. She drives off as soon as the door closes. She glances at the clock. 8:27. She is going to be late for work.

  Work, lateness, responsibility, hangovers, anger. These all still matter.

  We are still innocent.

  And, then, we are not. The world changes in the space of hours. Time untethers itself.

  She is home with Michael, watching in horror together, unsure what to do, unsure what this means. For their country. For their city. For their little patch of nothing that sits in its shadow.

  She does math. The train to the ferry. The ferry to the city. He couldn’t have gotten there. She knows this, nothing else. She will feel better when she sees him, but distance is distance and speed is speed. And late, for once, is a good thing.

  “Is Bobby working today?”

  Slightest quiver in his voice. She looks over. He is doing his own math. He is calculating distances, average speeds, estimating traffic. His sums are not as tidy, his answers not as comforting.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Call Tina.”

  She feels her soul drain from her chest.

  “Michael, dear God, Michael.”

  Somewhere deep inside of her, a howl is born. She will live with it until the grave.

  They watch. They can do nothing else.

  The city gasps.

  Twice.

  Mother of God.

  The house fills with people. Tina, Franky. Peter wanders in later, shell-shocked. He was downtown when it happened, he says. Everything he saw is trapped behind his eyes. He is speechless.

  All the people she loves collected under one roof.

  Except one.

  Hours pass. Information trickles in, none of it good. The house thickens with despair.

  She thinks this: she would know. She would know. She would feel it somehow. And she doesn’t. She looks at Michael, but he won’t look at her. She would know, there would be some sign. She hammers in a nail of hope, pegs everything on it.

  Tina teeters between hysterical and numb. G
ail pulls her into an empty room.

  “You cannot lose this child,” she says. Their eyes, clouded by tears, meet. They both know what she’s asking. What she’s demanding. Tina nods, bites her lip.

  “He is gonna walk through that door any minute now.”

  She believes this. She can see it. The door will open and he will be standing there. This will revert to something terrible, unspeakable, tragic. But something that happened to others.

  Neighbors and friends bring food in aluminum trays. The Landinis, the Hudecs, the Dales. They tell her they are praying, they have tears in their eyes. The trays are accepted and heated in the oven. They are placed on the table and the lids are removed. The food—chicken parm, penne vodka—lies there, uneaten. The sun is nearly down when Tiny Terrio shows up. He sobs in Michael’s arms, as though it were his son who was missing.

  The day turns to night, then back to day. No one moves, speaks. They cry, hope, pray. Tina sleeps on the couch in ten-minute intervals. Every time she wakes, she looks at the door. The ghost light of the television plays the same images over and over. They cannot watch. They must watch.

  In the morning, Michael makes some calls. He still has some connections in the department. Every few hours, the phone rings and Michael answers. The calls are brief. He returns to the living room with another name. A friend of his or friend of the boys’. Someone from the neighborhood. Someone who went to school with the boys. Men they know. Some have sat in this living room, watched this television. Mostly firefighters, but others too, men who worked in the towers. It is early, but one thing is already clear: Staten Island has been hit hard.

  The phone rings. Another name is whispered. The list grows.

  She knows her son’s name is being whispered in other living rooms across Staten Island, across the city. Other phones are being answered and her son’s name is traveling from lips to ears. Men with stern faces are saying his name. She can almost hear it: Bobby Amendola.

  More information trickles in. His company was there. He was there. Seen, entering one of the towers.

  She doesn’t care. The information is meaningless. She would know. She would know. She will not abandon hope. They are still finding people. She decides, then and there, that she believes in miracles.

  She goes to church. The pews are filled, people kneeling, hands clasped.

  She makes the sign of the cross, walks the aisle, feels it shift and move beneath her feet, like a ship at sea. She stumbles into a pew.

  She prays until her kneecaps ache.

  Please, Lord, she prays, please. Please.

  She drives home. She walks back into the living room. No one has moved. The television is showing something different. A Palestinian woman is clucking her tongue and raising her hands.

  She’s celebrating.

  And then Gail is gone. She feels something she’s never felt before. A rage so explosive she has this exact thought: I will cut out your heart and eat it. She is screaming, she is being restrained. They take her upstairs, Michael and Peter, and they hold her until she sleeps. She sleeps for twenty minutes, no longer.

  When she wakes, her body is throbbing with one thought: Bobby is dead. Murdered.

  * * *

  Enough.

  She stops walking, kneels down into the soft sand, keeps her eyes closed. She can sense him now: the man who would have been. The man he never got a chance to be.

  She tells him about his kids, how they’re doing. She tells him that the Cody’s pool is no more. She tells him a joke that Michael told her on St. Patrick’s Day. She tells him she’ll be back to wish him a happy birthday in a few weeks. Finally, she tells him that his wife has met someone, that it’s serious and he’s a nice guy and he’s good with the kids.

  She lets it sink in. He nods, smiles, is gone.

  She stands, wipes wet sand off the knees of her pants. She dries her eyes. She looks out over the water, watches the rain pucker the surface of the sea in a thousand places. She turns, starts back in the direction of the car.

  She’d never understood the purpose of a grave. She’s seen bodies lowered into the ground, been to more funerals than seemed fair. Still, a cemetery seemed impersonal, even cynical. The rows of headstones, the afterlife reduced to an efficient use of space.

  What she would give for a grave.

  She doesn’t feel the way some of the other families did, about Ground Zero, sacred ground and such. She feels no bond with Bobby there, no desire to visit where her son was murdered.

  But she understands. We all should get whatever we need.

  Someone once told her that the greatest pain in life was having to bury a child. She nodded in agreement, oblivious.

  Try not having a child to bury. Try having to share your child’s death with the rest of the world. Try having the world debate the meaning of your child’s death. Try having people speak and write about your child’s death vaguely, in some shapeless way, as though he were not flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood. Not a man. Not a father or husband. Not a son.

  Let it go, Gail. What needed to be done is done.

  She opens the car door, sits on the seat, legs still outside. She takes off her sneakers and smacks them together a few times. Wet sand falls off in clumps. She turns the ignition, checks the time. She’ll have to hurry if she wants to make the early mass.

  * * *

  Tina watches from the front steps as Wade parks the car. When he gets out, she feels a pang of frustration; he’s overdressed, wearing a green and brown houndstooth blazer, a crisp blue shirt, and dress slacks. He’s dressed for a Broadway show when they’re going to a kid’s birthday party on Staten Island. Jeans and a sweater would have been more than enough. She has some clothes in the house, could give him something more casual to wear, but then, she realizes, he’d be wearing Bobby’s clothes to his mother’s house. Probably not the best idea.

  She blows a wayward strand of hair out of her face. Nothing about this is going to be easy. There will still be hurdles, stumbles, failings. Love does not protect you; it exposes you. The last ten years are a testament to that sentiment.

  Wade reaches back into the car, takes out two bouquets of flowers and a small gift bag. He waves. She waves back. He walks casually toward the house, an easy smile on his face. Her frustration drifts away, is replaced by a raw longing. She’d like to rip those stupid clothes off his back and screw him senseless. She invited him over early to get the kids reacclimated before the party, but now she wishes there was no party to attend, no kids in the house. She hasn’t seen him all week, not since last Sunday, and she’s been stuck in a dewy, lovesick haze, daydreaming about sex, the dirtiest thoughts insinuating themselves at the worst possible moments. Embarrassing to be distracted in this way, at this age.

  It was a long drought, she tells herself.

  Just before Wade reaches her, she glances left and right, makes sure there are no nosy neighbors out on the street so she can kiss him properly. Not a soul. He stops on the step below where she stands so their heads align. He kisses her, slides a hand to her waist.

  “I missed you,” she whispers, after a long kiss that ends too soon.

  “Missed you too.”

  He hands her a bouquet of flowers.

  “They’re beautiful.” She eyes the other bouquet. “Who are those for?”

  “Mrs. Amendola.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?” he says, inspecting the flowers to see if there’s something wrong with them.

  “She’ll think you’re trying to kiss her ass.”

  “I guess I am, after a fashion. Don’t people like it when you kiss their ass?”

  “Not Gail.”

  He looks confused for a beat, but then the smile returns. He hands her the other bouquet.

  “Your good luck,” he says. He pulls an envelope out of the inside pocket of his
blazer. “I got Bobby Yankees tickets, but maybe I should give them to him now?”

  “Good idea. And that?” she says, pointing out the little gift bag.

  “Just a little something. A little treat. From Henri Bendel.”

  “For Gail?”

  “No, for Alyssa. I figured Bobby would be getting all the gifts today so she might feel left out.”

  She smiles, relieved. She opens the front door, gestures him in.

  “Is that okay?” he asks, as he walks past.

  “Yes, of course,” she says, before adding. “Her ass you can kiss.”

  She closes the door behind him.

  * * *

  The rain picks up in the early afternoon, wiping away any lingering chance of a barbecue. Gail will cook, is grateful for the distraction. Baked ziti and meatballs. Some appetizers. No one will go hungry in her home.

  She chops some tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, sprinkles some pepper and salt on the plate. She slides slices of eggplant into egg, then bread crumbs. She fries them in a pan with oil. She wraps pieces of salami around breadsticks, like Franky asked. She cuts aged provolone into bite-size squares. She puts stuffed peppers on a plate.

  Alone in the kitchen, she feels thoughts pressing up against her skull, demanding attention. All week, she has tried not to think about this. Told herself that she had to tell the boys first, tell Bobby, and then she could deal with her own feelings. Now everyone has been told. Bobby has been told.

  So what does she think?

  It is too soon. There. It needed to be said.

  Not true, but she can’t help it. That’s how it feels. An insufficient amount of time has passed. This was not just anyone. This was her son. This was Bobby. The kindest soul you ever met. He chose Tina, chose her when he was seventeen and never looked back. And now she’s choosing someone else. Not fair.

  She can’t lose Tina, Alyssa, Bobby Jr. To someone named Wade. Not fair.