Eddie Joyce - Small Mercies

Tina orders: a pepperoni pie, another pitcher of beer. Wade removes his tie completely, tucks it into an interior pocket in his jacket.

“What kind of name is Alderson anyway?”

“High WASP. My father’s people came over on the Mayflower, but my mother was off the boat from County Leitrim. Came here by herself when she was nineteen.”

Tina smiles. Stephanie was right; she must have a thing for Irish guys. Or half-Irish guys. She waits for Wade to continue, to explain how his parents met, but he doesn’t say any more. She is unaccustomed to having to ask questions about the parents of the man she’s dating. Every man she ever dated, his whole life was right in front of her. In plain sight. Nothing needed to be said. It was simply known. This is another thing she likes about Wade: there are things she doesn’t know.

Wade is looking around the room, soaking it all in.

“My mother would have loved this place.”

The pizza arrives with an abrupt clatter; the waitress slings a grease-stained pizza stand in the middle of the table and drops a tray on it. She slides a container of Parmesan cheese and a container of red pepper flakes under the tray. The cheese on the pizza sizzles; the pepperoni have curled into tiny basins of oil.

“Careful, that tray is hot,” the waitress chides as she whirls away.

Tina slides a slice onto a paper plate, blows on it, and hands it to Wade.

“Give it a minute. You’ll burn the top of your mouth if you eat it now.”

He does as she says. He takes a bite of the drooping angle of the slice.

“Verdict?”

“Delicious.”

“Not good enough. Best you’ve ever had?”

“The best I ever had?”

“Yeah. Say it.”

“I’m not sure. Pepe’s in New Haven is…”

Tina picks up a fork, brandishes it in the direction of his eyes.

“I’ll tell you what, Tina. It’s the best damn pizza I ever had.”

* * *

After dinner, they walk slowly up a sloping street to where the car is parked. It’s misting out, a rain so fine that it doesn’t fall so much as hover. When they get into the car, they kiss until he pulls away.

“I’m not sure what that was about,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I feel like that was some kind of test.”

Tina feels embarrassed at her transparency. She stammers a soft disagreement.

“Not exactly.”

“It’s okay if it was. But you should tell me what you’re thinking, what’s bothering you.”

“I guess we should have just gone to Per Se.”

Wade brings his hand to her cheek, draws her eyes up and away from the floor of the car.

“Tina, it’s okay that we didn’t go to Per Se. I’m glad we came here. So is my wallet. But I’m not entirely sure where your head is. I’m thinking maybe we pushed this too fast too soon for you.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just that you’re very different from Bobby and that’s a good thing. I just wanted to know that you were alike in some ways too.”

“Okay, so it was a test?”

She doesn’t recognize the look on his face.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

He looks out over the dashboard. A family passes on the sidewalk, the father carrying a grease-stained white paper bag with leftover slices. Wade puts the key in the ignition, turns on the wipers.

“So, how’d I do?” he asks.

“You ate five slices of pizza.”

“So?”

“I like a man who leaves empty plates in his wake.”

Wade kisses her, a long passionate kiss intended as a prelude. His hand slides up the outside of her dress, to the base of her breast. Tina feels a flutter in her stomach. Outside the car, a few teenage boys hoot as they walk by in hoodies and jeans, oblivious to the rain. Wade leans over and honks his horn, startling the onlookers. They laugh up the street, gesticulating and hollering back at the car. Tina whispers in his ear.

“Take me home.”

He looks disappointed for a beat until she clarifies.

“Your home.”

* * *

The drive into Manhattan is agonizing. The rain picks up and the traffic slows. There’s an accident on the BQE, closing a lane. Tina has too much time to think about what’s going to happen. The flutter in her stomach turns into a pit. She calls Stephanie to check in, make sure the kids are all right. She whispers, pretends she’s in a restaurant. They’re fine, of course, and how is Per Se? Out of this world, another course just arrived, let me run. Wade raises an eyebrow when she hangs up.

“Don’t ask.”

The traffic thickens to a derby at the rise in the BQE just before the Battery Tunnel; four lanes of cars jostle, connive, and try to funnel their way down to two. During the week, tempers would flare, but Saturday night is more patient. The city is right in front of everyone, the night still impossibly young.

Wade lives in Battery Park City. Tina knows this route well: after this merge, the steady crawl under the Promenade, the right onto the Brooklyn Bridge, staying right to take the FDR downtown. Getting to the city this way is a test of nerves: get right but spend as little time as possible in the right. You have to push and probe, test the resolve of others, flirt with collisions at every second. It’s a miracle there aren’t more accidents. She hates driving in the city, but it’s more than that tonight.

They will drive and not see what should be there. She will not look so she doesn’t see what isn’t there, what should be there. They will drive around Ground Zero, trace a little semicircle around Bobby’s grave. They will both try not to think about what is not in front of them. The tension in her body vibrates up and out of her, into the car, pulsing in the air.

The car has passed the crest of the hill; Wade needs to get over one more lane, needs a Good Samaritan or someone texting or a stalled car.

She can’t do this.

“Wade, please…”

A guy in a busted Taurus slows down, lets a space open between his car and the bus in front of him, waves them in.

“Wade, I think I need to go home.”

“What?”

A van with Chinese lettering on its side accelerates on their left, then abruptly veers in front of them, an insane dash across two lanes into the waiting space. Wade hits the brakes. Tina slides forward, but Wade reaches one hand over and corrals her in place. A few horns honk. The offending van is absorbed, part of the stream of traffic. The space closes.

“Oh, fuck this,” Wade says, and then steers the car left, away from the throng, toward the empty toll booths for the Battery Tunnel. With his right hand, he searches the center console for an E-ZPass. He winks at Tina.

“I think we can spring for the toll. The bread at Per Se would have cost as much.”

Tina pushes a long breath out. The car pauses at the booth and then glides down to the mouth of the tunnel.

“What were you saying?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Tina says. “Never mind.”

The car shoots into the tunnel, a blur of white tiles.

* * *

It’s bad before it’s good. They have to stop twice because Tina is overwhelmed and doesn’t think she can do it. When they’re naked together for the first time, she recoils from Wade’s touch and turns away from him. She cries because despite it all — the years and the loneliness and the mourning, how she felt in the car earlier and what she wants to do now, the breeziness fueled by a few pitchers of beer, the knowledge that she’s waited and been faithful, not just to Bobby but to his memory, been respectful and decent beyond what others expected, beyond what others did, that she’s been a widow worthy of a hero because that’s what Bobby is, will always be, despite the fact that she loves, actually loves, the man she’s lying next to, and he loves her, she knows that too, even though she’s not sure why, despite the fact that she’s entitled to this, that she’s earned this — despite all of that, she still feels shame, still feels this is a betrayal.