Eddie Joyce - Small Mercies

“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 immediately 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.

“Pig fucker.”

When Michael falls asleep, she gets up and checks in on Peter and Franky. She lingers over them, touching their hair and watching the tiny, restless spasms of their sleep.

* * *

She sweats through her third full pregnancy. A brutal summer starts early and leaks into October. She wakes sweating, falls asleep in a sheen. She spends her days leaning into the fridge or standing in front of the giant fan that cools the living room. Peggy is pregnant as well, a month further along; she comes to Gail’s house and they sweat together, with ice cubes on their tongues, the backs of their necks, under their arms.