Eddie Joyce - Small Mercies

While Gail sweats, Maria coughs. She starts coughing around Memorial Day and is still coughing on Labor Day. It’s a thick, phlegmy cough, sounds like her lungs have been filled with the wrong fuel. Every day, Gail asks her if she’s okay.

“A cold,” she says. “ Nulla .” Nothing.

She rubs Gail’s stomach to change the subject. Maria thinks it’s a girl. Gail thinks Maria may be right, especially if it’s true that girls steal their mother’s beauty. Her face is gaunt one day, puffy the next. Her legs ache with varicose veins. Even her translucent eyes seem dim and drab. She perspires like an obese sultan and the older boys, conscious of impending change, hang all over her.

In the fall, Maria’s cough turns sharp and painful. The phlegm disappears; her mouth seems to pull sound from an empty chamber. One morning, Gail sees a red spot on the handkerchief that she coughs into and insists that she see a doctor. Not tomorrow or next week. Today.

“It’s nothing, nulla .”

Gail doesn’t accept this answer. She drives Maria to the appointment herself, her swollen stomach grazing the steering wheel. The doctor tells her it’s viral bronchitis, nothing too serious. He suggests using a humidifier, drinking tea with honey and lemon, and taking Tylenol for the pain. Gail drives Maria home, stopping at a pharmacy to buy a humidifier. She sets up the humidifier in the still, dust-flecked bedroom of Maria’s house. She tells Maria that she should stay home for a few weeks and rest. Maria says that Gail needs help, that she can’t manage the two boys alone in her condition. Gail tells her that she’ll need more help when the baby arrives, that she’ll need a fully rested Maria without any cough. Maria lies on top of the bed, acquiescent, and this frightens Gail a bit.

“Are you okay? Do you want me to stay?”

“No, no, no. Nulla .”

“Stop saying that. It’s not nothing.”

Maria reaches for Gail’s stomach.

“Bambina. Bella bambina.”

“If it’s a girl, I’ll name her Nulla, after her stubborn grandmother.”

Maria laughs, provoking a coughing fit, which brings her torso off the mattress. Gail eases her back down. She kisses Maria’s forehead.

“Rest.”

After Gail starts the car, she has a moment of uncertainty. She turns the engine off and reenters the house, as quietly as she can. She takes the stairs slowly, her bulk bringing a few groans from the wood. She doesn’t want to scare Maria, wants to make sure she’s okay. She pushes the door to the bedroom in a few inches. The soft light of late afternoon sun is muffled by the curtains; the humidifier spews moist air over the bed. She hears Maria’s labored breathing, a few staccato coughs. She sees the dark bulk of her body turn in search of comfort.

Gail exhales. She is a mother, prone to checking on her charges, even when there’s no reason. Maria is resting. All may continue. She leaves the house as quietly as she came. She pulls the car delicately out of the gravel driveway, hoping not to disturb Maria. By the time she picks the boys up at the Landini house, her mind has moved on to a host of trivial concerns: what to make for dinner, whether Michael has to work this weekend, what to get the new neighbors as a housewarming gift.

She doesn’t think of Maria again until Enzo calls that night and tells them through rolling sobs that he came home from the store and found Maria cold and lifeless in their bed.

* * *

Bobby arrives in the shadow of Maria’s death, two months after she is put into the ground. His tiny body is pressed to cheeks streaming with tears, equal parts joy and grief. All look at him and think of Maria and how she would have loved to hold him. He spends his first day in this world without a name; they have been too busy, too guilt ridden and grief stricken, to worry about names. If it was a girl, the name was easy. But a boy?

Gail lies in the hospital bed, worn out in every way. Michael sits in a chair, holding his new son, trying to be happy. In the hallway, Enzo moans and shakes, his grief disturbing the happy idylls of the surrounding families and their brand-new bundles of joy. Tiny arrives with flowers. He is a new dad himself. His daughter, Maria, is a month old. Fatherhood suits him. He’s gotten a touch thicker above the belt and below the chin. Enzo sees him and hugs him with vigor, crushing the flowers between them. He shepherds Tiny into the room. Tiny kisses Gail, lays the pressed bouquet on her lap. He takes the petite, placid wonder into his arms. He asks for a name.

Michael and Gail exchange a nervous glance. The boy needs a name. He does not know their sorrow. He has done nothing to deserve this. From the hidden recesses of her brain, Gail remembers Maria sliding a photo across the kitchen table to her. Something she wanted to share. A fragile, faded, black-and-white thing, with dozens of fold lines crisscrossing the two people depicted: a young girl dressed in a blazer and skirt. Large glasses on a long thin nose. No classic beauty, but a touch of eccentric comeliness. Maria. A boy, a few years older, stood behind her, blithely handsome, on the verge of masculinity. His hands folded across his chest in mock defiance. Gail pointed to him.

“Enzo?”

Maria shook her head, carefully turned the flimsy, yellowed paper over so Gail could see the writing on the back: Roberto e Maria. Lecca. 17 aprile 1931.

She turned the photo over again, pointed to the boy.

“My brother.”

“Roberto?”

“Si. Morto . He died in the war.”

“He was so handsome, Maria.”

Roberto. Robert. Bobby.

“Gail?”

Gail looks to Michael for guidance. His eyes are tired, blank; no name is resting on his tongue. Tiny looks nervous for a second. She speaks without thinking.

“Robert. His name is Robert Enzolini Amendola. Named after Maria’s brother, Roberto.”

Tiny smiles, relieved. Even Enzo looks happy.

“Wonderful. Hello, little Bobby. Little Bobby Amendola.”

It sounds right. A good name. Anyone named Bobby Amendola is gonna turn out fine.

“Gail?”

She goes to see Enzo weeks later, finds him in the attic with dried sausages on strings hanging from the rafters. He’s drinking his homemade wine and cutting pieces of sausage with Maria’s knife, the one with the chipped black handle. Bobby is there, these things — the smell of that attic, the slicing of that sausage, the slosh of Enzo’s wine — they slip into him. He is tiny, but he absorbs them.

“Gail! Gail!”

* * *

She feels hands on her arms. She looks up and Michael is leaning down, his face in front of her. Not the addled, sleep-deprived father of three with no name on his tongue. Not the bold man of action who raced next door. Not the handsome, tireless dervish who fixed this house, worked two jobs, and satisfied the carnal needs of his libidinous, pregnant wife. No.

A tender old man with fear on his face, worried about his wife. How long has he been here? Crease lines converge on his eyes. When did he get so old?

He’s dressed for church, slacks and a collared shirt. He goes because she asks him to. Sometimes he doesn’t and she understands that; some Sundays she doesn’t want to go herself, but she does anyway.

“Are you okay? You’re not dressed. Is everything okay?”

A bit of fatigue in his voice. This isn’t the first time he’s had to pull her out of a daydream. She tells him it’s harmless, an idyll, but she can see big words scrolling across his forehead: Alzheimer’s, dementia .

“I’m fine. I need to talk to Tina.”

“Tina?”

“Yeah, I need to explain. I need to tell her about Maria. I never told her about Maria. Not really.”