Eddie Joyce - Small Mercies

Back and forth, on and on, again and again.

He used to love the ferry. It was the quickest way to get to Manhattan, to get off Staten Island. The summer before he went away to college, while his high school buddies were getting shitfaced in the Midland Beach parking lots, he took the ferry into the city most weekend nights with his girlfriend Tracy DeSantis. He’d have an inexpensive night planned: a walk around the Village, then a cheap dinner at a place in Chinatown or Little Italy, walk back down Broadway to the ferry. He didn’t know where to go, didn’t have any money anyway. He didn’t care. He just wanted to be there. They took the train up to Times Square, the Upper East Side, Central Park. He wanted to see it all, see every inch of it. He peered in through the windows of expensive restaurants — the bustling downtown hot spots, the posh uptown restaurants catering to tight asses, the steak and martini joints of midtown full of red-faced bankers and nattily attired lawyers — not with envy, but with impatience.

One day , he thought, one day soon .

Tracy didn’t like the ferry, didn’t really like Manhattan. But she liked Peter, probably even loved him in that simple, teenage way, so she went along with his requests. On the way in, he wouldn’t linger on the rear deck with her, wouldn’t enjoy the illicit pleasure of making out with her, touching her in the dark recesses of the ferry’s nooks and crannies. Instead, he’d pull her up to the front of the boat ten minutes before it docked, so they could needlessly line up with the tourists and the boisterous black kids from the North Shore projects, while the ferry crawled to its dock. Sometimes he even dragged her down to the seedy lower level with its surreptitious pot smokers and deranged, piss-soaked vagrants because the ramps down there lowered first, affording that level’s denizens a head start into the city, into the night. Peter didn’t want to miss anything, wanted everything the city had to offer, wanted the city itself.

On the way home, Peter, glum and a little surly, wanted to linger on the rear deck and stare up at the impossible angles of the Twin Towers, their peaks not visible until the ferry pulled a good distance away. That view, changing incrementally as the ferry drifted away from Manhattan, was simply awe-inspiring. No other description fit. After seeing it, Peter was awed; by the reach of man, by his godlike ambition.

Only when they were halfway across the harbor would Peter’s attention turn back to the expectant lips and tongue of the young Ms. DeSantis. By the time the ferry docked on Staten Island, he was back in her good graces, a short car ride away from getting laid in her basement while her parents slept two stories above. When they lay together afterward, Tracy talked about the benefits and potential pitfalls of staying together when they both left for college, and Peter nodded sleepy assents, all the while trying to re-create the sensation of standing at the back of the ferry and staring up into man-made infinity.

One night he told Tracy that whenever he left Manhattan, he felt like Columbus leaving the New World. He thought he was being poetic, but Tracy said that didn’t make any sense. That, if anything, he should feel that way when he left Staten Island because that was the less developed, New World place and Manhattan was the older, developed civilization, like Europe in the time of Columbus. As soon as she said this, Peter decided that they wouldn’t be staying together when they went to college. He conveyed guarded optimism for the proposition through the summer, though, to ensure the continuation of the good times in her basement. He broke up with her the night before he left for Cornell. He even managed to make it seem like it was the best thing for both of them.

He watches the ferry until it disappears behind Governors Island. He wants to feel like he used to when he was on that rear deck, ignoring Tracy and staring up at the towers. He wants to be awed again by something. Anything.

But the towers are gone.

And Tracy DeSantis is Tracy Gordon now. He Googled her a few weeks ago, found a Facebook page. Married to a dentist and living in Hazlet. Couple of kids. Still looks good, in the toned and complacent manner of the suburbs. Like Lindsay actually. Seems happy enough. He knows it’s a facade, but that’s not the point. A path not taken. Maybe he should have listened to her. They could have stayed together, coasted through college, a few casual dalliances here and there — on both sides, no questions asked, no hurt feelings — but stayed together.

He knows he shouldn’t do this, torment himself with visions of where his life could have gone. He knows the Internet presents ridiculous, one-dimensional cutouts of people and that his own mind is putting the best possible gloss on what their lives would be like together because of his present misery. He knows the last thing he needs is another woman in his thoughts. He’d broken up with Tracy because even though she was smart and pretty and nice, she was too limited… too Staten Island. Perfectly happy to go away for four years and then come home. Live the same life her parents had, maybe some incremental improvement. Move to Jersey, sure, but what was that?

A preordained movement. A half step.

Back then, he’d wanted something more. How could you live in the shadow of the greatest city on the planet and be content with that? If Tracy couldn’t understand how he felt when they were slouching back to Staten Island, she’d never understand him. He didn’t want Staten Island. And he didn’t want someone who did.

And now? He wasn’t so sure. What was the difference between Hazlet and Harrison anyway? What did being a partner at a law firm and taking home almost a million a year get you in this city?

A better class of shadow. Nothing more.

A Manhattan-bound ferry slides into view. Peter grabs a glass from the cupboard and fills it with water from the tap. He returns to the window to watch the ferry dock, his mind mercifully preoccupied by the early morning happenings of the harbor. The sheer amount of activity is dizzying; dozens of ships dot the dark waters around lower Manhattan.

Another horn sounds. The inbound ferry has unloaded its passengers, reloaded, and is now departing for Staten Island. The sound perplexed Peter during his first few weeks at the apartment. He’d hear the horn intermittently during the day — in the apartment, walking around Brooklyn Heights — and later the incongruity would gnaw at him. What the hell was making that sound? This was New York City, not Newport.

He figured it out on a frigid weekend afternoon in late January. He was trudging along the Promenade, bare hands shoved into his coat pockets, head down. A light snow falling, the wind snapping as it rose from the harbor’s dark water. He paused at the railing, enjoying the punitive blast of wind. He stood there for a few minutes, distracted from the specific woes of his life by the most basic, universal needs: to be warm, to be inside, to eat. He was looking forward to heating up some soup, taking a scalding shower, feeling the warmth return to his fingers. It didn’t matter that these were trivialities. He was looking forward to something, something that had a reasonable opportunity of actually happening, and he hadn’t felt that way in weeks. He was reassured that he could still feel anticipation, if only for a cup of warm soup in the belly.

Below him, the cars on the BQE flew by, oblivious. A hardy, lunatic soul jogged past him, bundled so completely that he couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman. He watched the figure until it receded into white haze at the other end of the Promenade. His gaze turned back to Manhattan and its incomplete skyline. He watched an orange ferry slide away from the terminal, announcing its presence in the harbor with a familiar bellow. When he recognized the sound, the small measure of pleasance he’d achieved sank from his chest; he felt a familiar wretchedness rise to take its place. Exposing a finger to the biting air, he traced a clear, unfettered line from the ferry across the open harbor up to the windows of Alberto’s eighth-floor apartment. In addition to having unimpeded views of lower Manhattan, the apartment was perfectly situated to receive the sound of the ferry’s horn.