Eddie Joyce - Small Mercies

“I miss them, Linds. I miss you.”

“That’s the worst part, Peter.” Her voice cracks. “I miss you too.”

“Then maybe I should come home.”

“No. I’m like the kids. I’m used to missing you. I’ve been doing it for years.”

She won’t be moved any further tonight. The emotion is gone. No anger, no sadness. All business.

“Okay, Linds. What are we gonna do about Sunday? Bobby’s party.”

“We’ll figure it out. Call me later in the week. You can talk to the kids.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

He deems the call a mild success. No yelling, no name calling, no unanswerable questions like “Why?” or “How many times?” or “What was it like?” Gina wasn’t called a slut; he wasn’t called a bastard. The gulf between them had been narrowed, if only by a few inches. Maybe this would be the way. An ocean of distance slowly lessening as time passes and the pain fades. Like the worst settlement negotiations, each side moving glacially toward a position it could live with. Can’t come right out with the number, everyone has to inch there.

Peter looks out the window. His cab is barely on the bridge. His buzz has become a headache. The bottle of red wine feels hours away. He suddenly understands the appeal of a flask.

* * *

Every night was the same. Gina would come to his office and close the door. She would explain that she couldn’t do this anymore, that it was tearing her apart, that David suspected something, that she felt so guilty she could barely function. When she started to cry, Peter would come around his desk to comfort her and soon enough, they were making love on the floor of his office as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

They would lie together afterward and whisper stories to each other about growing up on the Island. He told her about his crazy Irish grandmother in Bay Ridge and how he used to be able to flip over chain-link fences in one motion when he was a kid and how, on the night he got his driver’s license, he took Janice Flynn to Wolfe’s Pond Park and they made out for two hours, but Janice wouldn’t let him get past second base, so on the way home, he got a pain in his groin so intense he had to pull over and get out of the car. Blue balls, he laughed.

That’s a myth, she giggled.

That’s what Janice Flynn said.

She told him about her great-aunt Tessa, who still played her number—193—every day with the last of the Italian boys in Bensonhurst and how her mother sat her down the summer before fifth grade and told her the facts of life and she cried for three days because, even then, without really knowing anything, it seemed like girls got the shit end of the stick. She told him about the Christmas when their street iced over and her whole family — aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins — had to stay over and everyone got drunk and started crying about her mother’s brother Vito, who was the kindest soul who ever lived and was killed in Vietnam two days before he was scheduled to come home. She told him that when she was lying there with Peter, she felt like she used to when her father came into her bedroom when she was a child, whenever there was thunder and lightning, he would race into her room and climb into her bed and hold her and she’d never felt safer in her whole life. Until now.

That makes me feel more than a little icky, he said.

You know what I mean.

And he did. As exhilarating as the sex was, Peter enjoyed the afterglow — lying there blissfully, the only two souls in the world — even more. He hadn’t felt peace like that in a long time. Sometimes, he would catch a glimpse of Bobby’s picture and that bizarre phrase “We owe the dead our sins” would ring in his head. He didn’t think Bobby was condoning his behavior. Not exactly. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing that Bobby would ever do. (Then again, it didn’t seem like the sort of thing that Peter would ever do.) But it seemed like the sort of thing Bobby should have done, if given the opportunity, because really, what difference did it make? Right? Peter tried not to think about it too much.

We owe the dead our sins.

Well, okay then. Worked well enough for Peter.

He kept waiting for something to kick in and make him end the affair: guilt, common sense, a modicum of judgment, basic decency, professional concerns. But for the first time in his life, he felt unfettered by such considerations. Outside of the nightly encounters with Gina, his life went on in the same fashion. He took the train home, he kissed Lindsay, he hugged his kids, he did his work. If anything, he was happier; even Lindsay noticed, commented on it a few times. He spent his days at the office in giddy anticipation of Gina’s arrival. He spent his weekends in a weird, lovesick haze, eager to get back to the office but also somehow appreciative of the comforts of his married, suburban existence.

His euphoria was shattered only when he remembered that Gina was spending those weekends with David, was fucking David, was going to marry fucking David, and when that happened, he felt a burning jealousy in his chest that nothing could soothe. He couldn’t fucking stand it. Some asshole was going to marry Gina. Spend a life with Gina. His Gina. It wasn’t fair. She couldn’t marry this guy.

One night, while he watched her slip on her underwear in his darkened office, he told her.

“Gina, you can’t marry David.”

“Don’t talk about him. You don’t even know him.”

“I don’t need to know him. You can’t do it.”

“Stop saying that,” she yelled.

“Keep your voice down,” he said. He was still lying on the floor naked.

She slipped her bra on, clasped it closed below her breasts. Watching her dress was the only time he recognized the sordidness of the whole thing, but sometimes it made him excited all over again, led to another roll on the floor, another twenty minutes of peace. He stood and walked to her. She turned away from him. He hugged her from behind, pressed his wobbly erection into the yielding firmness of her rear.

“I can’t,” she said.

He kissed her neck, slipped a hand down to her breast.

“You can.”

“Peter, I can’t. I’m meeting David and his parents for dinner. I’m already late.”

His fingers found her nipple, hard beneath her bra. She moaned and turned to kiss him.

“Peter…”

He laid her down on the couch, removed her bra. He kissed her breasts slowly, his tongue grazing her nipples. His mouth moved south, to the taut flesh of her stomach. Her moans grew more urgent. He reached the small swell of flesh above her pubis. Her hands were on the back of his head, guiding him to the moist patch on her thong when her cell phone rang.

She slid from the couch, her knee catching his jaw and knocking him back. She found her phone and answered it.

“I’m on my way,” she said, her voice still hoarse with desire.

Peter sat upright, rubbing his jaw and listening to half a conversation.

“No, I’m not in my office. I’m downstairs, trying to catch a cab.”

“You’re downstairs? I thought we were meeting at the restaurant.”

“I meant I was on my way downstairs. I had to stop and drop something off in someone’s office.”

“No, not his office. Someone else’s office. No, David, do not come up. David.”

“Okay, I’ll be right down.”

She’d dressed frantically while talking. She was on the verge of tears.

“Gina, calm down,” Peter urged.

“Calm down, calm down? He’s downstairs, waiting for me. He wants to come up. He knows something’s going on between us.”

“How could he know that?”

“I don’t know, but he does.”

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”