Eddie Joyce - Small Mercies

She was giddy. A livelihood was being passed on, something that could be passed on again. Maybe Franky could learn the business. Bobby too. They would have something of their own. They wouldn’t need to rely on others, wouldn’t need to run into burning buildings or chase down criminals to earn a paycheck.

The extra money wouldn’t hurt. They could get a new car, help Peter pay off some student loans, maybe even think about a place upstate, a little cabin to get away from it all. Life would be a bit easier.

Besides, Michael would need something to fill his days. She knew enough retired cops and firemen to worry about how he would spend his time. A forty-seven-year-old retiree who liked his beers was a dangerous thing.

He wouldn’t have to rush in. He could enjoy a few months off, golf with his friends. They could take a trip together. Gail had gone back to teaching when Bobby reached high school, but she had her summers off. She’d always wanted to see Ireland and for years Michael had promised to take her. Now they could do it.

They made love that night. She lay awake afterward, spinning out the possibilities in her head. Maybe she could stop teaching, work at the store. Maybe Franky could start right away, never mind college, which was a waste of his time and their money, if she was being honest. Maybe Peter would get into Columbia or NYU for law school; he could live at home, commute, make a few extra bucks working for his father. She fell asleep thinking they would remember this night forever, the end of one chapter in their life, the beginning of a new one. She would remember it later for a different reason, as the last time she and Michael had sex for nearly a year.

She woke the next morning with a nervous enthusiasm, a feeling that slowly ebbed over the course of a strange and lonely summer. Peter stayed in Ithaca, got a job as a research assistant for some professor plus a few shifts waiting tables at the local hamburger joint. Franky was supposed to take summer classes at CSI, but one of Michael’s old FDNY friends had a landscaping business down the shore in Spring Lake and offered Franky twenty dollars an hour and a bed in a basement.

Bobby was home, but he was a vagabond, barely in the house, in constant search of hardwood floors or asphalt blacktop. In the spring, he’d had a late growth spurt, three inches in as many months, and become a basketball junkie; he talked about little else, spent all his free time practicing or playing. Last year, he’d been a bit player on the team, inserted into the games sporadically: a minute here, two minutes there. He barely stayed in long enough to break a sweat.

But most of the key players had graduated and Coach Whelan had dangled the promise of increased playing time under the noses of all the rising seniors as an incentive to make them practice over the summer. Bobby had taken the bait.

The other boys had played football and baseball, games Gail knew and understood. She enjoyed them, except for the more brutal aspects of football. Basketball was foreign to her, a fast-paced mess whose best players — no point denying it — were inevitably black. She didn’t understand Bobby’s fascination, but there was little doubt that he loved it. And unlike baseball and football, it was his; he didn’t have to toil in the shadows cast by his older brothers.

He got a job at a local basketball camp, an underpaid counselor to a bunch of fourth and fifth graders. After work every day, he hitched a ride to play pick-up games at P.S. 8 or I.S. 59 or hopped on the train down to Cromwell Center, arriving home every night with a ball in one hand, a half-empty jug of yellow Gatorade in the other and the smell of dried sweat coming off of him. Sometimes, when she stumbled across him in the house, Gail experienced vertigo — he seemed to be bobbing up and down — until she realized he was intentionally rising to the tips of his toes and lowering himself over and over, his calf muscles twitching with the effort and his lips moving in silent count. When she asked him what he was doing, he said, “Calf raises, duh,” like this was a perfectly normal activity that everyone should be engaging in whenever they had a free moment.

The only consistent time they spent together was in the mornings. She drove him to work and some days she lingered in the parking lot, watching her goofy man-child of a son interacting with his charges, a referee’s whistle hung around his neck, a smile etched on his face. Watching him with the kids was a joy, put her in a good mood that lasted until she arrived back to an empty home, another short note from Michael on the fridge.

Went golfing. Back later.

Went to meet Flanagan.

Went to AC with Tiny. Back tomorrow.

Back tomorrow?

She’d expected an adjustment period. The man had fought fires for twenty-five years. He wasn’t used to explaining his whereabouts all the time. He was entitled to blow off some steam. She understood that but she’d hoped that he would spend some of his free time with her. She’d declined the opportunity to teach summer school because she thought they’d spend some time together, maybe take that trip to Ireland. But Michael showed no interest in spending any time with her. When they did interact, he was surly or aloof, always hustling off to do this or that. He suddenly seemed to have an endless list of errands to run and for a while, Gail worried that maybe he was having an affair.

But when he came home at night, she smelled beer, not perfume, and that was cold comfort. She tried not to think of her father, tried not to think this is how it starts , and for the most part, she succeeded.

Michael was not her father. Michael was a good man. A good man going through a rough patch, had lost a bit of his identity, was finding his way. Taking over for his father would be a good thing, would give him something to do, a new identity. All would be well in January. She had to bite her lip and let him stumble a bit. He’d earned that much.

She filled the summer reading books and listening to baseball games on the radio and dropping in on the neighbors, mostly Diana Landini, she of the legendary low-cut blouses. They sat on Diana’s screened-in back porch and played hearts, a pitcher of powdered iced tea sitting on the table to slake their thirst. Gail listened to Diana complain about her husband, Joe, who the entire neighborhood suspected of carrying on a long-term affair. For several years, he had been spotted at various pay phones — in Keene’s Pharmacy, on the corner of Hylan and Richmond — slipping quarters into the slot and looking, for all the world, like a man who was trying not to be seen. If Diana suspected something, her complaints revealed nothing. They focused on Joe’s personal hygiene.

“The man’s breath always smells like ham, Gail. It’s not natural. He doesn’t even eat ham. And his snoring, dear God, he sounds like a wild animal caught in a trap. It’s no wonder I’m down in the kitchen eating Entenmann’s at three a.m. every night.”

To accentuate the point, she slapped the mass of exposed thigh that slipped out from her khaki shorts. The rest of Diana’s body had expanded in the years since poor Mr. Greeley had keeled over leering at her cleavage. Everything else on her body was like her breasts now, plump and oversized, but Diana still dressed to draw stares. Men still looked, but their looks were now accompanied by the rueful shake of a head, lamenting what had been. It gave Gail a secret, guilty thrill.

Gail threw in a few desultory, household complaints about Michael: socks on the floor, dirty dishes in the sink, drops of cold piss on the toilet seat. She took a sip of iced tea. Diana leaned back, her eyes made small by the girth of her cheeks.

“Jesus, you look great.”

“Stop.”