Eddie Joyce - Small Mercies

“You were talking about Vinny and a Jets game.”

“Jesus, I’ll just start over.”

Stephanie closes the toilet seat and sits on it. She removes a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her sweatpants, takes one out, and places it in her mouth.

“You mind?”

“No,” says Tina as she flicks on the exhaust fan. “Don’t let the kids see you.”

“You want one?”

She would love a cigarette. But she knows she shouldn’t. She waves her hand no. Stephanie tosses the pack onto the marble counter that Tina is leaning against. She lights the cigarette, takes a drag, and exhales up toward the vent. The whiff of burning tobacco sets Tina’s fingers tapping on the marble.

“So, back in December, Vinny took the boys to a Jets game. As usual. It was freezing out and I was trying to make sure no one gets frostbite or hypothermia and they’re all ‘yeah, yeah, yeahing’ me, you know, like I’m the asshole. I says, ‘Vin, it’s gonna be fifteen degrees out and windy and they’re not gonna have eight or nine beers to keep them warm, Vin,’ and he says, ‘Yeah, yeah, Steph, yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time,’ and he winks at the boys and they all laugh. And then they run out of the house and I watch them pull away in the Denali and they’re all smiling, thrilled to be rid of me. All three of them smiling because they’re finally rid of the nag. And you know what? I felt exactly the same way.

“Anyways, I straighten up a little bit and then I go upstairs to draw a bath. My Sunday ritual when they’re at the games. A nice warm bath, a little one-on-one time with the removable showerhead.”

“Steph.”

“What?”

“What if one of the kids hears you?”

“You’re such a prude. They’re not so innocent, they see everything on the Internet these days. You’d be surprised.”

“Whatever.”

Stephanie leans past Tina, taps the ash out in the sink.

“Do you really do that whenever they’re at the Jets games?”

“I pray every night that the Jets make the play-offs. Or that Vinny gets season tickets to the Mets.”

Tina forces out a laugh. Stephanie has been watching too much reality television; her jokes sound rehearsed.

“So anyways, I go up to the bathroom and I see Vinny’s facial hair in the sink. Like caked into the sink with shaving scum. A ring of little black and white hairs. And I think, Getting old, Vincenzo, because of the white hairs, and then it hits me. T, I can’t tell you how pissed I was. Normally, I’d just run the tap and wash it out, but I was so disgusted. I smeared some of it on the mirror so he’d be sure to know I saw it when he got home.”

Stephanie stops, takes another drag.

“So he forgot to clean up after he shaved?”

“Exactly.”

Stephanie nods, as though the point of her story should be obvious to Tina.

“Okay. That’s gross but…”

Stephanie smiles, a little secret on her tongue. One she wants to share. Tina knows the drill. She waves her hand in a small circle, attempting to move the story along.

“So?”

“So I fucked Tommy Valenti.”

Tina reaches over and shuts the bathroom door.

“You did what?”

“Fucked Tommy Valenti. Twice. Well, one time we fucked and then the other time, I gave him a blow job in the parking lot of the mall.”

“You’re joking me.”

“No, I ain’t.”

Tina doesn’t believe her.

“You’re telling me you slept with—”

“Fucked.”

“Tommy Valenti because Vinny forgot to clean up his shaving scum before he went to the Jets game. What am I missing?”

Stephanie takes another long drag, lifts her shoulders in mock incredulity. “Who shaves to go to a football game?”

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

“Tina, answer one question for me.”

“Okay.”

“Who shaves to go to a football game?”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Well, I do.”

“You’re a lunatic. Vinny shaves before a football game and that means he’s cheating on you.”

“Cheating on me again . And yes, yes it does.”

“That makes no sense to me.”

“Well, that’s because Bobby probably never fucked around on you.”

Tina’s mind catches on the word probably . She looks at Stephanie, who’s sitting with one leg crossed over the other and inspecting the soft pink polish on the toenails of her closest foot. A wave of disgust passes through Tina as she looks at Stephanie’s midriff, a patch of tanned, toned skin exposed between gray sweatpants and a white tank top. She remembers how Stephanie used to flirt with Bobby, touching his chest or his arm, right in front of her, especially when she knew Vinny was fucking around. She remembers Bobby enjoying the attention.

Slut, she thinks and then feels terrible.

“Does Vinny know?”

Stephanie looks up.

“God, no.”

“Isn’t Tommy Valenti married?”

“Jesus, Tina. Already with the judgment?”

“What? I’m asking. I can’t ask? Forget it.”

“Yes, Tommy is married, but he says his wife… they have an understanding. She fucks around too. They have an open marriage.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know. You know what? I don’t care.”

“Jesus, I mean, Jesus. I don’t know what to say.”

“T, Vinny has been fucking around on me for years. Years. When he was working on the floor, God knows.”

“I know, but I thought you said that mostly stopped. You know, after he stopped working in the city.”

“I thought it did. But I guess I was wrong.”

Stephanie’s sneer softens. Her eyes well and her lower lip starts to quiver. Tina knows this transformation, from angry defiance to wounded and heartbroken. You could set your watch by Stephanie’s mood shifts.

“What kills me is I can see her. When I close my eyes, I can actually see her. Some little whore in a Jets jersey, giving him head in the back of the car at a tailgate. My boys know her. Shit, Tina, they probably jerk off while thinking about her. How fucked up is that?”

“Pretty fucked up,” Tina says flatly.

Another sordid episode in the highly repetitive saga of Stephanie and Vinny’s marriage. In a month or so, Vinny will confess to a minor slip and promise to change his ways. The promise will be accompanied by a gift of some kind: a fur coat or diamond earrings. After an indeterminate period during which Stephanie will continue to punish Vinny by carrying on with her own affair and by generally making his life miserable, a second gift will be proffered. This gift will ensure the cessation of Stephanie’s vengeance-seeking dalliance and a temporary return to marital bliss for the DeVosso household for a proscribed period of time, determined principally by how long Vinny can keep his dick in his pants or alternatively, how long he can hide from Stephanie the fact that he is not keeping his dick in his pants. The bliss period was the worst for Tina because it required listening to Stephanie describe the graphic details of her reinvigorated sex life with Vinny.

At least that’s how it used to go. Ever since Vinny lost his job on Wall Street, the quality of his gifts had gone south, along with their ability to placate Stephanie. Vinny had come to lean heavily on his ability to avoid getting caught. Tina had little doubt that, in the future, Vinny would discard his shaven hairs with the care of a gangster disposing of a body.

Stephanie starts crying. She tears off a sheet of toilet paper and dabs at her eyes.

“I’m not a bad person, T.”

“No, no. I didn’t say that.”

She’s heard this all before, but tonight it’s a welcome distraction from her own thoughts.

Stephanie takes a final drag and extinguishes the butt under the tap. She retrieves the pack and takes another cigarette out. The tiny white cylinder is too perfect for Tina to resist.