Eddie Joyce - Small Mercies

“Not just my girlfriend, Mom. The love of my life. The girl I’m gonna marry. The mother of my children.”

He was dead serious. Right, she thought, sure. Heard this story before.

“Easy, Romeo,” she said. “She seems very nice.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

She walked across the hall to her bedroom, euphoric from Bobby’s long-awaited progress with the ladies. Another worry crossed off the list. It had turned out to be a good night, the first one in a long while. She looked at Michael’s empty half of the bed and felt a kind of gloom creeping over her, threatening her good mood.

Not today. He wouldn’t ruin today. She wouldn’t let him.

The gift! She’d forgotten all about it. She sat down on the bed, reached into her pocket, and took out the tiny, rectangular package. She removed the red wrapping with a quick rip to find a small black box. With two fingers, she eased the lid off the box. A shiny, metal object lay inside. She tilted the box and the item fell into her palm. It took her a few seconds to identify it: a nail clipper.

A nail clipper?

She found a tiny note tucked inside the box. A schoolboy’s shaky printing on it.

Gail, Take it easy on those nails. It’s a long season!!! Danny.

She brought her hands up for inspection. The tips of her fingers were all red and raw. Her nails were the jagged edges of broken plates. She giggled and fell back onto the bed. She fell asleep in her clothes, jovialities flecking her dreams for the first time in months.

* * *

She brought the nail clipper to the next game. Danny was waiting for her, his knees jutting up to meet his elbows, a knowing smile on his face. She took out his gift and waved it at him.

“You dirty dog.”

He laughed and tapped the wood on the bleacher beside him in invitation. She sat down next to him and he laid a hand on her shoulder and gave it a hearty shake, like they were old friends. His hand remained there throughout the lazy pregame layup lines until the Baddios walked in before the opening buzzer and sat in front of them. They watched the game together in restless silence, their thighs pressed together, nervous energy pulsing between them.

The game was a blowout; Farrell cruised. Without any real drama, Gail’s fingers remained out of her mouth until Bobby went to the foul line in the third quarter. Despite hours of practice, he was mediocre from the foul line and whenever he was sent there, Gail’s stomach tightened with nerves, no matter what the score. This game was usually so fast, so team oriented, that it jarred her whenever the action halted and an individual was singled out to perform a seemingly simple task. Bobby’s first shot clanged off the side of the rim. He shook his head in frustration. Gail lifted her left hand and moved it toward her mouth, but Danny intercepted it.

“Uh, uh, uh,” he said. “You’ve been a good girl all game.”

She laughed and squeezed his hand. Dana Baddio looked back over her shoulder at them with a raised eyebrow. Bobby sank his second shot, and Gail wriggled her hand away from Danny and clapped softly.

Alone in bed that night, she felt a longing come over her, a need borne of deprivation and anger and new attraction. Months had passed since she’d slept with Michael; she would not sleep with a man she was not speaking to. The anger had stifled any carnal yearnings, but, that night, she put her hand between her legs and found an impatient wetness waiting. She closed her eyes and thought of Danny’s crisp breath and all the places she wanted it to find.

Afterward, she scurried down to the basement, tiptoeing past Bobby’s room, to deposit her soaked underwear in the washer. In the damp, cool air of the basement, she was overcome by an acute sense of adolescent shame. She bawled while the washing machine chugged, her bare feet growing frigid against the hard cement of the basement floor. When she finally calmed, she walked back up the stairs, a queasy feeling in her stomach. She slipped into bed and a lifetime of admonitory sermons sprang to her memory. She remembered her childhood parish priest, Father Kenny, a tiny sprig of a man who railed and spit his way through mass. She remembered his voice, could nearly hear him saying, “Thou shall not, Gail.”

Her shame came from the thoughts of Danny, not the masturbation. She’d long ago reconciled her faith with certain aspects of the human condition. Touching herself was okay, her thinking went, as long as she thought of Michael. Sometimes your husband was away, sometimes he was stuck at the firehouse. What could you do?

God help her, it had never been an issue. Michael, or the thought of him, had always been enough. The other women laughed at her. They talked about Tom Selleck or Tom Cruise or whomever was that moment’s heartthrob. They talked about closing their eyes and thinking of someone else, anyone else. And Gail had never understood. Until now.

Thou shalt not, Gail.

She fell asleep by focusing on the prickly sensation of warmth returning to her feet. When Michael came into the bedroom hours later, unsteady and smelling of beer, she was lost in a deep, troubled sleep.

* * *

The games ticked by, each one like the last, in the stands if not on the court. The six parents talking in the quiet pauses of each game, the conversation revolving around the action on the court.

“This number 22 is a punk.”

“Terry’s off tonight.”

“Why aren’t we pressing this team?”

“That was a charge, ref!”

Every so often, Bobby made a play whose importance wasn’t readily apparent to Gail: he set a solid screen or threw an outlet pass or grabbed a rebound he had no earthly right to get. When that happened, Danny leaned over, put his hand on her back, and whispered in her ear.

“Bobby’s playing like a man possessed tonight.”

“Jesus, that screen rattled teeth.”

Sometimes he put his hand on her back for no reason at all.

* * *

After each game was the same as well: the lonely bed, the soiled underwear, the cold, unforgiving basement, the shame, Father Kenny.

Thou shalt not, Gail.

The vision of Father Kenny grew more intense, but also more comical.

Thou shalt not, Gail.

She started talking back to him.

Perhaps I shalt, Father. Perhaps I shalt.

She was always asleep by the time Michael came in and if he woke her, by accident or design, she feigned grogginess and turned away from him.

* * *

It was a good season. Saint Peter’s beat them twice, each time by a dozen points, but the games felt closer, like a play here or a bounce there and the outcome may have been different. They lost a heartbreaker to St. Joseph by the Sea, on a prayer at the buzzer, and got destroyed by Curtis on a night when the whole team was off. After the losses, Bobby was sullen and he sought comfort not with her, but with Tina. And that was depressing and thrilling.

He was the team’s heart and soul: its leading rebounder and second leading scorer. First, by a wide margin, in charges taken, balls dived after, floor burns suffered, and elbows swung. One night, Danny mentioned casually that he knew a few scouts, that he could probably get Bobby a scholarship to a Division II school: University of New Haven or Sacred Heart or Molloy College. Gail nodded, excited but uncertain.

Bobby had never been a student. CSI, then a city job, was the assumed route. But that night she watched him snatch a rebound and thought maybe, just maybe, basketball could be his road to a different life. Maybe, with Danny’s help, he’d have options. Maybe even work on Wall Street, like Danny, make a boatload of cash. Danny had said as much himself.

“Would love to have a kid like Bobby working for me someday. Kid who works that hard will always find a way to be useful.”