Small Mercies (3 page)

“The trickster is here.”

He breaks into a giggle, lets Michael tousle his hair before sliding into Gail’s arms.

“Missed you, Bob-a-loo.”

“Missed you too, Grandma.”

He smells like Cheerios and milk. He has his mother’s dark hair, but everything else is his father. The blue eyes, the goofy grin, the constant good humor. His smooth cheek feels young against her cragged counterpart. He’ll be nine in a few days. She’s been looking forward to his birthday party for weeks. Next Sunday, just the family. A barbecue in the backyard, like the good old days. She releases him and he skips back to Michael for a high five.

Alyssa follows her brother in, her perpetual pout a slap in the face after Bobby’s infectious jubilation. Other than a splash of acne on her forehead, puberty has not yet touched her. Her body is painfully geometric, a collection of straight lines, hunched shoulders, and stringy brown hair. Gail hopes she’s a late bloomer.

Tina comes in last. Usually she restores equilibrium; her pleasant but weary demeanor striking the middle ground between the moods of her children. Not today. No, today her heart is clearly with Alyssa and this troubles Gail. Tina’s unhappiness will have substance, will have something real behind it.

She looks at Gail with a pained expression, like a parent about to explain some unpleasant reality to a child. And then Gail knows, the answer presents itself, like a twig snapping after a few moments of pressure.

It’s the only thing that makes sense.

* * *

Tina doesn’t bother with a preamble. She doesn’t try to explain. She doesn’t mention Bobby. As soon as they’re alone—the kids safely planted in front of the television in the living room, Michael out running errands—she says it, confirming what Gail already knows.

“I met someone.”

Gail looks over at her daughter-in-law. Tina’s hands are trembling and she steadies them by pressing them down, fingers splayed apart, on the tabletop. Gail reaches over and squeezes Tina’s shoulder.

“Good for you, Tina, I’m happy for you.”

Not a total lie, but it sounds false to Gail even as she says it. She
is
happy. But she’s sad too. No sense denying it. She was afraid this would happen even as she hoped it might. She thinks there should be a better word for this feeling.
Bittersweet
doesn’t capture it. This is different. This is happiness and sadness entwined, flowing through you at the same time. Gail is sure there is an Italian word for this feeling, some word that Maria, her own mother-in-law, would have known. Some little word that sounds exactly the way she feels.

Tina has more to say, but Gail doesn’t want her to say anything. She doesn’t want her to make promises she might not keep. Already she can feel distance growing between them. Already they are protecting themselves, protecting each other, from what is to come. Tina starts gathering herself to speak. The shrill, insistent sounds of Saturday morning cartoons blare in from the living room.

“Tina, I know how much you loved my son.”

Tina hugs her and Gail notices that she
is
thinner. She gained weight after Bobby was killed. Her small frame didn’t carry it well. All the chub went straight to her face and her rear, made her look heavier than she was. But she’s slimmed back down; she nearly has the figure she had when Gail first met her, when Tina was a teenager. Even Michael noticed. She should have known. She feels a protective flutter in her throat.

Bobby Jr. walks into the kitchen.

“Mom, can I have a doughnut?”

Tina is sniffling and Gail dries her eyes with her shirtsleeve. Bobby’s eyes shine with embarrassment. Gail summons a smile. The poor kid has spent half his life walking into kitchens full of crying women.

“Everything’s okay, Bob-a-loo. We’re just crying about a silly thing.”

“Were you talking about my dad?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“Come here, sweetie.”

Tina slides around the table, opens her arms for a hug. Bobby looks down at his shoes.

He needs a male influence. This is probably a good thing. Tina’s mothering him too much, trying to shelter him from the world that took his father. It’s a fine line. You want to protect your kids, but you can’t go too far. If you shield them from everything, they never learn to fend for themselves. Michael used to worry that she mothered Bobby too much. Her baby.

“He’ll be like a turtle without a shell, the world will bring a hard boot down on him and he won’t know what to do.”

It was a hard boot all right.

Alyssa shuffles into the kitchen, eyes still glued to her phone. She looks up, assesses the situation, and frowns.

“Why is everyone crying?”

It is a complaint, disguised as a question.

* * *

After Tina and the kids leave, Gail sits at the table for a long time, processing this turn of events. She has questions. Of course she has questions. Loads of them. She can feel them piling up even as she tries not to think of them. Her mind starts spinning with possibilities, each of them unpleasant to contemplate. She sees Tina in a wedding gown, the kids on vacation at Disney World with a new dad, the whole family moving to San Francisco.

Yes, she has questions. She has more questions than she can bear.

But the answers, the important ones, are already there. He’s a nice guy and he’s good with the kids. And it’s serious, has to be. Tina has dated a few other guys over the years. Gail knows this even if nothing was ever explicitly discussed. Tina never said anything because it wasn’t ever serious enough to warrant a conversation. The fact of the conversation means it’s serious. The fact that it’s serious means he’s a nice guy and good with the kids. She could noodle this stuff out if she tried.

So, he’s nice and good with the kids and it’s serious. She’ll learn the details soon enough. No sense worrying about things you can’t control.

She knows this is right—that she shouldn’t worry—but she knows that she will. The questions will not vanish. The answers will not satisfy her. She can feel the happiness of this ebbing, the sadness rising, morphing into loneliness. She needs to do something, anything, to distract herself. She needs some relief from her own thoughts.

She stands, looks out the window. It’s still gray out, one of those ominous half days, a bridge between darknesses. She puts on a jacket, feels an anticipatory shiver run from the back of her shoulders down to her thighs.

Maybe later she’ll look up that Italian word that Maria would have used. Maybe she’ll just make up her own word.

Before she leaves, she looks back down at her to-do list. The final, solitary dash sits abandoned on the paper. She picks up the pen and gives the dash a companion.

It reads:

-Tell Bobby.

T
ina sets her lips in a gentle circle and applies a bright red lipstick. She inspects her reflection in the bathroom mirror, unsure whether the color suits her. Or the occasion. Even the simplest decisions—what lipstick to wear, hair up or down—are vexing her tonight. She hasn’t felt like this since high school: the fluttering stomach, the anticipation that borders on dread, the head turned to sieve, unable to hold a single thought.

You haven’t dated since high school,
her reflection reminds her.
Not really.

Only this isn’t high school, when emotions were the only thing that mattered. More than school, more than family, more than friends. When you could feel something so deeply, so purely, without any comprehension of its true capacities. To change you, your life, the things that matter. To bring new souls into existence.

No, this isn’t high school. The real world infringes, insists; a dozen anxieties jostle for priority in her head. The kids, Bobby, Wade, tonight, tomorrow morning, waking in a different bed, another man beside her, Gail judging her. She knows this last image is crazy, but she can’t shake it. It keeps showing up at the end of a sprint through half thoughts. She is lying in Wade’s bed and he is in the bathroom. She can see one of his pale naked buttocks atop a long, spindly leg, but the bathroom door bisects him, hiding half of his body. The tap is running; she can hear it. The sheets on his bed are lime green. Tina lies on top of them, luxuriantly naked, and Gail watches her from a doorway, shaking her head and frowning.

The whole thing is ridiculous. She’s never been to his apartment, never seen his bare ass. And she prays to God that he doesn’t have lime green sheets.

This isn’t high school. Why then can she hear Stephanie shouting at her from the bedroom? Twenty years pass and you wind up in the same place, more or less. In your bathroom talking about guys. She hears Stephanie call Vinny an asshole a few times, but she’s not processing it. It’s noise floating around her.

She’s thought about calling Gail half a dozen times, even flipped open her cell phone once to do it. She told her about Wade this morning, but it felt like she held something back. What is she supposed to say, though?

Gail, in case I wasn’t clear this morning, I’m planning on sleeping with this other man who I told you about. Tonight. Okay with you? Fine, we’re clear then. Okay, I’ll let you know how it goes.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Stephanie has crept into the bathroom while she was preoccupied.

“Jesus Christ. You scared the shit out of me.”

“So you weren’t listening to me?”

“Sorry, Steph. I’m just distracted.” She points to her lips. “Too much?”

“Not if you’re gonna give him a blow job on the way to the restaurant.”

“So yes, definitely too much.”

She starts blotting off the lipstick.

“Might be a good thing. Ease the sexual tension right off the bat. That way you can both enjoy your dinner. Well, maybe not you, depending.”

Stephanie does this, pushes the conversation toward sex, tries to make Tina uncomfortable. She’s done it since high school. The smallest details of Stephanie’s sex life with Vinny are conveyed to Tina, who long ago learned not to share in kind. Instead, she employs a simple trick to swat away intrusive questions: redirection. Stephanie is always eager to talk about herself.

“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.

“Give me one.”

“Really?”

“If not tonight, when?”

She plucks a cigarette from the pack, lets Steph light it for her. She sucks the smoke deep into her lungs and exhales with relish. It’s her first cigarette in three years.

“So what’s gonna happen with you and Tommy?”

Stephanie sits back down on the toilet.

“Nothing. Just having a little fun. How’s the cigarette?”

“Bliss.”

Bobby used to hate that she smoked. He used to nag her about it, even though she was only a social smoker, barely a pack a week.

It’s the worst thing you can do, he’d say, it’s poison.

Is that so? What about beer, Bobby? Or shots of Jameson?

It’s different. They don’t destroy your lungs, they don’t give you cancer.

So she stopped smoking in front of him. She only smoked around certain friends, Steph or Amy Rizzo or Maggie Terrio or when she visited her sister in Jersey. She’d smoke a single cigarette when she got home from work. Walk into the backyard with a Marlboro Light and a glass of wine, let the day’s bullshit float away in tiny puffs of smoke. Whenever they were out for drinks, she’d sneak away from him, find a compatriot to tuck outside with, even before the asshole of a mayor banned smoking in bars. Bobby hated it, especially when her partner in crime was a guy, even his own brother Franky. The only thing that ever made him jealous.

He’d pull her aside half an hour later, when their friends were up at the bar.

What the fuck were you two talking about? A little drunk, the slurring coming on, the belligerence along for the ride.

What?

Outside. I saw you laughing outside with Stevey.

Fucking Christ, Bobby. Relax.

Tipsy herself, glad to see Bobby the jealous one. For once.

You’d love it, T. I’m sure you’d love it if I snuck outside with Amy and you saw us falling over laughing. Yeah, you’d fucking love it if I was outside with Amy. Or Steph.

She’s pretty sure Bobby said that: Or Steph. He must have said that at some point. They fought about it more than once. He knew what buttons to push, even if he only pushed them when he was drunk.

When she got pregnant, she quit. Easy, no fuss. She didn’t have cravings, even after Alyssa was born. Not really. Here or there. After a few drinks, sure. Sometimes when she was driving. But for the most part, it was easy enough. Cold turkey.

One night, right before she got pregnant with Bobby Jr., they were all out at the Leaf: Bobby; Franky; Bobby’s father, Michael; Amy and Timmy; maybe even Steph; a few other guys. A big crew. A few tables pushed together in the side room. They were celebrating something, she can’t remember what. Gail was watching Alyssa. Michael was drunk and jovial, telling stories about the boys growing up. Everyone feeling pretty good, backslaps and smiles. Franky smoking like a chimney, right next to Bobby.

“Jesus Christ, Franky.”

“What?”