Small Mercies (27 page)

Franky closes the car door, walks back up toward the crowd. Michael never got a chance to tell him about Tina.

“What should we do, Mikey?” asks Tiny.

Another set of sheets gets tossed into the air and the wind catches them, sending them flying past the car.

“Not sure, Tiny, but I think better on a bar stool.”

* * *

If Michael hears “A Holly, Jolly Christmas” one more time, he’s gonna put a fist through the jukebox. Old man Dunn, the drunk at the end of the bar—his only customer for the past forty-five minutes—has played it at least six times. He has half a mind to declare last call, kick Dunn out, and close up shop, even though it’s only midnight. It’s a Tuesday night, a week before Christmas; a late crowd is unlikely.

Then again, what’s waiting for him at home? A pissed-off wife and a cold bed. He and Gail haven’t spoken in months, haven’t slept together in who knows how long. He pours himself another draft, refills Dunn’s rocks glass. He takes a dollar from his tip cup, slides out from behind the bar, walks over to the jukebox. He’ll play his own goddamn songs.

The front door opens. Michael looks over, sees his father enter the bar. A light dusting of snow lies on the shoulders of Enzo’s coat. He takes his hat off, shakes it free of snow. He walks down to Michael, hugs him hello, kisses his cheek. Michael’s in shock; he’s never seen his father in a bar before. Enzo takes a stool at the far end of the room, away from the door. Michael retreats behind the bar, money still in his hand, confused and a little nervous. Eight months ago, he retired from the FDNY. Seven months ago, Enzo offered to sell him the shop at a very discounted price. They haven’t spoken since.

“Do you have any wine?” Enzo asks. His English has improved over the years, since Maria died.

“None that you’d like.”

Enzo looks at the shelves behind Michael, searching for something he might enjoy.

“Zambuca. Just a small glass.”

Michael pours him a drink, slides it across the bar. Enzo reaches for his wallet.

“On the house, Dad.”

Enzo raises his glass. Michael retrieves his mug, does the same.

“Alla salute.”

They drink. Enzo rubs his hands together, bites his lip. He takes another sip of his drink. He’s nervous as well, searching for the right words.

“It took a long time, but I understood the other thing. Fighting the fires. Good thing. Noble. But this”—he points down the bar at Dunn, who is slumped over, sleeping on crossed elbows—“this. I do not understand this.”

He reaches for his drink, downs the remainder. He looks at Michael, beseechingly, hoping for some explanation. When it’s clear that Michael isn’t going to say anything, Enzo continues.

“Tomorrow, I go to Italy. For a month. When I come back, I need an answer.”

He stands, picks his hat off the bar. He looks at Michael, holds his gaze.

“Whatever you chose, Michael, I love you. Your family, your wife, your boys.
La mia famiglia. La mia vita
.”

He reaches over, pats Michael’s hand. He walks out into the night, doesn’t look back. The sound of the front door closing momentarily wakes Dunn. Michael refills his mug, goes back around to the jukebox. He surveys his choices as an adolescent anger builds within him. He’s a grown man, being given a curfew like a teenager.

When I’m good and ready, he thinks. Not a moment before.

* * *

Tiny and Michael retreat back across the Island to the Leaf. The bar is packed, but Michael secures a table in the back for the two of them. The word has spread. The whole bar is buzzing with the news. Tommy Flanagan, just off his shift, comes over with a round of beers and the latest gossip.

“So what’s the word, Tommy?” Tiny asks.

“Heard the Feds shut it down. The guy who won last year was some Serbian lawyer. But he was in the middle of a divorce. So his wife told her lawyer that Devin Cody brought eight hundred thousand dollars to their house one night last year and the Serb lawyer hasn’t listed it anywhere in his assets. So her lawyer called the Feds. One thing leads to another.”

A guy from a neighboring table, wearing a blue hoodie, interjects. “The lawyer wasn’t Serbian. He was a Croat.”

“A Croat?” asks Tiny.

“You mean Croatian?” asks Michael.

“No, not Croatian. Fuck, Vinny, what was the lawyer again?” he asks the guy sitting across from him.

“Albanian,” says Vinny, before returning to his own conversation.

“That’s it, lawyer was Albanian, not Serbian.”

The guy turns back to his table.

“That’s bullshit,” whispers Tommy. “How the fuck would an Albanian even know about college basketball?”

“But what, a Serbian would?” asks Tiny.

“Yeah, sure, Wagner had those four Serbian guys a few years back. The big kid, what was his name?”

“They weren’t Serbs, Tommy. They were Croats,” Michael says. They all laugh.

* * *

The afternoon limps into the evening. The Leaf takes on the contradictory character of an Irish wake: somber but festive. A stream of refugees from Cody’s trickles in, mixing with some Paddy’s Day revelers. The place fills up with a menagerie of blue collar guys: firefighters, cops, construction workers, Local One electricians. After a while, the whole bar is glowing with the camaraderie of half-soused strangers killing time together. The tourney is in full swing, but most of the crowd isn’t even watching the games. Fresh rumors about the pool arrive with every soul who walks in the door.

A couple of mob guys tried to shake Devin down. Four ex-cops threatened to start a war with the mob guys. Someone called him in the middle of the night and threatened to kidnap his daughter. Some asshole actually reported the winnings on his tax return. Devin’s wife ran off with a nineteen-year-old and he’s heartbroken. Devin ran off with a nineteen-year-old and the early entry money. He left some of the money with a nun and she gambled it away.

Tiny and Michael order burgers. They eat them in silence, unwilling to yell to be heard over the dull roar of the bar. They watch the games, have another round of beers. At eight thirty, Tiny asks for the check.

“That’s it for me, Mikey,” Tiny announces. “Want a ride?”

He should go home. But it’s been a long day, a sad day, and he wants to put a shine on it. He’s never known when to call it a night, has always chased a good time, a few more laughs with the fellas.

“I’m gonna stay for a little bit.”

He walks Tiny out the back door to his car. They embrace.

“Florida, huh?”

“Someone told me Laura Gentile moved down there after her second husband died.”

“Never gonna happen.”

Tiny winks at him.

“Ye of little faith.”

When Tiny drives away, Michael walks around to the front of the bar. A crew of guys stands outside smoking. He bums a cigarette from a regular he knows. He hasn’t had a smoke in years, but the day is calling for it. He stands off a little to the side. A few entry sheets drift past; some guys must have brought their sheets back here before abandoning them.

The pool is done. Another thing that made the Island cozy is no more. Michael’s been putting in entries since the mid-eighties, back when the pool was a couple thousand if you won. The boys grew up with the pool. They all loved it, especially Bobby. All over the tristate area, the news will spread: on Wall Street, out to Jersey and Long Island, up to Connecticut. No more pool. It got too big, drew too much attention.

And now it’s gone.

He takes a few drags on the cigarette, drops it on the sidewalk, and steps on it. His head swims from the smoke.

It starts to drizzle, driving the smokers inside. Michael walks back into the bar. The crowd has thinned a bit and separated into pockets: the still raucous, the silently stewed, and the unsteady in between. Michael finds an open spot at the bar, next to Tommy Flanagan and a few other guys he knows. He puts a twenty on the bar and heads for the bathroom.

The bathroom is empty. Michael relieves himself of a day’s worth of beer. He goes to the sink, washes his hands. When he looks up, he sees his father staring back at him from behind the smudged mirror.

If you’d taken the shop, maybe Bobby would still be alive.

Not his father’s voice. His own.

His chest tightens. It feels as though his ribs are closing to protect his insides. His eyes water. He goes to one knee, a half kneel, his hands holding opposite ends of the sink. He’s having trouble breathing. Little whirling dots blur his vision. He feels faint.

The door to the bathroom opens. Michael scurries to his feet. The tap is still running. He leans down, spoons cold water onto his face, the back of his neck and his arms.

“You okay, pal?” the guy asks.

“I’m fine,” he answers. “Dropped a quarter.”

He usually wakes with the thought. Most days, it’s there, on the back of his eyelids, waiting for him somewhere between asleep and awake. It’s better to wake with it, to have the sadness already there, the thought already accepted and just go about his day. But today, the slippery bastard hid all day, attacked when he least expected it.

He washes his hands, walks back out to the bar. He takes a long pull on his beer, waves the bartender over.

“Jameson,” he says. “A double.”

* * *

Enzo pours out two glasses of wine, slides one over to Michael. Gray hair sneaks up out of his shirt and down out of his nose and ears. He smiles.

“
Alla salute
.”

Michael takes a sip.

“Listen, Dad. Tomorrow night is Bobby’s last high school basketball game. It would mean a lot to him if you came. Would mean a lot to me.”

“Of course. I’ll be there.”

They sit in silence for a bit.

“Something else, Michael?”

Three months have passed since Enzo walked into the Leaf, gave him a deadline. He has not been a good man these past months. Not a good husband, not a good father, not a good son. He has been living in a fugue, angry for reasons he still doesn’t understand. But he is a humbled soul now. His hands start shaking. The words pour out.

“I was wrong, Dad. I was wrong, I was a jerk and I’m sorry. I had some kinda stupid midlife crisis, but I’m ready now. I have the money. I’m not a firefighter anymore, I have to accept that. I want something to pass along to my boys. I want the shop.”

Enzo rubs a finger over a drop of spilled wine. He considers his son.

“It’s okay, Michael. Is better this way. I sell the shop and then, when I go, you use the money, use it how you want it.”

“No, Pop,” he says, an unexpected urgency taking hold of him. “You don’t understand. I want the shop. I really do. I’ll buy it. We can talk price. I know I made you wait, so I can pay whatever you want, well, maybe not whatever you want, but we can make it work. I’m sure—”

Enzo raises a hand. Michael stops talking. He feels panicky, an only child’s overdue realization of his own selfishness. Enzo gulps down his wine, puts the empty glass on the table. His eyes are sinking moons.

“Is too late, Michael. Too late. Enzo Annunziata bought the shop. We closed last week.”

* * *

It is late when Michael leaves the Leaf. He is drunker than he’s been in a good long while. The rain has given the street a sheen. Wads of wet paper—more entry sheets—line the gutter. He starts to walk home. The streets are empty, most of the houses are dark. The only sound is rain hitting pavement. By the time he gets home, he’s soaked.

Gail is in a deep sleep on the couch. A library book is draped open across her chest. He lifts the book from her chest and saves the page with a mass card, the way she does. He kisses her forehead gently, trying not to wake her. He’s too unsteady to risk guiding her up the stairs.

He walks upstairs, stands outside Bobby’s room. He closes his eyes, listens at the door, hears nothing.

He walks into the bathroom, takes off his wet clothes. He tosses them over the shower rod, spreads them so they’ll dry. He walks to the sink. He runs the tap, splashes some cold water onto his face. He looks at his reflection.

He sees an old man who’s had too much to drink. An old man who didn’t follow his father. An old man whose sons followed him: one into a different life, one into the bars, one into the flames. He exhales, wipes his face with a towel, takes a last look in the mirror.

He sees an old man, cold and tired and ready for his bed.

F
riday is clear, blustery. Gail spends the morning cleaning the house in advance of Sunday’s party and the early afternoon halfheartedly watching the second day of games of the NCAA tournament. The news has spread like wildfire, putting the whole Island in a funereal state. Gail has gotten four calls herself, Michael another half dozen. No more pool. At noon, Michael says he’s feeling squirrelly, gonna go for a walk, which means the Leaf. She wants to ask about Franky, how he behaved yesterday, but she doesn’t. There’s enough bad news for one morning.

No more pool. Bobby would have been devastated. He would have been sitting here miserable, probably commiserating with Franky. Still watching the games of course, but miserable. She gets an idea: she’ll call Franky, invite him over.
They
can commiserate. And she can tell him about Tina in person. Easier to pass along news like that with a firm hand on the shoulder, a steely gaze in the eyes. Easier to say what needs to be said. To tell him that he can be angry about this, upset about this, but that he can’t be either of those things on Sunday. He has to behave, and if he can’t, he shouldn’t bother coming at all, which, God help her, is what she’s hoping happens.

She picks up the phone, dials his house. Straight to voice mail. She leaves a message, casual and nonchalant, asking him to call back. She’s still holding the phone when she gets another idea. It’s been two days and she can’t quite shake the defeated look on Peter’s face. Defeated by what? She thinks she knows, but she isn’t sure. She glances at the clock. Not even three. Peter is definitely still at work. She calls his house. Lindsay answers on the second ring. Her voice is neutral.

“Hello?”

“Lindsay, it’s Gail. How are you?”

“I’m fine, Gail. How are you?”

“Hanging in there. Is Peter around? I wanted to tell him about the Cody’s pool. It’s a silly thing, but I thought he’d want to know.”

“He isn’t here. He’s probably at work.”

Probably?
A little sarcasm.

“Of course, of course. Getting senile. Sorry. I don’t want to bother him at work. Just have him call me when he gets home.”

Gail waits for a response. When it comes, Lindsay’s voice is sharp but unsteady.

“He isn’t here, Gail. Do you understand what I mean?”

Gail knows what Peter did.

“I think I do.”

“Good. Well then, I’ll talk to you soon.”

Gail’s eyes start to water. Two women separated by a phone line. Each on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And still, they can’t connect.

“Lindsay,” she says.

“What?”

She almost breaks down, blurts it all out. About Tina, Wade, needing to tell Franky and Bobby and not having told them, even about Maria and Enzo and how she named Bobby and her mother and father and even about the stupid fucking pool. She almost says all the things she would normally say to Tina.

But she can’t. This isn’t Tina. Too much water has passed between her and Lindsay. They’ve never had that kind of relationship and it’s too late to start now. A desperate feeling seizes her. Sunday can’t be just Tina and Wade and her and Michael and Franky. They need buffers.

“Will I see you and the kids on Sunday?”

Lindsay sighs.

“I’m not sure, Gail.”

“Please, Lindsay. It would mean the world to little Bobby.”

This isn’t fair, what she’s doing to Lindsay, but she can’t help it.

“We’ll try . . . okay, Gail? No promises.”

“Okay, thank you, Lindsay.”

“Good-bye, Gail.”

They hang up. Gail holds the phone, contemplates calling her oldest son. She dials the number, is about to call when she changes her mind. She puts the phone back in its cradle, wanders to the kitchen table, and sits down.

“Oh, Peter.”

She can see the guilt now, sprinkled throughout their interaction. She would not have guessed it. Peter doesn’t seem the type. Probably isn’t the type, not really. She knows her son. This wasn’t some casual fling, some meaningless rut. There was some heartbreak on his face as well.

“Peter, Peter.”

Certain things suddenly made sense, like Peter’s absence whenever Gail called the past few months. He wasn’t living at home. She couldn’t blame Lindsay for that. She would have done the same thing as a young wife.

And now?

She doesn’t know, she’s not so certain. These things happen, even in the soundest marriages between the best-intentioned people. Even when there’s love. A long-dormant guilt stirs in her stomach.

She was so angry. Seething. She has to remember that. She wanted to kill Michael, something every wife says.
I could kill him
. And she really could have. She couldn’t stand the sight of him. But memory does a disservice to anger. She can’t re-create the feeling. It wasn’t an explosion of temper, the face going hot and the heart rate jumping. That’s easy enough to summon. Christ, an unruly kid in class or an obnoxious driver leaning on the horn can conjure that feeling.

This was different. Two people sharing a bed and a life, growing distant. The rift feeding on the silence between them. These things happen, people fall into a rut, struggle to get out. Every marriage has its lulls. But then it went to another level. He made a decision, without her input, without consulting her. A decision about
their
lives, not just his. And he wouldn’t even do her the courtesy of explaining it. It was his fault. Even now she believes that.

Don’t try to understand everything your husband does. Sound advice.

But this was beyond anyone’s comprehension, not just hers.

* * *

She was thrilled when Michael retired. Twenty-five years served, a good pension and benefits secured. She wouldn’t have to worry anymore, wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night with the flames from a nightmare still dancing in her head. And the timing could not have been better. Enzo was ready to hang up his butcher’s smock, ready to hand a profitable business over to his only son. The place practically ran itself. The same four people had worked at the store forever. Enzo even had a younger butcher who did most of the blood and guts work these days.

The young butcher’s name? Enzo.

Only on Staten Island.

A few weeks after Michael retired, his father came over for Sunday dinner and laid out the proposed transition. He wanted to run the place through December, one last Christmas with his customers. In the new year, Michael would take over. Enzo wouldn’t interfere, wouldn’t stop in every day and look over his shoulder. It would be a clean break; he wouldn’t get involved unless Michael requested. He asked only that Michael keep on his employees.

As for a price, Enzo said, he was an old man who needed little. He’d saved more than he would ever need. But he didn’t believe in handing things over for nothing, so he wanted something, a token amount, enough for him to take a long trip back to Italy, spend a month in the village where he was born, another month in the village where Maria was born. Michael sat and listened, and when Enzo was done talking, he poured three glasses of wine and they toasted the future.

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.