Small Mercies (29 page)

The new Enzo strides out from the butcher’s station in the back, an easy grin on his granite face. His head is a failed experiment in human geometry: the crooked nose, the forehead with three sides, the lantern jaw that juts out farther on one side of his face. He wears his hair in a tidy flattop that only accentuates the misshapenness of his other features. His eyes are little black stones pasted on a quarry wall.

“Gail,” he booms, before coming around the counter, his arms open. He’s startled the old lady, who turns to him in shock. The teenager slips two peppers into the container while the old lady is distracted. Enzo stops and puts his hand gently on her shoulder.

“You’ve scared me, Enzo.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Avello. I’m sorry. I was excited to see my friend. Paul, the peppers are on the house and give Mrs. Avello a package of fresh mozzarella for her husband.”

“Thank you, Enzo.”

He glides past her toward Gail, a silent giggle on his face. He hugs Gail. He smells like the old Enzo. God, the things she misses.

“What’s going on, Gail?”

“Nothing at all. How’s by you?”

“Menzamenz. What can I get you? Usual?”

“I’m a predictable woman, Enzo.”

He laughs, slides back behind the counter. The old woman shuffles away.

“Take a break, Paul. I’ll take care of Mrs. Amendola.”

Over the years, Gail has noticed that she is Gail when he is on one side of the counter, Mrs. Amendola when he is on the other. She’s always liked Enzo, long before he bought the store that Michael didn’t want. She still likes him, even though he turned one store into four, made a small fortune on the other Enzo’s reputation. He’s shrewd and ambitious. Can’t fault him for that.

And respectful. Keeps the picture of Enzo on the wall, has never renovated or updated the original store. Gives her money every year for Bobby’s scholarship.

“How’s Michael?” he asks, his back turned.

“Good. Bummed about the pool.”

“I know. It’s crazy. Customers have been complaining all day. What a shame.”

“How’s Michelle doing? Hear back from colleges yet?”

He turns, eyes wide, proud father.

“Son of a gun, I forgot to tell you. Got into Cornell. Ain’t that a thing. My daughter in the Ivy League. Like Peter.”

“That’s great. Congratulations.”

“Hey, if she turns out halfway like Peter, you know? Hey, we’re happy. She’s happy, right? All that matters.”

“I’ll give you Peter’s number. She should call him. He’ll give her the lay of the land. He loved Cornell.”

“Would you? That would be great.”

He wraps the hero in white paper, puts it in a brown bag, stuffs some napkins inside, hands it over the counter. She reaches for her purse. He waves her away. She hasn’t paid for a sandwich in years.

“Your money’s no good here.”

“How you gonna pay for Cornell if you keep giving away sandwiches?”

He points a finger to the picture above him.

“Hey, you know. I owe. Your father-in-law. May he rest. I owe.”

The chime on the door rings again. Enzo’s eyes drift to the door, to new customers.

“Thanks, Enzo.”

“Take care, Mrs. A. Give my best to Michael.”

* * *

She sits in the car, in the parking lot, and opens the wrapper. She takes half the hero out and takes a bite. She does this sometimes, eats a sandwich in the car. She’s not sure why. Tina teases her, says she has a crush on Enzo, that she’s waiting for Enzo in the parking lot like a teenager.

She’s not one for crushes, not one of these women who pretend to pine for the good-looking cop or fireman (or butcher) in the house down the street. No, she’s not one for crushes. Not anymore.

She pulls a pepper out of the sandwich, eats it.

She hasn’t thought about him in years.

Danny McGinty. He was easy on the eyes, no doubt about that; a tall, dark Irish charmer with salt-and-pepper hair and the sturdy build of an ex-athlete whose vanity wouldn’t let him go entirely to seed. Always a nice smell—cream and wood—hanging from him. Some of the other mothers feigned weakness in the knees when he passed. He made a lot of money and his wife was a high-holy bitch; that was the gossip.

Gail had never paid him much mind, just the odd
hello
or
good-bye
or
nice game
or
how were your holidays
? If anything, she found him a little off-putting; he seemed pretty pleased with himself. If she wasn’t so angry at Michael, nothing would have happened, no matter how good-looking or charming Danny was. She was furious, though. Her anger was palpable and Danny must have sensed it. Some men have that sense. They can sense discord or wanderlust or boredom or anger. Danny had that sense. She thought it was something special, a real connection between them.

An empty space beside her, filled in by fate. She thought that Danny had been sent to her, that his appearance at that specific moment in time—when things between her and Michael were so bad—was a sign of some sort.

She couldn’t conceive that it was calculated.

* * *

The same six parents sat together at every game: Paul and Dana Baddio, John and Mary Keegan, Gail, and Danny. Bobby was the starting center (and, as Coach Whelan had promised, the team captain). Vinny Baddio was the starting point guard, Pat Keegan the starting shooting guard. Danny’s son, Kevin, never played. Their sons were the only seniors on the team, except for Terry Kovak, whose father was doing a two-year bit in the federal pen for commercial bribery and whose mother was trying to hold down the fort in his absence.

Gail could have sat alone or with Nancy Duggan, who she knew from church and whose son Matt was the only sophomore on the squad, but she didn’t. Nancy Duggan was tough to take, always going on and on about Matt getting a basketball scholarship, like the kid was gonna end up in the NBA. Matt was a very good player—sophomores rarely made the varsity—but this was Staten Island, not Brooklyn or the Bronx, and Nancy Duggan needed to get a fucking grip. And as for sitting alone, well, she didn’t feel like sitting alone. So she sat with the Baddios and the Keegans and Danny. And she and Danny sat next to each other because neither of their spouses attended the games. Simple as that.

Danny knew the game, knew it well. Had played college ball at Fordham, according to John Keegan. Was some helluva player, back in the day. When Gail watched him striding across the gym or taking the bleachers two at a time with his long legs, she could see it, see the young Danny, lithe and lean, leaping in his short shorts. He came to the games straight from his job, something on Wall Street, the only man in the gym in a suit. His breath was always fresh, smelled like peppermint. He chewed gum incessantly, offered a stick to Gail at the start of each game, but she was too nervous to do anything but bite her fingernails and watch the action, uncertain exactly what she should be watching.

The team wasn’t supposed to be any good. A rebuilding year, if such a thing existed in high school. Last year’s team had been one of the best on the Island, laden with seniors and blessed with some size. This year’s team was green: mostly juniors new to varsity ball, a handful of inexperienced seniors, and the precocious sophomore, Matt Duggan. Worse still, they had almost no size at all. At six four, Bobby was the team’s only legitimate big man, the only player capable of mixing it up with the big boys from the North Shore. He played the whole game, never seemed to leave the court. She knew that he’d improved, but his role on the team was a bit mystifying. He rarely touched the ball on offense, spent most of the game under the baskets, jockeying for position so he could corral the ball and then swiftly give it to a teammate.

Danny assured her that Bobby’s role was important, even vital.

“He’s doing all the little things, setting screens, getting rebounds, diving for loose balls. Plus, he has to guard the other team’s best post player, who usually has a few inches on him. And he’s scoring ten, twelve points a game, without demanding the ball. Putbacks and layups. It’s easy to notice Matt because he’s scoring and Vinny’s got the ball in his hands most of the game, but the reason they’re winning is Bobby.”

And they were winning. Not every game, but more than anyone had expected. They played hard, they didn’t back down. Danny’s instruction helped Gail enjoy the games more.

“Watch his footwork, Gail. See how he helped, came over to pick up Matt’s man, altered that shot?”

“See how he spun off that guy to get that rebound?”

She started to appreciate the finer points of her son’s play. He was unselfish, dedicated to the team, and indefatigable. His relentlessness frustrated his opponents, drove them to commit silly fouls. He was tough too. Not afraid to mix it up. He was such an easygoing kid off the court, it surprised Gail that he had a mean streak. He stood up for his teammates, without hesitation. One night, a burly black kid on Port Richmond knocked Vinny to the ground with an elbow to the head. A dirty play, the whole gym gasped. And there was Bobby, right in the kid’s face, not backing down, even though he was a good forty pounds lighter. Some shoving back and forth before the refs broke it up. She reached over, instinctively, to grab Michael’s knee, say something like “That’s your son,” but it was Danny’s knee that she found. He looked at her.

“You okay?”

She pulled her hand away.

“Yes, I’m sorry. His father would’ve been proud.”

Danny nodded.

“Gotta stand up for your teammates.”

He looked down between his knees.

“Where is Michael anyway?”

She exhaled. She lifted her pinky to her mouth and gnawed gently on the tip.

“Good question.”

She knew the answer. He was at the Leaf. Every Tuesday and every Friday. Behind the stick, not watching his son play basketball. Not watching the final high school season that any of their boys would ever play. Not sitting next to her. Whenever she thought about it, she got so angry that her stomach clenched. He’d ruined so much already. Bobby’s games were the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal time. She wouldn’t let him ruin this.

She’d been wrong about Danny. He was nice. Lovely, actually. A little cocky, maybe, but hey, a guy with his looks and his money could have been far worse. Besides, he had his sadnesses, she could tell. A sullen son. A wife who didn’t come to any games. What kind of mother didn’t come to her own son’s games?

She knew that answer too. A selfish jerk. Someone so caught up in his own bullshit that he didn’t notice that his son loved this game. Loved it fiercely. Never mind that he was pretty darn good at it too.

You could say what you wanted about Danny, but he was at every game and his son never played, not unless it was an absolute blowout. It had to be hard for him that his son wasn’t very good at a game he’d excelled at. A game that he loved as much as Bobby did, she could tell, by the gleam in his eye when he explained a 1-3-1 zone or a pick and roll.

He told her as much, told her that basketball had been good to him. Got him a scholarship to Fordham, kept him out of Vietnam. Through basketball, he met a guy who worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The guy took a shine to him, offered him a job. He had his own company now, had made more money than he ever could have imagined. He didn’t say it in a bragging way, said it like he’d been the right combination of lucky and good.

He told her other things too. That he was raised in Far Rockaway, the youngest of six children, the boy his father kept trying for, God knows why, because Danny spent his childhood trying to avoid his father’s drunken rages. That he gave up drinking himself when he was in his early thirties. That he liked it a little too much, didn’t want to become his father. He didn’t elucidate, didn’t need to, not with Gail.

“A good-looking Irishman who doesn’t drink and has lots of money? Where do I sign up?”

Out on the floor, a whistle blew, louder than usual. Gail half expected the ref to point up in the stands at her.

Flirting, Amendola #40, flirting with a married man.

Her cheeks turned red. She’d crossed a line. She resolved not to do it again, no matter what.

* * *

The holidays. A pause in the season. The older boys came home. She and Michael temporarily broke their silence, acted civil in front of the boys, fooled no one. The whole family decorated the tree joylessly, quickly, eager to be away from one another. Gail couldn’t even listen to Christmas songs; they seemed to be written for people living different lives entirely.

Michael gave no explanation for Enzo’s absence at Christmas; the boys barely noticed. Gail tried to go see him, but the shop was closed, the house empty. He didn’t answer the phone. She asked Michael, a little concerned.

“He’s in Italy,” he said, his voice cold and sharp.

She usually loved the holidays: a week off from school, the whole family back together. But that year was dreadful. The boys, Bobby included, spent as little time in the house as possible, and who could blame them? She was miserable and Michael was gruff. The whole house reeked of unhappiness. After the first few days, they dropped the illusion of normalcy and went back to silent glares.

She missed Bobby’s games, missed basketball, missed Danny too. She knew that was a bad sign, a dangerous one, but she was too angry to care. She spent New Year’s Eve alone, on the couch, making her way through two bottles of Chianti and watching the ball drop in Times Square. She woke up the next morning, still on the couch, a single resolution in her fuzzy head:

Flirt with Danny as much as humanly possible.

* * *

The first game back and Danny was late. Worse still, Nancy Duggan slid into Danny’s normal spot at Gail’s side, spent the first quarter chewing Gail’s ear off about how Coach Whelan was misusing her son, playing him at small forward when it was clear that he should be the point guard. Never mind that the Baddios—whose son
was
the point guard—were sitting right in front of her, well within earshot. Never mind that the team’s record was 8 and 3, a fair bit better than anyone had expected. Never mind that Matt Duggan had struggled through the first half of the season, looking overwhelmed and skittish most of the time.