Little Mercies

The deceased boy rested in his casket. The guests paying their respects all thought the same thing: Sam’s face looked wrong. And they were right. It looked nothing like him. All his life, Sam had looked possessed. Black beady eyes that were half here and half there. Tics and scratching. It wasn’t just the drugs. He couldn’t stand it in his own skin. He was always high. Sammy was a real honest to goodness addict. And real addicts mean it. No one knew the boy either. Not his mother. Not his sister. No one. Save one. It was almost like—no, it was exactly like—he had been all demon all along.

It was a “Serenity White” casket made of Styrofoam, but the funeral director had covered it in quilted white blankets. A single white rose had been placed between his hands. A purple and teal ribbon was pinned on his lapel. Many of the guests wore them too. There was also a collection jar for Project Semicolon sitting on the table by the guestbook. For a boy of just twenty-one it seemed criminal to Father Tom that no one had sprung for a proper casket. But the whole family didn’t have a thousand dollars between them. And under the circumstances you really couldn’t blame them. But in their own way, each one of them blamed themselves.

The wake took place early evening on Good Friday. The sun was out and the air was crisp. But the cold of the winter still clung to the bones of the earth like a ghost that had not yet moved on.

Jenny was Sammy’s mom. She stood with her back to the room and laughed. It was an unbelieving laugh. Everyone was scared to talk to her. The smoke from the Newports she was chain smoking all day clung to her clothes and even her skin. She was thinking that the curse had been lifted. She was thinking that Sam had left her alone. That she was the one who had placed the curse on him to start with. Over a life that seemed to last ten lifetimes, she finally learned to live with the curse—but Sammy never could, Sammy never could have—that she knew. And part of her was glad he didn’t have to bear it any longer. She laughed again. And tears spilled down her cheeks. But, if she was honest, she was crying for her loss more than his. That was her little boy. Jane had her own family now. It had just been her and Sammy for as long as she could remember. And now it was just her. And nothing was going to fix that right again. Not now. Not ever.

Jenny had tried rehab. She had tried getting high with Sammy. She had tried bringing him to church. She had tried laser therapy. Her and Christy had staged so many interventions that Sammy got nervous anytime he saw more than three people in one room. And yet, it hurt Jenny that she wasn’t good enough to hold him to this world. But not as bad as it hurt Christy. Not even close.

Christy was the only one to dress up. She bought the dress at Antonia’s in North Bergen, poor thing. It was an embellished soft scoop corset gown with flowers down the skirt and lining. It cost her everything. Her curly chestnut hair draped her bony shoulders. She breathed heavily and stood, chest tight, neck tensed, jaw clenched and trembling. Father Tom hugged her. Jenny cried on her shoulder. Jane told her she looked beautiful. Three different male friends of Sammy’s offered her a smoke, but she didn’t want to ruin the dress or her makeup—this was as close as she was going to get to a wedding—and she wanted to look perfect for her man—she could at least give him that.

The thing I’ve noticed is that the suffering ones are always afforded their little mercies. All of Sammy’s mercies came in one package—they all came in Christy. She was every sweet thing he’d ever known. And all he ever did his whole life was let her down. She loved him anyway. But it broke him in so many pieces every time she cried—her tears were like jackhammers to his heart. If Sammy was looking down, he’d have to look away. He wouldn’t have been able to bear the sight of her.

Father Tom was out on the back porch with Bobby, the funeral director, and the two of them were passing a flask of bourbon back and forth.

“Sticks and bones, Tommy…” Bob started, as the fire froze in his chest. “After I drained the blood, his face sunk in like a deflated balloon. I had to inject so much filler. You couldn’t believe how much.”

“This place is a dump,” Tom said with vacant eyes welling with contempt. He moved his hand from left to right surveying the silhouette of P-town. “A hellhole, really.” Tommy took a long draught. But he’d been drunk for hours. He inhaled the diesel air, saturated with the chemical fumes from too many collision repair shops. Tommy had wanted to be a motivational speaker when he was young. He’d once sold fourteen tickets for a speech, but he’d booked an entire meeting room at the Hilton and had to spend months working night security at an auto lot to pay it back. He wasn’t bad in front of a crowd. He just couldn’t draw one. Then or now. People came to Christ the Redeemer to escape condemnation. And their despair varied from week to week, as did their attendance.

“At the rate people die in this town, I’m going to be a millionaire,” Bobby said.

“And yet, with all this tragedy, I’m lucky if I fill half the pews.”

“That’s only because the other half are working.”

The two men laughed and Tommy held the flask to his lips and laughed some more.

“It’s funny Bobby. I remember baptizing that little boy. Have we really gotten that old already?”

“Every week now I’m burying the child of someone after burying one of their parents years before – and every time I think the same thing.”

“My father told me once – it’s later than you think – I guess it is, after all, later, for all of us.”

And the two men went on like that, like they did nearly every week or every other week, going on a decade now. I’ve heard the whole routine enough times to know. Our lives are like that, really. The same situations and the same conversations. And very little changes, until everything does.

“With an alcoholic father who left and a junkie mother who stayed, it’s a wonder he made it this long,” Tommy said.

But just at that moment, Jenny stood at the door, her shaky hands fumbling to light a Newport. She walked past them out to the edge of the porch and lit the butt without saying a word. It was a quarter past seven and the sun was burning orange on the horizon, like the sparks of a butt being stamped out before it was finished. The two men went back inside and left the woman alone with her grief.

Christy stood over the coffin for the third time but still couldn’t bring herself to look down and kiss him goodbye. She hadn’t been asleep that night when he came in, dead sober, lay down next to her for hours, just watching her, and then finally kissed her on the forehead and got up and left.

Jane put her hand on Christy’s shoulder, startling her. “It’s only me babe. It’s gonna be okay.”

Christy looked back over her shoulder. She told herself not to cry. She told herself to be strong. She told herself what Sammy had said that day, the day she’d moved in with him—the first time she’d ever had a place to call home. “You belong somewhere now. You belong with me.” It was the first time she’d ever felt that she belonged.

It had been after she’d left the halfway house. After that, she’d had nowhere to go. The plan had been to get drunk, score some drugs, and maybe check out permanently. Christy didn’t plan anything out beyond the first beer. But in that moment, she had lost any remaining hope that things could ever turn around. It had been December. Christmas lights and glitz everywhere. Even in P-town the streetlights were lit up. The storefronts were decorated. And it was a bitterly cold night. About twenty-eight degrees. So, Christy figured, the hell with it. If I have to sleep outside or at a bus stop, maybe I’ll just make a real night of it, spend my last dollar and go out with a bang. But all that changed.

She ran into Sammy at Clancy’s Tap House. He was sitting at the bar sipping on pints of beer, stoned to high heaven. But when she walked in, he sobered up on a dime.

“Are you okay,” he’d asked.

“Not really,” she’d said. But, at that moment, she had felt fine, really fine, and safe, for the first time that she could remember. Because of the way he looked at her – he looked at her like she was the most important person in the whole world.

“Well, you’re gonna be okay now. You hear me?” Sammy had said.

“Yes sir,” she had said.

And the two of them had laughed for a long time.

That had been a good night. One of the best nights.

It wasn’t an hour later they were back at Sammy’s place, and she asked sheepishly if it was alright if she stayed.

“You don’t have anywhere else to go do you?” he’d asked. “Wait, don’t answer that. I already know. You stay here from now on. That’s that. It’s settled.”

She had only had the courage to nod her head. And then she jumped into his arms and hugged him as tightly as she possibly could. And she never left. Not once.

That spring Sammy overdosed for the second time since they were living together. Christy had found him with foam coming out of his mouth, legs twitching, with his lips blue and his face a pasty white. She had almost lost him.

In the hospital the following day she had hit him as hard as she could.

“What’s that for?” Sammy asked. “You never heard not to kick a man when he’s down?”

“You are gonna leave me. You selfish bastard—I hate you.”

“No. You don’t get to say that. You don’t ever get to say that.”

“Why not? Why don’t I?”

“Because I don’t say it, but I hate it here. Always have. I hate my skin. I hate P-town. I hate every goddamn thing on this earth. Except two things. You and mom. And you are the one I love most.”

“Then you have to stay—if you love me, you have to stay.”

“I’m making you a promise right here and now.”

“Make it.”

“I’m going to stay until I absolutely know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that the two of you are gonna be alright—but, you can’t ask me for more or ask me to stay forever—you understand—you can’t.”

“I am. I am asking you to.”

“But you can’t you see. If you love me. Because that would be cruel. Every single day for me is an unbearable torture. It is all darkness. You are the only light.”

Christy had kissed him and accepted it. Not because she was okay with it. But because sometimes, in P-town you can’t muster the courage to demand what you really want or need—and you have to just be thankful for getting even a little part of it—and you usually didn’t even get that. Christy wanted to convince him. She swore that she would get him to promise more the next time. She obsessed over what to say. But there never was a next time.

One day in the cold of the winter, during a heavy snowstorm, Sammy and Jenny were making split pea soup in the kitchen in a big twenty-quart pot. The smell of the salted ham hock, chipped from the bone, the thyme and bay leaves in the broth, and the residue of bitter yellow onion and sweet carrot rounded out the savory pallet.

They were talking about addiction, bluntly, as they sometimes did.

“The difference,” he said, “between you and me,” pausing to chop celery, “is that you are disappointed with what life gave you, so you use to forget, and you hate being an addict, which makes you hate yourself for not being stronger—but you don’t hate life itself.”

“And…”

“I hate life. Not just being born in P-town or watching everyone around me struggle and die. I hate life itself. I use to get away. Not wanting it to be better. Just wanting it over. But, I have to stay, if I can, for the ones I do love—in spite of how hateful life is for me.”

“You don’t mean that honey.”

“I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

That was the crux of it really. Jenny and Christy were both carefree spirits at heart, filled with love, and they had to endure everything they cherished always getting stamped out by this hard, indifferent world. Sammy was not a carefree spirit. He was an alien in a hostile realm, for whom the very weight of existence was torture.

After they made the large plastic leftover containers for the freezer, Sammy looked across the kitchen at Jenny singing as she did the dishes and knew that she was going to be all right. It had been a year and five months since she’d used. It was going to stick this time. The dark cloud had passed away from her at last. Now it was only Christy left.

That night Sammy and Christy had gone to Clancy’s Tap House. Christy was jumpy and giggly the way she got sometimes when it was just the two of them and nothing else was going on. It was a good night for her. Sammy had used in the bathroom before they left, but just a small amount. An amount that she wouldn’t notice if he was careful. An amount that made the white noise drain off and the cruel weight lift a little, but not enough to really help. An amount that he could still emote and be there for her and listen, but just enough that it wouldn’t cut him open and expose the raw tissue.

“When we get married,” Christy said, “I am going to buy you the most beautiful tuxedo you have ever seen, true black, with shimmering lapels—you will look like something out of a movie.”

“I don’t even own a suit. I’ve only ever worn one at funerals,” Sammy said.

“Just once,” Christy said. “I want to see you look handsome and light, like an angel. Perfect and polished. A gem with all the dirt wiped off. Nothing but sparkles reflecting back.”

“It’s a sweet thought love,” Sammy said.

He looked at her a long time with that half smile. She was looking forward to so many things. The hopelessness had almost broken. He studied her carefully.

Later that night, after Christy had fallen asleep in his arms on the couch, Sammy’s mind took hold of him. He went in the closet to get his coat for a walk and saw something unexpected there, on a hanger, something that confirmed everything.

His mind played for him the awful truth of a life where he stayed. Missed holidays. A never-ending parade of broken promises. An incomprehensible amount of tears. He saw the half smile and the rosy cheeks that made Christy “sparkle” lose their shine beneath the wreckage of him. He saw a baby boy crying in its crib. He saw police sirens blaring with their punctuating blues and reds. Strange men pulling him away from the only things of any consequence for their own protection. He saw them hungry, with unpaid bills and unfed stomachs. Then, in that moment, Sammy knew why his father had left. He also knew, for the first time, on that night, that Christy would be okay.

It wasn’t long after that day. It wasn’t long at all.

Father Tom stood before the handful of guests. The only ones Sammy had loved and touched. The net sum of all his work.

“A reading from Psalm 34:18, ‘The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit…’ My friends, we mourn the passing of one that has left us so young, but as I look out today, I can say with confidence that what Sammy left behind—that the love he poured out on each one of you—was not in vain. And the day will come when you will be united with Sammy again, but this time in another world, a world where there are no tears…”

And Father Tom went on for what seemed like a very long time. It seemed that way to Christy anyway. But she couldn’t hear a word that he said. Her heart was pounding in her chest like a drum and her temples pulsed with electric waves of heat.

It was almost time for their final kiss. She thought about that night at Clancy’s Tap House. She had so badly wanted to tell him that she had bought the tuxedo. The most beautiful tuxedo in the whole world. She had only wished he would have known. She was sure it would have saved him. Little did Christy know, he did know, and it never could have.

Sammy almost seemed to smile; he looked so handsome in that tuxedo as she kissed his lips one last time.