Free Small Mercies by Eddie Joyce

a boy and a girl, with dirty-blond hair and the pinched faces of the frequently disciplined. The family moved in two years ago, after the Grassos moved to a retirement home in New Jersey.
    “The last stop,” Sal Grasso told them on the day they moved out. Michael laughed. Gail bit her lip so she wouldn’t. Sal’s wife, Carla, punched Sal’s shoulder.
    “Stop saying that.”
    “What?” he said, as one beefy hand rubbed his enormous gut and the other brought a cigarette to his mouth. “How long you think I got anyway, babe?”
    It was hard to argue with Sal. He was an obese, two-pack-a-day smoker charging hard on seventy, with two heart attacks in his rearview, possessed of a complete unwillingness to make any lifestyle changes at “this stage of the game,” as he put it.
    But the joke was on him after all. Three months after they moved, Carla was dead. A massive stroke. The one thing Sal had never counted on was outliving his wife, who was a decade younger and infinitely healthier. The last Gail had heard was that he’d moved out to Vegas to work as a blackjack dealer, something he always wanted to do. Go figure.
    The Grassos had been good neighbors: friendly, not too nosy, helped you in a pinch. Invited Gail and Michael over for drinks every year sometime around the holidays. They reciprocated with a barbecue once a summer. Close, but not too close.
    The Russians aren’t as friendly. Michael gave up after inviting Dmitri to the Leaf one night. Dmitri said he didn’t drink, didn’t even thank Michael for the offer. A little brusque in his decline. That was enough for Michael.
    “Even the fucking kids are unfriendly.”
    Gail feels differently. These things take time. She was a stranger here once. A newcomer in a place with a distaste for newcomers. That newcomer sat at this same table, waiting for Maria.
    She runs her free hand over the surface of the table. They’ve had the table since they moved in: a gift from Maria and Enzo. The oak bears the nicks, bruises, and stains of forty years. So many words—angry, joyous, sad, hopeful—have passed over it. This table has heard more secrets than a confessional box. So much news. Even Tina’s nugget from yesterday.
    What was it that Maria used to say?
    The news of the world passes between women in kitchens.
    Gail can’t remember the Italian words, only the lilt of Maria’s voice, the hand gestures and pauses, the wooden spoon used to punctuate the point. The real news of the world: births, deaths, sicknesses, affairs. Whenever Gail had a bit of news, she told Maria here in this kitchen. And vice versa. Gail had no daughters of her own, no special confidante to pass news along to. There were friends, of course, but it never felt the way it did with Maria.
    Until Tina. They’ve spent a good bit of the past ten years at this table: talking, crying, commiserating. Tina sat with her at this table on the night Franky was arrested. Two days after Christmas. No one had seen him since Thanksgiving, when he showed up drunk to Peter’s house. They didn’t have any details but Gail knew it was bad. Franky had called Michael and Michael had called the only lawyer he knew: Peter. There was nothing to do but wait. So Tina waited with Gail. Had a friend stay over to watch her own kids, sat here through a long, eerie night, holding Gail’s hand, both of them sneaking glances at the phone. It finally rang a little after six in the morning.
    Peter said that Franky was being held in the Tombs, would be arraigned later that morning, would probably be released later that day, but they might need to line up some money for bail. Peter had already hired a good criminal lawyer, someone who knew state courts, handled street crime.
    “What did he do, Peter?”
    “He beat the shit out of a cabby outside the ferry terminal in Manhattan. Broke his nose.”
    “Why? Why would he do that?”
    “He says the guy said something about you.”
    “About me?”
    Her stomach churned. Bile