Little Mercies. Heather Gudenkauf

daughter. She looks up guiltily at me from beneath a forelock of dark hair damply pasted against her forehead.

      “It’s nearly midnight, turn that thing off,” I chide, holding out my hand for the game. She presses a button and suddenly we’re plunged into darkness but for the star-shaped night-light plugged into the receptacle next to her bed.

      “I can’t sleep though,” she protests in her gravelly voice.

      “Want me to rub your back?” I ask

      “Too hot,” she answers grumpily.

      “Sing you a song?”

      “Um, no,” she says shortly. I’m not surprised at this response. My singing is a long-running family joke. Still, I hum a few bars of a song that is Leah’s current favorite and wiggle my hips. Even in the dark I can tell that she is rolling her eyes.

      “How about a cold washcloth for your forehead and another fan brought up here?”

      “I guess,” she says with a jaw-breaking yawn.

      By the time I go downstairs, lug up the oscillating fan, wet a washcloth beneath the cold-water faucet and return to Leah’s bedroom, she is fast asleep. I slap the washcloth on the back of my own sweaty neck, plug in the fan and position it so that the marginally cooler air is focused squarely on her sleeping form. I lean over and lightly press my lips to Leah’s cheek and she doesn’t stir. I tiptoe across the hall to Lucas’s bedroom, stoop down to kiss his forehead and he waves a hand as if trying to swat away a pesky mosquito.

      I pull the washcloth from my neck, its coolness already absorbed into my hot skin, and I turn to see my husband’s silhouette in the doorway, a sleepy Avery in his arms. “Ellen, everything okay?” Adam whispers.

      I put a finger to my lips and silently cross the bedroom, step out into the hall and pull the door shut behind me. “I’m okay, it’s too hot for anyone to sleep.” I lay a hand on his arm and brush Avery’s hair from her forehead and she smiles sleepily up at me.

      “Thanks for coming to the game tonight,” he says as we move through the hallway toward Avery’s room.

      “Oh, I like watching the boys play. They’re really improving.” Adam is the coach for East High School boys’ varsity baseball team.

      “Yeah, they are,” Adam says proudly.

      Though I’ve been a social worker for nearly fifteen years, the job weighs heavily on my chest. I’ve thought about quitting, thought about getting a job where I wouldn’t hear the voice of a client shouting in my ear or weeping for the children I’ve taken away from them. One where I wouldn’t hear the cries of children in my sleep. But of course I don’t. I know my job is important, I know I help children.

      Adam presses Avery into my arms and, as I hold my daughter, I kiss the fine, silky strands of the dark hair that tops her head. She wraps her plump arms around my neck, and her even, steady heartbeat is a metronome, calming the galloping thud against my chest. I push away all thoughts of the children I work with and focus on the one in my arms and the two that are sound asleep just a few steps away. Despite the craziness of life, the long hours, the endless housework, the sleepless nights, for now all is right in my world and for this I am so grateful.

       Chapter 4

      Jenny sat on the wobbly chair at the bus station, her red backpack at her feet. Inside it held all her worldly possessions: some clothing, a few toy figurines, a cheap plastic wallet and an old birthday card from her grandmother. Closing her eyes, she could almost imagine the swaying porch swing they would have once they were settled into a house in their new town. Though it was nearly midnight and her eyes felt scratchy and heavy, Jenny felt a bubbling anticipation that came with something new. She rocked back and forth in the lopsided chair, punctuated with a satisfying thunk each time the chair legs hit the floor, until the old woman sitting next to her started making impatient clucking sounds with her tongue. Jenny reluctantly opened her eyes to find the tsking woman wearing a red-and-pink-flowered sundress and a scowl. The woman was frowning so deeply at Jenny that the corners of her down-turned mouth seemed to have collapsed into her thick neck.

      Jenny pretended not to notice and rocked the chair a few more times for good measure and then hopped to her feet to join her father, who was deep in conversation with a young woman with midnight-black hair, an intricate tattoo that crept up the woman’s arm and a nose ring. Jenny was accustomed to this, her father striking up conversations with strange women. Jenny always knew when he was going to make his move. He would run his fingers through his shaggy, brown hair shot through with copper and rub his palms against his cheeks as if checking the length of his stubble, and there was always stubble. Women loved her father. At least for a while anyway. He was almost movie-star handsome, but not quite, which made people like him all the more. His nose was a bit too prominent and slightly off center. His skin was tanned and deeply trenched lines scored his forehead and the corners of his blue eyes, making him appear much older than his thirty years. In the past six months a parade of women had come in and out of their lives. There was the checkout girl at the grocery store that always slid a pack of gum into their bag for Jenny. “My treat,” she said, not even looking at Jenny, keeping her smile brightly focused on Billy. There was the bank teller, the lady who decorated cakes at the bakery and even the nurse at the emergency room, who spent more time chatting with Billy than attending to the three-inch gash that Jenny got when she ran into the metal frame of the opened screen door. The nurse, a lively redhead with the pretty face and the curves Jenny knew her father favored, pressed a wad of gauze into Jenny’s fingers. “Hold that against your head, sweetie. The doctor will be here in a few minutes to stitch you up,” the nurse told her while glancing surreptitiously at her father’s ringless left hand.

      “Stitches?” Jenny squawked.

      “Won’t hurt a bit,” the nurse assured her. “We’re good here.” The nurse was right—it was, for the most part, painless. Instead of stitches, the doctor applied a thin layer of medical glue to her forehead, fusing the wound together. The worst part was lying on her back waiting for the glue to dry while her father stood on one side of the examination table and the nurse on the other, making plans to meet after her shift was over.

      Then there was Jenny’s favorite friend-girl (she refused to call them his girlfriends), Connie, who he dated last winter. She was a curvy woman who always wore a sweet, dimpled smile and her curly brown hair pulled back in a high ponytail. Connie had long, perfectly shaped fingernails that she had manicured every single Thursday after she got off work from her job at a hardware store. Holding Connie’s small, feminine hand in his, Jenny’s father used to laugh that such pretty fingers could handle a hammer much better than he ever could. Sometimes Connie would come from the salon with her nail tips painted a crisp white; sometimes they were lacquered neon-green or painted in a shimmery blue. Jenny’s favorite was when she came from the salon and there would be tiny jewels inset into each of her nails. One day, to Jenny’s surprise, when Jenny had finally gotten used to finding Connie blow-drying her hair in the apartment’s small bathroom or coming home from school to the smell of the turtle brownies that Connie was baking, Connie invited Jenny to go with her to the salon. Jenny picked out a pearly lilac-purple shade and minuscule silver gems that formed a butterfly on the nail of each of her thumbs.

      By the time the last of the sparkling jewels fell away, the polish chipped and peeling, Connie was gone. Jenny demanded that her father tell her what had happened. Did they have an argument? Say you’re sorry. Jenny asked her father if he was drinking again. You said you weren’t going to do that anymore! Her father winced as if Jenny had slapped him when she asked him if Connie left them because of his drinking. He insisted that wasn’t the case and Jenny knew that he was telling the truth. He got up each morning, walked her to school, went off to work as a painter for an area contractor, came home each night by six. Connie would often join them for supper and they would watch TV, even play board games together. And even though his hands shook sometimes and once in a while his eyes flashed desperately for a brief moment, he didn’t act like he was drinking. Then what was it?