Small Mercies

Small Mercies

Stories

Seven stories of ordinary people at the edge of something changing.

 

Contents

Housewarming

The Long Fare

Low Tide

The Understudy

Wire Transfer

The Last Guest

Static

 

Housewarming

The boxes were still labeled in Priya's handwriting from the old apartment — KITCHEN (fragile), BOOKS (heavy, ask for help), MISC (sorry) — and Dev had started to resent the word fragile a little, the way it showed up on nearly every box, as if she'd decided in advance that everything they owned was breakable and it was his job to prove her wrong.

They'd closed on the house in March. It was May now, and the only room that looked lived in was the kitchen, because Priya cooked when she was anxious, and she had been anxious since the inspection turned up knob-and-tube wiring they couldn't afford to fix yet.

"We should invite people," she said, elbow-deep in a box of spice jars. "A housewarming. Get everyone here before we let the boxes win."

Dev was on the floor of what would eventually be the nursery, though neither of them called it that out loud. He was assembling a bookshelf from a kit, and the instructions were entirely pictorial, which he found more insulting than helpful. "We haven't even unpacked."

"That's the point. Deadline. People are coming Saturday, so the boxes have to go somewhere."

He didn't answer right away, and she noticed, the way she noticed everything lately, like she was auditing him for signs of retreat. Three months ago he'd said maybe we wait on the baby thing until the house isn't a construction site, and she had not brought it up since, which was somehow worse than if she'd fought him on it.

"Saturday's fine," he said.

Fourteen people came. Dev's brother brought a plant that would be dead within a month, though everyone at the party would compliment it sincerely. Priya's college roommate brought wine and immediately asked to see the whole house, and Priya walked her through it room by room, gesturing at things that weren't finished yet — this will be the reading nook, this wall is coming down eventually, we haven't decided on the nursery — like a realtor selling a version of the house that existed only in her head.

Dev stayed in the kitchen refilling drinks. He liked the party better this way, at the edges of it, close enough to hear the shape of conversations without joining them. From the hallway he heard Priya say the word nursery again, easily, like she'd already decided, and something in his chest tightened the way it had at the inspection, the way it had every time a number came up that they didn't have.

His brother found him by the sink. "House is good," he said. "Good bones, right? That's what people say."

"That's what people say."

"You don't sound sure."

Dev looked at the dish towel in his hands, at the water stain shaped like Florida on the ceiling above the stove, at his brother's dead-in-a-month plant sitting on the counter like a bet someone had made on their future. "I keep thinking we bought this house for a family we don't have yet," he said. "Like we skipped a step."

His brother considered this with the seriousness of someone three beers in. "Or you bought it for the family you're going to have, and you're just early." He shrugged. "Houses don't know what year it is."

After everyone left, Priya found Dev standing in the nursery-that-wasn't, the bookshelf finally upright, empty, waiting for books that were still in a box marked heavy, ask for help. She stood in the doorway a while before he noticed her.

"You told Meghan this would be the nursery," he said. Not an accusation. Just a fact he wanted to put down between them and look at.

"I did."

"I'm not ready to call it that."

"I know." She came and sat on the floor next to him, in the sawdust and the plastic packaging from the shelf hardware. "I wasn't trying to decide it for you. I just — when Meghan asked what the room was for, nursery was the only word that made the room make sense. Everything else was just an empty room with good light."

Dev ran his thumb along the edge of a shelf, checking it for splinters out of habit. "What if it stays an empty room with good light for a while?"

"Then it's an empty room with good light," Priya said. "I can live with that. I just need to know we're deciding it together, and not that you decided already and forgot to tell me."

He looked at her — really looked, the way he hadn't since the boxes started multiplying — and understood that this was the actual conversation, the one underneath the wiring and the budget and the word fragile written fourteen times in her handwriting. Not whether they were ready. Whether they were still doing this, whatever this was, at the same time, in the same direction.

"I haven't decided anything," he said. "I've just been scared out loud, one box at a time."

Priya laughed, surprised into it, and leaned her head on his shoulder. Outside, someone's dog was barking at the dark.