The Shape of Mercy

by Susan Meissner

  “Can you wait a moment?” the woman asked. She put me on hold before I could answer but was back within a minute.

  “Miss Boyles would like to know if you can come for an interview on Thursday. Five o’clock?”

  “Uh. Well, yes.”

  “Okay. You have a pen? I give you the address.”

  I didn’t recognize the street. It sounded like the address of a residence rather than an office. Abigail’s home.

  “Just ring the bell at the gate. I will let you in.”

  A gated home. Like my parents’.

  “Okay?”

  “Wait,” I said. “Can I ask what I would be transcribing?”

  The woman hesitated. I heard her cover the phone with her hand. She was consulting someone. “A diary. It’s three hundred years old. It belonged to an ancestor of Miss Boyles who lived during the Salem witch trials.”

  The connection to Mercy Hayworth was immediate, and I hadn’t even heard her name yet. My interest instantly soared. A diary. Literature of the most intimate kind, amazingly personal and revealing. Penned during the Salem witch trials and kept for three centuries. Somehow I knew it was the diary of a woman, not a man. A woman with secrets. This resonated within me more than anything else: a diary was where secrets were recorded.

  I wanted this job. I had secrets of my own.

  “Okay?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” I said. Yes, yes, yes.

  “Okay.” She hung up.

  I stared at the address in my hand for a moment, then went to my computer and googled it. I studied the map and realized Abigail lived in an older, stately neighborhood where the moneyed families of early Santa Barbara built their mansions.

  I wasn’t sure how Dad would react to my taking on a part-time job that had nothing to do with Durough enterprises, but I knew he would approve of this: my prospective employer lived the kind of life he was familiar with and trusted.

  I waited until after I knew my parents had eaten dinner to call my dad and tell him he no longer needed to deposit the spending allowance in my checking account. I practiced saying it a couple times before I called so I would sound calm and confident, like it was the most natural thing in the world to earn my own money.

  He took the news better than he had taken my other decisions that made no sense to him, like choosing Santa Barbara instead of Stanford and majoring in something other than economics. Dad was slightly amused, a bit perturbed, but subtly proud of me for doing—albeit without grace—what all Duroughs of the past had done: made things happen instead of let things happen.

  I wanted to earn my own money. I was making a business decision. He liked it.

  My father does not control by domination; he controls by persuasion. There is a huge difference. I have never felt ignorant or inferior around him, only the pull to conform. It’s a very strong pull. My father possesses a keen ability to make people do what he wants them to do. Couple that with his good looks, calm demeanor, and disarming confidence, and it’s no wonder I tremble at the thought of disagreeing with him. I’d won the battle of where to get my undergraduate degree, but I doubted he would concede anything else.

  When I told him about the job, I could almost hear him thinking, This will be good for Lauren. She’ll come to see success lies on just one road. The Durough road.

  He wanted to know the details.

  “So it’s hourly?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?” he asked, even though we both knew it didn’t matter.

  “Eleven,” I said as confidently as I could. I knew his gardener’s assistant made more plucking snails out of the Durough flower beds.

  “And you’ll be doing what, exactly?”

  “Transcribing a diary.”

  “Well, that’s different. What kind of diary? Whose is it?”

  “It belonged to someone who lived three hundred years ago. I think it’ll be very interesting.”

  He paused for a moment. “You know you could do consulting work for me online for a few hours a week, Lauren. I told you that a long time ago.”

  Yes, I knew. “I just want to try doing something on my own.”

  “Well, if you really want to do this, I won’t tell you not to.”

  I refrained from telling him I was not asking for his permission.

  “And if you’re set on earning your own spending money, I can appreciate that. I can even get behind that,” he continued.

  I cringed. The words “spending money” put my experiment instantly and squarely into perspective. It was clear to us both that I was still wholly dependent on his wealth for everything else. He didn’t mean to sound condescending. He meant to remind me of the big world that awaited me—his world. My little project was just that: little.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Good luck with your interview.”

  My cheeks felt hot. “Yep.”

  “Mom wants to say hello.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let us know how this works out, okay? I’d like to hear more about it sometime.”

  “Sure. Bye.”

  I heard the phone being passed from one hand to another. I raised my free hand to my face to rub away the warm hues of humiliation.

  “Lauren! You’re getting a job?” My mother didn’t sound alarmed or annoyed. Just surprised.

  “Just a few hours a week, Mom. And I may not even get the job. The interview’s tomorrow.”

  “Well, I’m sure if you’re being interviewed, you’ll get it,” she said, as only a mother can. Then, as if to prove she had no doubt I would get the job if I wanted it, she moved on. She reminded me that my Uncle Loring’s fiftieth birthday party had been moved up a week. She’d told me several days earlier that the two-day affair was now being held in two weeks instead of three because Uncle Loring had to go to Singapore. I told her I’d be there.

  I don’t think Mom thought I had forgotten. She just wanted to remind me where I belonged.

  Three

  My first impression of Abigail Boyles was that she was unbreakable. Despite her delicate, eighty-three-year-old body with its transparent skin and her glistening, over-watered eyes, she stood straight and stiff-necked when we met on her threshold, with not a hint of frailty to her. A map of wrinkles hardened her face rather than softened it, as if the creases had been massaged into place by sleepless nights, hours of regret, and steady frowning. I knew in a moment she was a woman who had always been alone, yet this did not mean she hadn’t loved or been loved. There was an underlying sadness about her, though she smiled genuinely. A sadness that made her unyielding rather than vulnerable.

  I was let into Abigail’s massive Tudor-style home by Esperanza, the woman who had answered my phone call two days before. She introduced herself as Miss Boyles’s housekeeper. Abigail stood behind her, wearing lavender pants the same color as the stationery she had used for her ad. She stood so close she could’ve easily answered the door herself, and I wondered why she had shadowed her housekeeper to the door. I found out later she wanted to look past me to her circular driveway and see what kind of car I drove.

  I drive a BMW.

  When she spoke, Abigail’s voice was low, controlled, and carefully measured out. It seemed the voice of a younger woman. She extended her hand.

  “Abigail Boyles,” she said.

  “Lauren Durough.” I took her hand. It was cool and watery-soft, like she had just lifted it from a jar of formaldehyde. I let go as soon as it was polite to do so.

  “Esperanza, Miss Durough and I will meet in the library.” Abigail looked straight at me as she spoke.

  “Right this way.” Esperanza closed the front door behind me and motioned to a set of closed double doors on one side of the tiled entryway. I saw matching double doors on the other side, open to reveal a sitting room in maroon and cream. From the doorway I could see it was beautifully but sparsely decorated and looked as if it were never used. Ahead of me, an L-shaped staircase with paisley-carpeted steps led to the upper floor, and mo
re doors lay beyond the staircase at the end of the long hallway. One door was fully open, revealing large black-and-white floor tiles, flashes of chrome hanging from the ceiling, and countertops free of clutter. Afternoon sunlight fell on a bowl of strawberries sitting near the edge of an island topped with polished granite.

  Esperanza opened the double doors across from the sitting room, exposing a room that did not fit with the little I’d seen of the house. Abigail’s library was overly furnished, exploding with paintings, tiered candles, vases of flowers, pillows and cushions—and bursting with books. While the sitting room appeared purely decorative, the library looked as though Abigail spent every waking moment in it, surrounded on all sides by piles and stacks and cases of books.

  It was the first time in my life I’d been surrounded by books and felt uneasy. Only half of them were housed on shelves. The rest were loose, unfettered, poised as if to attack.

  “Please have a seat.” Abigail pointed to an armchair that sat among towers of pages stacked around it like scaffolding.

  I walked to the chair, sat down, and minded my ankles as if the books closest to me might nip at my feet. Abigail sat across from me in a similar chair, surrounded by Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, and Socrates. Esperanza closed the door and I immediately felt claustrophobic. Abigail smiled as if she knew and wanted to assure me I was safe.

  “So, what intrigues you about this job, Miss Durough?”

  I’d practiced the answer to a question like this after searching the Internet the night before, educating myself at midnight on how to nail a job interview. I was prepared to say the job called for an interesting blend of skills and abilities I happened to have, but what came out of my mouth were two unrehearsed words:

  “The diary.”

  Abigail’s smile deepened; she liked my answer. I mentally formed answers to the question Abigail would surely ask next. Why is that?

  But that’s not what she said.

  “You like secrets.”

  I colored. “I like autobiographies. I like seventeenth-century literature.”

  “Mmm.” She waited for more.

  “And I’m drawn to what a woman who lived three hundred years ago would write if she thought no one would ever see it.”

  Abigail nodded once. I satisfied her on this point and on another: I correctly guessed the diary belonged to a woman.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said.

  The nail-the-interview sites told me, when asked this question, to stick to details that matched the job’s requirements.

  “I’m an English major, an honors student, and I like to write fiction in my spare time. I love to read. I like Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, George MacDonald, some Hemingway, some Steinbeck. I’ve studied a wide variety of writers: Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Tolkien.”

  “A true fan of literature,” Abigail said like she was announcing it to the audience of books all around us, convincing them I could be trusted. Another point for me. “I think literature reveals more about us than history does.” Abigail settled back in her chair. I hadn’t realized she’d been sitting forward.

  She was right. I told her so.

  “You’ve chosen a very interesting focus for your major,” she said next.

  I didn’t know if that was a compliment. I said nothing.

  “I think Santa Barbara might be the only UC school to have an English concentration in Literature and Cultural Information,” she continued. “It’s a very interesting blend.”

  “UC Merced has something like it, I think.”

  “But you chose to come here.”

  “I liked the campus. And I would’ve missed the ocean.”

  “And I suppose Merced would have been a little far from home.” She cocked her head, as if gauging my response to her snooping. She had obviously looked up Palisades Point Academy and knew where it was, a stone’s throw from Malibu, situated in a gated haven where the wealthy laid their heads at night.

  I wondered for only a second if she’d figured out who my father was. Of course she had. My Duroughness kicked in.

  “Do you have any questions about where I grew up, Miss Boyles?” I kept my tone light, like hers.

  Her grin was wide and appreciative. “No, I don’t think I have any questions about that.”

  I waited.

  “How about if I tell you a little about me,” she said. “I’m eighty-three years old and I’m a retired librarian. My family is originally from Boston, but I’ve lived in this house since I was five. I’ve just one living relative in Maine, who surely expects to inherit my estate but is in for a surprise.” She looked at the wall of tomes on her left. “I’ve a mind to will him just the books, since I know he cannot wait to get this house and toss them all out.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve had the diary since I was thirteen,” she continued, turning back to face to me. “It’s been passed down through eight generations of my family, and it belonged to an ancestor of mine. Her name was Mercy Hayworth and she was my cousin, eight times removed. She lived in Salem in the late 1600s.”

  Abigail waited, letting the date and the town’s name coalesce in my mind with what I surely knew of colonial American history.

  “I would like for you to transcribe the diary for me,” she continued, “and edit it for clarity. I want the language to be readable for today’s audience, and I want it typed onto a computer disk. I’ll need help finding a way to have it bound, too. Do you prefer PC or a Mac?”

  “What?” I had the distinct feeling the interview was coming to a close.

  “PC or Mac. Do you have a preference?”

  In a half stutter I told her I had my own laptop.

  Abigail shook her head. “No. I’ll provide the computer. Do you have a preference? I will buy whichever one you prefer.”

  “Um, a Mac, I guess.”

  She nodded. “Do you think you can do this job for me, Miss Durough?”

  I couldn’t believe we were finished. Abigail had barely asked me about my qualifications. She had barely asked about anything. I didn’t even know why she wanted the diary transcribed. She didn’t appear to want it published.

  The words, “Just like that?” filled my mind, and as I thought them, they climbed out of my head and into my mouth.

  “I don’t see any reason not to hire you, Miss Durough. Do you?” Abigail grinned.

  “Yes. No. I mean, no, I don’t and yes, I’d like the job.”

  “Good. Which days can you come? I was hoping to have you three times a week for several hours at a time.”

  “I get out of class on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays at three thirty. I could come then.”

  “Excellent. You can have your dinner here with me on those days and work into the early evening hours, until seven or so. Will that work?”

  “Uh, yes. That’s fine.”

  She stood. “I’ll see you on Monday, then. Esperanza will give you the code for the gate so you don’t have to use the buzzer each time.”

  I stood as well. Abigail made no move to see me to the door. An awkward moment followed where we just stood and stared at each other.

  “Good-bye,” she said. Her voice was strangely kind.

  “Good-bye, Miss Boyles.”

  I took a step toward the library door and she called out to me.

  “Miss Durough, would you consider letting me call you Lauren? And you could call me Abigail. The formality of using our last names will drive me batty.”

  I smiled. “Sure. That would be fine.”

  “See you on Monday, then, Lauren.”

  “See you then.”

  I didn’t call her Abigail that day.

  I walked to the library doors and opened one of them. I looked back as I stepped through, not knowing if I should close the door or not. Abigail stood in her ocean of books, perfectly relaxed, watching me leave her.

  I closed the door behind me.

  When I got into my car, I called home. I knew Dad would
be on the golf course at five thirty on a Thursday and that I would get his voice mail.

  It took only seconds to leave a message telling him I got the job.

  Four

  Before I met Mercy on the pages of her diary, I dreamed of her. The night before my first day at Abigail’s, I dreamed of a woman wearing a dress like the one I wore in the Thanksgiving play in fourth grade. Dull wool skirt, muslin apron, and a white cap with puckered edges. She sat at a table, a candle burning beside her, writing. I knew she was Mercy, and I knew she was writing in her diary. She bent over a page, her hand flowing across the paper in swirls and slow flourishes as she spun the words with a feather quill. Her features were soft and unfocused in the dim candlelight, and she seemed deep in thought. I moved toward her and she heard me. Her head lifted and her eyes met mine. With the quill poised over the diary, she stared at me, her eyes kind but sad.

  She didn’t ask me who I was or what I was doing there. I wanted her to, but she didn’t.

  Instead, she looked past me. I turned my head and saw a woman in a chair in another part of the darkened room, sitting amid a pile of books, the titles of which I couldn’t read in the darkness. The woman was asleep.

  Abigail.

  I looked back at Mercy.

  She was gone. The diary was there and the burning candle, but the chair where she had been sitting was empty. The quill lay on the pages with the feather pointed toward me.

  Like an invitation to pick it up.

  The candle went out and I awoke.

  I felt alone, though Clarissa murmured in her sleep in the bed next to me. It took a while before I fell back asleep, and when I did, I dreamed of nothing.

  Abigail’s first question when I returned to her sad house surprised me. We settled at a sturdy wooden table in her suffocating library, and instead of asking if I wanted a cup of tea—I could see she had one—she asked if I talked to God.

  “You mean, do I pray?” I said. I might have stuttered.

  “What is prayer but talking to God?” She lifted a withered hand and flicked her wrist, as if to wave away a cartload of my naiveté.