The Shape of Mercy

by Susan Meissner

  Raul turned to look at me. “Were you going to say something?”

  “No.” My voice was barely above a whisper. I collected my thoughts and composure. I needed to reclaim the room as something lovely, not morbid. I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Perhaps you and Cole can bring your dad here sometime so he can see it.”

  Raul smiled. “My father passed away three years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Now there’s an apology you really don’t have to give.”

  “But I am. I’m sorry he’s gone.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Raul moved past me toward the door and put his hand on the doorknob.

  I took a step toward the nearest bookshelf and reached for Robinson Crusoe. I withdrew it and thrust it toward Raul. “Did you want to borrow this?”

  Raul looked at the weathered copy. It was more than a hundred years old.

  “I don’t need to read that copy.” He laughed.

  “I know you don’t need to, but would you like to?”

  He looked at the book and then at me, and I think he may have looked at the spot on the floor where the tea had spilled.

  “Maybe next time.” Raul opened the door and left. I heard his footsteps in the hall and then on the stairs as he took them two at a time.

  I stood there with Robinson Crusoe in my hand, looking at the empty doorway for a full minute before I reshelved the book.

  I took the croissant and what was left of my tea and went next door to the Writing Room instead. I sat at my little wicker table with its glass tabletop, sipped my tea, and looked at my black-and-white prints of Paris. The flying buttresses at Notre Dame. The Latona Fountain at the palace at Versailles. The Eiffel Tower at sunset. The sloping lawns at the Château de Sceaux.

  There wasn’t a person in any of the pictures. I had chosen these prints myself and had always found them pleasurable to look at. I really hadn’t noticed before that the photographs were empty of people. Paris landmarks without so much as a retreating figure in the background. Not one living, breathing soul.

  I stared at the photographs I loved so much, alone in my Writing Room, until my father came looking for me.

  My cousins were heading back to Stanford. It was time to say good-bye.

  I grabbed my empty mug, the uneaten croissant, and the sodden napkin and started to follow Dad down the stairs. But I turned back, stepped into the little library, and reached for Robinson Crusoe. I tucked it under my arm and closed the door behind me.

  I came back to Santa Barbara from Uncle Loring’s party with a sizable headache, a slightly bruised ego, and a hundred-year-old copy of Robinson Crusoe. The first two made my transcription work tedious the first afternoon back at Abigail’s. I had to ask Esperanza for Tylenol an hour into my work. Abigail was attending the opening of a library up the coast, fortunately, so I didn’t have to explain my moodiness. The pressure in my head seemed to expand, despite the Tylenol, the moment I read in the diary that the spectacle in Salem had begun.

  Everything was about to change for Mercy.

  And she didn’t even know it.

  Twelve

  5 February 1692

  Goody Trumball, who lives the next farm over, came today to help me press apples for cider. She and my mother were especially good friends. Goody Trumball came to the Village as a new bride fifteen years ago, and my mother was the first to befriend her. Mama let Goody Trumball cry without shunning her when she was sad for the home she left in Topsfield. And then, added to this woe, poor Goody Trumball could not give birth to a live child for many years. Four of them died. I remember two of these dreadful occurrences. I wasn’t there in the birthing room either time; I wasn’t there at the Trumball cottage at all. But twice I was awake when Mama came home from the Trumballs’ to tell my papa that another dead child had been laid in Goody Trumball’s arms.

  Mama spent day after day with Goody Trumball, sitting with her as she wept. She brought me along to tend to the Trumballs’ fire and bake bread and do the washing. I did all those things, but I also listened to my mother whisper to Goody Trumball not to give way to despair. Goody Trumball was grateful for my mother’s condolences, but I remember her saying once that my mama did not know how it was to bring a dead child into the world. I stopped my sweeping when I heard her say this. In a hushed voice—I almost could not hear her—my mother told Goody Trumball she was wrong Before my brother Thomas was born, and when I was three, my mother gave birth to a daughter who never took a breath. My sister was born pink and unable to breathe. She turned blue and then gray and then she died. This was a year before the Trumballs moved to the homestead next to ours. My mother knew how it was.

  Then one summer my mother and Goody Trumball both gave birth to babies that lived. Thomas was born in July, and Goody Trumball’s first son, Charles, was born in August. Goody Trumball gave birth to another son the following year. Those were happy times. Mama and Goody Trumball spun wool and talked of Village news, and I had the little lads all about me as we played on the floor by the fire. Mama and Goody Trumball talked of having more children, hoped of them, but none came.

  Thomas and my mother fell victim to the pox when Thomas was four. They suffered for days, and I was not allowed in the cottage to tend to them. Papa sent me to Maine so I would not also fall ill. I hated him for it. Hate is a terrible word, a terrible passion. My hate was like my own pox. I wanted to be with my mama and Thomas, and Papa forbade it even when he knew they were dying. It was a long time before I understood that Papa did what he did to save me. I do not like to think of the day Mama and Thomas died, both within an hour. I do not like to think of that year at all.

  Since that horrible time, Goody Trumball has taken an interest in me and seems keen on letting me know I can come to her with womanly concerns. She thinks it quite odd that I write stories, but she likes watching me write. I showed her how to write her name with a stick in the dirt. Her name is Patience, but she has none when it comes to forming her letters.

  As we pressed the apples today, Goody Trumball told me Elizabeth Hubbard is also afflicted with the strange fits. That makes four girls.

  I asked Goody Trumball if she thought the girls have brain fever.

  She said no one knows what ails them.

  I did not want to talk about the afflicted girls anymore. I asked Goody Trumball what she thought of John Peter Collier. She smiled at me and said she thought he was quite handsome.

  Back in Santa Barbara, I sat back in my chair and leaned my head against the padded frame. The February 5 entry had been long and tedious to transcribe. Mercy had scrunched her letters close together, no doubt to conserve the paper in her diary, but it made reading her ancient words difficult. The ink was blotchy in places. It was easy to imagine she had cried as she wrote about losing her mother and little brother.

  Abigail had left the library at some point while I was working, but as I stretched in my chair, I noticed she had returned and stood near me. Her eyes rested on the computer, where Mercy’s three-hundred-year-old thoughts lay across the flat screen in Times New Roman font. Abigail wasn’t close enough to read them. At least, I didn’t think she could read them. Her eyes weren’t focused on the words themselves, just their illuminated presence.

  Abigail knew the diary. She knew when I missed a thought or flubbed a sentence, so I knew she’d read the diary before, many times. But I never saw Abigail read it.

  She saw I was looking at her. “Esperanza has dinner for us on the patio,” she said placidly. “Hope you don’t mind eating outside.”

  I saved the file and stood up. “No. Not at all.”

  Abigail turned without a word, and I followed her out of the room.

  We stepped into the entryway, and as we headed toward the dining room and the expansive set of french doors that led to the patio, I noticed that the doors to the sitting room were closed.

  Abigail was silent as we moved through the hall and dining room and out onto the flagstone patio. Esperanza was f
illing water goblets when we reached the iron and glass table. A slice of lemon and several raspberries floated among the perfectly round globes of ice in our glasses. Abigail motioned to one of the place settings with her head. My invitation to sit. She then took the chair opposite.

  “Spinach salad with cherries, balsamic vinegar, and gorgonzola,” Esperanza said, placing a salad plate in front of me.

  I thanked her. She set a plate in front of Abigail and then disappeared through a doorway that led back into the kitchen.

  Abigail picked up her napkin. “It’s such a lovely evening.” She said this as if she were speaking to the evening itself, complimenting it on its beauty.

  I said yes, it was.

  “Would you say grace tonight, Lauren?”

  “Um. Sure.” I rumbled through a casual prayer of thanks for the meal and a generic blessing upon our families. Not nearly as eloquent as Abigail’s rote table graces, but she had caught me off guard.

  When I opened my eyes I saw that Abigail was smirking.

  “What?” I asked, slightly embarrassed.

  “You pray to God as if you are old chums.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was amused, envious, or aghast.

  “Is that a criticism?” I plunged my fork into my salad.

  “No. A warning, my dear.” Abigail picked up her fork and knife and sliced a tender spinach leaf in two.

  I held my fork in midair. “A warning?”

  “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.” She slipped her fork into her mouth and began to chew.

  My fork was still suspended a few inches from my lips. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Get hurt how?”

  She finished chewing, stared at me for a moment, and then gently lifted her shoulders. “Never mind.”

  But I did mind. “What do you mean?”

  Abigail pursed her lips and sliced another spinach leaf in two. She said nothing.

  It dawned on me that Abigail was telling me something about herself, not about me. Not even about God. After spending nearly a month with her, I was finally beginning to understand that this was how I would discover who she was and why the diary mattered so much to her—via scattered moments at her dinner table.

  Deep down I knew she meant having a casual relationship with power could be dangerous. I’d just missed an opportunity to peel back one of her layers. Instead of saying, “Get hurt how?” I should have said what my Dad would have said had he been at Abigail’s table.

  Tell me.

  I wondered if it was too late to say it anyway.

  Abigail opened her mouth. “How was your uncle’s birthday celebration?”

  It was too late.

  “It was a nice party.” I slid my fork into my mouth, wiser.

  “That bad?”

  I finished chewing. “No. Not that bad. Just not my kind of thing.”

  Abigail reached for her water glass. “And what is your kind of thing?”

  I thought for a moment. “I guess I prefer smaller crowds. Less activity. Less booze. Less food, less bling.”

  “Bling?”

  “Flashy jewelry. Diamonds. Stuff like that.”

  Abigail smiled. “Stuff like that.”

  I didn’t think Abigail used the word “stuff” very often, but I was pretty sure she knew what I was talking about. I told her so.

  “Excess alarms you,” she said.

  “Annoys me,” I corrected her.

  She tipped her head. “I wonder why that is so?” But she didn’t wait for my answer. “You didn’t see some of your high school friends while you were home?”

  I worked a slippery cherry onto my fork. I had the strangest feeling Abigail knew I didn’t have any close friends from high school. Knew that I really didn’t have close friends at all. That I often preferred being alone to being with people. That I was a loner and always had been.

  Like her.

  The cherry tumbled back onto my plate. “No.”

  “Must have been a lonely few days, then.”

  I pursued the cherry across a layer of olive-oiled spinach. “My cousins were there.”

  And Raul.

  “And a couple of their friends,” I added, tossing Bria and the cell phone into the mix.

  “Oh. How many cousins do you have?” I sensed Abigail was thinking of her singing cousin Dorothea and that the memory was sweet.

  “Four. My dad has one younger brother and he has four sons. We’ve pretty much grown up together.”

  “Four sons,” Abigail’s voice was wistful, like so many others have been when Loring’s sons are mentioned.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re the only girl.”

  “Yes.”

  Abigail smiled. “I see now where your muscle comes from.”

  I was five four and barely weighed 110 pounds. “What?”

  “You’ll be a perfect CEO.” Abigail skewered a cherry in one deft movement.

  Words failed me. I wanted to argue with her, but I didn’t know where to start. The fact was, I would make a good CEO if I wanted to be one. I just stared at her.

  There was a second or two of silence while Abigail chewed. Then she looked at me. “You transcribed February 5 today?”

  “Yes.”

  “So sad what happened to Mercy’s mother and her little brother.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “It was just her after that. Just her and her father in that little cottage.”

  The equation she was drawing between me, her, and Mercy was plain.

  Three daughters. Three fathers. No sons.

  I saw nothing but the vaguest of similarities. Mere mathematics.

  Besides, Abigail and I didn’t grow up without our mothers like Mercy did.

  I decided to remind Abigail of this. “It would’ve been terribly hard on Mercy’s mother, had she been alive, to witness what became of her daughter. I imagine it was hard enough on her father.”

  Abigail gave me a strange look and then nodded.

  She had forgotten there were things about Mercy I didn’t yet know.

  Thirteen

  14 February 1692

  I have been out of ink and out of walnut shells to crush to make more. Papa has been to the harbor and back several times, and he brought me ink from Boston. It is very fine ink, as black as night. Papa seems pale and weak to me, but he insists fresh air and labor are making him well. I wonder if he would rather live at the harbor and not be constrained to travel so much when his brother’s ship is in port, but he will not leave this cottage where he loved my mother.

  Something odd occurred at the meetinghouse during the sermon today. Prudence Dawes would not stop staring at me. She would look at me and then John Peter and then me again. When our eyes met, she did not look away. I smiled at her. I did not know what else to do. She did not smile back. She just slowly turned her head to face the front.

  When the meeting was over, John Peter and his mother met Papa and me at the door as we walked outside. John Peter asked if we would care to sell them eggs every week as the family that had been selling eggs to them moved away. Papa said of course we could and that he could bring some over on the morrow. But John Peter said no, he would come get the eggs himself. Papa looked surprised. So did John Peter’s mother. So did I, I’m sure. One of John Peter’s sisters could surely come get eggs.

  But then Papa looked at me, and I think he knew why John Peter wanted to come get the eggs himself.

  As we made our way home, Papa did not say anything until we were almost at the cottage. And when he did speak, it was not to me, but to God, I think.

  “’Tis the way it should be,” he said.

  I think he will miss me when I marry someday. I think he sorrows at the thought of being alone in the cottage.

  18 February 1692

  John Peter was back again to fetch eggs. I daresay he asks his mother to cook eggs every night. He asked if he could read my stories sometime.

  “Who told you I write stories?” I said. I
could scarcely speak. I do not tell this to people. Papa has asked me not to, and it is not something I wish others to know.

  “You did,” was his answer, “when you were ten.”

  Eight years ago. I don’t remember telling him this, but he does.

  He held the basket and watched me gather eggs from our henhouse. I told him I could gather the eggs and hold his basket, that I do it all the time, but he said, “’Tis no trouble for me to hold the basket.”

  I brushed up against him when I stepped away from the roost. ’Twas not what I planned: I merely misjudged the distance between us. I am usually alone in the henhouse. I begged his pardon.

  He told me he is not free to pardon where no offense is taken. Then he reached out and laid a hand gently on my hair. I nearly toppled with the weight of that gentle touch. He pulled a piece of straw from my hair and tossed it to the ground.

  I looked down at his basket. It was full.

  “I shall have to get a bigger basket,” he said.

  “I shall have to get more chickens,” I said.

  We both laughed.

  My heart won’t be still.

  If I were in the meetinghouse for the sermon and the tithing man saw my pounding heart, he would whack it.

  20 February 1692

  I do not know what to make of the news Papa has brought home tonight. Dr. Griggs has made a diagnosis in the case of the afflicted girls: witchcraft. The doctor can come by no other explanation for their fits. Everything he knows to do, he has tried. Nothing has healed them. He has declared they must therefore be under the spell of a witch. When Papa told me this, my mind conjured a picture of a Mary Glover, even though I know not what she looks like. I saw her standing at a barrel of soaking laundry as men accused her of strangling the children, making them fly and bark like dogs. What was she thinking when they said these things? Could she have done what they said she did? Did she in truth do the Devil’s bidding? The thought makes me shiver.