The Shape of Mercy

by Susan Meissner

  “Want to get out of it?”

  Her eyes met mine. A curl of raw noodle was hooked over her bottom lip. “Why?”

  “So you can come home with me for the weekend.” I couldn’t look at her as I said it. I folded a bra in half and waited for her response. I was prepared for anything.

  “Really?”

  She sounded incredulous. I couldn’t tell if it was because she had no desire to come and didn’t know how to tell me or because she was shocked at being asked, since I had never asked her before. She was my roommate our freshman year too.

  “No big deal if you don’t want to come,” I said quickly.

  “I’d have to be back by six on Sunday. Can’t get out of that one. I work seven to midnight.”

  “So you’ll come?” Now I sounded incredulous.

  “If you want me to.”

  “I do. I want you to come.”

  “You’ve never asked me before.”

  “I know,” I said.

  We just looked at each other, wordless, for a few moments. We both knew we had absolutely nothing in common except an address. She had never asked me to her parents’ house, either. They lived 150 miles away in Bakersfield.

  “Sure. I’ll come.” Clarissa stood and brushed noodle fragments off her holey cutoffs. “What do I need to bring?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing special. A swimsuit if you want to use the pool. We can go out Saturday night if you want.”

  Clarissa snorted. “Yeah, but we don’t need any clothes for that, ’cause we’re strolling naked down Rodeo Drive. Forget the underwear!”

  I stuffed some pajamas in my bag. “Very funny.”

  She yanked a canvas tote off a bedpost and stuffed the oversized T-shirt she slept in inside it. “It would be funny. It’d be hilarious. You’d get your name on the society page.” She whipped her head around to look at me. “But you’ve probably been there lots of times!”

  “Yeah, sure. Lots of times.”

  Clarissa laughed and threw a pair of sequined flip-flops in her bag. “So do you have a butler and maid and everything?”

  “Yeah, and a shoeshine boy and a chauffeur and a scullery maid and a footman.”

  Clarissa smirked. “C’mon. What’ve you got?”

  “A couple gardeners.”

  “Really? That’s it?”

  “We have a housekeeper.” I sighed. Eleanor was more like a doting aunt.

  “Does she bring you your dinner on plates with those silver dome things on top?”

  I began to wonder if I’d made a mistake asking Clarissa to come. “Only on your birthday,” I quipped.

  “I always thought that would be cool, to have your dinner arrive all hidden away like that.” Clarissa tossed in her toothbrush and a makeup bag. “Well, I’m ready.”

  I didn’t tell her the dome lids weren’t there to make you feel special. They just kept your food warm.

  “Don’t you want to call to see if you can get off work?” I asked.

  “I can call from the road. I’ll say I’m sick. I could use a break.”

  “You’re going to call in sick?”

  “Yep. I am sick. Sick of working all the time.”

  Clarissa tossed the rest of her dry ramen noodles into the trash.

  I grabbed my bag and Robinson Crusoe, and we left.

  My parents’ house is situated on a hill shared by two Hollywood execs, one Academy Award winner, a Golden Globe nominee, and seven or eight people like my dad—men and women who shape the local economy and beyond.

  It’s Mediterranean in style with a red tile roof over its creamy beige vastness. Long, sloping lawns, plenty of palms and bougainvilleas, heavy oak doors everywhere you look, and wrought-iron gates and fencing.

  “I can’t believe you live here,” Clarissa breathed as we got out of the car.

  “It’s just a house, Clarissa.”

  “Yeah, right.” She grabbed her bag and flashed me a wicked smile. “God, I wish you had some brothers!”

  I reached for my own bag. “I’ve got four cousins. All boys.” I doubt she picked up on the edge to my voice.

  “Get out of town. Really?”

  “One of them is too young for you, Clarissa. He’s only seventeen.”

  “Who says that’s too young?” She winked at me.

  “I do,” I whispered under my breath.

  This is what money does to people.

  My parents were pleased to finally meet Clarissa. My mother wanted to know if we’d eaten breakfast, and as soon as she heard Clarissa and I had split a granola bar on the way down, she headed for the kitchen to ask Eleanor to make something for us.

  “I’m not really that hungry, Mom,” I called out to her.

  “I am!” Clarissa yelled and Mom smiled back at her.

  “So, what’s your major, Clarissa?” Dad asked as we followed him into the breakfast nook.

  “Political science. I want to work as a lobbyist in Washington. This country needs some fresh vision. It’s totally falling apart.”

  “Do you have anything against free trade?” Dad asked casually and I felt my heart miss a beat. Please, please, Clarissa, don’t say you do.

  “I have nothing against free trade. I don’t care how money gets made. I care how it gets spent.”

  “Interesting,” Dad said. “Please have a seat.” He motioned her toward the table and cleared away scattered pages of the L.A. Times.

  I was all for changing the subject. I was trying to think of something to talk about when I heard movement in the doorway behind me.

  It was Cole. He wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a sleeveless T-shirt, and his hair stuck out in all directions. It was obvious he’d slept at my parents’ house and that he had just gotten up.

  “Lars! What are you doing here?” he asked. Before I could answer, he saw Clarissa and backed up a step. “Whoa. Sorry. Didn’t know there was company.”

  “Hi! I’m Clarissa. Laurens roommate.” Clarissa thrust her hand forward. A tangle of bracelets jangled. She was smiling from ear to multi-pierced ear.

  “Hey. I’m Cole. Lauren’s cousin.” He shook her hand and then turned to me. “What do you know? We both brought our roommates.”

  “Raul’s here?” I asked.

  “Yep. He’s out running, I think.”

  “You guys drove five and a half hours to come here? Why?” I couldn’t believe Cole and Raul were there. Again.

  “Last weekend I met up with a buddy of mine from high school who’s moving today. I told him I could help. Your parents said I could stay here ’cause my folks are in Singapore and there’s nothing to eat at my house. Raul wanted to help too. We flew.”

  “You flew.”

  “Yeah. Raul has his pilot’s license. We came in a Cessna. It only took a few hours.”

  “You flew.”

  “Yeah.” Cole laughed.

  “In a plane.”

  He gave me a withering look. “That’s usually how it’s done. I don’t see what the big deal is, Lars. Lots of people our age have their pilot’s license.” He turned to my dad. “Is it okay if I use your Expedition today?”

  “Sure,” Dad said. “The keys are in the breezeway. It needs gas, though.”

  Cole started to walk away. “I got it, Uncle Bryant.” He turned back around to face Clarissa. “Nice to meet you, uh …”

  “Clarissa,” my roommate said, and I swear she fluttered her eyelashes.

  “Clarissa.” Cole took another step and then swung back around. “Hey, you guys heading back tonight?”

  “No,” Clarissa said quickly.

  “Do you want to go to a party with us?” Cole continued. “Were going to a beach party in Malibu. Should be fun. My ex-girlfriends throwing it.”

  “That’d be great!” Clarissa said before I could respond.

  “Cool. We’ll be back here by seven.”

  Cole disappeared and Clarissa turned to me. The stud in her nose glistened in the sunlit room. So did her pearly white teeth.

&
nbsp; It was seven thirty that night before I saw Raul.

  I made sure I was in my dad’s office looking at schematics when Raul came in from running that morning, and I tried to beg off from going to Malibu when he and Cole returned from helping Cole’s friend move. But Clarissa wouldn’t hear of it.

  She spent the day lounging by the pool, chatting with my dad about why communism didn’t work and helping my mother fix a glitch on her laptop. At lunch, Eleanor brought her a salmon steak seared with garlic butter under a shiny chrome dome as she basked on the patio. I’d asked Eleanor to do it.

  I didn’t tell Clarissa why I was hesitant to go to Malibu; she had no idea it had anything to do with Raul. She just assumed I had no clue what it was like to have fun, since I so rarely presented her with evidence that I did. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him again. I just wished I had met him under different circumstances.

  Clarissa dragged me downstairs when Cole called for us. She wore a gauzy, lime green baby-doll blouse, flared jeans, her sequined sandals, and huge silver hoop earrings. She looked fabulous and hip. I had on yellow capris and matching jacket that for some reason made me look model-skinny.

  “That outfit looks really hot on you,” Clarissa said, as we made our way downstairs. She stopped me on the landing, reached behind me, and undid my barrette. My hair fell about my shoulders. “And your hair looks good down around your face. You shouldn’t wear it back all the time, Lauren. You look like somebody’s grandma.”

  She tossed the barrette up to the top step and sailed down the stairs.

  Raul and Cole waited in the tiled foyer. Raul stood right about where I had commanded him to mop up a spill. He looked up at me and smiled.

  “Hi! I’m Clarissa! I’m Lauren’s roommate.” Clarissa walked right up to Raul and beamed at him.

  “Raul San Domingo.” His accent decorated his words like music.

  “Raul, you remember Lars?” Cole said.

  “Yes. Yes, I do.” Raul smiled at me.

  “Lars! That’s a cool nickname. How come you never told me that was your nickname?” Clarissa punched me lightly.

  I looked away from Raul’s brown eyes. “No one calls me that but my cousins.”

  “Ready?” Cole motioned toward the door, and Clarissa dove forward to walk with him. I could read her. She wanted to sit by Cole in the car.

  I fell into step with Raul. What else could I do?

  “I didn’t know you had your pilot’s license,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t see how you could’ve known.”

  I caught a whiff of his cologne. It was subtle and clean. I didn’t recognize it. Ahead of us, Clarissa chattered at Cole.

  “That was nice of you to help Coles friend move,” I ventured.

  He just nodded.

  Then he turned his head to look at me. “I like your hair down like that,” he said.

  “Oh!” Clarissa turned to face us as we stepped out the front door and into the cool night air. “I’ve been hiding her barrettes for months, hoping she’d just give up on them. But she keeps buying more.”

  “Yeah, Lars has always been a bit old-fashioned,” Cole said, jangling my dad’s keys and opening the vehicle door for Clarissa.

  I felt my face flush. “Thanks a lot, Cole.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “It’s true! She’s always reading old stuff. I mean really old stuff,” Clarissa said, as she stepped inside the vehicle. “What’ve you got lying around our dorm right now?”

  I didn’t answer. Raul opened my door for me.

  “Oh yeah,” Clarissa continued. “Robinson Crusoe. Wasn’t that written, like, a zillion years ago?”

  Raul looked at me. “You’re reading Robinson Crusoe?”

  Before I could say anything, Clarissa assured him, that yes, I was reading Robinson Crusoe, and it wasn’t even for a class. Then, as soon as Raul and Cole were inside the vehicle, she told them I spent all my free time with an old woman, working on the diary of an accused Salem witch.

  “A witch?” Cole sounded disgusted.

  “She wasn’t a witch,” I said quickly, ramming my seat belt latch into its buckle and catching my finger. I winced and shoved the finger into my mouth.

  Raul was staring at me.

  “Well, she said she wasn’t,” Clarissa said.

  “You have a diary from the Salem witch trials?” Raul asked.

  I withdrew my pinched finger from my mouth. “It’s not mine. I’m just transcribing it.”

  “The whole thing is kinda creepy if you ask me. I’ll be glad when she’s done with it. And anyway, we’re going to toss out the old-fashioned ways, aren’t we, Lars?” Clarissa turned to face Raul and me in the backseat. “We’ve got it all figured out. Lauren and I are going to walk down Rodeo Drive in the nude!”

  Cole burst out laughing. Raul just rewarded me with half a lopsided grin.

  The rest of the evening was the Clarissa Show. She was in her element. I was not. Raul was quickly embraced by Cole’s friends, as was Clarissa. I landed in a quiet spot like I usually do at parties and spent the first half of the breezy evening hanging onto my hair, which, without its reins, whipped about my face with gusto.

  At some point in the evening, Cole, Raul, and a couple other guys walked past me on their way to start a sand volleyball game. I sat in a deck chair by the fire pit, listening to a girl I had just met tell me and another girl how many times she’d been stung by a jellyfish last summer. I was nodding, only half listening to her, when I heard Raul’s distinctive voice and my head lifted. He looked down as he swept past me. Moonlight and torchlight splashed about his shoulders. He smiled at me as he walked past, amused, it seemed, that my hair had gleefully hurled itself into my eyes and mouth. I dipped my head and yanked my hair away from my face. When I looked up, his back was to me and he was walking away.

  I watched him trudge through the sand toward the net. Ahead of him and off to the right, Clarissa stood in a clutch of people who seemed to devour her every word. She threw her head back and laughed, spilling the beer she held in her hand. Someone reached out to steady her.

  “The welts went from my hip to my ankle,” the girl next to me said. “I looked like something from a horror movie.”

  I grasped as much of my hair as I could in my fist and wondered how I was going to tactfully escape from Jellyfish Girl. I slipped one foot back into a flip-flop. The other sandal was half buried in the sand. I reached down, grabbed it, and shook it gently. Sand rained down around my toes. I slipped on the other flip-flop and raised my head. Raul stood in front of me.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I said back. A wisp of hair sashayed across my forehead. I let it.

  Raul squatted in the sand as Jellyfish Girl explained that the meat tenderizer the lifeguard gave her did absolutely nothing for the pain, but he was a total babe, so it was okay.

  “What are you doing?” he asked softly. Jellyfish Girl kept going with her play-by-play. His grin said, Are you nuts? This is a party. Why are you sitting here?

  “Nothing,” I whispered back.

  “Want to play some volleyball?”

  There haven’t been many moments in my life when I wished I had natural athletic ability, but that was one of them. I sucked at just about every sport but foosball, and that’s not even a sport.

  “Thanks, but you don’t want me on your team,” I whispered back.

  He just smiled and said, “Come on.”

  “I’m serious. I’m terrible at volleyball.”

  “Then you can play on the other team.”

  I smiled back. “Very funny.”

  From the net several yards away, Cole shouted at Raul to hurry up.

  “You can watch.” Raul stood. He held out a hand to help me up.

  I hesitated only a moment. I reached for his hand, and seconds later I was following him to the volleyball net. A few people had gathered to watch the match, but there was nowhere to sit but on the sand, and I felt awkward standing t
here alone. I stayed for ten minutes or so, unable to keep my eyes off Raul, but he seemed engrossed in the game, or at least very busy. He was a good player. A couple times the ball skittered off into the crowd, and I fetched it for the players, providing seconds of usefulness.

  When Clarissa shouted at me to “come meet this guy who knows Tom Cruise!” I looked to see if Raul was watching me leave.

  He wasn’t.

  I lost track of him after that. I spent the rest of the evening keeping a drunk Clarissa on her feet and out of trouble.

  We got back to my parents’ house a little after two in the morning. Raul and Cole headed to the game room to play video games. Cole didn’t ask Clarissa and me to join them. It was obvious Clarissa was in no shape to do anything but go to bed. I led her upstairs.

  Clarissa slept in late the next morning and missed the guys’ departure back to Palo Alto. I drove them to the municipal airport in Santa Monica twenty minutes away. Along the way, Cole and Raul talked about the party, how much fun it was, and how they’d clobbered every mismatched team that tried to beat them in sand volleyball. I just steered and listened.

  “Tell me what you think of Robinson Crusoe when you finish,” Raul said as he got out of my car. He handed me a slip of paper. “It’s my e-mail address.”

  Cole mussed my hair, told me I should go find a barrette or something, and thanked me for the ride to the airport.

  “Bring Clarissa to the next Sorry,” he called as he walked away from the car. “She’s kind of fun.”

  Raul lingered just a second longer. “That was nice what you did for Clarissa last night.”

  “What?”

  “I saw how you spent the rest of the evening watching out for her. She’s lucky to have you for a friend.”

  No words would come.

  He smiled at me and left to catch up with Cole.

  I didn’t stay to watch them take off.

  Sixteen

  1 March 1692

  I went to the tavern with Papa to see what Tituba, Goody Goode, and Goody Osborne would say to the charges against them. So large a crowd gathered that we had to move the whole assembly to the meetinghouse.

  I wish I had not gone. It was akin to a nightmare, what I saw.