The Shape of Mercy

by Susan Meissner

  I stared at the doors.

  “Still want to go down?” he asked.

  From somewhere deep inside me, my frustration burst through.

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  The minute I said it, I wished I hadn’t. Those words had nothing to do with whether I still wanted to go to the cafeteria or not, and we both knew it.

  For a second we were both silent.

  “I really think everything’s going to work out just fine. Most of the time it does.” Raul’s voice was gentle. He could have asked about the phone call, why it had moved me tears, why I was so torn between two warring concerns. But he didn’t. It was one of the kindest things anyone had ever done for me.

  He pulled his hand away and the doors swished closed, the car empty. “Want to pace?” He smiled.

  I smiled back.

  We walked the floor eight times.

  Raul told me about growing up in Guadalajara. There was a lot to tell. I only had to listen.

  Six and half hours after surgery began, we were told Dad was in recovery, heavily sedated and intubated, but doing well. We had been told at the five-hour mark that it was taking longer than expected and that we needed to just sit tight. My mother and Denise practically jogged the cardiac unit that last hour.

  The surgeon suggested we wait to see him until the following day since he was sedated. My mom was allowed in for a few minutes, and I was told I could visit first thing in the morning.

  Cole and Raul weren’t allowed to see Dad because they weren’t immediate family, and since they had to get back to Palo Alto, they got ready to leave.

  “Want to take us back to the airport, Lars? I’ve borrowed a car from a friend of mine here, and he needs it to get to work. We’ll need a ride from his place.”

  Cole didn’t wait for me to answer. He just hugged his mom and mine and started for the elevators.

  “Do you mind?” Raul asked.

  “No,” I said. I had nothing better to do. My aunt and uncle agreed to wait for my mom and take her home so I could use my parents’ car.

  Cole chattered the whole way to the municipal airport, expelling the nervous energy he had stored up in case something bad happened during the surgery. When we got to the airfield, Raul went inside the main building to okay his flight plan. I stood outside with Cole and waited. Behind the fence lay a sea of white and cream planes with splashes of color on their wings and sides.

  “Which one is Raul’s?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Which plane is Raul’s?”

  “Oh.” Cole pointed to a plane across the Tarmac with a bold blue stripe on the cockpit door. “That one. But it’s not his.”

  “His is broken?”

  “What?”

  “Why aren’t you in his plane?”

  Cole made a face at me. “Raul doesn’t have a plane. Did he tell you that plane was his?”

  My face grew hot.

  “Man, are you gullible, Lars. Good one, Raul.” He laughed.

  “Raul doesn’t have a plane?”

  Cole laughed harder. “I’m so sure! No, he doesn’t have a plane. He has a pilot’s license, though. At least he told me he does.”

  “Whose plane is that then?”

  “A friend of my dad’s at the West Valley Flying Club. He lets us borrow it for hardly anything, ’cause he hasn’t been able to fly it in a while. He only charges us for the fuel. He likes Raul. Everybody likes Raul. And Raul takes good care of the plane.”

  “So Raul rented that plane.”

  “No, not rented. Borrowed.”

  The warmth continued to spread across my face and neck. I felt like I was melting.

  Cole cocked his head at me. “Besides, Raul can’t rent a plane. Do you know how much it would cost to rent a plane, Lars?”

  I couldn’t say anything.

  “Okay, well, you and I don’t have to worry about money but some people do. Raul can’t afford to rent a plane whenever I want to come home. You think everybody’s made of money?”

  No, no, no.

  “I just thought … I mean, he’s at Stanford.

  “On a scholarship and student loans.”

  “He wore such nice shirts when you guys came home.”

  “What? Oh. Those were my shirts, Lauren. He borrowed them because he wanted to look nice while he was here. Man, are you red. People will think you spent the day at the beach instead of the hospital. I do believe you’re embarrassed.”

  I wanted to rub the red and the heat away. I didn’t want Raul to see me shamed out of my wits. I had done it again, done exactly what I loathed. Assumed I knew everything and was wrong all the way around.

  “I can’t believe I did that,” I muttered.

  “Me neither. You were always the nice one.”

  I looked at Cole. “Don’t tell him, please?”

  “Tell him what?” Cole’s eyes danced with glee.

  “Please, Cole, don’t tell him!”

  “Don’t tell him you don’t like him now that you know he’s not rich?”

  “That’s not true, Cole. Don’t you dare tell him that! I swear to God that’s not true!”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Cole, please.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  I leaned against my car, wanting to dissolve into the warm metal. I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to wait for Raul. And yet I did.

  “Why did you guys even come?” I moaned.

  Cole blinked. “Well, I came for my parents and for your dad.”

  “And you just used Raul as your personal taxi driver?”

  He laughed, but it was a sour laugh. I didn’t like it. “You really are dense, Lars. Wake up. Raul didn’t come to be my chauffeur.”

  I met his eyes and waited for him to tell me.

  “Raul said you e-mailed him and told him your dad was going to have surgery and that you were afraid.” Cole folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against my mother’s car. “He came for you.”

  Thirty-Six

  I slept in the guest room by the little library. I don’t know why. When my mom went up to bed a little after nine, I went into my bedroom, grabbed my overnight bag, and headed up to the third floor. I poked around in the library for a while, sat at my old writing desk awhile longer, and then climbed into a bed I had never slept in and begged sleep to take me to a place where I didn’t have to think about who I really was.

  For so long I had imagined I was different, that money wasn’t important to me, that I was a new kind of Durough. I didn’t evaluate people or tasks or ideas by their monetary worth. I was above all that.

  I wasn’t the person my dad was.

  I was someone else.

  I was someone worse.

  I did evaluate people and ideas by their monetary worth, but I pretended I didn’t. And that was worse.

  I had judged Abigail that way. And Clarissa. And the gardener’s son.

  And Raul.

  Sleep didn’t come for a long time.

  I woke early, before the sun. My dreams were unremembered, but they left me unsettled and on edge. I didn’t want to remember them.

  I made my own breakfast, drank several cups of coffee, and waited for the day to break. As soon as the sky turned from pink to amber, I left a note for my mother apologizing for going to the hospital without her but I couldn’t wait to see Dad. I knew she would at least be happy to hear that. I promised to come back and get her if she didn’t want to drive down herself.

  I wondered if I would collect frowns from the nursing staff for showing up so early, but no one seemed to mind that I had come before visitors typically showed up. Perhaps they thought I had camped out the night before in the waiting room like others had done.

  My father had a restful night, the nurses said, which meant he did not burst his stitches or spike a fever or slip into cardiac arrest. He was barely awake when I stepped into his room. The breathing tube had been removed, and when he saw me, a quiver of a smile br
oke across his face.

  “Lauren,” he whispered.

  “Shhh. I know it probably hurts to talk, Dad.”

  “It’s not so bad,” he croaked.

  I took the seat next to his bed and ran my hand across his. He grabbed for my fingers.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  He cracked another smile. “I’ve felt better.”

  “You’ve looked better,” I whispered back and the smile increased before it fell away. He didn’t have the strength to keep it.

  “I was afraid,” he whispered.

  “What’s that?”

  “I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I think maybe I was gone for a few minutes,” he continued.

  My heart stuttered. “What?”

  “Just for few minutes. Don’t tell your mother.”

  Another prancing beat. “But Dad, your doctor said you came through just fine.”

  “It wasn’t during the surgery. It was afterward, in that hot, white room. I felt like I was slipping away, like I was leaving you. Leaving you all.”

  I stroked his hand and said nothing. My heart pounded.

  “And do you know what I was thinking?” His hand stirred under mine.

  “Tell me.” My two-word answer was a whisper.

  “That I hadn’t done enough. I was afraid I’d see my father and he would know I hadn’t done enough.”

  My grandfather, who I barely remembered because he died when I was six, came to the forefront of my mind as I sat with my father’s hand under mine. I remembered my grandfather in snapshot images, moments of video when he waved the camera away while he puffed on a pipe. I remembered thinking he looked like Winston Churchill. I remembered him wearing gray suits and smelling of pine.

  I remembered being afraid of him.

  Charles Durough was a stranger to me. Not a mean or hostile stranger, but a stranger nonetheless. My father never talked much about Grandpa. I always thought he and my dad were just men who kept their feelings to themselves.

  “What do you mean you hadn’t done enough?” I asked.

  “Duroughs have to make something of ourselves, don’t we? We have to take the tobacco and the gold nugget and make something of ourselves. And we can’t stop.”

  His voice fell away.

  “Can’t stop what?” I whispered. But I knew. In that moment I knew what my father feared more than anything, and it had nothing to do with money. He feared he wouldn’t measure up.

  I had underestimated everyone.

  Everything I believed about my dad and me and the Durough legacy fell away, and the truth suddenly became crystal clear.

  My father wasn’t driven by a relentless desire to amass wealth. He was driven to please his father. And he worried that he couldn’t do it.

  Just like me.

  Certain there could be no pleasing my father because I wasn’t a son, I convinced myself to do the opposite of what he expected of me. I would be nothing like the sons the Duroughs before me had been. This is why I went to a state school and majored in English and told myself I had no desire to run the company—so that I would be nothing like my nonexistent brother, the heir who was never born.

  I squeezed my father’s hand as tears slipped down my cheeks. “You’ve done quite enough,” I whispered. “Do you hear me, Dad? You’ve done more than enough.”

  He closed his eyes, but a tiny grin formed on his lips.

  “I am so sorry, Daddy,” I mumbled. The tears kept coming. I couldn’t stop them.

  My father slowly opened his eyes. “Why?”

  “I’m sorry you never had the son you wanted. And I’m sorry I’ve made such a mess of things.”

  He could only stare at me as tears coursed down my cheeks. I had to look away to avoid his questioning eyes.

  “What are you talking about?” he finally asked.

  I caressed his hand and waited for my voice to return and my tears to lessen. He waited too.

  “I don’t know who I am,” I said, shaking my head.

  His fingers tightened around mine. He said my name and waited until I looked him full in the face. “You are my daughter. You are my flesh and blood. I have never wanted you to be anyone else. You will do wonders with your tobacco and nugget of gold. I know it.”

  We were silent for a few moments. I wiped away my tears with my free hand. He was so quiet I assumed he had fallen asleep, but he was looking at me still, waiting for me to acknowledge him.

  “I’ve made so many mistakes,” I said.

  “Welcome to planet earth.”

  I smiled. “I just wish … I wish I didn’t judge people by what they have or don’t have. I wish I could see people for who they are on the inside before I come to any conclusions.”

  My dad blinked slowly and then said something so profound, I knew I would never forget it. The funny thing was, after that morning, he didn’t remember saying it.

  “Yes, that would be better than the other, but it still makes you their judge.”

  My father squeezed my hand and drifted back into his numbed slumber.

  And I just sat there, mesmerized.

  Later that afternoon, as I stood in my father’s study and prepared to head back to Santa Barbara, Esperanza called me. I hurried to answer my phone, anxious to talk to Abigail.

  “Lauren, it’s Esperanza.”

  “Yes, I know. Is she home?”

  “No.”

  “Have you heard from her?”

  “No. I have heard from someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “Graham. He’s coming.”

  Something about the way Esperanza said his name alarmed me. “What do you mean, he’s coming?”

  “I think he knows Abigail left without telling anyone where she is. And he saw how tired she looked when she was with him. And sad. He could tell too that she’s not herself.”

  “So?”

  “He told me he thinks she is, how do you say, losing it.”

  Losing it?

  “Esperanza, what are you saying?”

  “I think he’s coming to take over her affairs. I think he wants to go to a judge and have him say Miss Abigail is not able to take care of herself.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Sí, but that’s what I think he wants to do.”

  “Well, he won’t get away with it. Abigail is fine. She … she probably just needs some time alone.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Esperanza sounded so unsure.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. But I think you should be here when he comes.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because you are Miss Abigail’s assistant. I am only the housekeeper. What if he brings a lawyer? A lawyer will not listen to a housekeeper.”

  “And you think he will listen to me?”

  “You are her assistant. You are smart. You can talk to these people.”

  I couldn’t believe Esperanza believed a twenty-year-old college student would be able to help Abigail.

  “Surely she has other friends, business associates …,” I began.

  “Miss Abigail worked at the library twenty years ago. No one remembers her. And she only worked part-time. She didn’t need the money. She just loved the books.”

  “What about her lawyer? She has to have a lawyer.”

  “I don’t know his name, and I don’t know how to find it. You should come and look for it. Look in her desk. In her files.”

  I was appalled. “I can’t do that!”

  “Then how can we prove Miss Abigail is not crazy? How can we keep Graham from taking everything? You should come. She likes you. She trusts you.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” I said, remembering my last conversation with Abigail.

  “Yes, she does.”

  “I tried to take a copy of the diary.”

  “She was disappointed in me that I took that thing from your purse! More disappointed in me th
an in you.”

  “But she kept it.”

  “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t trust you.”

  I had no idea how to intervene on Abigail’s behalf and was about to say so when my eyes fell upon an antiquated tin of tobacco on the mantle in my father’s study. My father had had it for years. It was there to remind him, to remind all of the family, of the tin of tobacco that Abel Durough gave Wilbur Fellowes, the tin of tobacco that contained a gold nugget and changed a man’s life.

  My father’s words came echoing back to me. You will do wonders with your tobacco and nugget of gold.

  I had a choice.

  My father had spent his life making not money but an image. An image of the successful man. He knew no other goal, and it haunted him.

  I could spend my life making something else.

  This is what Mercy taught me in her dark and dreadful classroom. The choice was mine, imperfect though I was. I could choose to make a difference in the life of someone else.

  This one thing I could do, even in chains.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Thirty-Seven

  Esperanza was alone at Abigail’s house when I got back to Santa Barbara a few minutes after three in the afternoon. She let me in.

  “When is he coming?” I asked as she closed the door behind me.

  “Tomorrow. He said he would be on a flight first thing in the morning. You have classes tomorrow?”

  “Yes. I can skip the last two, but not the first. I’ll get here as soon as I can, a little before ten.”

  “Bueno. I think you should plan to sleep here until he goes back.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are a young single girl. It would not be right for him to stay here too. He will have to get a hotel room.”

  “But this is—”

  “This is not his house. This is Miss Abigail’s house. I will tell him you’ve been working on a project and staying here.”

  “But I haven’t been staying here.”

  “You stayed here two nights.”

  “But the diary is finished. It’s not even here!”

  “Graham doesn’t know that. I don’t have any trouble lying to protect Miss Abigail. You say nothing about that. I will tell him you are staying here, and he will have to get a hotel room. Bring some clothes, pajamas. You are staying here.”