The Shape of Mercy (9 page)

“We got a million people to do that, man,” Cole said. “Do you even know how to clean up a spill? If you do, you’ve been holding out on me.”

“I think I can figure it out,” Raul said, smiling and rubbing the floor with the paper towel.

Cole looked at me. “Hey, Lars. Did you meet my roommate?”

I steadied myself on the wall behind me. His roommate.

“We didn’t actually meet,” Raul said as he stood and took a step toward me. “Hello. I’m Raul.” He looked down at his right hand, which held a damp paper towel. He raised his head and shrugged. “I don’t think you want to shake my hand.”

I could say nothing.

“This is my cousin, Lars. I mean, Lauren,” Cole said. “We call her Lars. Had to make her one of the guys.”

“Nice to meet you, Lauren.” Still the wide smile; still the calm composure. I noticed at that moment his oxford shirt was almost certainly custom-made. It probably cost him $200.

“Nice to meet you too,” I whispered.

Cole stared at me. “Lars, you look like crap. You sick or something?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.” Cole took the paper towel wad from Raul
and started for the kitchen. “Bathroom’s just down the hall to the right, Raul, if you want to wash your hands.”

Raul lingered a moment.

I swallowed hard. He had made a fool of me, but I was the only one who knew it. “I owe you an apology,” I said.

“Dont worry about it.” He cocked his head, flashed a half smile, and turned to follow Cole down the hall, disappearing behind the bathroom door.

I just stood there, mindlessly rubbing my ankle.

A hired maid appeared from within the dining room, carrying a tray with empty glasses. She stopped when she saw me.

“Can I get you something, miss?”

I told her I was fine.

Papa went out for a little while today. After three weeks abed, he was near frantic for want of news and activity. He came home from the tavern with news that his brother’s ship is expected in harbor next week. But he also brought with him strange tidings. He told me two young girls in the Village have been afflicted with a terrible sickness which sends them into awful fits. Betty Parris is the daughter of the minister. I know her. She is but nine. The other girl, Abigail Williams, is her cousin. She is eleven. Papa said the talk is that some terrible disease has fallen upon them. They are quite ill. He told me to stay away from the Village. Except for worship at the meetinghouse, he wants me to stay at the cottage
.

I am afraid for the girls. James Luddy’s sickness began with awful fits
.

Wanderer flew away today. The sun was shining. He thinks winter is over.

I did not think much of the sermon today. Rev. Parris is much interested in warnings of doom and the prospect of
the fires of hell. He speaks of Satan as though the Devil is God’s equal instead of a mere created being. God could whisper Satan out of existence with a word. Surely Rev. Parris knows this
.

And it was so cold in the meetinghouse. Too cold to imagine the fires of hell consuming our sinful souls
.

The tithing man saw me looking at John Peter. But John Peter was looking at me, as well. And since he was closer to John Peter than to me, it was John Peter he poked with his long stick. I had to look away so as not to laugh
.

Papa went into the Village again today to make ready for the arrival of the ship at Marblehead. He came home with news that the King has appointed for us a new governor. Papa said all the talk in the tavern was if the new governor would stand in the way of the colony’s having its charter restored. I listened to Papa because he wanted me to, but I am not of a mind to worry about a charter. Which of us can truly say we do not need another soul to help us tend to our affairs?

Betty Parris and Abigail Williams are still afflicted. The younger Ann Putnam has become ill as well. There is word that the girls are afflicted with the same condition as the Goodwin children five years past. Papa said he read the account of the Goodwin children. A minister from Boston, Cotton Mather, wrote of it. Papa said it was believed the children were bewitched. I do not like that word, bewitched. I did not care to hear
more, but Papa bade me pour him some cider and he told me what Cotton Mather had written. The older Goodwin girl was afflicted first and then her siblings. Rev. Mather wrote that their jaws were out of joint and they barked like dogs, that their necks would be as dissolved one minute, then stiff the next, that they screamed that they were being roasted on spits, and that one of the Goodwin children flew from one end of the room to the other. A washerwoman named Mary Glover was accused of bewitching the Goodwin children. She was tried, found guilty, and hanged
.

I told Papa I didn’t want to hear any more
.

I went outside to my tree to finish my story about the wind and the rain becoming good friends, but my mind kept providing me pictures of children barking like dogs and flying across rooms like bats, and I could not think of any words
.

When I came back into the cottage Papa was coughing again. I fear the sickness in his chest was only sleeping.

I
spent most of that weekend at my parents’ house trying to avoid Raul, which was nearly impossible.

I grew up hanging out with my cousins at the Sorries, as we called them, kidspeak for the family soirees. We thought our parents’ parties were boring, so we played tabletop bowling with the hors d’oeuvres, stole sips of champagne, played hide-and-seek when we were little, and when we were older,
Super Mario Brothers
and Texas hold ’em. My cousins were used to my being around. Actually, they insisted on it. If left alone, I disappeared to the third floor or got sucked into conversation with my parents’ friends. Mom and Dad’s friends all seemed to
think I acted mature for my age. My cousins didn’t approve of escapes to the third floor or Sorry guests who enjoyed my company.

So at Uncle Loring’s two-day party, Cole expected me to be available for a quick pickup game of just about anything, and since we didn’t see much of Tyler—he, Bria, and Bria’s cell phone kept to themselves—and Kip needed to study for the ACT, I was enlisted to play any game that required teams of two. Blaine and me against Cole and Raul the Non-Caterer.

Whenever I found myself glancing at Raul, his eyes invariably met mine. He’d grin, and I would look away and pretend I hadn’t been stealing glances. It happened more than once—I’d be looking at Raul, not realizing what I was doing, and he’d catch me. It embarrassed me every time.

Raul and Cole slept in one of the third-floor guest rooms at our house since there were so many other family members staying at Uncle Loring’s, and I ran into Raul several times a day on the stairs. He probably thought I was
trying
to run into him. He knew I didn’t have a bedroom on the third floor, so why else would I come up there unless it was to “accidentally” bump into him?

I couldn’t look at him without picturing him on his knees, smiling as he wiped up that spill. And every time our eyes met, I was certain he was still laughing over what I had said.

I wanted him to be offended that I had mistaken him for one of the caterers. At least somewhat insulted. I could’ve handled that. I was convinced he enjoyed watching me squirm, and it annoyed me.

After lunch on Sunday afternoon, when the rest of the household was napping, watching the football game in Dad’s home theater, or gossiping on the terrace, I made myself a cup of tea, grabbed a leftover croissant from breakfast, and headed up to the third floor. I didn’t run into a soul. Worried about dropping my mug and croissant, I kept my eyes on them as I opened the little library door and then eased it closed
with my foot. I turned to face the room and there, standing in front of me with an open book in his hands, was Raul.

Surprise coursed through me and I flinched, sending the contents of my mug sloshing over its sides, onto my hand and the hardwood floor at my feet. The pain wasn’t excruciating—I don’t care for my tea blistering hot—but I gasped nonetheless, and Raul took a step toward me.

“You all right?”

“Yes, yes,” I said through my teeth. I blotted at the tea on my wrist with the paper napkin I had wrapped around the croissant. The roll fell to the floor and Raul knelt to retrieve it. Spilled tea was all around him.

“Want to hand me your napkin?” He smiled up at me as if he had just delivered a punch line.

“No!” I said crossly. I bent down to wipe up the spill myself.

He cocked his head and stared at me, smiling all the while. “So
you’re
the one who’s supposed to be offended?” he said playfully. “I thought it was me.”

“Yes,
you
should be offended,” I shot back, wiping up the tea with savage strokes.

I stood up and so did he. He handed me the croissant.

“I didn’t know it mattered that much to you,” he said.

“It’s not that it matters to
me
, it just matters.”

He blinked. “Wow. Okay. Sorry.”

I huffed. “How about if I do the apologizing instead of you?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“It is. I’m sorry I assumed you were part of the catering staff. That was rude and—”

“I didn’t think it was
that
rude.”

“Can I finish?”

“Sorry.”

“Will you please stop that?”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

For a moment we just stood there. I was the first to crack a smile.
The moment I did, his face relaxed into an easy grin. He’d been playing me. Again. I still felt like a fool, but for some reason it didn’t bother me as much the second time.

“I really am sorry, Raul.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. A nervous habit.

“Apology accepted.”

An odd silence followed.

“Did you want to be alone in here?” he finally asked.

No one had ever asked me that before. I was always alone in the little library.

I wondered how he could tell he had intruded on my private space. Did Cole tell him? No, probably not. Cole probably told him the room was just a closet of antiquated books no one cared about. Or he’d said nothing at all because the room itself didn’t matter to Cole. It struck me as odd that Raul had bothered to look inside. I had never stumbled upon any of Cole’s other friends in the little library. Raul was the first. He still held a book in his hand,
Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe.

“You can stay if you want.” I had wanted to be alone, but I wasn’t going to kick him out.

He understood and turned toward the nearest bookshelf to replace the book.

“I’ll go. This room’s yours,” he said.

I felt my face color. “Did Cole tell you that?”

Raul shrugged. “I could just tell. I’ve seen you coming up here all weekend.” He pointed to the book he had just replaced on the shelf. “My father read
Robinson Crusoe
to me when I was ten. Ever read it?”

I hadn’t. I’d never been intrigued by a story about a rich man marooned on a lonely island for the better part of his life.

“Great book,” Raul continued. “There’s a lot of great books in here. Papa would probably burst into tears if he could see this room.”

Raul looked at the shelves with their ancient offerings. I took in the
room with fresh eyes, seeing it as Raul did. Dull oak shelves, sleepy beige walls, oval rug in a wan hue hard to describe, and row after row of books, their spines in muted shades of blue and burgundy and brown. In that moment, the room morphed in my mind and became an extension of Abigail’s faded library. I hadn’t thought of the two rooms as being alike in any way, but they were. In my mind, I saw them blending together, indistinguishable from each other. Mausoleums to former lives, most of them fictional. I sucked in my breath.

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.