The Shape of Mercy

And so it comes to this

2010-11-19T11:55:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the The Shape of Mercy Blog. Unlike most blogs, this is where this one ends, not where it begins. If you are finding your way here for the first visit, your first order of business is to scroll down the archives to the very beginning. You will totally ruin it for yourself if you continue to read this post or any other from 2010 or 2009. Start from the beginning and work your way back to this spot. . .

If you are a regular visitor you can keep reading. . . Yes, I left you all dangling with Abigail's last post. Yes, it was her last. Yes, she left this Earth for brighter places. You knew it was coming. We all did. It comes for all of us, that invitation to the brighter place.

I know the most reasonable thing I could've done - perhaps should have done - was to continue with a post by Esperanza, perhaps sharing a recipe - in her grief - of something she served at the after-funeral reception. Or a post by Clarissa on how lovely the opening day was at Mercy's Gallery, despite her grief. Or an email from Lauren to Raul on how the diary is changing the lives of the people who read it, and that even though she grieves for Abigail, she knows that she, too, has a changed life because she met Abigail in the flesh and met Mercy in the pages of the diary.

But each time I would begin one of those posts, I would realize that I too was grieving the loss of this character and that nothing would be same after this. Then why did you kill her off, you might say. Because this is how life is scripted for us: we are born, we learn to love and be loved, and at some point after that, we die.

If you itch to know what becomes of Lauren, Clarissa and Esperanza, well I can certainly imagine a future for them, can't you? Lauren marries Raul. He becomes a heart surgeon, she teaches history at UCSB and lectures on the diary and what it teaches us. In time they are blessed with a son they name Michael and a daughter they name Abby. Clarissa marries John, she becomes the director of Mercy's Gallery, and they have twin girls: Chloe and Cara. Esperanza and her husband become the house parents for UCSB girls - scholarship girls on a very tight budget - who come to live at Abigail's House while they attend college. Graham meets a woman in rehab. He finally figures out what it means to love someone and be loved. (But not to worry. He is not killed off. . .)

And they all live realistically ever after - until the far-off day when the Brighter Place beckons. . .

It's not such a bad place to leave off. I can see it all. . . Can you?

Abigail on the Classics

2010-07-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

These will be my last words.

My doctor thought I wouldn't last through June. I believed him for the most part, why wouldn't I? - but I sensed a hedging within me when he said this, a reluctance to obey. I am still here.

But not for long. The doctor who tosses up his hands isn't quite sure now when I will depart but I can sense that it will be soon. Tonight, perhaps. It would be nice if it was tonight. I've always wanted to die in my sleep.

Clarissa is writing this for me and we just had to stop for a moment so she could complain about my choice of words. She is done complaining. Off we go again.

Lauren used to tell me I was a woman tethered to my regrets. She doesn't say that anymore. I don't think I am the same woman I was when hired her to transcribe Mercy's diary. I waited a long time for someone like Lauren to give the diary to. Deep down I think I knew that when I did find that someone, when I was finally able to let the diary go, I'd finally be able to let go of a lot of things.

I don't hate my father anymore for his manifold unkindnesses to me. He missed my mother.

I don't hate myself for marrying Edward Swift. I missed the father I wished I'd had and the man I wished I'd married.

I don't hate myself for not loving Graham enough.

I don't hate anything more.

I've discovered that there are things you carry with you into the world beyond this one. Everything that resides in your heart makes the journey with you. I don't want to make the crossing with hate in residence.

I've tried to thank Lauren for her part in my coming to this place. She is always trying to minimize the difference she has made in my life. I suppose it is too much to consider how things would have turned out if she had not answered the ad. I realize now she almost didn't. And she cannot bear to consider that. And I would not be the same person had I not met Clarissa, had not opened this crypt of a home to these girls. If Lauren had not answered the ad, I would not have met either of them. And who knows what might become of Mercy's diary, then? What would have become of all of us?

Clarissa has left the room. She needs a minute. I think I can finish this on my own. Yes, I think I can.

I leave you with this: Zora Hurston, writer and anthropologist, penned this. I read it some time ago and forgot it for many years: "Love makes your soul crawl out out from its hiding place." Our crooked souls are bent on hiding until we understand how beautiful it is out from under the rock which we think protects us, but in fact, presses us into the dust.

I see that now. It is beautiful here in the vastness. It always has been. I just had my back to it. God in His mercy, and oh how extravagant is mercy, waited for me to crawl out of my hiding place and see it for myself.

How strange to think people will say I died in my sleep. I will wake in my sleep.

I am ready.

Love, Lauren

2010-05-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Raul:

I walked into the campus bookstore today and there was Mercy's diary, sitting on a table up front, a placard with my name and picture resting on a little easel next to it. About knocked me off my feet.

I can hardly believe the diary is now in any bookstore in any part of the country where anybody can read it. I knew this time was coming when the diary would no longer be this quiet little thing between Abigail and me. But it is strange just the same. The media interviews have finally slowed a bit, which is a Godsend. They were fun, but they were intense. I only have one more month of classes left - oh, and did I tell you Mercy's diary has been accepted as my senior project? Good thing since I have thought of little else the last two years.

Quite a number of the interviewers wanted to speak to Abigail, but she absolutely wouldn't do it, not even on her good days. It was a convenient excuse to tell these people that Abigail has terminal cancer and unable to participate in the interview. Most of them knew that but asked anyway; Abagail's diagnosis been noted in every news article I have seen about the diary. I think people find that little part of the story poetic or something, that the diary has been published and Abigail has lived long enough to see it. I guess it is poetic. But it is also sad.

Clarissa accepted the job as business director of Mercy's Gallery. The grand opening is set for July 1. Sometimes Clarissa and I stop over there before we come home from classes with fresh pictures on our phones for Abigail to look at. She is too ill to make the trip anymore. The exterior is all finished, and the curator Abigail has hired has been busy acquiring all kinds of amazing items - books, paintings, sketches, instruments. I am pretty sure Abigail is spending every dime of her remaining investments on the Gallery. Graham complains about it to no end, even though he is not the jerk he was when he first arrived here. She bought him a beautiful townhouse and gave him the deed to it. As long as he keeps his job and stays out of the casinos, he's got nothing to worry about.

I think the end is coming soon for Abigail. She is so weak, so thin. But the amazing thing is, Raul, she is happy. I know she is in pain, pretty much all the time now. But she is happy. I don't like to think about the imminent future. None of us does. We just concentrate on Today. It's not such a bad way to live.

Even if you aren't dying.

Off to class. Good luck on your clinicals. . .
Love, Lauren

Mercy's Quill

2010-04-12T21:29:00.000-07:00

From Mercy's book of poems and stories
June 1689

The Rose

Bud of rose
A bloom of folds
Pink and crimson
The part we hold

Stem of thorns
Slender spires
The piercing pains
Of little fires

One part beauty
Soft as fleece
One part callous
Bereft of peace

Fragrant fabric
Petals fall
Thorns stay fast
And move not at all

Ask Clarissa

2010-03-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Spring Break your senior year is not like spring breaks of the past. I suppose this should not surprise me. In two months' time I will graduate and everything that has defined my life for the last four years will change. Most of my friends are going straight into grad school, including Lauren. And for a long time that's what I thought I would do. Anybody who hopes to do anything in business needs an MBA. I am starting to wonder if that's really what I want to do.

Partly it's because I see how hard John works for his paycheck. He's never NOT thinking about the next sales call he has to make or the next client he needs to impress or the next business opportunity to pursue. He acts like he loves it, but I wonder if he has conditioned himself to love it. You either love a life like that or you must hate it. And would you really want to hate something you had to commit to that much?

And partly it's because Abigail has asked me to think about something. Mercy's Gallery will be up and running this summer and will need a business director. She's asked me to consider taking the job. It's a not-for-profit thing, so I probably could make more elsewhere - like running around selling pharmaceuticals like John. And I'd technically be working for Lauren. She's going to be the executive director, working part time while she works on her MFA at UCLA. (Yeah, Masters of Fine Arts. Ask her about that sometime. She's the first Durough in a century to get a masters degree where you don't have to take econ. . .) Of course Lauren wants me to take it. She told me so.

My parents think I should take the job. Even if it is a not-for-profit thing. The economy for college grads is pathetic right now.

John is wondering how he fits into the picture. He doesn't particularly care what I do next as long as he knows where he is in the picture. I did ask him what he meant by that, even though I knew. "I don't want you moving away," he said. But I just wanted to hear it.

Abigail told me to think about it, but not to think about it too long, and then she smiled in this way she has now when she makes a joke about her dying. Lauren hates it when she does that, and most of the time I don't like it either. But this time I laughed. And so did she. . .

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2010-03-15T16:36:00.000-07:00

St. Patrick's Day isn't exactly a holiday with any kind of Latin flair to it, but I make Irish Apple Mash every time it rolls around. I've made it since I first started working for Miss Abigail because my mother made it for her. Sometimes you just need to keep doing what you've always been doing. I add a little nutmeg to mine, and accasionally a dash of cayenne pepper. Because I can.

And I think Abigail likes the tiny kick it gives her. At least, she's never asked me to stop. Apple Mash goes nicely with thick-sliced bacon. Miss Abigail likes for breakfast with a strong cup of Earl Gray. . .

Esperanza's Apple Mash
four cooking apples (Rome or Jonathan)
six to seven potatoes
1 tablespoon sugar
2 Tbls butter
Dash nutmeg

Peel potatoes and cook in salted, boiling water. Peel, core, and slice the apples. Place them in a pot with a tablespoon of water, and the sugar. Cook until soft. When the potatoes are cooked, drain and mash thoroughly. Beat in the apples and butter. Serve warm.

Abigail on the Classics

2010-03-05T12:50:00.000-08:00

The doctor told from the very beginning that there would be good days, bad days, and days in between; days that start out good and turn bad and days that start out bad and turn good.

So far, today has been a day that has defied this prediction, this warning that my days would be limited to three kinds. It has been neither good nor bad. I don't feel wonderful, I don't feel terrible. Today I don't feel much of anything at all. Clarissa said this morning that perhaps, in light of the monster hidden inside me, this means it is a good day. The monster is sleeping and I feel nothing. But Lauren, who said nothing at all, surely thinks that any day when you can feel nothing is a day that is not quite good.

On a good day you should feel something.

There was a time when Lauren was afraid of my library. Do you remember that? My many books, stacked around the room like armed guards, intimidated her; made her feel like she was being scrutinized or perhaps judged. But she spends more time in here now than I do. Sometimes I will come downstairs at night, when I cannot sleep, and I will see a stripe of light under the door, and she will be in here having fallen asleep while doing homework, the paper-and-binding watchdogs shushing me as I peek inside.

On those nights I feel complete. There is no other word for it. It's as if I could melt away into the hall carpet and be gone forever from this house and it would be all right because I am complete. All done. Finished.

Perhaps tonight will be one of those nights when I creep down the hall and there will be the yellow ribbon of light under the library door. And then this day will become a day when I feel something.

And it will be good.

Love, Lauren

2010-02-22T13:43:00.000-08:00

Dear Raul:

A light rain is falling as I type this message to you. The clouds outside my window look fat and happy with rain, like they could do this all week long if they wanted to. I am in the library at Abigail's house and we are both sipping tea and eating one of Esperanza's scones. She calls them empanadas but they are really just scones with crimped edges. I saw the recipe she used. I pointed that out to her - all in fun- and she told me with a frown that she put a dash of cayenne pepper and coriander in the mixing bowl which unBritished the dough and made them more an empanada than anything else. She doesn't laugh at her own little jokes these days. She is already grieving the loss of everything that defines her day.

Abigail grows weaker. I think she is in more pain now than she admits. I don't think she refuses to complain because she's brave, though she is that, I think she believes the pain is like a cleansing penance for all the things she wishes she had done differently. It does no good to tell her she has already paid for the mistakes she has made.

The diary will be released on April 1 and I am as nervous as I am excited. My agent wants me to throw a launch party for it at the local bookstore but that's not what I am going to do. I am going to wait until the gallery opens, probably in May or June, and the celebration will not be the book published but the diary displayed. Mercy's diary. Not my book.

I pray everyday Abigail will live long enough to see it. . .
Miss you,
Love, Lauren

Author Intrusion

2010-02-19T15:38:00.000-08:00

It's me the author intruding for just a moment to announce the audio version of The Shape of Mercy has just been nominated for an Audie award!

The Audies (you can find out more here) are the Audio Publishers Assn's (APAs) annual awards of excellence and are handed out every May at the very cool Book Expo in New York. The Shape of Mercy audiobook was produced by Christianaudio and narrated by the talented Tavia Gilbert.
I share the nomination in the Inspirational Fiction category with these fine people and their books:

A Month of Summer, by Lisa Wingate, narrated by Johanna Parker
(Recorded Books)

Double Minds, by Terri Blackstock, narrated by Cassandra Campbell
(Zondervan)

Kiss, by Ted Dekker and Erin Healy, narrated by Pam Turlow
(Oasis Audio)

The Tempest Tales, by Walter Mosley, narrated by Ty Jones
(Recorded Books)

If you want to know how to get your hands on the The Shape of Mercy audiobook, it's available right here for 28% off retail, and that's always nice.

Thanks for letting me poke my head in here. On Monday, Lauren's up. The diary is nearly ready to be released to the world and she's nervous. . .

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2010-02-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

I am making a list of all of Miss Abigail's favorite dishes and I am making them, one a time, so that she can enjoy them and I can see her enjoy them. Today for lunch it will be Fruited Rice Pilaf. Sometimes I make this with a pork roast. But not today. Today I serve it alone. It will not be a side dish to a pork roast today. It will be The Dish. It will make her smile.

Fruited Rice Pilaf
2 Tblsp olive oil
1/4 cup chopped onion (I use Vidalias)
1/4 cup chopped celery
2/3 cup uncooked rice
1/4 cup orzo
2 cups water
1/3 cup orange juice
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup dried fruit bits
1/4 cup toasted sliced almonds

In large skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion and celery and cook 5 minutes. Stir in rice and orzo and cook two minutes. Add water and orange juice, salt and cinnamon. Bring to a boil. Reduce to low and cover. Simmer 10 minutes. Stir in diced fruit. Cover and simmer 8 to 10 minutes. Sprinkle with almonds. Serves 4.

Abigail on the Classics

2010-01-22T13:02:00.000-08:00

There was a time when falling rain would bring to mind all the things about my life I wish I could just wash away. That time is lost to me now, thank goodness. As I sit here and listen to the steady rhythm of water from heaven, I am only reminded of how beautiful the hillsides will be this spring because of it.

I am beginning to think I may not be here to see those hillsides in bloom. The menace within me has begun boiling a brew inside that will eventually kill me. I don't know what the doctors call the fierce amber fluid that the cancer produces and which they insist must be siphoned off. I don't want to know what it is called. It is enough to know that it seems to materialize from nothing.

Wait. That is not entirely true. My own body is producing it. Lauren would tell me, no, the tumor is producing it. But who produced the tumor, Lauren? My body did. My own body has turned against me. It's the most inane thing. It will consume itself, my body will. It will win. And it will lose.

Lauren has reminded me these last few few days that a new body awaits me in heaven. She is being brave for me. I can sense her fear, though. She knows I want to stay in my house until the end. She knows it might come more quickly than we thought. She knows Mercy's gallery won't be done by the time the cauldron inside me has its way. She often shows me photos on her digital camera of the work being done. The construction workers have done nothing the last few days with all this rain. Nothing for five days. Five days lost to me.

So I amuse myself with the architect's drawings. They are beautiful - the drawings. There are people strolling about the drawn-in grounds and birds in the sky and a brilliant sun.

And on every exterior shot, the hillsides behind are in bloom.

The rain is quickening its pace now. I believe I just heard thunder. I think it's time for a cup of tea.

Ask Clarissa

2010-01-08T11:41:00.001-08:00

It was a little strange returning to Santa Barbara after the holidays knowing I am now in in my last semester at UCSB and that these next few months will be the ones where everything will change.

Lauren and I will graduate from college, and Abigail, who is starting to show battle scars from the war the cancer is waging against her, will graduate to whatever kind of paradise awaits her on the other side of this life. I won't be living in a dorm and I won't be living here in Abigail's house after May. I am most likely headed to LA to go get my MBA wherever I can, wherever I can afford it. It seems like I will be starting all over again. Just when I got comfortable with my life.

We don't really talk much here in Abagail's house about what the future holds. It's just the three of us now. Ryan got an apartment with her sister - unwilling, I think to live in a lovely house where someone is dying - so it's just me, Lauren and Abigail after Esperanza goes home at the end of the day. We've started another book in our little book club of three, not Pooh this time. We are reading Sonnets from the Portuguese from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Abigail's choice, course. Love poems. After all these empty years, Abigail is in love with love.

John Beckett took me to meet his parents over Christmas. I should rephrase that. I didn't go to meet his parents. I went to a party at his parents' house in LA and they were there and I met them. When he brought me back home, John told me he'd been gone the month of January on a business trip to Tokyo. And he asked if perhaps while he was away if I would not see anyone else.

"See someone else?" I said. "You want me to keep my eyes closed for a month?"

He drew me close. "You know what I mean."

I did.

I kissed him this time.

Abigail met John Beckett that night. She told me after he left that he suits me. I reminded her that she just met him. She told me, "Yes, but you've been living here in my house all these weeks since you met him. He suits you."

Dang it all. I miss him . . .

Love, Lauren

2009-12-21T20:22:00.000-08:00

Dear Raul:

Do you ever feel like time in December marches to some other beat, a faster one; a cadence that you simply aren't ready for even though you knew it was coming?

My finals are done, and I am home at last at my parents' house but it still seems like there are parties or events or a myriad of somethings that still must be attended to. My mother says try as she might to get more done earlier in the year, it simply doesn't seem to make a difference. The pace of December's days and nights is simply accelerated no matter what she does. It's all part of the preparations for Christmas. And she's just gotten used to it.

This just doesn't seem right to me somehow. The first Christmas wasn't fast or frantic or exhausting. It was quiet and unhurried and practically missed by everyone except for some shepherds. If we are trying to recapture the wonder of the first Christmas, it seems to me we are grasping for something that is completely OTHER. Not bad or disrespectful or unhealthy, just other. There is the real Christmas, the first one. And there is the other one, the one we drive ourselves to exhaustion every year to create. I think we are missing something.

Tonight I shall do nothing but drink cocoa and look at the stars . . .

Merry Christmas, Raul. Or should I say Feliz Navidad! Give my love to your parents and sisters. . .

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2009-11-30T17:17:00.000-08:00

The last of the turkey has been eaten - today I made enchiladas with the last of it - and, pardon me for saying so, I am glad the leftovers are out of my refrigerator. Leftovers are not my favorite thing. They do not taste like the day they were made, I don't care what anybody says.

Tonight I am making sopapillas for Miss Abigail. She has liked them since she was a little girl - back when my mother made them for her. Here is my mother's recipe:

Sopapillas

4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 Tbls sugar
1 1/4 cup scalded milk, cooled
1 Tbls shortening
1 pkg yeast
1/4 cup warm water

Combine all the dry ingredients. Cut in shortening. Dissolve yeast in warm water and add to cooled milk. Add to dry ingredients. Knead dough 15 to 20 times. Set aside for ten minutes. Roll dough into 1/4-inch thickness and cut into squares. Fry in melted, hot shortening, a few at a time. Dust with cinnamon sugar and serve with honey.

Save none for leftovers. They are only yummy the day you make them . . .

Abigail on the Classics

2009-11-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

I am starting to feel my mortality.

I can sense within me that there is an intruder and that my own body has surrendered to it. Have you seen how an animal who has no will to fight lies down in front of its competitor and exposes its tender belly? Inviting its own defeat? This is how I see it, almost like a spectator watching from the last row in the arena. I am not in a war with the cancer. I am its spoils.

Lauren has stopped asking me to at least consider treatment. The treatment is not a cure, my dear Lauren, I told her, more than once. It will only delay the inevitable and fill those extra days with nauseating frustration. Besides. We are all appointed a time to exit. Most of us don't have the odd gift of knowing when it is. It is odd. And it is a gift.

Mercy's diary will probably be published after I am gone. I am quite fine with this. I won't have to wonder if Lauren and I did the right thing and not being able to do a thing about it. Even now
I still wonder.

The gallery is under construction and despite my money, influence and daily badgering, I may well be in my grave when it is finally finished, too. I am not quite so fine about that. Lauren took me to see the progress made so far. It is a great scraping of the earth and a huge slab of cement at the moment. Hard to believe it will be beautiful one day - a great white edifice of art and music and literature.

I am re-reading my favorite books while I still have the time. Today I am reliving the melancholy magic of Wuthering Heights. I can almost smell the heather . . .

Ask Clarissa

2009-11-09T13:56:00.000-08:00

It was bound to happen. I knew there would come a point in our budding relationship when John Beckett would ask the "If There's A Good God Then Why" question.

Everybody has to ask themselves that question at some point, you know? They either come up with an answer they like or they don't. If they don't, they ask other people that question - many times over - 'cause they simply have to have an answer for it. It's the question of the ages.

We got into it, like John and I usually do, at the coffee shop, on my break. Some little kid who lived in the neighborhood where he grew up was kidnapped, abused and then killed. He knows the parents. It's horribly tragic. So right now John Beckett's pretty ticked at God. I mean, if there's a good God and he can do anything, then why the heck didn't he stop it?

I told him I agree that the situation is horrendous. Tragic. The person who did this is a monster. But I asked John if he was ready to take his question all the way to its logical conclusion? Which is what? he said.

Which bad things do you want God to stop? I asked him. All bad things? Just some of them? Which ones? Where do you draw the line? On a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is cataclysmic natural disaster, and 9 is mass murder, and 8 is the killing of an innocent kid, and 7 is the car accident that leaves you paralyzed, and 6 is your spouse leaving you for another person . . . well, you get my drift. Where do you draw the line? You want God to intervene all the way to 1? All the way to you getting a flat tire or breaking your ankle playing tennis? No? Then where do you want him stop? At 5? At 8? Where do you want him to intrude on the natural outworking of our moral choice? Do you realize if you want him to intervene all the way to 1 you have just eliminated the need for doctors, nurses, lawyers, judges, policemen, the military, hospitals, prisons and courthouses? Where do you want him to stop, John?

There's no reason he couldn't have stopped this, John said, pointing to the article in the paper about the kid.

Well, how many reasons have you thought of? I asked. Do you really think mere mortals are capable of thinking of ALL the reasons there could be?

He started to get mad. Whose side are you on? he growled.

I laughed, but not in a funny way. I said, Who said anything about sides? This is just the way it is. It's a matter that is too big for sides. I am just telling you if you are going to stick with your argument, you need to consider how it shakes out when you take it all the way to where it stops.

John stood up. You want to tell that to this little boy's parents? he said coolly.

They didn't ask me, John. You did.

Well, what if they did ask you? What if they did ask you why God let this happen?

That's a different question, John. I don't know why. I don't think anyone has the answer to that one.

John stood up to leave. I didn't think you were such a big fan of God, he said.

I didn't think I was either, I told him. I am however a fan of keeping it real. If you're going to believe in something, believe in it all the way. If you're going to believe God should stop bad things from happening, then believe in it all the way. Keep it real, if you're going to bother to keep it at all.

John said, If this kid was your little brother, I doubt you'd feel the same way. Then he left without saying goodbye.

Everyone's convictions about what they believe are tested when they lose something - or someone - they love. Maybe John is right. Maybe I would feel differently if that little boy had been my brother.

But this isn't about how any of us feel. It's about what is and what is not. . .

I don't want to think about it anymore, it's making my head spin. And I have to get back to work. The afternoon crowd is coming in for their hits of caffeine. I'll ask Lauren about it tonight. She's a fan, as John would say. . .

Love, Lauren

2009-11-02T16:12:00.001-08:00

Dear Raul:

The diary is as good as printed. The last changes I could make to it, I have made, not that there was truly anything to change. A word here and there that I had to guess at because Mercy's ink had faded were the only words I seriously thought about changing. And it's done. The galleys for Mercy's diary have been sent back to the publisher.

In a couple weeks, those pages will go to the printer. The publisher has decided to expedite the first printing and have them available by Easter. Today, they sent me a PDF of the cover. I honestly wasn't sure if I liked it, Raul. It was so simple, so unpretentious. Ryan thought it was perfect. So did Clarissa. But Abigail and I kept gaping at it, wondering, I suppose, for the umpteenth time if we're ready for Mercy's heart and soul to be laid bare. The cover image looks like softened leather, brown and warm like a saddle in the sun. And across it is the image a of quill, a bit of ink, and the cap of colonial woman, folded loosely. It evokes the strangest feelings in me.

The publisher has decided on a title and I am learning to like it. Diary of Innocence. There is nothing outwardly wrong with it of course, but it has always just been Mercy's diary to me. It is awkward to think of it having a name other than just that. Abigail asked me if I liked the title and the cover and I told her it's not as if I like them, it's as if they must be what they must be. That makes no sense, I know. And yet she knew exactly what I meant.

For now, I can let the diary go. There is nothing I need to do between now and April. Clarissa said she will get a website up and running for me and Ryan said she'd design the look for it. The foundation has been laid for the Mercy Hawyworth Arts Center and construction will begin as soon as the cement is dry. In southern California, you can build whenever you want. . .

I feel a little useless at the moment. Midterms kept me busy the last couple weeks, as I am sure they did for you, too. But they are done. I feel untethered.

Like I don't know how to prepare for what comes next. . .

Miss you,

Love, Lauren

Mercy's Quill

2009-10-26T15:37:00.001-07:00

From Mercy Hayworth's Journal:

(a portion of the page has torn away. The entry appears to be a few days after her sixteenth birthday, in October 1689.)

. . . Papa gave me a book of poems and inside are these lovely verses by Anne Bradstreet. . .I wish I had known her.

By Night when Others Soundly Slept
by Anne Bradstreet

By night when others soundly slept
And hath at once both ease and Rest,
My waking eyes were open kept
And so to lie I found it best.

I sought him whom my Soul did Love,
With tears I sought him earnestly.
He bow'd his ear down from Above.
In vain I did not seek or cry.

My hungry Soul he fill'd with Good;
He in his Bottle put my tears,
My smarting wounds washt in his blood,
And banisht thence my Doubts and fears.

What to my Saviour shall I give
Who freely hath done this for me?
I'll serve him here whilst I shall live
And Love him to Eternity

2009-10-16T14:48:00.000-07:00

It is hot today, nearly eighty degrees and I can't believe I am simmering a pot on my stove, but the girls love my vegetarian chili. It's a savory pot of bubbling beans, very nice for an October evening - in Vermont, though, not southern California.

But Abigail likes it. That matters to me more than anything.

Here it is:

Esperanza's Veggie Chili

1 Tbsp olive oil
2 yellow onions, chopped
2 carrots and 2 celery stalks. chopped
2 jalapeno peppers, chopped
1 28 0z can diced tomatoes
4 or 5 cloves of garlic, minced
1 green pepper, chopped
1/4 cup parsley
4 ot 5 tsp chili powder
1 tsp each cumin and oregano
1/2 tsp salt
2 cans kidney beans
2 small zucchini, sliced
rice

Heat oil and add onions, carrots, celery and jalapenos. Cook, stirring often for 5 minutes. Stir in tomatoes, garlic, green pepper, parsley, and spices. Simmer 20 minutes. Stir often. Add beans and cook 15 minutes. Add zucchini and cook 5 minutes. Spoon over rice. Sprinkle with grated cheese. Serves 4 to 6.

Abigail on the Classics

2009-10-12T10:56:00.001-07:00

My humblest apologies. It is my fault that I am so late in writing this. I lacked the energy when we returned to Santa Barbara after our little retreat to the Pismo Beach house, and then I lacked the motivation.

It's not that I didn't have a lovely time with my girls. I did. I was unmotivated because I had such a lovely time. I didn't want to come home to this house where my mother died when I needed her most and where my father died sputtering he didn't need me at all. I know I will probably breathe my last in the same room where they both left me - fifty years apart. Tell me you'd race home to embrace an imminent future like that one.

Clarissa says if I am going to spend my last few months here whining about the past, she's leaving. I don't think she is serious. Well, actually, maybe she is. In any case, when she said that, I realized I really don't want to think of this house as the place where I will die. It is, but I don't want to think of that being its purpose. It is the house where I made most of the choices that have defined me, good or bad. It is the house where I learned what I could change and what I couldn't. I met Lauren in this house.

It is the house where I lived.

So I had my coffee on the patio this morning. The birds were singing to the day and the sun was coaxing the morning glories into a most narcissistic display of splendor. And I just sat and sipped. Clarissa saw me there before she left for class and I think she realized she does not have to think about finding a new place to live.

Lauren is getting a package today. She told me the galleys for the diary are ready and she is going to be going over them word by word. This is the last time she and I will have a chance to weave Mercy's words into the tale that will be her legacy.

I am glad the sun is shining today.

Ask Clarissa

2009-09-28T13:08:00.000-07:00

I went to Abigail's beach house just to get away from school and life and the coffee house and maybe even John Beckett for the weekend. I read the Pooh book, which Abigail told me over and over is not a Pooh book, and had really nothing to contribute to any conversation about it. It was a cute book, I guess. I will probably save it to give to my own kid someday. But it didn't, like, move me. I didn't have sticky notes protuding out of mine like Lauren had in hers.

And I wasn't pondering the illustrations like Ryan was. I am not even sure she read the dang book. She was just all over the illustrations; their charm and poetic imperfections and wonderfully abstract shadows. Whatever.

The first night at the house we decided to have our dinner outside on the patio (Esperanza grilled salmon) and discuss our overall impressions of the book. Oh, yeah. We're talking about When We Were Very Young. Lauren went on and on about this and that, Ryan murmured one-word super-niceties about the illustrations, Esperanza said she wished she had known about the book when her kids were little and I said I didn't have any overall impressions.

All right, Abigial said. How about underall impressions then, and the other girls laughed.

Do you have a favorite line? Lauren asked.

I cracked open the book to the Pooh poem and said, "A bear however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise." And I snapped it shut.

Lauren and Ryan giggled but Abigail didn't.

I love that line, too, she said.

And then Lauren and Ryan stopped laughing because Abgail was serious.

Think of a bear, she said. A bear lives alone unless it's a mother with cubs. They hunt alone, they walk alone. They sleep alone. And if they just sit in their cave and do nothing, they increase their size but never their influence. They never make a difference to anybody. They just get fat.

It got quiet then.

I don't think Pooh minds being chubby, I said. He likes it. It's part of who he is. And other people like it about him. Other people love that about him.

That's not really Pooh, she said. It's before he was Pooh.

It's Pooh and you know it, I said. Besides, it says "however hard he tries," Abigail. That's the opposite of sitting in a cave and doing nothing. Even Eeyore would tell you that.

She broke into a smile and then began to laugh.

Abigail seemed different after that moment, like something big and heavy that she'd been carrying around for decades had just fallen into the ocean below us.

We all sat and talked until well after dark. And when I went to bed, in the room Abigail had slept in as a child, I opened the book and started to read it again from the first page. It wasn't like the first time I read it. This time it made me feel young, like a kid. And I fell asleep thinking of my old bedroom and the sound of my parents talking in low tones as they shut down the house for the night, and Fruit Stripe gum and new boxes of crayons and watching the stars come out.

I began the weekend just wanting to get away and I left it not wanting to go back. Life is complicated when you are an adult. Too complicated.

John Beckett, who can just about drive me crazy with his opinionated diatribes, kissed me tonight. I wanted him to. . .

Love, Lauren

2009-09-25T11:57:00.000-07:00

Dear Raul:

I hope you've had a more restful week than last week. I don't know why the universal They insist that medical students must be sleep-deprived to learn anything.

I am learning to think of us as just good friends, as you have asked, but I would be lying if I said it's a skill I like. I am not trying to start a conversation you don't want to have yet, but if we can't be honest with each other, how can we be good friends? I miss you, Raul. And I miss thinking of you as more than just a friend.

I wanted to call you as soon as I got back to Santa Barbara from the weekend at the Pismo Beach house. But I needed time to mentallywork through the weekend's effect on me.

It was different for Clarissa and Ryan. They had never been there before, and so they started making memories from nothing, mostly good ones. The house is beautiful, has an outrageously fantastic view, is steps away from the ocean and Abigail paid for everything. The only damper on their perspective was Abigail's prognosis, something we all attempted to avoid thinking about anyway.

But I had been to the beach house before. It's where I found Abigail and the diary that terrible weekend she wanted to disappear - in every sense of the word. I's stopped it then; that course she had set for checking out on me altogether. But I can't stop it this time. No one can.

We sat at the same patio table, the girls and Abigail and I, where I had given Abigail that book of poetry Tom Kimura wanted her to have. But this time there was a different book on the table, When We Were Very Young. Also a book of poetry. I don't think Ryan had ever read a child's poetry book before, certainly not as an adult. It was a bit of a stretch for Clarissa, too. But I loved the book, probably because Abigail loves it and the reading of it has reminded her of much happier times.

I loved most the poem called The Invaders, abouta line of cows walking through a flower-strewn meadow: The first two stanzas are these: In careless patches through the wood/The clumps of yellow primrose stood/And sheets of white anemones/Like driven snow against the trees/Had covered up the violet/But left the bluebell bluer yet/Along the narrow carpet ride/With primroses on either side/Between their shadows and the sun/The cows came slowly one by one/Breathing the early morning air/And leaving it still sweeter there/And one by one intent upon/Their purposes, they followed on/In ordered silence. . .and were gone . . .

I just can just see it all. The flowers. The morning sun. The quiet cows and their lumbering stroll through the dewy grass.

When I told the girls that this one was my favorite, Abigail said, with tears in her eyes, that that was always her favorite, too. And I suddenly realized why she must like it so.

Primroses.

Her favorite flower. They always find a way to come back after a hard winter.

Take care, Raul. Don't work too hard. Life is short. . .

Love, Lauren.

Author Intrusion

2009-09-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

Just a quick intermission here to share with you some exciting news! Lauren, Abigail, Clarissa and Esperanza told me it was okay to jump in here and tell you that The Shape of Mercy was named Book of the Year for Women's Fiction by the American Christian Fiction Writers. The award was presented Saturday night at the ACFW's annual conference in Denver. Pretty cool!

I was nominated with six other gifted writers; and I am truly amazed to have been named the winner. I wanted the Christian theme in The Shape of Mercy to be as organic to the plot as oxygen in our lungs - we breathe it in all day long with hardly ever being aware of it. So I was afraid the subtlety of the faith thread would perhaps keep me a nominee only - for which I was already extremely grateful. I was surprised beyond words when my fabulous editor called me with the news.

But I know you are anxious to get on with what happened at the Pismo Beach house this weekend when the Girlz gathered to discuss "When We Were Very Young." It was a weekend that can't be summed up in one post. Each of the gals will share with you their perspective on the "book club weekend," starting with Lauren - on Friday.

Until then . . .

2009-09-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

From Mercy's Book of Poems and Stories

February 20, 1692

Papa was loaned a book of poetry from a gentleman he knows in Marblehead. Such a lovely, sad poem. It was written by Sir George Etherege. He wrote it for the woman who asked how long he would love her. Who of us knows the span of years we will be granted? I would rather exhaust myself having loved than to have avoided the ache of having loved simply because of the things I do not know.

"It is not, Celia, in our power
To say how long our love will last;
It may be we within this hour
May lose those joys we now do taste;
The Blessed, that immortal be,
From change in love are only free.

Then since we mortal lovers are,
Ask not how long our love will last;
But while it does, let us take care
Each minute be with pleasure past:
Were it not madness to deny
To live because we're sure to die?"

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2009-09-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

I am not very happy with the way things are. Abigail has cancer, as I am sure you already know. She will not let the doctors cut it out. You know that, too. They can't cut it all out anyway. And besides, she said, it likes her. It will grow back.

I cannot picture my life outside the walls of this house. I have worked here since I was a teenager and I am now sixty-nine years old. Abigail says I have nothing to worry about. I can retire in good health and spend my days making tamales for Arturo and reading drinking horchata on my patio.

I don't want to retire.

And what will become of this big house?

I am not happy. Not happy at all.

This dish isn't authentic Mexican but Lauren and the girls like it. They want it all the time. And I don't feel like finding something to post here today that I really like.

Biscuit Topped Mexican Chicken
2 cups cooked chicken, cubed
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 can of chopped chiles
1 cup shredded Jack cheese
1 cup shredded Cheddar
1 can Mexican style corn
1 cup Bisquick
1 cup milk
3 eggs separated
1/2 tsp salt
fresh ground pepper

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease 11 x 7 pan. Layer chicken, onion, chiles, cheese and corn. Beat Bisquick, milk, salt, pepper and egg yolks. Beat egg whites in separate bowl until stiff. Fold in yolk mixture. Pour over chicken. Bake until knife inserted in top comes out clean, about 35 minutes. The girls like it with Spanish rice.

Abigail on the Classics

2009-09-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last few days reading literature that simply doesn't thrill me in the least. In fact, it has left me feeling rather depressed. And for pity's sake, who has time to read depressing literature when there are so many wonderful books, begging for attention?

I certainly don't have time. So I am putting away the literature on what happens to your body when the cancer within lays claim to your insides like a greedy Monopoly player who simply isn't content to own hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. I am through reading about obstructed this and blocked that and stents and stomas and grains of sand in the hourglass.

Today, I feel lovely. I have no sense of the Intruder today. And today is all I consider anymore.

We are reading A. A. Milne's When We Very Young, the girls and I. Dear Ryan, the girl-with-the-boy-name who I regret I haven't learned to love yet, held up her copy today and announced with disdain, "This is Winnie-the-Pooh."

No, it's a book of poems written by the man who created Winnie the Pooh, I told her.

It's a kid's book, she said.

Would you prefer some adult literature? I asked her, and I handed her the 50-page treatise on treatment options for advanced ovarian cancer.

She closed her pouty little mouth.

Didn't think so, I said.

When We Were Very Young is a collection of forty-four poems. It was the first of the books Milne wrote featuring Pooh and Christopher Robin, and when it was published in 1924, only a little more than 5,000 copies were printed. It seems to me Dorothea and I had one of those copies. We read it at the Pismo Beach house, I think. I just remember reading it with her in the sunshine. With sand between our toes. And there was lemonade and cherry tarts.

I don't have the book now. Makes me think maybe it was Dorothea's book. And nothing remains from her childhood; nothing except the memories I have of it.

I am going to suggest we girls discuss the book over a weekend retreat at the Pismo Beach house. Weekend after next. I shall have Esperanza call the property manager to air it out.

It will be relaxing and peaceful. How can it not with sand between our toes?

And there shall be lemonade and cherry tarts.

Ask Clarissa

2009-08-24T16:45:00.001-07:00

It's been a little creepy around the house. Ryan extended her stay in Europe for another week - can't say as I blame her. Lauren's been home at her parents' the last few days reconnecting with Raul now that's he's back from Guadalajara.

So it's been me and Abigail at the house. Me and Dying Abigail.

At first I didn't quite know what to say to her. But heck, if I am anything, I am transparent. I just flat out told her, "Abigail, I don't have a clue what to say to you about this. I can't tell you it's all going to work out just fine, 'cause we both know it won't. I can't tell you don't be sad; you've lived a good, long life because that's like saying hey, get off the planet and make room for someone else. So I mean really, what can I say?"

And she said, "You can say, 'Let's go to Cold Stone.'"

I said it. So that's what we did.

While we ate cake batter ice cream with cherries and chocolate I asked her if there were any books I should read before she, you know, because it was always Abigail's intention to see that I read the classics while I lived in her house.

She licked her spoon, cocked her head and told me she thinks it would be a good idea if she and I both read A. A. Milne's When We Were Very Young.

I thought only for a moment that she was pulling my leg. But only for a moment. A woman in her 80s who has known mostly sadness her adult life is dying of cancer. It's the perfect choice. But she doesn't have it in her library. We decided to order five copies. It will be book club at Abigail's. Me. Abigail. Lauren. Ryan. Esperanza.

I am actually looking forward to this.

And yes, since you must know. John Coffee Shop Beckett and I are seeing each other. We never get to finish our arguments in the coffee shop. So we simply have to pick up where we left off later at dinner. I don't call it dating, per se. Lauren asked me who is paying for dinner when we go and I told her to shut up and mind her own business.

The books are due in tomorrow. I don't think I want to wait until Ryan gets back to start.

Love, Lauren

2009-08-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Raul:

I have been in a bit of a fog the last few days. I am sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I've been wrestling with news that has me grappling for a handhold. I wish you were here. I cannot wait until you come home from Mexico.

Abigail announced to Clarissa, Esperanza and me that she has cancer. It is advanced and surgery and treatment will likely only prolong her life by a year, maybe a little longer. She has decided to do only what will keep her alive long enough to see the the opening of Mercy's art gallery. Beyond that she says she doesn't want to fight it. After she told us, she went to her library and started making phone calls to the contractor, the architect, her lawyer - telling them all methodically, as if announcing a bit of bad weather is headed our way - to step everything up a notch. She wants the building competed by the New Year.

We've only just had the building plans approved. The ink on the last environmental survey is barely dry. They all told her - even the lawyer - that she is asking for the impossible. But she just said most of what we say is impossible is really just improbable and she's never been a fan of probabilities. So everyone better just stop imagining what can't be done and instead get busy pursuing all that can be.

I can hardly believe I am writing this. Ryan is due home from Europe next week. Clarissa emailed her and told her the news. For now, Abigail says she wants nothing to change. She wants the girls and I to continue living with her this next school year. I don't know if Ryan will want to. Clarissa has been quiet. I don't know what she is thinking. And usually I do. Usually she just says what she is thinking.

Esperanza is angry. She has been making cookies and bread and empanadas nonstop, banging pot and pans around in the kitchen as if they were battle drums. I don't know what to do with all the food she is making. I don't know what to do about anything.

I miss you, Raul. I know we have a lot to talk about when you get home. But I miss your nearness.

Call me when you get home.

Love, Lauren

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2009-08-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

Much on my mind today. Something is up with Miss Abigail. She wants to speak to me and the girls later today. She asked me to make her favorite strawberry pie. I did. I include the recipe here. It is a great dessert for using fresh strawberries. You can't use frozen, so don't even try.

Fresh Strawberry Pie

Crust
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 Tblsp milk.
Sift dry ingredients. Add oil and milk. Mix well and then press into pie pan. Prick with fork tines and then bake at 425 degrees for 15 min. Let the crust cool.

Filling
3/4 cup sugar
3 Tblsp corn starch
1 1/2 cup water
large pkg strawberry Jell-O
3 cups fresh strawberries, sliced

Mix sugar, corn starch and water in sauce pan. Bring to boil. Add Jell-O and stir to completely dissolve. Let cool. Add strawberries, stir well, and pour into pie shell. Refrigerate until set. Serve with whipped cream.

Abigail on the Classics

2009-07-31T11:58:00.000-07:00

I apologize for my tardiness. I am not one to take an appointment lightly. You can be sure I am late because there was nothing I could do about it.

I have also never been one to pretend something is true when it isn't nor have I been the kind of person to suppose everything will turn out fine when it is quite obvious it won't.

What is "fine" anyway? We say something is fine when the thing in question is as it should be, when nothing about it is amiss, when it's the way it was before anyone wondered if something might be wrong with it.

I am not exactly fine. Something is amiss, in fact.

I have been diagnosed with cancer. Ovarian. It can happen to old women like me who've never had children. My little nests of eggs have exacted a kind of justice for having been kept from performing their sacred duty. It's not that I didn't want children. I did. But the only man I was married to did not. After he left me, I was too old and too single to consider waltzing into motherhood on my own. Besides, I had Graham, right?

The girls do not know. I haven't even told Esperanza, even though she has taken me to my doctors' appointments of late. They all suspect something. I can see it in their eyes.

I don't plan on keeping anyone in the dark. I shall tell them soon. After I have a chance to decide what I want to do.

And amazingly enough I do have some choices.

Isn't that just fine?

Win a book!

2009-07-24T13:17:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note here before I head back to my current work in progress. I am loving it! It's called Lady in Waiting and the historical thread in this one is the demure, dulcet and doomed Lady Jane Grey. Brave girl. . .

The Shape of Mercy is a Book of the Year finalist in the American Christian Fiction Writers Women's Fiction category. Yay! To celebrate, I am giving away a signed copy here and also on my regular blog

To enter, just drop a shout in the comments section here by Thursday, July 30. You can enter on the regular blog, too, if you want.

And just so you know, The Shape of Mercy didn't win the RITA award at the RWA national conference last week in D.C. The accomplished Nora Roberts won in our category, but it really was a thrill to be a finalist alongside her.

Have a great weekend. Abigail is up on Monday. She's been secretive lately. Wonder what's up. . .

Ask Clarissa

2009-07-20T11:21:00.000-07:00

Okay. Yes, it's true. I am sort of going on a date with John Beckett on Friday. Yeah, the cell phone guy. It's his idea. And I wouldn't actually call it a date. I'd call it a deBATE. Huge difference.

But Lauren's calling it a date. And now Abigail and Esperanza are calling it a date. Just because a guy says, "Hey, you want to grab some dinner and talk about this?" that doesn't mean the upcoming dinner is a date. We got into a discussion about politics and capitalism (can you see this is so NOT pre-date talk?) and he told me democracy is the only form of government that works and I said democracy is only as good as the people in charge and we couldn't finish the conversation because other people were waiting in line and getting all jittery waiting for their java.

So we're going to finish the debate on Friday. Yes, over dinner. John Beckett is a prime example of arrogance and opportunistic behavior. I said it to his face. And he has told me on numerous occasions on his daily stop at the coffee shop that I wouldn't last a day in a place where everyone had as much power as everyone else. He so doesn't get it.

Lauren says I am the one who doesn't get it. He likes you, Clarissa, she said. Does not, I said. Then why does he keep coming to your coffee shop? she said.

We make d- - - good coffee, I said.

She just laughed.

In a sad way, though. She and Raul are having issues.

But that's besides the point.

It's not a date.

Not a date.

Love, Lauren

2009-07-17T16:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Raul:

I just want you to know that I understand your need to stay a few weeks longer in Guadalajara to help your friend deal with the loss of her brother. I know I didn’t sound like I understood when you called me last night. It just caught me by surprise. I am sorry I sounded like I didn’t care about this friend of yours. I do care about her loss.

But if I am being honest with you, I have to tell you it scares me a little that she is someone you once had feelings for. And that she once – and maybe still does – have feelings for you.

I can’t help feeling a little pushed aside. I don’t want to feel that way, but I do. I’d be less than honest with you if I said I was fine with this. If I am being melodramatic or over-reacting, I apologize. I miss you.

Clarissa came home with me for the weekend. Cole is here and we are going over to his house tonight to swim and play volleyball. Yeah, I am going to attempt to play volleyball. They insist they are just friends. She actually met someone at the coffee shop who she says drives her nuts but she keeps talking about him. And she says he can’t stand her, but he keeps coming into the coffee shop. It’s the strangest thing. It’s like they both love to hate each other.

Abigail went to the doctor the other day and then she went again today. Esperanza took her both times. I don’t think she is sick. She doesn’t appear to be sick. But she dismissed both doctor visits as if they were trips to the grocery store. She won’t say why she went and I guess it’s really none of my business. She was quiet when Clarissa and I left the house this afternoon. I am worried about her.

I am praying every day for your safe return. Hope you’re not irritated with me. It’s almost impossible for me to picture – you being irritated with anyone. But still. Sorry if I’ve disappointed you somehow.

Miss you,
Love, Lauren

Mercy's Quill

2009-07-10T10:56:00.001-07:00

From Mercy Hayworth's journal - dated February 10, 1691

I came across this lovely poem today while in Boston with Papa. It was written by Catherine of Siena, who lived three hundred years past. It makes me think of heaven . . .

CONSUMED IN GRACE

I first saw God when I was a child, six years of age.
the cheeks of the sun were pale before Him,
and the earth acted as a shy
girl, like me.

Divine light entered my heart from His love
that did never fully wane,

though indeed, dear, I can understand how a person's
faith can at time flicker,

for what is the mind to do
with something that becomes the mind's ruin:
a God that consumes us
in His grace.

I have seen what you want;
it is there,

a Beloved of infinite
tenderness.

Abigail on the Classics

2009-07-06T11:58:00.001-07:00

Did you know that when The Bell Jar was first published, Sylvia Plath used the pseudonym Victoria Lucas? It was only after she took her own life that the book that would become her definitive work was published under her real name.

I feel sorry for the poor girl. She wrote The Bell Jar - the story of a gifted woman who wars with thoughts of suicide - from the standpoint of someone intimately knowledgeable. She wanted anonymity. Perhaps some would say it does not matter now. She is gone. She is not here to demand Victoria Lucas be known as its author. And she is not here to need her privacy. But I believe if it mattered to her while she lived, it should matter just as much to us in her death. Who is to say what we believed to be of great importance while we lived ceases to matter at all when we die.

I have read that while in college, Sylvia wrote in a letter: "I've gone around for most of my life as as in the rarefied atmosphere under a bell jar." I took enough science classes in high school and college to know what a bell jar is for, at least the kind I think Ms. Plath was talking about. This kind of jar has a rounded top and a bottom that is open. Put it on a snug base with a firm seal and you can create a significant vacuum. And of course, that lovely clear glass allows wonderful visibility to lookers-on. Whatever is being tested under the vacuum will have a ready audience.

I do believe I can relate to what life is like inside the bell jar. It can suffocate you. Some cannot break the glass and get out. I just learned that from the inside you can paint the glass black so that at least no one can see in.

But then, you cannot see out, can you? So which is worse, I ask you?

I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow. Esperanza is taking me. Something is not quite right. I kind of wish the glass around me wasn't so dark. . . .

Author Intrusion

2009-06-19T16:18:00.001-07:00

I need to break in here for a moment to let you know that The Shape of Mercy blog will go quiet next week while I am away from "the office." I don't think I will be anywhere near a computer so I hope you will hang tight and come back the week after next to see what The Girlz are up to.

I can tell you that in the coming weeks Clarissa will have another run-in with John Beckett - and another date with Cole. Raul will rekindle an old friendship with someone from his past while he's in Guadalajara which will through Lauren off balance a bit, Abigail will get some disturbing news, and Esperanza will try sushi for the first time. Don't stay a stranger.

And for fun, here's a picture of my good friend, Susan May Warren, who's in Holland at the moment. She came across a Dutch version of The Shape of Mercy. Pretty cool, huh? Thanks, Suz!

Ask Clarissa

2009-06-15T10:48:00.000-07:00

So I am in the coffee shop this morning and this guy comes in during a much-needed lull. He’s got his Bluetooth thingy in his ear and a laptop and the morning paper under his arm. He’s drenched in cologne, is wearing a gray suit that looks and smells like he just picked it up from the dry cleaners, and he’s chattering away to someone he is obviously trying to impress. On his phone.

So he gets to the counter. He’s looking right at me while he’s telling Prospective Client how wonderful his company is. He holds up a finger like he might need another minute before he can reenter the real world where I and the coffee shop exist.

I smile nice and say loud enough to make his pointed head jerk a teensy bit, “No prob!”

It is delicious turning away from him and busying myself with the pastry shelves. I get the attention of Mindy who’s building the drinks this morning and I tell her the guy at the counter is mine. She smirks and gets a big bag of beans to grind for the next onslaught of caffeine addicts.

Mr. Cell Phone is pacing a little. He wants his coffee. He wants the deal. He wants everything. He leans over the counter to get my attention. He snaps his fingers. Dear Mindy grinds the beans next to me. Clever girl. I pretend I don’t hear him. Mr. Cell Phone grabs a napkin from the counter and a pen out of his pocket and scribbles something. I am thinking it is his coffee order. I begin to hum a happy tune. Mindy grinds a few beans.

A man comes in the store and smiles at me. I cheerfully ask the new guy what I can get for him. He happily tells me he wants a dark roast with room for cream and a blueberry scone. We complete our transaction with lots of cheerful small talk and the whole time Mr. Cell Phone is jockeying for position so that he can wave that napkin in front of my face, all the while chattering way on his Bluetooth. I give the new guy his change, wish him a fantastic day and immediately turn back to the pastry case to straighten the straight doilies.

At long last Mr. Cell Phone says goodbye and the moment he does I look up at him. “All set?” I say oh-so-sweet. He huffs, with a little smile of his own on his face, like I am a cute, dumb blonde who needs a lesson or two on napkin-waving. “I was trying to get your attention!” he says, shaking his head in just about the most patronizing way he could.

“I was trying to get yours,” I say, just as cool as you please.

His mouth drop opens a bit. His glassy, I-need-my-coffee eyes widen. Have I just said what he thinks I have just said?

Oh.yes. I have. I detect the slightest snickering from Mindy.

Mr. Cell Phone simply doesn’t know what to say. I can tell he wants to turn on his fancy heels and go get his coffee elsewhere. But he needs his coffee and he’s got an incoming call.

“Tall cinnamon latte, no cream,” he says flatly.

“You got it,” I respond and I take his five dollar bill. I hand him his change and ask for his name so that I can write it on his cup. He says, “This is John Beckett,” but he is saying it into his Bluetooth, while looking straight at me. He tips his head, as he continues his phone conversation, like he’s saying, “There, smart aleck. You have my name.”

I write “This is John Beckett’s latte” on his cup and wish him an exuberant nice day and I hand the cup to Mindy.

He walks away, and looks back once, and I can tell he’s wondering if he should report me to the manager.

“I am the manager!” I call out to him, with a smile and a wink.

After John Beckett finds the farthest corner of the shop to finish his phone call, Mindy turns to me.

“You know that guy?”

“That’s John Beckett,” and I pick up the napkin he left on the counter. It is scribbled with T Cin lat no w c.

I crumple it and toss it in the trash.

I gotta text Cole. He’s gonna love this. . . Oh, yeah. We went on a date Saturday night. But there’s nothing to tell. Yet.

Love, Lauren

2009-06-08T12:34:00.000-07:00

Hey, Raul:

You’ve only been in Guadalajara a week and it already feels like months since you left. Tell your mama and hermanas hello from me.

Plans for the arts center are coming along. Abigail and I have hired a female architect to draft the first set of blueprints. This gal is someone my dad knows and really likes. She has designed a beautiful art gallery in New York and a stunning museum of modern art in Miami. The rest of her portfolio is impressive.

I also have to admit I like it that she’s a woman. It just seems appropriate somehow. I don’t mean for that to sound bad. I just think of all the women in Mercy’s life – and in mine – that have had such a pivotal effect in this journey, and it just seems right. For Mercy, there is the memory of her mother, and the women who were accused before her, and the Goody Trumball who tried to help her. And Prudence, of course. And then John Peter’s sister who gave the diary back to Mercy’s family – to Mercy's cousin’s wife. Then there is me. And Abigail. And Esperanza. And even Clarissa.

I mentioned all this to Cole and he told me I was being sexist. Cole also thinks I should re-write the ending of the diary so that Mercy comes back from the dead to haunt the people who falsely accused her. Since you know Cole, you know he’s only half-kidding.

Did he tell you he’s coming up to Santa Barbara this next weekend to see Clarissa? Like, a date . . .I am not sure what to think. I don’t want to see either one of them get hurt. Sure, Cole seems like a self-assured lady’s man, and Clarissa is a street-smart chick who won’t take crap from anybody. But inside they are as fragile as the rest of us.

We shall see . . .Miss you,
Love, Lauren

Mercy's Quill

2009-06-05T13:07:00.000-07:00

From Mercy Hayworth's book of poems and stories

September 1, 1691

Morning breaks across the hill
Flood of sun, a steady spill
Sings the dawn, a heady trill
Be gone, night! Be gone, chill!

Birds take flight, across the mist
Into velvet blueness kissed
All around, above, amidst
Light now reigns and will persist

Until the hours fade to gray
Begins the end of this new day
It soars without me to heav’n – away!
The morrow waits and I must stay

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2009-06-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

Today I share with you my version of Baja Fish Tacos. When people come to the West Coast for the first time and they hear "fish" and "tacos" in the same sentence, they get a little worried that if they order one at a restaurant they will get a taco made of cat food. I have served these to countless reluctant Easterners who always want the recipe afterward. They judged before they tasted. Never a good idea:

Esperanza's Grilled Baja Fish Tacos

Marinade
1/3 cup olive oil
2 Tblsp vinegar
Juice of one lime
1 garlic clove, minced
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp chili powder
Dash of red pepper flakes

You can use cod or tilapia. This is enough to coat 1 lb of fillets. Let them sit in this for 30 mins before you grill them. It’s good to use a mesh grilling basket because tilapia especially becomes very delicate as it grills and flakes easily. You will lose it all in the grill. You can grill them in foil packages, but then you give up texture and visual appeal. A grilled piece of white fish looks better than one cooked in foil. The fillets will grill quickly. No more then 8 to 9 minutes total cooking time. Yes, it's true that some fish tacos feature fillets that have been battered and fried. Yes, they are yummy. They are also bad for you.

White sauce
½ cup mayo
¼ cup sour cream
¼ cup plain yogurt
¼ chopped fresh cilantro
Lime juice
Couple dashes of tobasco
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Serve the grilled fillets in warmed corn tortillas with the white sauce and shredded white cabbage. You simply cannot use lettuce. Cannot. Must be white cabbage. Chopped tomatoes are good on top. Baja fish tacos are never served with grated cheese. So don’t even go there.

Abigail on the Classics

2009-05-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

The wheels are in motion.

I have sold a sizeable amount of stock to finance the Mercy Hayworth Memorial Arts Center, much to my lawyer’s shock and awe. He tried to convince me to wait and see how I feel about this project in six months – nothing good happens when we are impulsive, he said. Ha. I didn’t tell him I certainly know all about the regrets you live with when you act on impulse only.

But I told him that in six months I could be dead. Highly unlikely, he said, referring, no doubt, to my robust contrariness, the kind of which has kept codgers alive and kicking well into their centenarian years.

In any case, it’s my money, my estate, and I can do what I want. So I did. I have also asked my lawyer to draw up the necessary paperwork to set up a land trust so that the parcel of land I am donating will always and forevermore be a monument of sorts to Mercy.

Lauren’s father’s company is taking care of all the contracting. I have nothing to do now except watch it grow.

It’s a beautiful piece of land, really. I’ve had developers after me for years, wanting it. You can’t see the ocean from the land, but you can smell it. You can feel it. On extraordinarily quiet nights, you can hear it.

In the meantime, Graham is at last gainfully employed. I wonder every day if this will be the day when he decides he doesn’t like working and will quit. That’s not your problem, Clarissa tells me. So stop wondering. I think there are days she’d like sock Graham soundly in the head. I wonder if maybe that isn’t what he has needed, all these years - for someone to care enough about him to knock some sense into him.

I am glad Clarissa is staying at the house with me this summer. I would never tell her this, but she makes me feel brave.

Ironically, if she knew, I think it might scare her off . . .

Ask Clarissa

2009-05-25T17:32:00.001-07:00

I can’t believe I am saying this but I can’t wait to get back to Santa Barbara and Abigail’s mausoleum of a house. I am home for the three-day weekend, and it’s hot here in Bakersfield and I am finding the older I get the more I don’t fit here anymore. A bunch of my high school friends are here for the summer; some have jobs, some don’t. All of them seem to have this itch to be like we all were in high school – back when nothing really mattered but who liked you and who didn’t.

I am glad beyond words that I took on the job as assistant manager at the coffee shop and that means nearly full time work this summer. Lauren’s going to be around some, too, since she and Abigail are going to build the arts center - you know, the one that she is convinced will appeal as much to the struggling blue collar machinist as the upwardly mobile CEO. We shall see about that.

And Lauren has plans for us to spend any weekends I am not working at her parents’ house in LA. Cole will be around. And Raul, after he gets back from visiting his parents in Mexico. Should be an interesting summer. Ryan has a summer internship in Paris, lucky her, so the studio will be available for me to flee to when Lauren is gone and Abigail is moody.

Graham finally got a job at an upscale men’s clothing store. in SB. It’s actually the perfect job for him. He’s knows all about expensive clothing for men. He practically sold his soul to the devil to finance his gambling habit - all the while wearing $2,000 suits.

And now that he has a job, he wants a car. We convinced Abigail not to buy him one, but she did decide to let him borrow her old Mercedes until he can afford his own wheels. She never drives it. It’s like a thousand years old. Graham turned his nose up at it and I wanted to clobber him with the broken gear shift on the bucket of bolts I am driving around. But he ended up taking it. He wanted Abigail’s Jag. He said it without saying it, if you know what I mean. I started to whisper “Don’t!” to her but I didn’t have to. She told him it was the old Mercedes or her Schwinn.

I am almost starting to like her. . .

Gotta run. A party tonight. Last one. . .

Love, Lauren

2009-05-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Raul:

I can hardly sit still to type this email. First, I signed that contract and sent it. Mercy's diary, at least my transcription of it, will be on bookstore shelves by Christmas. It makes me light-headed just thinking about it!

But guess what? Remember I told you I wanted to find a new investor for that arts center idea I had and that I planned to donate the publishing proceeds to fund an endowment for it? Abigail wants to build it! She has undeveloped land in Santa Barbara that she wants to donate and she has stocks she says she will sell to see it built. When she told me, I honestly could think of nothing to say. She misunderstood my silence for disappointment. She asked me was there a reason why I didn't approve? When I finally spoke, I whispered that I was speechless with amazement not disappointment! But I asked her if she'd really thought about what it would mean to fund a multi-million dollar project. I imagine it could cost $10 million to build - maybe more.

She said, "I know exactly what it will mean."

I think perhaps she wants to find a remarkable way to make up for the mistakes she's made in her life. She is at her lawyer's today to start working out the details. He will probably try to talk her out of it. I doubt he will succeed.

I want to call it the Mercy Hayworth Arts and Literary Center. And I want her diary to be housed there in her memory. She loved to write, she loved beautiful things, she loved people. It's the perfect place for it to be. I have to dash out for my last final, but I wanted to tell you this. Isn't it cool?

Can't wait to see you this weekend!
Love, Lars

Mercy's Quill

2009-05-11T10:08:00.001-07:00

From Mercy's book of poems and stories
11 May 1692

In my dreams she came to me
This locked space
Without a key
She kissed my brow
Soothed my worries
Lingered long
No sense of hurry
But gone again, a flickering ache
The second I became awake
Left me smiling, grieving, bare
For just a glimpse, to see her there.

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2009-05-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

A little while back, when Miss Abigail was sick, someone asked for the recipe for chicken tortilla soup because this is what I fed to her to chase the flu away. It is better than aspirin and cough syrup

Here it is.

Esperanza’s Chicken Tortilla Soup

3 cups of cubed cooked chicken (Abigail only likes white meat. I roast the chicken in the oven with garlic, onion power, cumin and a couple shakes of cayenne. I bring home the thighs and legs to Arturo, my husband)
8 cups of chicken broth (if you use the canned kind, add some adobo seasoning to it otherwise it tastes like old tea)
12 corn tortillas cut into shreds the size of French fries. I use kitchen shears
Seasoned oil – we like olive oil
One green bell pepper and one yellow one – diced
Two tomatoes – diced
One yellow onion – diced
One garlic clove – minced
Some cornstarch and chili powder mixed together – maybe 4 tablespoons of corn starch and one of chili powder
Lots of shredded cheese
Snipped cilantro
Sour cream
Avocado bites

In oil, fry the tortilla strips in batches in large Dutch oven. Drain them on paper towels. Use the same oil to sauté the peppers, tomatoes, onion and garlic. Add more oil if you have to. Add the chicken broth and chicken and simmer for 15 minutes. Increase the heat and add the cornstarch mix a little at a time so that the soup is creamy, not thick. Serve piping hot in bowls. Top with shredded cheese, cilantro, sour cream, avocado bites and the crispy tortilla strips. Usually there aren’t any leftovers. But if there are, keep the tortilla strips in a paper sack. If you put them in baggies, they will go limp like lizards.

Abigail on the Classics

2009-05-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

I feel very strange today, light-hearted. Hopeful. It’s been a long time since I have felt weightless like this. Even when I read Tom’s poem to me and knew I had his forgiveness, I still felt the weight of the choice I had made all those years ago. But today it feels different.

Lauren showed me the publishing contact today for the diary. I told her she was under no obligation to show it to me. I gave Mercy’s diary to her to do with as she pleased. But she wanted me to see it. And I suppose, deep down, I wanted her to want me to.

The money this publishing house is offering is a nice amount. Clarissa said it was enough to make her want to write a book, and I imagine she was only half kidding. For Lauren, of course, it has never been about the money. Lauren is an heiress to millions. When Clarissa asked what she would do with “all that money” she turned to me and asked if I remembered that proposal she helped write for her father last year, the one for the non-profit literary and arts center. Perhaps you also remember it?

It was to be a grouping of galleries all in one place, connected thematically and centered on a garden in the middle. There was to be a viewing library of rare books, and a museum of antique musical instruments, and a gallery of rare china and furniture. Lauren envisioned readings of the rare books, concerts with the instruments, and meals served with the antique china and furniture. Everything was to be displayed as if it was in current use. She envisioned classrooms for lectures on art history, music, literature, design, textiles. I told her I did remember it. Lauren told me she wanted to find a new investor for that project and use the money from the publication of the diary as an endowment so that anyone of any socio-economic class could become a member of the center and enjoy its offerings. She asked me what I thought of that idea.

I told her it was an idea worthy of thought and contemplation and I asked her if I could think on it and get back to her.

The thing is, I can’t get that project out of my mind now. I am thinking. . . I am thinking I might want to be the investor to plunk down the millions to see this center become reality. I have some property right here in Santa Barbara that is just sitting here doing nothing. Developers come to me every so often asking me to sell it to them. And I have always turned them down. I have stocks that I could easily sell to fund the center. I could make it happen in a heartbeat.

The thought of doing something so spontaneous and expensive and, I confess, memorable, is making feel like I’ve had too much Dom Perignon.

I think I might do it. I think I just might. . . Would you?

Ask Clarissa

2009-04-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

I never set out to be the kind of person who is good at giving advice. And you have to realize there is a difference between being a person who gives good advice and being a person who is good at giving advice.

Think about it.

You could be a wisdom powerhouse but have not one scrap of skill on how to give anyone good advice. I'm sure you've met smart people who have all the answers but who suck at advising people on what to do.

I know I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve been told when I do give someone advice, they never feel stupid. They never feel like they should’ve been able to figure it out on their own. And I guess I’d rather be good at giving advice that may not always be 100% perfect than bad at giving advice. Obviously if you give good advice badly no one will listen to anything you say. If you give mostly good advice, well, eight times out of ten you will have made difference in a person’s life, perhaps for the rest of their life.

Abigail asked Lauren and I last night if we thought she should buy Graham a car. A used one. So he can look for a job. I didn’t answer back with, “Why should a healthy, capable 50-year-old who has struggled all his life to be free of your well-meaning, but back-firing enabling miss out on the joy and challenge of buying his own car?” Instead, I just told her what she really already knew. She wouldn’t asked if she didn’t already know: Buying Graham a car will keep him in poverty – every kind of poverty there is.

“He doesn’t have any money,” Abigail said.

“People with jobs have money.” I said. “And you can’t just give him one of those, either.” Which she already knows.

She asked me how a person without a car can possibly find a job.

“People without cars find jobs all the time. It’s their determination that gets them where they want to go, not four wheels and a steering wheel. You never give Graham any reason to be resolute. About anything.”

Lauren told me later she thought I had told Abigail something she had needed to hear for decades.

Surprised the heck out of me. I wonder how many dunderheads tried to tell Abigail she was totally blowing it with Graham and totally blew it themselves. I wonder if they even bothered.

Almost makes me want to change my major.

Almost.

Author Intrusion

2009-04-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

Pardon me while I stop in to let you know a new interview is up on the Book Club Queen.

If you've ever wondered where the idea for The Shape of Mercy came from or how writing it affected me or what's on the drawing board next, head on over and take a peek.

You can also read a review of The Shape of Mercy by the Book Club Queen Bee right here. The site is chock full of other reviews, so grab a cuppa and browse. Have a great weekend, all.

Love, Lauren

2009-04-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Raul:

I am writing this to you while sitting in a not-very-comfortable chair at JFK. My dad and Meghan are in line for Starbucks. It’s been a long day; we could all use a little jolt from a tall latte.

We meet today with the publisher that I feel is the best option for me for Mercy’s diary. They are a relatively small house, by New York standards, but I felt strangely at home in their offices. Everyone there loves history; that’s what they love. They want success, but they don’t love it. What they love is seeing something as priceless and remarkable as Mercy’s diary immortalized and accessible to every generation that will come after me. I just like that.

Meghan thinks we should go to auction for the publishing rights but I just don’t feel right about that. She explained all the different offers she has received and what each publishing house has promised – and what they haven’t – but she told me in the end, it’s my decision and I should feel good about what I decide.

And my dad? He has surprised me by letting me choose. He told me in the taxi over here that some business deals are about money, some are about people, some are about posterity.

He has read the diary.

The publisher I like is preparing a contract and they will send it to Meghan later this week. If I sign off on it, the wheels will start turning. The diary will be in print by Christmas.

I hope I am doing the right thing. It’s the right thing, isn’t it? If Mercy knew what I was doing would she approve? Would she want the world to know what she wrote in secret? Would she?

Mercy's Quill

2009-04-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

From Mercy's book of poems and stories - 1692

The blacksmith’s daughter was known throughout the sleepy village as a maiden who knew not when to keep silent. Her name was Verity and an apt name it was. Verity always spoke whatever words filled her mind, whether they be words anyone should want to hear or not. If a villager mistreated his horse, she would ask him in a loud voice in front of all if he would like his Master to so treat him. If the married women took to gossiping on the steps of the Meeting House, she would caution them not to trip down the stairs since the long white robes of holy judges tend to wrap around the ankles.

The blacksmith and his wife were quiet, docile folk and knew not how to silence Verity’s tongue. And the blacksmith secretly enjoyed Verity’s brash and honest comments because she often said what he only dreamt of saying.

But when the time came for her to be married, few men would consider taking her to wife, even though she was as beautiful as a morning sunrise. Her golden tresses and dove-gray eyes were as comely as her tongue was untamed.

The only match the blacksmith could make was with the miller's son, a young man who never ventured from the grindstone. The man’s name was Jacob and he could neither speak nor hear. A long and terrible illness when he was but a babe had stolen away his voice and ears. Ah! The perfect match, the villagers snickered. No one, especially the gossips, could speak of anything else for days; nay even weeks after the couple were married. Verity had finally met her match.

But, as fate would have it, Verity grew to love the quiet man who let her speak on and on and never once lifted a finger to silence her. And his quiet acquiescence allowed her to speak all the more loudly about that which vexed her spirit, because who could silence her now that she was married, but her good husband, and he cared not that she had an opinion on so many matters.

They lived a happy life, Verity and Jacob, and were blessed with six daughters who were encouraged by their mother to speak whenever words were desperately needed.

And always in front of their cottage, on the dirt and in the mud, were myriads of little pictures drawn by a stick or a stone, etched there by Jacob, and which Verity never swept away. For they were messages from her quiet husband – pictures of his pleasure - because he who had no voice now had seven.

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2009-04-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

Esperanza here. So everyone in America likes to make the Mexican Wedding Cookies for Christmas, but in my house, my mamacita always made them for Easter.

I am making them today for the girls to take home to their families. Lauren has invited Abigail – who is finally well – to come home with her to Santa Barbara for Easter dinner on Sunday. At first she said no when Lauren asked her. Then she suddenly changed her mind. And after she said yes, she went into her library and closed the door and she is there still.

Anyway. Here they are. Don’t eat too many jelly beans this weekend.

Esperanza’s Mexican Wedding Cookies

About 2 cups of flour (you know me, I don’t measure)
¼ tsp salt
2 sticks of soft butter (don’t even say a word)
1 heaping cup of powdered sugar
Vanilla extract – maybe a little more than a teaspoon, dash of almond extract, too
1 cup finely chopped pecans or walnuts

Stir the flour and salt together then in another bowl mix together the butter and half the pwdered sugar until smooth. Stir in the vanilla extract and then the flour mixture until nicely blended. Then stir in the nuts. Cover and refrigerate the dough for about 2 hours or until it is firm enough to work with. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Shape the dough into balls that are about 1 inch in diameter. Place the balls on ungreased baking sheets with about an inch between the cookies. One sheet at a time, bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes or until set, but not brown. Put the other half of the of the powdered sugar in a shallow bowl or pie plate. Transfer the baking sheet to a wire rack and cool for 2 to 4 minutes. Carefully remove the cookies and roll each one in the sugar to coat. Cool the cookies completely on a wire rack.
When cool, store the cookies in an airtight container. These cookies freeze very nice. Makes about 40 cookies.

Abigail on the Classics

2009-04-03T13:37:00.000-07:00

I am in no mood to discuss anything with anyone.

I've a fever and a headache and Esperanza is hovering over me, suffocating me with worry and tortilla chicken soup.

Lauren knows better than to treat me like a child, Ryan is plain afraid of me and my germs, and Clarissa is simply too elated not to have to discuss As I Lay Dying with me. Oh, the irony in that. As I Lay Dying.

It's obvious to me Clarissa didn't like the book. I never expected her to like it. It isn't a story to be liked. It's the writing that is likeable, for pity's sake. You don't have to like Hannibal Lecter to appreciate the intricacies of his character.

I really don't have the energy or initiative to expound on any of this. I just want a hot cup of tea, Sonnets From the Portuguese, and solitude.

It's not like I wish the girls weren't here in the house with me. I didn't say I wanted silence. I can hear them getting ready for class and dates and work, and I don't mind the sounds that I hear.

I just want to be alone as I listen.

Leave me.

Ask Clarissa

2009-03-27T22:49:00.000-07:00

I don’t have but a minute or two. The coffee shop is hopping tonight. The manager has brought in live music and everyone’s loose and lively ‘cause we’re all back from spring break and no one’s going crazy with overload yet.

I finished the book Abigail gave me to read. As I Lay Dying. My first by William Faulkner. It’s a strange book. I am not used to fifteen different people telling me a story. Fifteen dysfunctional people. I really can’t see what Abigail sees in it, unless she likes spending time with people who make her sad life look normal.

Lauren, who’s read the book, thinks Abigail probably relates to it because the characters spend their sorry time in the pages struggling to bury their dead mother. Lauren had to remind me Abigail lost her mother when she was just a kid and then had to live with a grumpy father for the next fifty years. Yeah, well, that sucks, but what did Abigail really expect me to get out of a book like this? My mother isn’t dead. She and I went shopping together for swimsuits a couple weeks ago.

I’m not saying the guy isn’t a great writer. He writes really good depressing stuff. Abigail will want to chat about it this weekend. She’ll end up thinking I have no patience for anything more complex than once-upon-a-time crap. I so can appreciate something a little deeper than Dr. Seuss. But she’s right. I don’t have the patience for slow motion. If I am going to go deep I want to jump off the cliff at full speed, not hack my way down a mine shaft with a Barbie-size pick ax.

Oh, and hey, btw, I had a pretty good time hanging out with Lauren and Raul and Cole last week in Palo Alto. Get this. I think Cole is falling for me. Well, not really. But kind of. We'll just have to see. He kept looking at me.

Lauren has been instructed by her father to take the relationship slow with Raul. Like, don’t rush into anything, baby girl. I can read that man like a book. He’s desperately afraid of losing her to another man.

And here Lauren’s spent the better part of her life thinking her dad wishes she was a boy. . .

Love, Lauren

2009-03-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

I was still feeling a little bummed you had to stay in Palo Alto for spring break but then Meghan (she’s the literary agent my dad found) decided we need to go to New York and meet with the two publishers who are most interested in Mercy’s diary. Dad wants to come with us and I am actually glad he does. As much as I want to see Mercy’s diary in print – and most days I still do – I am not enjoying the process very much. It’s very . . . impersonal. I don’t know how else to describe it. The diary is suddenly all about the money. How much it is worth. How much we should accept as an advance for it. How much it will bring in to the publishing house that takes it.

Meghan says I don’t need to worry about any of that, that’s why I have her. But it’s not that I am worried about the money. I’m not. I am worried about what the money does to the diary. To me. To Mercy’s memory. Abigail told me the money and the diary are two separate things. The diary is what it is and it won’t change. The money is about the paper and the ink and the bookstores and the trucks that will carry the crates of books. Mercy’s memory won’t be in the truck, she says. I told her I didn’t quite agree. Abigail said the transcription I have made is impeccable. But it is not in Mercy’s ink, contains none of the smudges of tears or travail or time, none of the human touch that a handwritten diary offers. And because I have rewritten the diary in the language of today, the transcription is more my interpretation of Mercy’s memory, than her actual legacy.

Perhaps she is right. What do you think?

I still plan to come see you this weekend. The life of medical student is not truly his or her own but you can’t spend every minute studying. Clarissa and I will drive up on Friday after her shift. She’s only working until noon so we should be there well before dark. Until then, enjoy the intricacies of pharmacokinetics.

Love,
Lauren

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2009-03-09T16:00:00.001-07:00

So Abigail tells me she's been dreaming of Crepes Suzette. She used to make them with her mother and the memory is no doubt as as sweet as the crepes.

I will be honest with you. I am partial to tortillas. How could I not be? Tortillas will always win out over crepes of any kind. But Abigail doesn't ask for very many things from the kitchen. If she wants Crepes Suzette, I can oblige. But I am making them with tortillas.

Here's my version. You can call them Crepes Esperanza:

3/4 stick of softened butter
1/4 cup sugarorange zest
Juice of 1 orange
Melted butter for brushing
2 tablespoons sugar for sprinkling
Thin, orange half-circles for garnish
6 soft and warm flour tortillas

Cream together the butter, sugar, and orange peel until uniform. Spread over the surface of the tortilla and fold into fourths – the tortilla should look like a triangle. Lay on an oven-proof pan and brush tops with melted butter. They can overlap a little. Sprinkle with the 2 tablespoons of sugar and place under your broiler for about two to three minutes. The sugar will crystallize. Remove from oven and lay the thin orange slices across the tops to complete the look. If you are brave, sprinkle the hot tortilla wedges with some Grand Marnier mixed with brandy, maybe ½ cup altogether, and light with a long handled lighter. Mind your hair and sleeves.

Abigail on the Classics

2009-03-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

When I was a young girl, before cancer stole my mother away from me, she’d send Marcella home early on nights when my father was out of town and we’d make dinner for just the two of us. Marcella was Esperanza’s mother and an exceptional cook, but this was when I was quite young - many years before Esperanza was born, and before Marcella was even married.

My mother wasn’t terribly adept in the kitchen. I didn’t know it then, but she was a much better hostess and philanthropist than chef. She wasn’t a chef at all, actually. I didn’t realize until much later she could barely make toast without burning it.

Once we made Crepes Suzette, only because I had heard them mentioned in a book and I liked the name. We picked the oranges for the sauce from our own tree in our backyard.

Did you know the first Crepes Suzette were the result of a mistake made by a fourteen year-old assistant waiter 1895 at the Maitre at the Monte Carlo's Café de Paris? He was making a dessert for the Prince of Wales when the cordial on the crepes caught fire. The flames crisped the sauce but the Prince was waiting, so the waiter, whose name was Henri Carpentier, served them anyway. It is said the Prince like the crepes so much when he was done eating them with his fork, he used his spoon to get to the last of the sauce.

They were named at that moment after one of the ladies sitting at the Prince’s table, Suzette. Henri is quoted as saying that the dish could turn a cannibal into a civilized gentleman, it is that exquisite.

And all from a little mistake caused by a novice in a kitchen.

My mother thought that was such a fun story. Our Crepes Suzette were dreadful, gargoyle-looking things. Crepes are difficult to make beautiful, especially for someone as unskilled and unlucky in the kitchen as my mother was. But I didn’t care. They tasted like a mistake somehow made beautiful.

To this day, I can’t eat them without thinking of my mother. And the mess we made in the kitchen that night. And how dilapidated they looked.

And how enchanting they tasted.

I shall have to tell Esperanza it’s time to have them again. I think my girls would like them . . .

Ask Clarissa

2009-02-23T14:49:00.001-08:00

I usually hate Mondays but it was actually a relief for the weekend to end. Ryan and Lauren both had other places to be and I was alone with Abigail the entire weekend in that tomb of a house. Esperanza was around on Saturday for awhile but not on Sunday. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and come to work at the coffee shop.

Something about Abigail creeps me out. I already told you she can seem younger than she is. Don’t ask me to explain it. She just does. And then the next moment she’s like this worn out, wrinkled bit of humanity that has always had too much money and too little fun. The weird thing is, she knew without me even saying anything that I didn’t want hang around the House without the other girls there. She even joked about it. Lucky for me I had a date on Friday night and double shifts on the weekend.

The date was okay. The guy’s name is Nathaniel Chance but everyone just calls him Chance. He’s a senior psych major. Psych majors are probably the hardest people to go out with. Think about it. They are into your brain the whole time. Not so much because they want to be, but because they are spending all their good hours absorbed in the study of how people behave and think, and they are doing that because they chose it. They chose the major, which means they like that stuff. Really like it. They want to be at it the rest of their working days. So they can’t help it. I couldn’t help but wonder if Chance was secretly and subconsciously picking apart everything I said or did. And if he knew that’s what I was wondering, he would find that very interesting.

I kinda like him though. I wished he had asked me out again on Saturday, but he didn’t, so I had to go find some friends to hang out with so that I wasn’t wandering the catacombs with Abigail.

I am reading a book Abigail loaned to me. It better hold my interest more than the last one did. I have hope for this one. It’s As I Lay Dying. When she handed it to me I told her hey, that was the name of a heavy metal band out of San Diego and she told me no, it was book by William Faulkner.

Thank you, thank you it’s Monday and Lauren and Ryan are back . . .

Love, Lauren

2009-02-20T13:20:00.000-08:00

Hey, Raul:

The tulips you sent me for Valentines Day are just now starting to wilt a bit. Too sad. They are still so beautiful, though. Clariss and Ryan an Esperanza wanted me to keep them in the kitchen but Abigail said absolutely not. Those flowers are mine alone. They are on my dresser and are the first thing I see when I wake up each morning.

It was a busy week and I am ready to kick back at my parents’ this weekend. I know you and Cole can’t come this time, but I secretly hope something will change and you will be able to come after all. Ryan’s going to see her sister’s new baby in Fresno, so Clarissa’s nervous about being alone with Abigail. It’s actually kind of funny. Clarissa doesn’t have too many weak spots. To see her visibly unnerved by the thought of being alone with Abigail is very interesting to me. It’s like she’s afraid Abigail will remind Clarissa there’s still so much she doesn’t know about herself. I told her that and she told me to go choke on some caviar. Hah! I nailed it and she knows it.

I suppose I should tell you it’s not going to be all sun and relaxation at my parents’ house. My dad wants to chat with me about where I see our relationship headed. Yours and my relationship, Raul. Can I call you later today? We don’t have to talk about this yet, if you don’t want to. And I am not asking you to tell me where you see us in ten years. I think my dad’s just wondering if you and I are dating right now just for the fun of it. I’ve realized I’m a lot like my dad, so whatever he wonders about, I wonder about, too. . . . Call me?

Love, Lauren

Mercy's Quill

2009-02-16T10:09:00.000-08:00

August 1691

I borrowed a book of poems from a family in Boston that Papa knows, written by Lady Mary Wroth. Many lovely verses within its pagea. O, but this one that I shall copy here in my own little book so I shan't forget it. So sad. Love she gave and it was handed back to her. Poor thing. I hope 'twas only a season:

Drown me not, you cruel tears,
Which in sorrow witness bears
Of my wailing,
And love's failing.

Floods but cover and retire,
Washing faces of desire,
Whose fresh growing
Springs by flowing.

Meadows ever yet did love
Pleasant streams which by them move,
But your falling
Claims the calling

Of a torrent curstly fierce
Past wit's power to rehearse;
Only crying, Or my dying
May instead of verse or prose
My disastrous end disclose.

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2009-02-09T14:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, so Lauren tells me you want the recipe for green tea smoothies. First, these weren't my idea. Why you'd want to mess with berries and bananas and ice cream - the only decent ingredients for a smoothie - is beyond me. I only fiddled with this concoction because the girls wanted them. If you ask me, I think they look like a potion mixed in the laboratory of a mad scientist.

Anyway.

This is enough for two to three people depending on how big a glass you are using.

First brew some green tea. Don't get the cheap stuff. Get a nice package of green tea, by the bag, if you must and brew some and let it cool. Don't cool it by adding ice cubes. Let it cool on its own. You put ice cubes in hot brewed tea, and you will dilute it to uselessness.

Then add the following to your blender:

1 cup ice and crush it
1/2 banana - or just toss the whole thing in there.
1 peach, pitted and cut into chunks
1/4 tsp of ground ginger - I just shake it. Guessing here.
1 tblsp of honey or one good squirt
1/2 cup vanilla frozen yogurt

Blend all this together and then add:

1 cup of cooled green tea

Blend just until uniform. Pour into tall glasses. If you have fresh mint. Put a couple leaves on top. It improves the look.

These are actually good for you. I'll give you that.

I am needed back in the kitchen. Clarissa is boiling water. . . .

Abigail on the Classics

2009-02-06T11:32:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since there were young voices in my house. Lauren, Clarissa and Ryan have been here more than a week. Sometimes the house is electric with their noise and movement. Sometimes it is like they aren't even here.

There have been moments since they moved in when I have felt like a very old woman; when they dash down the stairs with little white earphones in their ears, and when they pour a bowl of cereal while punching numbers on their tiny phones, and when they decide at 10 p.m. to go out for orange juice.

There have been as many moments when I have felt like time has worked its way backward and I can almost seeTom Kimura stepping in off the patio and telling me the hummingbirds in the hydrangeas have hatched.

I was the age they were when I told Tom I didn't love him even though I really did. Funny thing: I can't imagine a one of these girls being as foolish, and yet they seem much younger than I was.

I have let Ryan use the Kimuras' old gardeners cottage for her studio. I don't know why I still think of it like that. There hasn't been a gardener living in it since the 1960s. And that man wasn't even a Kimura. It was a musty mess when we cracked open the door, but these resourceful young women had it cleaned up in no time. I am glad there is nothing left in it to remind me of when Tom and his father lived there. And yet, I am reminded anyway very time I poke my head inside. I want to give the girls their space and Ryan certainly doesn't need me interrupting her painting, but now that the cottage has been aired and open, I am drawn to it.

I loaned Clarissa another book, As I Lay Dying. She told me it sounds incredibly depressing. I told her it is actually more about how to live than how to die. And she said she'd read it and see for herself.

I picture a long conversation in the cottage when she finishes.

Ask Clarissa

2009-01-30T09:27:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it’s been a few days in the Big House and it’s not like it's perfect, but I gotta tell you there’s nothing like having a bathroom all to yourself. I can put up with the morgue-like quiet, the chunky silverware, the ticking of clocks everywhere you turn, and all-the-cans-in-a-row (didja see Sleeping with the Enemy?) in the kitchen if it means having my own bathroom and only having to look at my own toothpaste spit in the sink.

Ryan’s the lucky one. She has the gardener’s cottage for her studio and it is super cool. When the House gets too housey, she can just say she’s got homework and can head over to her studio. I am going to have to take up painting.

I don’t have much time for this post. I am at work and writing it in between making lattes and cleaning out the leftover scones from yesterday. But I just have to say Abigail seems older than she really is sometimes, and then she will seem younger. Way younger. It creeps me out. I catch her looking at Lauren and Ryan and me and it’s like she’s one of us, like we’re a quartet of some kind, instead of three college students and an old lady. It’s weird. I can’t explain it. Not right now anyway. I gotta run. And hey! I have a date tonight!! His name’s Chance. No joke.

Love, Lauren

2009-01-26T09:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Raul:

It was so wonderful to see you this weekend and even though we didn’t really need you & Cole to help us move in with Abigail, I am glad you came anyway. I am so jazzed you got to meet Abigail. I could see that you remind her of Tom Kimura in a way. I already know that I often remind her of herself.

So we had our first two nights at Abigail’s and we’ve managed to keep the kitchen from burning down - Esperanza’s own words - we haven’t overloaded the washer and we haven’t flooded the moody corner bathroom. After you and Cole left on Sunday, we all sat in Abigail’s beautiful sitting room and we thoroughly squished those never-used pillows. Clarissa even threw one at me when I told Abigail that Clarissa didn’t get Anna Karenina. Clarissa was quick to point out that she had no trouble getting it, she had trouble wanting to get it. Clarissa doesn’t like authors who use their characters to lecture their readers on their own world views. Tell the story, Clarissa says, I can figure out how you think if you just tell a good story. Then she said the suicide at the end was a cop out, but we all – except for Ryan – remembered Mercy and we quickly changed the subject.

Ryan is starting to grow on me. I really didn’t know her that well when Clarissa suggested her as a third housemate. I think I told you she’s an art major and very quiet and introspective. Abigail is letting her use the Kimuras’ old gardening cottage for a studio. We cleaned it out today. It’s going to be wonderful. Even Abigail said so. She sat with us and drank green tea smoothies when we were done cleaning it. It was nice. I think we will be spending a lot of time in Ryan’s studio.

I am meeting with the literary agent my dad found later this week. She has some ideas for me about what we should and shouldn’t do with the diary. She’s been talking to other publishing houses. Several, actually.

Sometimes I wish no one knew about it but Abigail and me.

XOXO
Lauren

Mercy's Quill

2009-01-19T15:52:00.000-08:00

From Mercy Hayworth's book of poems and stories

April 2, 1692

The Merry Margaret

Ship upon a golden sea
Sails for twilight, away from me
Slips past the edge of all I know
To places where I cannot go
Unafraid she boldly glides
Past safe harbor, past the tides
Bound for ports where day commences
No fear, no doubt, no bold defenses
She beckons me to watch her fly
‘Cross the blue, in hopes that I
Might grip the post, hold fast and yearn
For the day when she’ll return

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2009-01-12T10:32:00.000-08:00

So the young ladies are coming over to the house for breakfast tomorrow. Lauren, Clarissa, and a friend of theirs named Ryan. A girl named Ryan. A girl.

This is, of course, none of my business. This is Abigail's house. If she wants three college girls running around, it is her call. Abigail told me she will expect the girls to keep dirty dishes out of their rooms, and to clean up any messes they make in the kitchen. Of course she expects this. But expectations are one thing. Reality is another.

But it's none of my business.

They are coming to discuss the arrangements. Lauren tells me it's not a done deal. Abigail would like me to join them so that we can talk openly about the bathrooms, the garages, the laundry room and the kitchen but I will wait until they have finished eating and I clear the table. I will not be able to discuss any arrangements with plates on the table.

We shall see. I've never had to share this kitchen with anyone. Not even with Abigail.

I am serving waffles. But these are not those sugary concoctions that have no heart and soul. These are waffles with purpose:

Esperanza's Good for You Waffles
1/3 cup wheat germ
2/3 cup flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
1/2 tsp soda
2 Tbls sugar
dash salt
1/4 cup oil
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups buttermilk - you already know I don't measure anything. I am just estimating here.

Mix everything well. Make sure your iron is oiled well and hot when you pour the batter. Serve with sliced strawberries, blueberries and honey butter. A little whipped cream is nice. This is enough for about three people.

Abigail on the Classics

2009-01-02T15:31:00.001-08:00

Another year has come and gone. Another stretch of moments packaged to be remembered are waiting to be forgotten.

That’s how I used to look at the passing of one year and the birth of another. It’s different this time around.

This January is not like Januarys of the past. Things are different.

For one thing, Tom Kimura is in heaven and I am here but I have his forgiveness and the poem he wrote for me.

For another, Mercy’s diary is less a reminder of every mistake I’ve made and more a tutor on hope. Having it locked up in my safe all these years, afraid to look at it, was like keeping a diamond buried in a vat of mud. I had mistakenly assumed it had no ability to dazzle me. I saw only the mud.

And lastly, I am not alone. At least not on Sunday afternoons and Thursday nights. Lauren comes to visit me then and she often brings Clarissa with her. We share a meal and talk about books and life and love. And yes, it’s true. I have invited them to come live with me. I’d forgotten what it was like to care about people. I am well aware that caring about people lays you bare before a buffet of risks, but there are risks to every undertaking. Even being alone. We all have to choose which risks are worth taking. They are hesitant, the girls. Lauren tells me Clarissa wants to add a third girl to the mix to even things out, meaning, I think, that Clarissa feels Lauren is too much like me.

I don’t know whether to laugh or weep.

I am fine with a third girl coming if Lauren is okay with it.

Graham pretends that he thinks it’s a great idea. I can tell he does not. He thinks the girls will somehow take advantage of me. He might think this because until recently that was his sole pursuit, even on days when he wanted to be doing something else. He might also think I am only doing it to keep him out of the house and in that little condo I bought for him. It wouldn’t be appropriate for Graham to be living in this house with three single college-aged women.

Esperanza says it’s my house so I can use it however I wish. But the girls will be in her kitchen. She knows it and I know it. Esperanza has had that monstrosity of a kitchen all to herself for decades. Besides, she likes it when Lauren hovers in the kitchen to watch her cook. And I am quite certain Clarissa would benefit from a few cooking lessons. The girl eats ramen noodles raw for heaven's sake.

They will let me know next week what they have decided. I will be quite all right if they choose to stay on campus. I am an old woman and I live in an old house. Besides, change is never easy for anyone who has seen eight decades of it. But I’d be lying if I said I do not hope they say yes. And the house seems to echo my longing. If I sit still and silence even my breathing, I can hear the house sighing in anticipation.

Will they come?

Ask Clarissa

2008-12-26T11:40:00.000-08:00

I have agreed to read Anna Karenina during my Christmas break. Lauren recommended it. Abigail, too. I am not a huge fan of fiction. I am not a fan at all. But Abigail says Anna Karenina is not what anyone could rightly call fiction. There is nothing of pretense about it.

But it’s a novel, I said.

And she said, it’s a commentary on family dynamics. On relationships. On the human condition. What is imaginary about that??

It’s actually her copy I packed in my suitcase when I drove home to Bakersfield. There are notes in the margins. In different shades of ink. Abigail says she learns something new every time she reads it.

Abigail has asked Lauren and I to rent rooms from her. I hardly know what to think. Her house is enormous. She has a housekeeper who has little jars of capers and shallots and saffron threads in the pantry. And the pantry is a room, did I mention that? She has gardeners and a man she pays to drive her around. Her house is bigger than the three houses I grew up in all put together.

Lauren is warming up to the idea. She says Abigail is waking up after years of reclusivity. She is lonely. She likes our company.

I don’t know. The room I’d have is something out of a magazine photo shoot. And Esperanza is an awesome cook. There’s just something about pretending I fit into that life that irks me. Lauren says it is no different than her having lived in a dorm with a shared bathroom the last year and a half. You don’t stop being who you are just because you change from sleeping on Kmart sheets to Egyptian cotton.

I am not sure she is right about that. And that’s what’s bothering me. Is she right? Who is not changed by their environment? Name someone.

I am not saying I would change for the worse if I lived in a house like that and had imported truffles tossed into my omelets. I am just saying I would change. And that has to be considered. Tell me I am wrong. . . If you can.

Love, Lauren

2008-12-19T18:18:00.000-08:00

Hey, Raul:

Wish I could see you before you head home to Mexico for Christmas. Did you get the package I sent you? Check your mailbox before you go. In fact, take it with you on the plane to Guadalajara. A good book on a long plane ride is a must.

Remember when I told you the guy from the publishing house said he would get back to me by Christmas? Well, he called yesterday and said he wants to talk about a contract right after the holidays. I called my dad as soon as we hung up. The first thing he said was that he found a literary agent for me and that I should let “this gal shop the diary around to see who else is interested.” Exact words. I told him I really wasn’t looking for like, the sweetest deal or anything. I am donating all the proceeds anyway. He said it’s not about who pays the most for Mercy’s diary, it’s about who wants to pay the most for it. The company that invests the most into the diary will treat the whole project with the most care and attention. I suppose he is right. The publishing guy isn’t going to like this, though. He asked me if anyone else was looking at the diary and did I have an agent. I said no to both questions just a week ago. Dad told me the guy asked both of those questions because he assumed one or both were probably true.

Guess what? Abigail has asked Clarissa and I to move in with her. Now that the diary is finished I only go over there once a week or so and she misses my company. The last few times I’ve brought Clarissa with me. I knew Abigail and Clarissa would hit it off. Abigail is spectacularly transparent these days and Clarissa always has been. Anyway, she has all these empty bedrooms and she’s only a few miles from campus. She said if it would make us feel better she’d charge us a nominal rent. Clarissa told me she’s not sure she wants to give up eating raw ramen noodles and sharing a sink with people who don’t chase away their toothpaste spit. But then she said, “Seriously, Lars. I need to think about it.” I know what she means. Abigail has a lovely home and employs a phenomenal cook but her house is a sad place. It’s like the walls themselves are in a constant state of mourning. I think Abigail can see that. It is no doubt the reason she has asked us to join her there. What do you think?

Can’t wait to see you at Cole’s New Year’s party. Safe journey, Raul. Merry Christmas!
Love, Lauren

Mercy's Quill

2008-12-15T09:10:00.000-08:00

From Mercy's book of poem and stories

16 December, 1691

Icy blast of Winter's breath
Furious, bold, unwelcome Guest

Slips inside despite the shutters
Flecks of ice, her raucous Brothers

Alight on hearth to melt and glisten
Watch them now. Stop and listen

Winter noticed has but one voice
When she whispers we hear no noise

When gentle flakes kiss the ground
No homage is paid; She makes no sound

Only when she wails a greeting
Is interest gained; a desperate meeting.

~ Mercy Hayworth

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2008-12-12T16:20:00.000-08:00

There used to be Christmas parties in this house - back when Miss Abigail's mother was alive. So I have been told, anyway. I wasn't even born when Miss Abigail's mother died. Miss Abigail herself was just a child.

But sometimes when Miss Abigail allows the past to speak to her, she will tell me how it was in this house when her mother walked the rooms.

And at Christmastime, there were parties. There was music and dancing and games and food. Of course food.

Abigail especially liked the spiced cider her mother had simmering on the stove for hours until the guests arrived. She didn't let my mother make it for her, even though my mother was a better cook than even I am. She liked to get it going. On cold nights, her parents added a little rum to the little glass cups before the cider was poured into them.

Here is how she made it.

One gallon of apple cider
5 or 6 whole cinnamon sticks
a small handful (a dozen maybe) whole cloves
half an orange sliced in circles
half an orange sliced in circles

Simmer at a very low heat on the back of the stove for several hours before your guests arrive. The aroma will beckon them inside. It smells heavenly.

Next time I will tell how to make the best Mexican wedding cookies. The best.

Abigail on the Classics

2008-12-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

Abigail here. I read in the newspaper this morning that Polaroid will discontinue selling its magical film. By this time next year, it will only be found on e-Bay and in museums and in stuffy old houses like mine.

I was just a teenager when the Polaroid camera came out, late 30s, I think. Of course my father had to have one. We got another one in the 1950s and another in the 60s. The Polaroid camera never failed to mesmerize me. Watching life materialize on that little black square was like watching a memory being tattooed onto my brain. It was like something from another time and place, beamed our way by a friendly but highly advanced life form on another planet. There was nothing else like it.

Few things could be so instantaneous back then. Now everything is that way. Lauren takes all her pictures on a camera that looks just like my old 35mm, but there is a little screen on the back that shows her the image the moment she has taken the shot. If she doesn't like it, she can press a button and it disappears.

I wonder how she knows so quickly which pictures aren't worth keeping. Time has a way of redistributing value. But she is young. . .

I've decided to read The Crucible again. It's been awhile. Reading it always makes me a little grumpy, though. There are so many little things that I don't think are quite right but I can't prove any of it. It's just a gut feeling I have. And really, does it matter? The Crucible is less about the Salem Witch Trials and more about McCarthyism anyway.

Still. Makes me wish we had a few Polaroids of what it was really like to live when Mercy lived. To see what she saw.

I will let you know how grumpy I am this time around. In the meantime, I'd buy up Polaroid film if I were you. . .

Ask Clarissa

2008-12-05T09:05:00.000-08:00

Okay. So since my last post that song by Pat Benatar, “Love is a Battlefield,” has been tumbling around in my head practically driving me crazy. I don’t even like that song or that kind of music. But a customer came in the coffee shop the other day, ordered a tall minty mocha and told me he’d read my blog post and asked me what I meant when I said love is a solid, not a space to be filled.

He said that’s like saying love is already there. And he told me he’s not in love with anyone right now and when he was it was like a complicated maze that made him feel like he was grappling for a handhold the whole time. A war zone. Now that he’s not in love he says he’d very much like to feel that there is no empty space to be filled. But he does feel like there is a void, even though he doesn’t want to.

I told him I didn’t think love was the war zone. That had to be something else. Desire. Lust. Greed. Control. Jealousy. Need. Those troubadours of conflict show up in the romantic relationship we call ‘being in love.’ Being in a space. Those are the things create the friction, the sense that there is chaos in the space.

The love I am talking about is not in the space. And yeah, it’s already there. When you climb out of that crazy place that empties and fills, thrills you one minute and haunts you the next, you bump right into it.

And then what? he said. You live happily ever after?

You live, I said.

He took his cup, smiled and told me he’d like to come back in five years and ask me how that little declaration still shapes up for me.

I told him I wouldn’t be in this coffee shop in five years.

He laughed. Gave me a big tip.

I don’t think he understood a word I said.

Ciao,

Love, Lauren

2008-12-01T07:49:00.001-08:00

Hey Raul:

Glad to hear you didn’t totally choke on your exam. Didn’t think you would. You should celebrate with flan. Esperanza would totally approve. And I know it’s your favorite.

Well, the guy from the publishing house is coming out to see the diary. He arrives on Friday. I can’t believe how nervous I am about him coming. I already feel like I need to get a talking paper ready to defend Mercy’s every thought and action. Stupid. No one’s diary needs a defense. We’re having the meeting at Abigail’s. I told Abigail I thought her lawyer should be here for the meeting and she asked why. I didn’t have an answer. I just thought he should be there. I texted my dad and asked him what he thought and he called me and said of course a lawyer should be there. My lawyer. I reminded him I don’t have one. He said I’ve always had one. (Oh, BTW, this lawyer I’ve always had is drawing up papers so that Abigail’s gifting of the diary to me will be a legal transaction that will stand up in court in case there are problems later. I know what he means. But still. . .) Anyway, my lawyer is coming to the meeting too. His name is Brent. Not sure if that is his first name or last.

Abigail had to be coaxed into being at the meeting. She is so detached from the diary now. I don’t think I will ever be. Not even when I give it to a museum, which I will do. I don’t know how she can be that aloof but perhaps that is her coping mechanism for letting go of all those years of regret. Distance. Graham has no interest in being there, thank God. There’s no reason why he should. But he’s asked more than a couple questions about the diary. I think he can sense it’s a book that forces you to confront your choices. I am not sure what to make of Graham. He seems so sad. Esperanza said he’s said because he hasn’t played a game of cards in a month. I don’t think that’s it.

Gotta run. Class in five.

Miss you so much,
Love, Lauren

p.s. I took your advice and left the newspaper clipping of Tom Kimura’s obituary on the table by Abigail’s favorite armchair in the library. I bought a lavender-hued primrose to set beside it. She said nothing to me about the obit. But she thanked me for the primrose. Which is the same thing, don’t you think?

Mercy's Quill

2008-11-24T21:44:00.001-08:00

From Mercy Hayworth's book of stories and poems — believed destroyed, recently discovered. . .

July 18, 1691

Mama
All my joy, all my sorrow
Meets me now, and will tomorrow
Memories sweet when she was near
Close beside me, always here
My mother’s touch, her voice, her song
Hidden deep now, but all is wrong
She who was the morning sun
Lies asleep with beloved son
Sword that sliced the whole in two
Made half to be old and half now new
Part in one world, whole but torn
Holding back the breaking morn
For every dream where she appears
‘Tis my life awake, no death, no fear

~ Mercy Hayworth

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

2008-11-21T11:08:00.000-08:00

You will have to be patient with me. My recipes, they are all in my cabesa, in my head. I have no little cards in little boxes in my kitchen. I don't measure, either. If I say shake in some cinnamon, you are just going to have to trust me and do it. Maybe that means you will have to trust yourself. I don't use measuring spoons. I don't have measuring spoons.

This is okay, yes? If not, you will have to go back to your little boxes and your cookbooks and your magazine clippings.

So, Graham was here for dinner last night. Miss Abigail invited him at the last minute and I had only one lamb chop thawed - for Miss Abigail, of course. So I had to change the menu at the last minute. I made what I call Kingergarten Enchiladas. I call them this because my mother told me Abigail loved them when she was a little girl. She still loves them. I like them too but I don't tell my family because they are not authentic Mexican food. I made them because I happened to have all the ingredients. I made them because Graham at nearly 50 acts like a 5-year-old sometimes. I am trying to be patient with him. Not because I want to but because Miss Abigail asked me to. These are very easy to make. Graham liked them. Figures.

Kindergarten Enchiladas
12 flour tortillas
A carton of cottage cheese - not the tall one
Sometimes I throw in a beaten egg
Shredded cheddar cheese - like, one bag of four-cheese Mexican
Minced garlic - a clove or two or three
Cumin - six shakes?
Salt and pepper
Can of chopped chiles
Can of red enchilada sauce
Sliced black olives

So you mix the cottage cheese, and beaten egg (helps to bind everything), half the bag of cheese, the spices, the drained chiles - half a can for sissies, no can for true kindergartners. Put some of the mixture onto each of the tortillas and roll them up. Place them seam-side down in a baking dish. Pour the red sauce over. Sprinkle with the rest of the shredded cheese and the sliced black olives. Cover with foil and bake for maybe 25 minutes at 350. Don't overbake. Flour tortillas scorch easily. Everything should be nice and bubbly. Service with rice and beans.

Abigail on the Classics

2008-11-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

My name is Abigail Josephine Renata Boyles. I am an 83-year-old retired librarian and the former owner of Mercy Hayworth's diary. Mercy was my cousin, eight times removed.

Some might call me eccentric; it is a word widely used to describe old women who aren't afraid to loudly express an opinion. I've seen many a three-year-old loudly express his or her opinion and no one whispers that the pint-sized troublemaker is eccentric. No, we are told they need a nap.

Call me what you will. What is an opinion for if not to be shared? What is an opinion's impact if it is not defended?

I've a library bursting with books, so Lauren tells me, and I've read everyone of them. I've an opinion on every one of them. I've been invited to share them with you. And I shall do it. Let this be my legacy then, since I no longer own the diary. I will share with you my vast wealth of loud opinions on books you should be reading. Now then. Shall we begin?

I've a handful of friends, not many, who prefer movies over reading a book. Slightly less than a handful, actually, and I guess they really aren't bonafide friends. They are people I know and wonder about.

Take Audrey. She loves the movie My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. Adores it. A stuffy London professor (eccentric maybe?) transforms a Cockney-voiced seller of flowers into a beautiful woman who speaks like the queen. Surely you've seen it.

Did you know the movie is based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion? I mentioned this to Audrey once and she told me I certainly had my facts mixed up. There are no pigs in My Fair Lady. Perhaps I was thinking of Animal Farm, instead?

Dear Audrey, I said, Pygmalion gets its name from Ovid's Metamorphosis. When disenchanted Pygmalion finds himself fed up with real women with real flaws, he sculpts a statue of the perfect woman and falls in love with it. The goddess Venus smiles down on Pygmailion and brings the statue to life.

But tell me what happens when you take something square and make it round to fit in a round hole? All you've done is made transportation possible. When the square thing arrives on the other side of the round hole, and it is lying here on a vast plain of open space, it suddenly has no need of its newly rounded edges. It begins to grow its points again.

What? said Audrey

There is a line from Pygmalion that goes like this. Eliza says it after her outward transformation is complete and inside, she is still the same girl . . .

Eliza! That's the same name! Audrey interrupted.

Yes it is. It goes like this. Eliza says, "I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else. I wish you'd left me where you found me."

But she and the professor fall in love at the end.

Do they? I said.

Abigail, you haven't seen the movie, Audrey said.

Oh but I have.

Then you've forgotten. Audrey smiled sweetly.

Audrey is 60-something. Younger than me.
She thinks I am eccentric.

Who can really say that all is well at the end. Who can really say Eliza stayed round. Learned to be round. Inside, where no one can see. Who can say?

Ask Clarissa

2008-11-14T10:22:00.001-08:00

Let's get one thing straight before we go any further.

I am not here to tell you what you want to hear. If that's what you want, you need to go call your mother or get a fan club or something.

I like to tell it like it is. I have never seen the sense of telling it like it's not. So you can expect a straight answer from me. All the time. That's just how I am.

You might be wondering what qualifies me to give advice. Here's the thing. We're all qualified to give advice, we're just not all qualified to give good advice. And the word 'good,' as you must already know, is a relative term. A book can be good, a child can be good, a day can be good, a pizza can be good. Advice is good if it helps you make a wise decision. Someone can give you really crappy advice but if it helps you make a wise decision, well, you see my point.

I grew up in a lower-middle class home, whatever that means. My parents have blue collar jobs, they own their home but every extra penny goes to make the mortgage payment. I have a brother and sister, both older than me, and I am paying my own way through college just like they did. I also had a younger brother. He died when I was 14. Leukemia.

I've been in love twice. Once in high school and once in college. But now I am out of love. Isn't that dumbest thing you've ever heard? In love one moment and out of it the next. Out of love. That just goes to show you it wasn't the real thing. I don't think the real deal is a space that is filled one day and empty the next. I don't think it's a space at all. I think it's a solid.

So there you go. There's my first conversation starter. True love is a solid. Got a question for me? An observation. A snarky response? Post it here.

~ Ciao,

Love, Lauren

2008-11-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

Hey, Raul:

Finished all the corrections to Mercy’s diary. It was weird to press save, knowing I was really finished. Abigail was with me when I wrapped it up, sipping tea as usual. When I turned around and told her I was done, she said, “Well, that’s that.” But she and I both know that just isn’t true. Something is about to begin, not end. Prof Turrell’s editor at his publishing house has already sent me an email. It’s not like it’s a done deal - not by a long shot, but this guy is asking all the right questions. He wants to see the transcript. He wants to see the diary, too. If I am hesitant to travel with it, he told me he would fly out to look at it.

I asked Abigail what I should do and she said the diary was mine to do with as I saw fit. I really don’t think she cares one way or the other. She has fulfilled two life dreams that have been robbing her of peace for decades. She has given the diary to someone she trusts and she has the forgiveness of the one person she loved most and hurt the most. She has moved on. Plus, she is busy working on getting Graham settled here in Santa Barbara. He promised to get help with his gambling addiction and she is at a place where she wants to believe him. Esperanza is not so confident. She rolls her eyes at me every time Abigail mentions Graham’s name.

Anyway, I’m not sure what I should do. I know where the diary belongs. Ultimately it belongs to everyone. I suppose the best place for it is a museum like the Smithsonian. My dad says until I decide I should have it insured and transferred to his safety deposit box. He texts me everyday – I could strangle Cole for teaching my Dad how to text – bugging me about it. He’s right, I guess.

I think for now, for at least a few more days, I just want nothing to change. I want the diary to be mine and Abigail’s and Mercy’s – and no one else’s. For just a little while. I am already sensing loss thinking about how things will change. Makes me feel melancholy. Tell me I’m not being selfish.

I should go. Got a paper due tomorrow. How did your clinicals go?

Miss you,
Love, Lauren

p.s. Tom Kimura’s obituary appeared in The Oregonian yesterday. My dad told me. Texted me actually. I didn’t tell Abigail. Should I?

Beyond the last page

2008-10-31T14:36:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wished the characters you've read about in a book lived on after you turned the last page, that you had a backstage pass to their lives beyond the confines of the book's pages?

Here on The Shape of Mercy blog, Lauren, Abigail, Clarissa, and even Mercy, will live on in posts that will appear on Mondays and Fridays. We begin where the book left off. Don't have the book? Buy it here.

Get the inside story on Lauren's budding relationship with Raul, her newfound insights into her own worldview and the echoes of Mercy that resound within her. "Love, Lauren" will feature Lauren's email correspondence with Raul and his back to her.

In "Mercy's Quill," you can take a step back in time and read one of Mercy's poems and stories saved from the journal that, contrary to belief, was not burned after her trial.

Want to discuss life and love with Clarissa? Join her at the coffee shop for a latte and her unique brand of advice on the things that bring us the most joy and cause the most trouble. "Ask Clarissa" is part advice column and part colorful commentary.

In "Abigail on the Classics," octogenarian Abigail Boyles comments on the classics while giving us glimpses of the past she fought so hard to keep a secret. Want to know more about her childhood? The garden parties she and Dorothea attended? Her romance with Tom Kimura? Sure you do . . .

Abigail's devoted housekeeper will share a recipe now and then from her trove of tried and true favorites on "In the Kitchen with Esperanza." She showed you how to make an omelet. Now she will share a whole lot more.

Each Monday and Friday one of these gals will post on this blog. You are welcome and encouraged to post questions to these ladies or to the people they know and care about - except Mercy of course. She's in heaven . . .

Hope you will come by often!