MERCY

It is, certainly, obstinate, compact, self-disciplined, holding itself in check, but also amenable, attractive, polished, soft, agreeable in the hands

Sunday morning and Mercy can't open her eyes wide enough, they seem to softly go back to half-mast, up down, up down. What happened last night doesn't seem real, doesn't seem like it happened at all. Patrick #1 is gone and Patrick #2 is gone and she can't find her phone. She is in last night's clothes, she will wear these clothes for the next week.

May God be with you (and also with you)

Mercy's father dresses up in Sunday best, with a hat like on Easter and a ruffled dress and cardigan and he sits in the living room and watches church on TV, the big women with purple hair and the soulful preachers with expensive suits, can I get an Amen, can I get an Amen. This is before he is so sick that the priest comes for last rites every week, as if he will die at any time. This is my classroom, he tells Mercy. This is where I learn. Can I get a witness. Can I get an Amen? And, almost always, Mercy's father is taking notes, right down to makeup and hair. 

Mercy packs two bags, one large duffel bag full of clothes and one hard suitcase full of books. This is all she takes with her. She stops only twice to go to the bathroom on the way home, the highway is empty save for semi-trucks that flash their lights at her because she drives with her brights on. In the second rest area, an old janitor asks her if there is any more chicks in the lady's room and she says I don't know because she doesn't really know but she does, it is 4:00 am and no one else is around. He grumps back at her, smacks his lips, you don't know huh ain't that something.

She pulls into the long driveway full of dead trees. She pulls her car behind the run down boat in the driveway, the broken down Mercedes with the legal tags and license plates, as if her father will ever drive it again. Her father had always had very stylish cars but now he had a van because it was roomy and didn't hurt him so much coming and going from the hospital and the van was parked in the huge two stall garage, out of sight. In the early morning light the boat looked so much bigger. The yard felt like it went for miles. All of the houses on the block looked fake, like a movie set, like Mercy could pry the sides open with her fingers and open the houses fronts on hinges, a doll house.

The woods rustle behind her. It is a photographer. Flash and snap and rustle and run.

You don't love me anymore, she thinks. None of you. None of you love me anymore. She struggles with the key, has to set down everything in her hands to rock the huge front door opens, remembers how much she has always hated this about the front door, the things you forget when you are away for too long.