Blame: A Novel

by Huneven, Michelle

  We’ll see how it goes, honey, she said.

  Her father and Burt alternated after that. Her friend Sarah made the tedious four-hour drive from Pasadena once. Otherwise, Brice was her most regular visitor, showing up every month or so. Patsy first wondered at this constancy, so missing when they were lovers, then came to rely on it. He always caused a stir in the visiting room. Some women were convinced he was a movie star or Paul Newman’s brother. A somebody.

  Patsy, and all the others, lived for letters, proof they weren’t forgotten.

  I went down to Altadena last week and met with your new tenants, wrote Burt. He’s postdoc at Caltech—microbiology—and she’s an economist looking for work.

  Your father prays for you every night, her mother wrote. I hear him in the kitchen talking to his Higher Power.

  Sarah wrote, I miss you, I worry about you, please let me know what I can do, what I can send you to read.

  •

  Gloria and Annie half hoisted her between them. Flattered that they bothered, she went along.

  Nine women sat in a circle in the classroom behind the guard station. Gloria and Annie, of course, and Ruth too, who wasn’t a drunk but applied the program to her pyromania—I am powerless over setting fires.

  Yvonne told of having her kids taken away and shooting up her pimp with bad heroin. Barbi described waiting tables drunk, spilling soup and drinks on customers. Gail’s mother got her drunk the first time when she was six. All the women sang the glories of AA, of God, of not having to drink.

  Patsy recoiled at the loser litanies and simplistic religiosity. She might have a genetic propensity for alcoholism, but she’d always stayed on track, accumulating degrees and honors and publications in spite of a concomitant taste for liquor, pharmaceuticals, and rich boy wastrels. She’d been valedictorian and Party Hardiest in high school, the first in her family to matriculate into a University of California grad school and a California correctional institution. She, at least, had range.

  Not for me, Patsy told Gloria afterward. Besides, I’m not sure I want to give up alcohol for the rest of my life.

  How ’bout one day at a time?

  That’s sophistry, said Patsy. Everybody knows it means forever.

  They do? Gloria shrugged. So drink till you’re done. Then, if you feel like a meeting, they’re around. Oh, look, here’s Ruth with coffee.

  After the big show Gloria and Annie had made of dragging her to an AA meeting, she thought, they might have fought a little harder to make her stay.

  •

  Benny came to see her. This is a surprise, Patsy said.

  I told you I was coming.

  I mean the sport shirt. I’ve never seen you outside a suit. She pointed to the wall of vending machines. You buying?

  They sat at one of the long metal picnic tables, chips and sodas between them. So, Benito, whassup? she said.

  In fact, someone would like to visit you, Benny said. Someone not on your list. Mark Parnham?

  Fear squeezed her veins shut.

  Name ring a bell?

  Don’t be sadistic. What does he want?

  To talk to you. Get to know you a little. You up for it?

  Oh god. What could I say to him? But I should see him, if he wants that.

  You don’t have to. Or there can be a mediator.

  I’ll see him. But alone.

  You’ll have to put him on your list first.

  And send him the questionnaire, thought Patsy. That would take at least a month to process. What does he want? she asked. Did he say?

  To meet you. Talk. But it’s up to you, Patsy.

  How can I refuse him?

  •

  I have a new boyfriend, wrote Sarah. Do you remember Henry Croft, in anthropology? We started talking at a party at Kelley’s and haven’t stopped since.

  I got that transfer, wrote Burt. Bonnie and I both think life will be better for the kids once we get ’em off TV and onto ponies.

  Your father went out to get a haircut and came home with a used Vespa, her mother wrote. I’m fit to be tied.

  •

  Don’t tell Larena you offed a couple JWs, said Gloria.

  She one?

  All day every day. Armageddon’s comin’, baby.

  Larena lived in Gloria’s dorm. She was twenty-two years old and in for cashing a bad check—here in minimum-to-medium, some women gabbed freely about their crimes in group. Patsy found Larena painting her nails in bed. Hey, Larena, can I ask you some things about Jehovah’s Witnesses?

  You want me to witness you? Course I will. Larena put down the tiny nailbrush, drew a newsprint magazine, The Watchtower, from under her pillow, and handed it to Patsy. On the cover, Jesus in robes looked askance at a big modern church. This will get you started, Larena said.

  Patsy rolled the little tabloid into a tube. So what do you guys believe?

  Larena blew on her orchid fingertips. Well, personally speaking, I’ve found that God is Jehovah, and my life is all about serving Him. His Kingdom is coming, and I’m just doing everything Jesus tells me till then.

  Oh, so you believe in Jesus.

  Well, sure. But we know Jesus isn’t God. Only God is God. Jesus is King and God’s son, but he’s a human, same as us, only perfect. And he died on a torture stake and not a cross. That cross business come from pagan times and was just added to make pagans believe.

  You sound like a Unitarian, said Patsy.

  A what?

  Never mind.

  You know, Teach . . . Larena gazed at the floor beside her bed, where missing linoleum revealed ridges of crusty black mastic. This idn’t the real world. The real world is yet to come. And it will be paradise. We’ll all live in big ole mansions on wide bullyvards. So hurry up, Teach, time’s running out on you.

  When is this paradise supposed to come?

  Nobody knows. They used to say dates, but that was a mistake. But there be plenty a warning. The earth’ll crack open, the sky’ll rain blood, the rivers, they’ll boil up outta their banks. The walls of this ugly ole prison’ll crumble down like Jericho. It’ll be the big cleansing of the earth, just like Noah’s time, only the angels’ll come with their flaming swords to sort out the wheat from the chuff.

  Her voice had risen almost into song.

  But what about forgiveness? said Patsy. Where do you stand on that?

  Oh, you gotta forgive. You gotta put shit behind you, or it eat you alive.

  Yeah, but what about angels slashing everybody. Won’t they forgive?

  God give everybody all the time in the world to come to Him.

  Ahh.

  Larena handed her an Awake! and more Watchtowers.

  Patsy scanned the little tabloids at her desk, searching for some hint about the sad man who had seemed so fair-minded in the courtroom. She had assumed such generosity was religious. She found an article about “community,” but it only explained that JWs deplored churches and clergy—everyone taught god’s word. Another article said god was angry at the world, the illustration a bearded white man in the clouds, clutching thunderbolts.

  Patsy had harbored some religious sentiment as a child—she once dreamed that Jesus liked her in particular. But twelve years of Catholic education had eroded such feeling, and the two summers during high school when she worked in the parish office finished it off. The priests! Each had his own carton of milk in the refrigerator—whole milk, skim, half-and-half, liquid Coffee-mate—and each kept obsessive track of fluid levels, convinced the others were helping themselves. So many accusations, lost tempers, and hard feelings over dairy products! Later on, her training as a historian further demystified the Church and made Patsy immune, even hostile, to institutionalized faith. In every intro-level and survey class she taught, Patsy used the historical Jesus to demonstrate the rigor of historical scholarship. If we examine Jesus’ life as historians and we look into all contemporaneous sources, she’d say in lectures, we are able to establish exactly three facts. Jesus was born, he ate some
meals with people, and he died—possibly by crucifixion.

  She’d wait for the murmur of discomfort, the hiss of disbelief, the secular titters, then add—And that’s it.

  •

  In the hot, rank afternoon, the air heavy with stockyard fumes, Patsy left off reading and sank into a sticky near-sleep, where once again she dreamed of taking the big, sweeping left turn to home, only to see in the old Mercedes’ headlights the two in their white blouses and dark skirts, the mother’s mouth round in surprise. Then the booms and thumps, a spray of stars, a veering off, leaves brushing metal, a small white hand sliding off a dark fender.

  Jesus fucking Christ. Patsy kicked her legs to wake up, opened her eyes, took more breaths, then turned on her side. In the heat and ricocheting noise, she sought another route to sleep and this time wandered past mansion after mansion under towering elms along broad, deserted streets.

  6

  Unlike her mother, who would not accept the extravagantly surcharged collect calls when her father wasn’t there, eternally broke Brice never once turned down the prison operator. Would you do me a favor? Patsy asked him. Would you find out about Mark Parnham?

  What about him?

  General stuff. He wants to see me, and I want a sense of him first. Don’t talk to him or anything. But if you could check him out somehow, find out if he’s as nice as he seems.

  •

  Long, loud, too-bright clanging days passed. The deputy warden offered her a job teaching high school history and English geared to the high school equivalency test. She met nine students three times a week for two-hour sessions. Half her students, including Larena, read at or under fourth-grade level. Twenty-seven cents an hour was deposited in her commissary account.

  Lying on her bunk in sticky October heat, what Gloria said drifted back to her, about drinking till you were done. Done. Could she ever be done with alcohol? All that fun! Collapsing into a chair with a good stiff drink. Starting to make dinner by pouring herself a glass of red wine—was there a better moment in the day? If a drink was large enough and strong enough, the very first sip relaxed her, filled her with well-being. Could she ever be done with such fast, effective relief?

  Her father’s sobriety had been such an effort, such an event, the great life-changing hinge in the whole family history. Before, all was shouting, late-night smashings, and creepy-wet bourbon-scented bedtime kisses. After was the incessant low talking and intermittent laughter of men in the house at night, the phone always ringing with calls from sponsors, sponsees, strangers trying not to drink, a whole household industry of sobriety. And meetings, meetings for everyone, for her dad, her mom, even meetings for Burt and her. How she hated those church classrooms with the small chairs, the too-kindly adult, the other children weirdly eager to describe their parents’ cruelty and misbehavior.

  Sobriety was her father’s greatest accomplishment. How pathetic!

  But drinking till you’re done—the phrase implied a natural cessation, no force or rupture. How appealing to think she might one day have had enough, and walk away into the rest of her life without craving or a thundering sense of loss. The idea offered release, and the mental clarity of a thin, clean pane of glass.

  Possibly, she was already done. Hard to be sure. At Bertrin no little jars appeared, no tempting, cloudy tinctures distilled from rotting cornflakes.

  Afternoons, before final count, she’d see women in the meeting room, their chairs in a ragged circle. They were laughing in there.

  •

  Brice was escorted into the visiting hall. A few low whistles greeted him, and he waved jauntily to the whistlers. Stop it, Patsy whispered as he reached her. She dreaded calling attention to herself, even by proxy. I’m not kidding, she hissed. Nobody’s supposed to talk to other visitors. You’ll get us all thrown out.

  Hi there, Brice, he said, overriding her. So nice of you to drive four hours just to tell me the poop on Mr. P. that you so thoughtfully unearthed.

  So nice, she said. I mean it. It’s just . . . She gave a wild glance around the room, then smiled at his face. You look good, great—that’s a terrific haircut. You’re a marvelous human. Now, tell me everything.

  Do you really like the cut? You don’t think it’s a little froufrou in back?

  And the sides. And front, especially the front.

  Brice grinned and touched his tarnished blond hair.

  They sat down at one end of a concrete picnic table. Another couple sat on the opposite end, hands clutched across the table.

  She and Brice did not clasp hands. Your guy lives in West Altadena, near the arroyo, he said. I looked him up in the phone book. A little ranch house, I cruised it—don’t worry, nobody was home. One of those fifties stucco jobs tarted up with wood siding. Fruit trees in the front lawn. Kid’s toys lying around. Guy could use a gardener, and arborist.

  Did you see him? Or the kid?

  Nobody was home. But—Brice paused dramatically—the house next door was for sale, and I disturbed the occupant. Said I was on the verge of an offer, but since I was moving because of bad neighbors, I didn’t want to repeat the problem. She was young, her husband was at the Jet Propulsion Lab but had been transferred to Cape Canaveral. At first she talked to me through the screen door, but I got her out on the stoop. She told me right away about your guy and what happened. His son is her son’s best friend, and she’d had both father and son over for dinner a lot since the accident. They’d become close, she said, and that hadn’t been the case when the man’s wife was alive. Not that the wife wasn’t nice, but—Do you want to hear this, Patsy? Brice stopped, checked Patsy’s face.

  Every word, Patsy said, though she was already weirdly cold.

  I guess Mrs. P. was extremely shy. She’d bring this neighbor lady bags of fruit from her trees, but leave them on the porch without knocking. The only time she ever went inside the neighbor’s house was right after she became a Jehovah’s Witness. To convert her.

  I can’t believe you found all this out, whispered Patsy.

  And that’s just for starters, said Brice, turning to look at a woman at the next table over who was humming at him.

  Hah, baby, whispered the humming woman. Hah, handsome.

  Brice, Patsy hissed. What else?

  He turned back. Let’s see. Yeah, well, I asked the neighbor lady, Isn’t the husband a JW too? And she was like, Oh no, god no, not even close. He hated that his wife got all caught up with that.

  He’s not a Jehovah’s Witness?

  Defiantly not. Distrusts them. After the accident, a dozen Witnesses got to the hospital before he did. Some janitor there had put the word out. At first your guy was really touched, you know, that her church group had rallied, but soon it was obvious that they’d only come to talk him out of authorizing a transfusion. They don’t believe in transfusions.

  I can’t believe she told you all this, said Patsy.

  Oh, she was a talker, said Brice. Of course he did authorize a trans-fusion.

  Of course, said Patsy. Boy. You hit the gold mine.

  Yeah, though I also had to hear about the guy on the other side who parks his RV right by her bedroom window, and the witch across the street . . .

  I owe you, said Patsy.

  Teach? Teach! One of the women a few tables away whispered sharply. He’s on a show, ain’t he, Teach?

  Patsy turned further away from the woman.

  C’mon, Patsy, called another woman, sotto voce. Just say what show.

  She can’t say, Brice stage-whispered to the second woman.

  He’s on a show! I knew it, I tole you, the woman crowed.

  Don’t, please, Patsy murmured to Brice. I have to live with them.

  •

  As she courted sleep at night, Patsy drifted now to West Altadena, to the little orchard with the thick grass that the man was too grief-stricken or overwhelmed to mow. Or perhaps the woman had always mowed it, steering a push mower around slim-trunked trees laden with plums and nectarines, the daughter r
aking up behind. She imagined them in long skirts and long-sleeved blouses, working with the patience of former centuries, gathering fruit into wooden buckets or galvanized pails, fruit for pies and cobblers and preserves in clear glass jars, fruits parceled into bags and distributed through the neighborhood. And then, the orchard was untended, the fruit swelling and softening and falling into the thick grass, where it burst and rotted and was eaten by ants.

  •

  You win, Patsy whispered to Gloria as they began to say their names around the room. Annie, alcoholic. Rondene, ack-aholic.

  Patsy, she said at her turn.

  Good to see you, whispered Gloria.

  The dad wants to meet with me, Patsy said. I have to do something.

  The next afternoon, they asked Patsy to lead the meeting.

  In for a dime, in for a dollar, Patsy said, and recounted her life of heedless careening, only to fill the room with laughter. I went to classes drunk. I lectured undergraduates about my sex life. I lectured bartenders on military history. I peed in my office wastebasket, then held office hours. Drunk, I’d sleep with anyone in my path—boys, girls, husbands, wives, students, teachers. That’s what I’m told. There’s much I don’t remember. I used to call people to find out if I had fun the night before or caused another disaster.

  And this kid, Ernest Cruikshank. Funny I remember his name. His chippy little girlfriend was bawling in my office: Your own student. How could you?

  I had no idea what I’d done. I told her not to worry—as far as I knew, it never happened. Even my old boyfriend Brice yelled at me once for feeding his little niece booze and piercing her ears. The girl was fine, but his mom—the girl’s grandmother—yelled at him for subjecting her to lowlife like me.

  A woman named Nel whispered to Patsy at the break that she too had hit someone with her car in a blackout, in her case, a policeman waving her through an intersection. She’d broken his leg, and a rib that nicked his lung. He was still alive, healed up in fact, and there in court to see her sentenced, the dickhead. Nel got five years, would be out in three, her lawyer clearly not as skilled as Benny.