Blame: A Novel

by Huneven, Michelle

  The next morning, Patsy woke up, sick with shame. In telling her stories, she’d heard them for the first time herself. The ease with which she’d dispensed cruelties! She’d never considered herself thoughtless or immoral. Fun, a little hell-bent, maybe, impulsive, but always amusing. And basically a good person. Now, seeing the miles driven drunk, the pranks, the commitments ignored, the marriages violated, and her obliviousness throughout, she seemed despicable.

  Was there ever coming back from such actions? Or does a person round some bend and the path back is lost for good?

  And she still hadn’t sent Mark Parnham the questionnaire. The simplest request by her main victim, and she’d put it off.

  Gloria told her to write a list of people she’d hurt when drunk, then write letters to them all. Sorry I got your boyfriend/husband/kids drunk . . . , she wrote. Sorry I had sex with . . . Sorry I borrowed your camel coat and those Italian books and lost them. Sorry I smashed your garage door, sorry too about the crape myrtle. Sorry I fed you pills and alcohol and pierced your ears.

  Dear Benny,

  I want to make amends for my ingratitude and all the ostensibly clever but actually very rude things I said as you were really in there, trying to save my life.

  Not all the letters were sent, only those that wouldn’t reopen wounds or injure afresh. It never occurred to her that people would write back.

  We’re so proud of you, darling.

  I appreciate your forthrightness. But I forgave you years ago.

  I was not surprised, her former best friend Hannah wrote,

  to hear you were in prison. Sooner or later somebody was going to have the good sense to lock you up—though I’m sure you’ve already found some married guard to schtup, or someone else’s girlfriend, someone too weak or kind to deflect your freight-train come-ons. Patsy, you say you’re sorry and want to make amends to me? You want to know how to do that? Cross me off your list! Never contact me again! That’s the only true amend you could ever make to me.

  Sincerely, H.

  And this:

  Dear Patsy,

  I got your letter. I hope you are all right. I’m fine but I don’t like school this year. I have boring teachers except for English.

  I am on a big reading binge lately, are you? The best thing I read lately is The Alexandria Quartet which is actually 4 books in 1 box. Uncle Brice gave it to me for my birthday. (I just turned 14!)

  About what you said in your letter. Don’t feel bad about the beer and stuff. You didn’t see me, but I stole a pill from your purse and took the whole thing. That’s why I was so sleepy that night. Don’t worry about piercing my ears, either. I really wanted them pierced. Anyway, the second my grandmother saw me wearing earrings she made me take them out. My ears grew right back.

  Yours Truly, Joey Hawthorne

  •

  Still going to meetings, Pats?

  As always, her father was too interested, too hopeful.

  Don’t, she said. She hated the flaring of hope in his eyes. Then she hated the fear that replaced it.

  I go, she said.

  Thatagirl.

  What else is there to do? Patsy studied the other families in the visiting room and thought about her list of those she had harmed, one of whom was her father. In college, she’d stolen three hundred and fifty dollars from him. He’d overpaid her tuition one quarter and the bursar sent her the refund check. If she’d told him about it at the time, he probably would have told her to keep the money. But she cashed the check and spent it recklessly, pointedly, paying for drinks and meals until all of it was gone.

  Women were in Bertrin for stealing less. Larena got two years for paying rent with a two-hundred-dollar check drawn on a closed account—granted, not her first offense. And fifty-nine-year-old Rondene pulled two years for cashing a $137 welfare check nicked from a neighbor’s mailbox—though Rondene’s case was different. She didn’t even need the money. I jus loves to steal! Loves it! she told Patsy. I cain’t wait to get outta this place and steal some more!

  She couldn’t pay her father back, not now. She’d write him a check one day when she was out.

  Guess what, Dad? she said, and again, his face ignited with hope.

  I might go to fire camp in February, she said. I have to run a ten-minute mile and be able to do ten men’s push-ups and chin-ups. But it’s safer and easier time, and outdoors. This older woman I know, Gloria, qualified, so I don’t see why I won’t.

  Oh, Patsy, he said, his eyes filled with tears.

  •

  MacLemoore!

  She woke to darkness dropping away, a black wing swooping past.

  What’s that?

  No tenting, you know that.

  Oh, CO Hefferton, the night witch. Patsy rubbed her face to wake up and determined that Rhoda overhead had kicked aside her blanket so it curtained the lower bunk—and looked like tenting, what women did here for privacy, sex.

  Do it again, I’ll write you up.

  Rhoda kicked off her blanket the next night too—hot flashes, she said—but another CO was on and didn’t care or notice. Sensitized, Patsy soon woke up on cue when the blankets fell, gloried briefly in the fleeting darkness and seclusion, then yanked the blankets to the floor. A write-up could cost her a chance at fire camp.

  Eventually the two women swapped bunks. Patsy liked it up high, where the acoustic tiles blurred into chalky landscapes, and something about the altitude recalled the dorms at St. Catherine’s, her high school, and lolling around with the boarders there, eating cookies by the sackful, smoking cigarettes leaning out of windows. Prison, she thought again, was not unrelated to milder institutions. Those small-town rich girls, like her dorm mates at Bertrin, had also mocked her intelligence.

  Not until she got to Berkeley had she found kindred minds, male and female. She’d met her first Jews too, who were city-bred, cultured, political, as exotic to her as royalty. She’d vowed to marry a Jewish intellectual. How they’d talked and argued, mostly about books. And how everybody drank. Closing bars. Straggling up Telegraph, University, in the fog-socked dawn.

  Even then some said, We can’t keep up with you, Patsy.

  The story of her life: nobody could keep up.

  She’d always balanced her excesses with hard work. She held it together, or thought she had, until she applied for jobs. Neither of the two tenure-track positions she’d been asked to apply for had come through. Pomona had courted her so assiduously, she’d gone apartment hunting while interviewing. But the offer never arrived. She had no idea what happened until last April, a few weeks before the accident, when she’d run into one of the search committee members at a conference in Irvine. He admitted that during her candidating, she’d been a little too . . . hilarious with a waiter. You know, on the social night, he said. When they take you out and get you drunk to see what you’ll do? No, no, you weren’t inappropriate, not exactly, but maybe not so appropriate either, not for an interview. Later, if you were already on board, nobody would’ve taken issue . . .

  Something similar must have happened at ASU, since the faculty chair there said that her lecture on Jim Crow was the most incisive she’d ever heard. Patsy’s third choice, UMass, had passed on her as well, but that was expected, she wasn’t really nineteenth century, as they’d specified and eventually hired. She ended up at her fourth choice, the small, second-rate trade school turned liberal arts college in Pasadena, where the department was so pleased to get her, they knocked a class off her schedule.

  Good old pedestrian Hallen College. Her department chair, Wes, said they would take her back when she came out. They had no clause forbidding felons. A couple profs in criminology had done hard time, he said, and that had only added grit and weight to their teaching. Of course Wes had heard the legal version, that she’d swung into her driveway too fast at dusk, the hard-to-see time, and accidentally killed two people, a tragedy that could happen to anyone.

  •

  I’m having a hard time with the note, she
told Benny.

  Just send him the damn questionnaire, he said. It’s been months already.

  I should write something. Or it comes across as too cold.

  You know, Patsy, you don’t have to see him.

  It’s the least I can do. Even if he just wants to yell at me.

  He won’t yell, said Benny. He just wants to talk about what happened. And I think he’s concerned about you. That’s the impression I get.

  He’s concerned about me?

  Well, Jesus, Patsy, who isn’t?

  •

  What if she and Mark Parnham met and fell in love? What if they already were, a little? She imagined them collapsing into each other’s arms, blindly burrowing into each other’s bodies, love neutralizing grief, extinguishing guilt. Could they make a life from that?

  Even she would have to say, Impossible.

  •

  Please know that I’ve stopped drinking and am active in a program to help me maintain my sobriety so that I will never drive drunk again.

  That could only be cold comfort to him.

  I grieve for them. I hope to lead my life in a way that somehow pays homage to their lives.

  Me me me. Too much about me. She crumpled the paper, lobbed it into the brown sack she used for trash, her aim improving.

  The mother and daughter hovered right where her peripheral vision ended. So what should I say? she asked them. And while we’re at it, what does he want?

  The two stirred, shifted, gave nothing away.

  After Christmas came good news, and she wrote:

  Benny A. says that you wish to meet with me, and if that’s still true, in about a month I’ll be transferred to an honor work camp near Malibu. It’s much closer to you and will be a much easier place to visit than where I am now. I hope to see you there.

  Sincerely, Patsy MacLemoore

  7

  Handcuffed and shackled (feet and waist) for the ride south, Patsy sat in the front of the van with the driver. Two male convicts, likewise cuffed and shackled, and a male guard occupied bench seats in the back. Patsy expected her spirits to lift after passing through Bertrin’s gates, but there was nothing gladdening in the heavy stink of the stockyards and the dirt-brown low hills. The men muttered among themselves behind her. Their chains clinked softly. The scenery did not change. The sun shone through her window, and she dozed in its warmth.

  She opened her eyes when the van slowed. They were leaving the freeway in Bakersfield. Big treat, the driver announced, and pulled into the drive-through lane at a Wendy’s—unbelievably, the same Wendy’s she’d frequented in high school. The same plate-glass windows and blue vinyl booths, the usual truckers and roughnecks who’d hissed and made kissing noises at her and her girlfriends. Three miles due east, a flat, easy bike ride away, her parents were no doubt home in their house on the fairway, on Clubhouse Drive.

  The driver bought them cheeseburgers, french fries, and chocolate shakes. Biting into the hot, crisped meat brought tears to her eyes. Melted cheese and mayonnaise oozed onto her knuckles. She got lost in the saltiness, the juice, the warm, moist layered thickness of the burger pressed against her face. They all ate without speaking, rummaging in their french fry bags and gulping like dogs.

  Less than an hour later, salty saliva flooded her mouth. Oh no, she said, Officer? They were on the interstate, between exits, so she looked frantically for a litterbag or receptacle. Finding nothing suitable, she tucked her knees to one side and vomited onto the van’s floor, her retching loud and helpless, like a strange and desperate form of sobbing. This made one of the men behind her gag too.

  Oh Jesus shit, the other convict said. Shit shit. You stinking sons of bitches. If you can’t hold your burgers, don’t eat ’em.

  Hell, the sick man said. It was as good coming up as it was going down.

  Bile stung high in her throat, behind her nose. Her eyes watered. She was weeping, it seemed, and no longer fit for regular food. The driver got off at Frazer Park and had them clean up in a gas station parking lot, the job hampered by handcuffs and shackles and the van’s interior carpet. She scooped up her mess with paper towels and, shuffling and clanking alongside the guard, carried the clump to the Dump-ster behind the station. On the other side of the Dumpster was a berm of filthy snow and acres of high desert scrubland before the scraggly town of Frazer Park. She stood for a moment taking in the cold air, the sweep of pewter-colored mountains. She imagined slipping off into the scrub, then up a canyon, evading pursuers, sleeping curled around a campfire on the dirt.

  The guard grunted, and as Patsy turned to go back to the van, a teenage girl came out of the restroom and registered the shackles with a visible start. No doubt curious to see who wore such things, the girl looked directly into Patsy’s face. Patsy met the gaze with frank coldness—eight months in prison had made her fluent in intimidation. The girl averted her eyes and scuttled.

  I must remember that for students, thought Patsy.

  •

  They reached the camp in the green hills north of Malibu in the late afternoon, when the light was pale and fuzzing up with marine moisture. Two guards met them at the entrance and performed a cursory search of the van before activating the gate. Then they zigzagged up the side of a grassy hill to a parking pad beside a Spanish-style building. Two female COs met them. The driver came around and let Patsy out of the van. He removed her handcuffs and shackles. These’re Bertrin’s, he said, as if she’d try to claim them.

  Patsy was taken to an office, where she filled out forms. In a smaller room, she was given a swift strip search by a red-haired female CO, then handed a bundle of used jeans, T-shirts and flannel shirts, the usual toiletries, and bedding. Next stop was across the courtyard at the clinic, where an older prisoner rubbed Neosporin into her raw wrists and ankles. You ready to work? the prisoner said. Cuz here, honey, they put you to work.

  The redheaded CO, Sweeney, took her into an equipment room and had her try on leather firefighting boots, knee-high and laced up, until she found a comfortable pair. You’ll need them starting tomorrow, she said, and carried the selected pair as she led Patsy to her barracks. They passed three women crouched in a vegetable garden, and through the windows of the first barracks Patsy saw someone sweeping. Otherwise the place appeared deserted. On the other side of the high hurricane fence was a eucalyptus forest, tall dark trees standing deep in their own shed bark.

  The camp’s layout and rustic charm seemed familiar; the public area looked like a California mission with its courtyard, fountain, and fruit trees. The barracks were stacked like stairs on the hillside and looked down through pine trees to the mirroring sea.

  In the third barracks Patsy was shown to a row of iron cots with lockboxes chained to their legs. Lumpy, hand-knotted rag rugs sat next to two of the beds. Desks were built into the walls.

  Toilets are there, Sweeney pointed. Patsy stuck her head in to see two stalls, with doors. Only six of you here at present, Sweeney said. They’re out on the bus till five. It’s four now, so you might want to shower before they get back, or you’ll never get in. Dinner at five-thirty. Any questions?

  When was this place built? Patsy asked.

  In the Depression, said Sweeney. By the California Conservation Corps.

  Camp Ohwanakee in the Sierras, her own Catholic summer camp, had been another CCC project, more alpine, but with a similar layout. The familiarity was disconcerting, in the way places merged in dreams: I was at camp, only it was also a prison . . .

  Patsy was making up her bed when a woman appeared in the doorway. I’m Lima, she said. Is there anything you need?

  No, thanks.

  I’m grounded with a sprained wrist—she held up a wrapped arm. Black prongs of gang graffiti poked out of the Ace bandage. Can I come in?

  I need to shower now, Patsy said. She knew nothing about this Lima and had no interest in her.

  I could come back.

  That’s okay.

  Do you have a cigarette?

&
nbsp; Don’t smoke.

  You got coffee?

  A woman’s voice from outside: Leave her be, Acevedo.

  Ramen?

  Acevedo! said the voice.

  Patsy opened her lockbox and started placing her possessions inside. When she had finished, Lima was gone. The door hung open. Wind soughed through the trees.

  •

  First wake-up was 4:45 a.m., followed by a general scrabbling in the darkness. Someone said, If you want breakfast before hike, come on.

  You want eggs, tell Gloria, another roommate said.

  Gloria!

  And there she was at the food window, with a pencil.

  The camp has its own laying hens, she told Patsy, but when I got here, all the cook set out was a tub of scrambled dry. A waste of fresh eggs. You better have three if you want to make it through PT.

  Patsy’s eggs came, scrambled soft, impossibly yellow, fluffy, and rich.

  PT—physical training—was a daily hike, two to three hours long. Patsy and four other new inmates were last in the line. Today’s route was “the Burn,” six miles into the mountains behind the camp and back. The women moved fast, and Patsy trotted along, kept up as best she could. Sun, ocean, and green hills pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat. Some of the women sang, but she barely heard them over her own hoarse breath.

  You people mean business, she said to a CO bringing up the rear.

  You’ll feel it tonight, but you’ll get used to it.

  Somebody farted, to general laughter.

  Wait’ll the downhill, an inmate called back. They fart like horses.

  But this trail was all uphill. Only at the very end did they swerve into a gulch and half run, half slide a mile down to camp, and Patsy forgot to listen.

  Lunch was a tuna sandwich, a mealy apple. Patsy got up from the table, and her thighs were sore to the touch. Her face was tight and pink, as if scalded. She’d have to ask her mom to send sunscreen. But she was lucky, no work detail today. It was Sunday, visiting day. She slept straight through till dinner.