Blame: A Novel

by Huneven, Michelle

  And look, he said, you’re stocked up too. He opened an overhead cupboard to reveal Medaglia D’Oro coffee, red boxes of Finn Crisp crackers, ripening avocados. Her old staples. Brice had remembered them, and she had not. In the fridge, a sharp cheddar and half-and-half for her coffee.

  And these I made this morning. Gilles pulled aluminum foil up to reveal a plate of stacked tea sandwiches. Jam and butter on the white bread, he said. Cream cheese and watercress on the wheat. Want one?

  I’ll wait for—She’d forgotten the names of her brother and former lover. Too many subway tiles, groceries, and this eager-to-please, garrulous boy.

  Oh dear, he said. Are you all right? Here, sit down. He guided her backward into the breakfast nook and pulled out a chair. Do you want a tissue?

  No, no. Through the glass tabletop her hands writhed in her lap.

  I can’t imagine what today is like for you, said Gilles. I hope the apartment is everything you dreamed of. I wanted to tart it up, you know, with pillows and paintings, and I brought over my big old teddy bear for you. I thought he might cheer you up, like a pet, but Brice is so strict.

  He is, she murmured, thinking she might have liked the bear.

  Gilles set the table: cups, small plates, mismatched linen napkins, the sandwiches. As the shock of his beauty subsided, she saw typically lax teenage grooming—sloppy shave, straggly hair in his eyes. Sixteen, she decided.

  You’re so nice to go to all this trouble, she said.

  It’s practice for my future catering company. Gilles’s Meals.

  Yes. Perfect. Are you French?

  My father was. And I lived in France for two years. But I’m from right here. Pasadena.

  You live in the building? Patsy asked.

  Until Brice gets grouchy; then I go to Mother’s till he asks me back.

  A small shock of certainty, a pause in the blood. Of course.

  Brice might’ve said something to prepare her—even if disclosures of a personal nature didn’t come easily to him.

  Oh—and Brice said to tell you I’m in AA.

  You? she said.

  Two years without one sip.

  How old are you, anyway?

  Twenty next week.

  You must have started young, she said.

  Twelve, he said. But I had talent.

  Apparently, Patsy said. I’m two years sober too.

  I know. Gilles carried the teapot in its flowered cozy to the table. Brice blew your anonymity. I could take you to meetings, he added. I’ve found all the good ones. I go every morning, early.

  How early?

  Six-thirty. I like to get it out of the way, first thing.

  I’ve been getting up at five.

  Shall I come get you, then? Tomorrow? Ten after six?

  Yes. Patsy gave a laugh of relief. I was wondering how I was going to do ninety meetings in ninety days, she said.

  That’s what I’m doing! Ninety in ninety. Every time I finish, my sponsor says, Oh, you’re doing so well, you’ve come such a long way, why mess with a good thing? Let’s do another ninety in ninety.

  Yeah, my parole—

  Patsy? Patsy? Oh, there you are, Burt said, and walked straight up to the sandwiches. Those look good.

  A phone began to ring.

  Is that here? Patsy asked, bewildered.

  Gilles pointed to the living room, where a boxy white rotary phone pealed on a side table. Burt tossed her the receiver on its coiled cord. Hello? she said.

  It’s me, Brice. I wanted to make sure it worked.

  You thought of everything, she said.

  •

  The four gathered at the glass table to drink the tea and eat the little sandwiches. Brice asked after the old girls who’d pestered him at Bertrin and Malibu. So much for my brief and happy life as a movie star, he said.

  The tea tasted like some delicious toasted wood, and she loved the sandwiches, the cream cheese with its fattiness and tang, the sweet berry jam and cold shards of butter. Even after she felt vaguely ill, Patsy kept eating and drank so many cups of tea, her fingers buzzed and she felt feverish and chilled at the same time. Gilles was gathering dishes, and Patsy couldn’t track what anyone was saying. She wanted to go into the bedroom and put a pillow over her head.

  Brice stood. I’m sure you want to unpack, he said. We’re right upstairs if you need anything. Our number is by the phone.

  Burt saw them out; then he too had to go. He was due at work. I hate leaving you alone, he said. The kids said I should kidnap you.

  You heard Mr. Knock-Knock. I can’t leave the county.

  That douche bag, said Burt. God, what a putz.

  Patsy kissed her brother’s bristled cheek and closed the door.

  Alone! Roaming room to room, she opened and shut cupboards, eyed the telephone, then ran a deep tub foamed with bath oil. Her breasts and knees and toes made pink protrusions in the bubbles. There you are, she greeted them, prison having allowed no time or place for self-inspection. Her legs were the skinniest she’d ever seen them, and muscular from firefighting. She added hot water with her toes, until the heat made her heart race. She got out of the tub and grabbed a towel all too quickly; the air burst into prisms, and she had to sit on the toilet, bent over her knees until the whirling bars of color subsided. Traffic rumbled outside, a bass note to the city’s hum, and above that, she heard a faint ringing, so high-pitched, steady, and beautiful it could only be silence.

  Wrapped in the towel, she stretched out on the Bellwood-issue sleigh bed with its plain white hotel linens and down pillows. She wished that Brice had told her about the boy ahead of time instead of parading him in front of Burt like that. Not that she was so surprised. In all the months she and Brice ran around together, they spent very few nights with each other. Two, actually. Two nights.

  When you get right down to it, sexual indifference isn’t that mysterious.

  During their breakup three years ago, Brice had said, Thailand has ruined me. At the time, she’d taken it to mean that he was drawn only to tiny, slim women and that she was too big, too clumsy, too blond and American to suit.

  In renting an apartment at the Lyster, Patsy had neither expected nor wanted to resurrect their romance. But she’d had other ideas—silly ones, she saw now—about soldiering on as devoted, mutually single friends, both unfit for love.

  The only thing to do, she saw, was to proceed as planned, stay here until she could move home to Pomelo Street, and keep to her own resolves.

  She had resolved to be good, whatever that meant. Her soul, that scrap of energy, was in tatters, no doubt beyond repair. Her only hope was to make herself useful to others, try to balance wrong with right.

  Her stomach was still queasy from the sandwiches.

  Eating lightly would be good. Possibly some fasting.

  And she would let her hair grow long again.

  •

  A loud jangle woke her and, thinking she was still at fire camp, Patsy stumbled to her feet before recognizing the phone. It’s Gilles, said the young voice, so then she thought it was already morning and she was late to the meeting, but the room was bright, and baking in late afternoon heat. The fog had cleared and the mountains sprawled beyond her windows.

  Brice says dinner is at seven. Hors d’oeuvres at six-thirty.

  What time is it now?

  Almost six. Will you come?

  She wasn’t at all hungry, but company appealed to her.

  •

  Having encountered no reproach earlier in the day and having had their dinner invitation accepted, Brice and Gilles were relaxed and talkative. Taking turns, they told her how they’d met. The first time was back in February, said Brice, in the produce section of El Rancho. I saw this shopping cart filled with loose vegetables. No bags, just red peppers, zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes—so beautiful. I thought the produce manager was clearing the displays, then I see this guy dump in an armload of red onions.

  Actually, said Gilles, it was a stupid way to s
hop—it took hours to check out. And meanwhile this creature was staring at me. So rude. I said to him, I see you’re looking at my feet. And he said, No, no, I’m looking at your vegetables. I had to tell him it was a line from a book. You know it, Patsy—what Seymour Glass says to the girl in the elevator before he blows his brains out?

  “ ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish,’ ” said Patsy.

  Right! I had to explain it to the illiterate one, here. And he said, Well, I really hope you’re not going to do that. The darling. I said, No, I’m making ratatouille for Mother’s library luncheon. Then we both got all shy and left.

  And that could’ve been it, said Brice.

  Except then, my sponsor said I had to get a job. You know, get off the couch, be a worker among workers. My sponsor—he’s also my uncle—owns all this property, and he said I could help fix up apartments, painting and stuff, and sent me to the Lyster. And who’s my new boss but Mr. Never Read Salinger—

  I read Catcher in the Rye, said Brice. I never went on a jag.

  And we were all, It’s you! It’s you!

  And we haven’t been apart since, said Brice.

  That’s not true, my love, said Gilles. You kick me out on a regular basis.

  I need to sleep. And work, for god’s sake.

  At this point Patsy checked Brice for his old resistance. His long legs were extended, one arm was flung over a chair, fondness crinkled his eyes. She waited a beat, then another, for him to look elsewhere, to withdraw those limbs. She knew his rhythms, or thought she did. But the brightness lingered in his eyes, his arms and legs did not retract, he remained open, amused—Brice, her old tormentor, complicit in love!

  He soon rose and grilled thick steaks on a hibachi out on the fire escape. Gilles sliced and dressed tomatoes. They ate in the dining room with all the windows open, two fans buzzing. In the long June evening, the sun hung in the sky as if it had forgotten what to do.

  The fork twisted out of her hands after a few mouthfuls. I’m sorry, she said. I’m not used to such rich meat.

  Don’t worry about it, said Brice.

  We want you to be happy on your first day home, said Gilles. Are you?

  It doesn’t feel real yet.

  What can we do for you? Gilles was up and taking her plate. Oh, I know. Let’s go for a drive. I have the Bweek—Mother’s car.

  French for Buick, Brice said.

  They clambered down the stairs to the parking lot and a large latemodel cream-colored sedan. I’ll sit in the back, said Gilles, and Patsy, you sit up front. Better yet, you and I will ride in the back. Brice will be the driver. Like it’s a limousine. Brice doesn’t mind, do you, sweet pea?

  Where to? said Brice.

  I’d like to see my house, said Patsy.

  They drove north into Altadena. In the dusk the mountains were a dark gray-violet. Patsy peered out from the backseat like a child, at the cupped and rolling greens of the golf course, then the rustic, broken-up neighborhood across Lake Avenue. There was the park, with its wisteria bowers and green softball diamond. Another turn, and they were on Pomelo Street. The air with the late sideways rays of sun was swollen with drifts of spores and motes sifting down.

  Slow, slow, Patsy said. Okay, here, pull over for a sec.

  Her house was set back from the street, its clapboard tea-towel white, as were the trunks of the twin sycamores, whose last crumpled brown leaves were being forced off by furry new green ones. How close the mountains were! And the driveway, that driveway—it was two concrete tracks, buckled and cracked, with weeds in between. The oleander hedge alongside it was overgrown and abloom, the white blossoms like wadded tissues among the dark leaves.

  In the Bweek’s slippery beige backseat, Patsy felt as if she were in one of those dreams where you can’t quite get home, you’re almost there, but something’s off, somebody else—two tenants or three bears—lives there now.

  Okay, she said. Before anybody sees us.

  Driver! Gilles rapped the side window. Drive on.

  Brice turned up the radio, a Vivaldi season. Spring, Patsy thought. They drove south to the freeway, then west. The sun had set, and the world before them was in silhouette, as if cut from black construction paper and pasted against the orange sky. Patsy opened the window, put her face in the air. Her hair blew into her eyes and mouth. Not quite shoulder length, it had been trimmed in exchange for a two-ounce bottle of Taster’s Choice by a woman who’d learned cosmetology at the Sybil Brand Correctional Institute. Patsy gathered the flying strands in one hand. Her hair would be long again soon, and Patsy imagined it streaming behind her, a thick rope unraveling, a banner unfurled.

  11

  Before sunrise, Gilles drummed softly on her door. They climbed again into the Bweek and drove in morning fog on Colorado Boulevard, the main street, deserted and colorless except for stoplights. You could see them for blocks, synchronized—green, yellow, then red.

  Such a big old boat, said Patsy. Doesn’t your mom need it?

  She has her Bug. This is the town car.

  Nice of her to lend it.

  Mother’s a brick, said Gilles, considering what I’ve put her through.

  And what have you put her through?

  Let’s see. When I turned fourteen, I ran away from Hotchkiss to live with this artist in New York. If you and I get to be good friends, I’ll tell you his name, he’s very famous. Mother didn’t approve, so I couldn’t let her find me. I didn’t tell her where I was for two years.

  She must have been out of her mind.

  Oh, completely. But I called her all the time—from pay phones and weird places she couldn’t trace. I missed her too, but if she could’ve, she would’ve kidnapped me and had him arrested. Then I moved in with this writer—he’s famous too, more even than the painter—and he lived in Paris half the year. I was sixteen by then, so I made a deal, that if Mom sent me my passport and promised not to call the vice squad, she could visit.

  Did she?

  Yeah, a couple times.

  But she got you home somehow. Because here you are.

  That’s not why. I just got too hairy and smelly and lost all my sex appeal. Then I got sober, and that was the last straw. So I was sent back.

  Was that okay with you?

  I was a basket case! I cried for a month, poor Mother didn’t know what to do. I hung out on the sofa watching TV and eating and got all pudgy and truly ugly. Then Auntie, that’s my uncle Cal, who I told you about, who’s also my sponsor—I call him Auntie—he told me I had to get out of myself and be a worker among workers, and the instant I took his direction, there was Brice of the big, beautiful schnoz.

  And how long ago was that?

  Like three months. Gilles glanced at her, his hair straggling in his eyes. Brice didn’t tell you about us, did he? Before you came?

  He did not.

  He was supposed to. He promised he would. But you weren’t surprised, were you?

  A little, yes.

  But you knew he was queer. He said you knew.

  No.

  According to him, you used to say—Gilles lowered and flattened his voice to a monotone—Brice, you’re gay. Brice, you’re gay. In bed.

  I did? I sure don’t remember. I must have been drunk, she said. There are a lot of things I don’t remember. I was a big blackout drinker.

  Me too! cried Gilles, as if this were yet another remarkable affinity they shared. I was a big blackout drinker too!

  •

  At the First Presbyterian Church, Gilles parked around back, where men and a few women clustered in a courtyard.

  Hello, ladies, Gilles said to a group of men.

  Gilles, they answered, and stared at her.

  This is Patsy. My neighbor.

  Hi, Patsy, they said, lifting Styrofoam cups. Welcome.

  To two men smoking by the planter: Hi, girls.

  Oh hi, Gilles.

  This is Patsy.

  Patsy, they repeated, relishing the flat a. Welcome.

 
Gilles led her to a large community hall where a man in the doorway shook their hands. Welcome, he said. I’m Vaughn, the greeter.

  Nice to greet you, said Gilles. Greet Patsy. She’s new to this meeting.

  Greetings, Patsy. Welcome.

  They took seats close to the door because farther in, Gilles said, the cigarette smoke was lethal. At meeting time, since they were right by the entrance, they greeted everyone all over again.

  After the opening readings and announcements, the secretary gave Patsy a little plastic disk, like a poker chip, pale blue with gold printing on it. WELCOME on one side. KEEP COMING BACK on the other.

  Here’s Auntie now, Gilles whispered, clasping the hand of a tall man with clipped snow-white hair. Auntie, here’s Patsy.

  The uncle gave her a friendly, interested smile. He seemed familiar and was, for an older man, exceedingly handsome, like an old movie star—Katharine Hepburn’s elegant father or the retired gunslinger turned sheriff in some spaghetti western. Patsy, he said, taking her hand. Cal Sharp. So glad you’re here. We need you to even things out a bit.

  He meant the male/female ratio, as there were forty or fifty men and at most a dozen women.

  As Cal Sharp made his way up to the front of the room, he squeezed shoulders and shook hands like a senator.

  A man talked for fifteen minutes about how he drank his way through the army and two marriages and got sober “with a nudge from the judge.” The group’s secretary reminded him to choose a topic for general discussion and gave him a sheet to choose from. He picked “Getting Through the Day.” Maybe half the people who spoke said that this meeting was what got them through the day. Gilles’s uncle was called on—he hadn’t raised his hand. He said, Try as I might, I can’t get God to speak to me face-to-face. I have to come in here, where God speaks to me through all of you, and I almost always hear exactly what I need to get me through the day.

  •

  After the meeting, Gilles took her to Barkers Broiler, where she used to come for breakfast at two or three in the morning after a night of drinking. In daylight, the coffee shop was dingier than she remembered. The floors smelled of pine cleaner, and the Formica tabletops were gritty in their seams. People from the meeting clustered at other tables. Vaughn the greeter. Gilles’s uncle.