Blame: A Novel

by Huneven, Michelle

  Patsy studied the smooth, well-tended face. Hadn’t Silver seen a file, received some dossier on State of California letterhead? Or maybe she wanted to hear how Patsy would explain herself.

  My mother died six months ago. And I just got out of prison.

  Silver took a moment before answering. Those are both major adjustments, Patsy, she said. Grief. And coming out of prison. The grief, I imagine, makes settling in all the more difficult.

  Yes, Patsy said. I’m not feeling very social. And I’m not drinking anymore. So now everybody wants me to come to parties and dinners and hang out while they’re drinking away. They’re kind and sweet, but I can’t do it.

  It’s too much for you.

  Way too much! And not at all how I want to go about my life now.

  How do you want to go about it?

  Patsy mimed lifting a large bowl off her lap. I want to surface slowly. I want to fade back into life.

  You want to take your time.

  And not call attention to myself.

  Can you tell that to your friends? That you need time to adjust?

  I do, over and over. Give me time. I’m not quite up to it yet. Then they say I’m depressed, and isolating. But I’m not isolating. I see people every day at AA meetings, the college. I eat a meal with my neighbors every night. And even that’s too much.

  You’re overwhelmed.

  I’m overwhelmed.

  Of course you are. What you’re going through is like what a soldier goes through coming home. Moving from a highly structured, stressful environment to a much looser place where messy, unpredictable everyday life has been rolling along as usual. Plus, you’re grieving a major loss. Silver shook her head slowly in sympathy. How long have you been out of jail?

  Irritation flashed. I wasn’t in jail, said Patsy. I was in prison. There’s a difference. I’m surprised that you of all people don’t know that.

  I don’t know it, said Silver, unruffled. Will you explain it to me?

  Patsy frowned at the flat white sky outside. If Silver was taking referrals from parole agencies, shouldn’t she be well versed in the criminal justice system?

  Jail is short-term, said Patsy with singsong impatience. Like before you’ve been arraigned or if you’ve got a month or two to serve. You can’t spend more than a year in jail.

  So jail is the county facility.

  Right, and I was in state prison.

  Thank you for clarifying that, said Silver with a brief smile. I imagine you have to do that a lot.

  Not really, said Patsy. Nobody mentions prison to me. The word hasn’t passed my father’s lips. My friends don’t exactly bring it up either. Except for Gilles, the kid I go to meetings with. He wants to know everything about it.

  And you appreciate that?

  Actually, I do. Yes. I really do.

  Silver gazed at her quietly. You know, Patsy, you and I can talk about anything you want. That’s what I’m here for.

  I know, Patsy said, re-irritated. She had been to therapists before, and they always started in on this you-and-I business—you and I are going to have a real time of it here, as if it were an actual relationship and not a hired ear.

  Still, Silver had fielded her snappishness well, even seemed strangely pleased by it. That quick smile, the flash of amusement in her eyes.

  •

  Binx and Caroline, two tall, strong-looking women who sat together at the morning AA meeting, turned out to be Gilles’s particular friends. After giving Patsy a few days to settle in, they reclaimed their places in the booth at Barkers. Binx had broad shoulders and a short cap of mink brown hair. Caroline was taller, freckled and mannish, her curly hair hennaed red. They’d both competed in two Olympics.

  Really? What events?

  Hurdles and quaaludes, said Binx.

  Hammer and vodka, said Caroline. And mannies too.

  German quaaludes, explained Binx.

  Patsy said, I thought athletes were supposed to be so healthy.

  Wherever did you get that idea?

  Caroline ran the meeting on Thursday mornings and wanted Patsy to speak. Heat flooded Patsy’s face. She’d spoken at many meetings in prison and fire camp, but this was a big meeting, and attendees walked out into the world at large. Not yet, she said. It’s too much.

  It’s so people can get to know you, said Caroline.

  I wouldn’t know what to tell them, Patsy said. She didn’t want to lie or sandbag, but she also wasn’t sure she wanted fifty strangers to know she’d been imprisoned. She turned to Gilles.

  Never refuse an AA request, he said. That’s what Auntie says.

  But how much should I tell?

  Everything—but in a general way.

  Do you tell everything?

  Oh, you know me. As my Cuban nanny said, Gilles no tiene pelo en la lengua. I have no hair on my tongue. It all comes out, sin filtración. And Auntie always says, You’re as sick as your secrets. I mean, I never go into the finer details of bum sex, but you know . . .

  Patsy told a fifteen-minute version of her story. Then Caroline handed her the list of topics for discussion and she picked one at random: serenity. But anyone arriving late that day would’ve thought the topic was incarceration, because everyone who talked told about being imprisoned, even some of the best-dressed management types. Even Gilles’s elegant uncle, who talked about being locked up for drunkenness and conduct unbecoming an officer.

  After that morning, people were friendlier to her. She was asked to speak at other meetings. Men came up to her at the breaks. Hey, did you hear I found a job? they said. Did you hear I moved? Yeah, to a new apartment on Los Robles.

  Why do they tell me these things? she asked Gilles.

  They want to talk to you, he said. They have to talk about something.

  At Barkers, she listened to Caroline, Binx, and Gilles deconstruct the meeting. They laughed at Sean the caterer, who hired two barely clean heroin addicts and was stunned when they vanished with his van, which surfaced, gutted, in Bell Gardens. They made much of Rajid, the Iranian hairdresser who paid for his girlfriend’s breast augmentation.

  It would’ve been easy to jump in with the quips. Gives a whole new meaning to tit for tat. She’d had a sharp tongue before. But she’d made a pledge to herself: no harmful speech. She was making a clean beginning here. Keeping her big mouth shut. Her new reticence pleased her, except when she felt like a prig.

  She found she could make demands of herself and meet them, a novelty. A meeting a day. Read something of a spiritual nature each morning. Keep a journal. Pray, even if her higher power was To Whom It May Concern.

  Not drinking, she discovered, may have muted her sociability, even made her shy, but it was a great aid to self-control. To bridling the instincts.

  •

  Binx nodded toward a booth in the back, where Gilles’s uncle presided over a group of men. I have it bad for him, she said.

  You and every other female in AA, said Caroline.

  And every widow and divorcée in La Cañada Flintridge, said Gilles. Not to mention San Marino, Arcadia, and Pasadena.

  Who are you talking about? asked Patsy. Not Cal. Cal? Really? Oh, but Binx, he’s way too old. He’s old enough to be your dad.

  And then some, said Binx. But who cares? Have you noticed his eyes?

  Patsy had. Unusually dark blue and lively. And kind.

  I am powerless over those ink blue eyes, said Binx.

  I thought you liked his smile, said Caroline.

  Oh god, his smile, said Binx. She turned to Gilles. Is he still dating that helmet-head from South Pas?

  He never dated her, said Gilles. They’re old friends from the club.

  Who is he dating, then?

  I’m not sure he’s dating yet, said Gilles. It’s only been four months since Aunt Peg died. Why don’t you go over and talk to him? He’d like it, I’m sure.

  I can’t go alone, Binx said. Caroline?

  I have to go to work, said Caroline.


  Patsy? Will you come with me?

  Sorry, she said. I’m happy here.

  She did not want to start up with the boy-crazy stuff.

  I’m not up to it, she said. Sorry.

  That’s okay, said Binx. I know how it is. My uncle was in one of those country club minimum-security places for six months, and it took him two years to surface after he got out.

  Well, that’s hopeful, said Patsy, who was happy to hear that he’d surfaced at all.

  •

  I go to AA meetings, and afterward four of us go out for coffee. Gilles and these two women. They gossip about everybody at the meeting. But I can’t.

  Yes, life has gone on without you. It must be difficult to jump back in.

  No, that’s not it. I didn’t know these people before. But AA isn’t my social scene. It’s more like, I don’t know, my church.

  People have friends at church.

  I’m not against friends, just gossiping. It feels to me like fouling the nest.

  You think they’re fouling the nest?

  They can do what they want. I’m not judging them. But I don’t want to bad-mouth people. Or know their personal stuff or go to another table to flirt with some guy. That’s not how I want to be.

  How do you want to be?

  I knew you would ask me that. I’m learning your approach. You play dumb and toss things back at me. How do I want to be? I want to keep a respectful distance with people so I don’t wreck things with ’em. Not to sound all saccharine, but being a good person interests me. A person who doesn’t talk about other people’s shortcomings to get a little lift. I’d like to do some actual good in the world, since I haven’t been very good up till now.

  In what way haven’t you been good?

  Oh, come on. I killed two people. You knew that.

  Silver paused and lifted her chin. Okay, she said in her low, calm voice. Let’s go back and look at that. Do you want to tell me what happened?

  In the air conditioner’s hum was a soft, rhythmic cycle of clicks and whirs: the sound of time passing at the sliding scale rate of ten dollars an hour.

  Sure. Okay, Patsy said, pushing her hair behind her ears and allowing a tone of prison-bred defiance to dull her voice. A little over two years ago I took my car out when my license was revoked. I was in a blackout and probably forgot I wasn’t supposed to drive . . .

  Silver was attentive, as if a stone had been lobbed into a well and she was waiting to hear it land. When Patsy was done and the stone had landed, Silver leaned forward and in her deep, unperturbed, unhurried voice said, This has been a great tragedy for everyone, Patsy. Two people lost their lives, and now you have to carry that burden for the rest of yours.

  And that’s what I’m trying to figure out, Patsy said with feeling. How to carry that burden and make up for it in some way.

  Make up for it?

  I don’t know. More balance it. Balance it with something.

  And prison?

  What about prison?

  Wasn’t that your punishment?

  Yes, yes.

  So you have been punished.

  Yes.

  And that didn’t balance it for you?

  Oh, officially, I suppose. In the most acute sense. The official debt-to-society sense. And it really is punishment. Especially for anyone like you or me raised in middle-class privilege. So filthy and loud and ugly. But you don’t deal with why you’re there, except maybe with the state shrink who’s a different person every month. Basically, you sit around. Or in fire camp, you hoe weeds. Nobody cares about how you’re going to cope with what you’ve done. It’s like you said, I have to live with what I did for the rest of my life. I’ve given it a lot of thought. The most I can do, I think, is to add something good to the world, though I’m not sure what. I’m still stuck on the basics.

  The basics?

  You know, Patsy said. How to be less selfish and not give in to my craven instincts all the time.

  What do you mean by instincts?

  You know . . . I mean, do you want a list?

  Sure.

  Drinking. Doing nothing. Sex. Eating all the time. Napping. Gossiping. Or spending whole days staring out the window.

  Are these instincts or impulses?

  When Patsy didn’t answer right away, Silver went on. I ask because I think of instincts as internal indicators that I rely on. I consult my instincts, for instance, about people and decisions. The things you listed—drinking, sex, and napping all day—those to me are impulses. Am I making sense?

  Yes. You’re saying it’s not my instincts, but my impulses I should control.

  Control, yes, we like to control our worst impulses. But there are ways to consider our impulses that aren’t so antagonistic to them. I’ve found that impulses also serve as signals. Silver spoke easily and reasonably, her voice a wide, soft path through the woods. If I have an impulse to sleep all day, she said, I know that something’s off. Or if I’m overeating . . .

  I know, I know, said Patsy. Like if I feel like drinking, I’ve got to go to a meeting, call my sponsor, get back on track.

  Is that what you do?

  Yes, except not call my sponsor. She’s still inside—in prison. I know, I should get another one. I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I have my eye out. There’s this completely lovely older guy at my morning meeting I’ll maybe ask. Though it should be a woman. But I haven’t met that many women in AA yet. I need to go to some different meetings. See? So much to do to get up and running. That’s why I can’t start gossiping or flirting with guys. I don’t want the distraction. I can’t get involved with anybody right now.

  Okay, said Silver. We have to stop.

  Silver’s face was set and closed. Did I say something wrong? Patsy asked.

  Our time is up, Silver said firmly. We have to stop.

  Patsy stared at her for a moment, grabbed her purse, and fled.

  14

  All week a thread of uneasiness wove through her days and led back to Silver’s sudden and shocking coldness, the abrupt way she ended their session. We have to stop. What had Patsy said to make Silver so cold? Had she been glib, or bragged, or somehow insulted the woman?

  She went to meet with Knock-Knock and imagined the PO’s beleaguered, seen-it-all voice. It’s not working out with the therapist, Patsy. Or, You know, Patsy, you can’t steamroll a therapist. Or maybe Goldstone would wordlessly hand her a slip of paper with the name of another therapist.

  In fact, the PO was in a light and distracted mood and hardly glanced at her meeting card. Sounds like you’re holding steady. Good. Keep on the way you’re keeping on, he said. See you in two weeks.

  •

  Her favorite thrift store, the Sunflower Shop, sold moth-nibbled cashmere twin sets and odd bits of old china, the life effluvia of the old Presbyterian ladies who ran it. Patsy bought a linen shift for a dollar, pumps in ice blue dupioni silk for seventy-five cents. Two boxes of Wedgwood Drabware china cost six dollars. The shapes were made from the same blanks as the company’s fine china, but, intended for the servants’ use, the glaze was the neutral gray-brown of cooked oatmeal. To Patsy, the Drabware was plain and vaguely punitive, but Brice collected the stuff. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have known about it. She lugged the boxes home in two trips. Brice shouted with pleasure. Oh my god! My god! Where did you find this? Look at this platter! And this coffeepot!

  No, he couldn’t pay her back or give her anything.

  This was how she wanted to be. Generous, surprising people with pleasure. Her own happiness from this transaction carried her for an evening, until a twinge called her back to the lingering worry. That’s right, Silver. Our time is up. We have to stop.

  •

  She was surprised to hear Ian Sasaki’s raspy Southern drawl over the telephone. Of course she remembered him, she said, recalling his compact leanness, the shock of thick black hair, his handsome, angular face. Yes, she’d like to see a movie. Neither mentioned the girlfriend who’d called during
the dinner at Sarah and Henry’s.

  They met at the Esquire Theater east of the city college and watched an understated movie about a Texas oil executive trying to take over a small Scottish town. After, Ian took Patsy’s elbow and steered her into the soft blue summer night. They walked along Colorado Boulevard, past the college and shut shops. He was two inches shorter than she was, intense and self-contained, and comfortable—too comfortable—with silence.

  Can you tell me what kind of work you make? she asked.

  I used to make these large abstract polymer sculptures, he said. I had some good years, bought a house in Altadena.

  His house, they figured out, was three blocks from hers, two north and one to the west. A knight’s move.

  Despite all his success in polymer, he continued, or because of it, he’d decided to return to painting. He was making work about aquatic life. Fish.

  Fish! she exclaimed. How funny.

  Not realistic fish, he said. But they’re not exactly abstract either. I just hope they’re not cartoons.

  He walked in silence for half a block. They may well be cartoons, he said.

  Silence for another block. Patsy said, I suppose Sarah told you about me.

  She said you teach together. You’ve been gone for a couple of years.

  She told you where.

  Yes, Ian said.

  So no need for shocking disclosures.

  No need. He brushed lightly against her then, and again some minutes later. Then at intervals, each brush causing a pleasurable disturbance to her system. At Avalon Street she said, You’ve walked me home.

  Swiftly he kissed her cheek, a whiff of turpentine, a flash of chrome-colored light behind her eyes. He walked away.

  In bed that night, she recalled the brush of Ian’s arm and touched her own to revive the thrill of those collisions again and again, until she played it out. Then her thoughts rolled to dread and tomorrow, after work, Silver.

  •

  I got the feeling you were mad at me last week.

  What gave you that impression?

  You said, We have to stop. Like I said something to offend you.

  Normally I say we have to stop when the time is up. As I recall, I was ending the session because our fifty minutes were up. But let’s go back. Can you remember what we were talking about?