Blame: A Novel

by Huneven, Michelle

  Patsy had never once thought of the Pondo as a halfway facility. Her term for all the hubbub and moochers and revolving stepchildren was upscale crash pad.

  •

  The first time Lewis phoned her, he had a pretext, an annoying bit of Hallen red tape about parking on campus. They talked for an hour. She found her own pretext two nights later—would he speak at her Friday meeting?—and this time they stayed on for two hours, she on the sofa in her home office, wrapped in the old rag, he fifty miles away in his bungalow in the orange groves near Rito.

  They started meeting for lunch between classes, and later, when they were done teaching, took brisk walks into the hills above Hallen, Patsy’s exercise on teaching days. They swapped books, discussed them, adjusted each other’s tastes—Really, Tolstoy was in a different league from Turgenev, he said; her attachment to Fathers and Sons might not withstand an adult reading.

  Didn’t he know that Hofstadter, as lucid and elegant a writer as he was, was already old guard; he should try Susman, her favorite.

  Patsy had finished her second book, Raised Up, a study of Hull House graduates, and was researching her third, a more literary effort, Situated Women: Gender, Geography, and Possibility in the Novels of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather.

  Lewis had never read Cather. He was a quick study, though: two, three books a week. Death Comes for the Archbishop, he said, knocked him out.

  A crush. Her friends had all had one or more. Sarah was in agony for months over the new Asian studies professor, and Margaret, a colleague who taught at Pitzer, had fallen for a nineteen-year-old poli-sci student, female. But one didn’t act on such feelings. One suffered, deliciously. And took it out on unsuspecting husbands, who were the real beneficiaries. Crushes brightened the days, restructured the weeks, rein-vigorated the nights. Gave those droopy old marriages an infusion of starch.

  You have a cruh-ush, Sarah sang.

  He sounds yummy, said Margaret.

  Patsy considered her situation of a different order. She and Lewis were a true match, both chatterers, debaters, always brimming over with yet more to say. Not only were they both sober, their sympathies were unusually alike: each took a panel of AA members to talk to prisoners once a month. Patsy went with Gloria out to Corona. Lewis took a gang from his old drunk farm to the Acton honor farm.

  •

  Patsy wished Silver were around to talk, and maybe to regulate her a little. But after they’d worked together for fourteen years, Silver had retired and moved to Tucson, Arizona.

  It occurred to Patsy that this business with Lewis might be her post-therapy acting out. Now that she wasn’t giving a weekly account of her life to someone, it was time for a little regression, and fun.

  Waiting for him to finish class and rid himself of lingering students, with their questions about the essay, the midterm, and if they could do extra credit, Patsy sat at her desk with her back to her door and gazed out at Hallen’s new red clay track, where hammer throwers, shot-putters, and hurdlers trained. She’d turn at his quick knock and see his thin, jagged face, still lit and amused by some undergraduate’s take on the Russians—“The Darling” was just codependent, or “The Nose” was like the dating process.

  Let’s go, Lewis would say. They’d stride into the hills behind Hallen, through the neighborhoods of big, theatrical homes with walled gardens and old trees. One night they walked as far as Audrey’s old house, three miles. Strangers lived there now, but Gilles’s gritty ashes moldered under the great ficus tree.

  Lewis wore jeans and pressed shirts and big pullover sweaters that hung well on him. He had a slim, lanky body and that easy feline swagger. In fact, all his clothes looked good on him, except perhaps his loafers, which were too pointy and down at the heel; he’d bought them in Italy three years before.

  His hair was iron-colored and curly, his hands and arms expressive. He talked with a chronic intensity that Patsy couldn’t get enough of, and often he slid his long fingers into his curls and gave his head a good scratch, as if to stimulate fresh thought. She found him wonderfully appealing, handsome, and heartbreaking. What was he doing roaming strange neighborhoods with a married woman?

  They waited forty-five minutes in a crowd of students and young families for thin-crusted eggplant and jalapeño pizza at Casa Bianca. They drove into Pasadena to eat boysenberry pie with overlarge scoops of vanilla ice cream at Pie ’N Burger—she would’ve enjoyed it more if a man she knew from meetings wasn’t a few seats down and watching them. She saw how the two of them must look, chattering face-to-face, with Lewis tapping the Formica countertop to make a point and leaning into her, cajoling her to agree.

  •

  On the days they didn’t see each other—that is, most days—they talked on the phone, often for hours, which she hadn’t done with a man, ever. They were both good at talking about themselves—lots of practice in AA—and revealed their checkered pasts with good-natured oneupmanship. She’d finished her coursework at twenty-six, before her drinking got too out of hand, whereas he, at twenty-six, had been working in a car parts store, failing to keep current with a mounting cocaine debt, and wouldn’t even start his coursework for another year.

  He too had woken up from a blackout to find himself in custody—in his case, in the rubber room of a county detox, with no idea how he got there.

  That’s the thing, said Patsy. I didn’t know why I’d been arrested either. They wouldn’t tell me. Then a detective started reading the homicide report.

  That sounds sadistic.

  They were pretty mad at me, said Patsy. And for good reason.

  You don’t remember anything about the actual accident? said Lewis.

  No, she said. I thought I remembered something, but when the husband came to see me in prison, I found out I had it all wrong. I’d imagined long hair, and uniforms, like Salvation Army members.

  Patsy tucked the old rag more tightly around her. Actually, when I talked to your meeting, she said, I didn’t mention that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I stopped saying that because once, at a big Hollywood meeting, I said, I swung too fast into my driveway and hit two Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the whole room burst out laughing, as if I’d told a joke.

  Ouch, he said.

  Yeah. Patsy was silent, recalling her dismay when the people kept laughing as she’d tried to set them straight.

  We don’t have to talk about this, Lewis said.

  I don’t mind, she said. In fact, it had been a long time since she’d spoken in any detail about the accident or prison; she used to talk to Silver about those things, and there’d been times with Cal, early on in the marriage, when she was haunted and couldn’t sleep, but not recently.

  I’ve only been to jail twice, Lewis said, and never for more than a day. But I rank it among the worst experiences I’ve ever had. How did you get through all those years intact?

  Who says I’m through? said Patsy. Or intact?

  Yes, but you’ve obviously moved on.

  From prison itself, to some extent maybe. But I think of them every day. The mother and daughter. I’m involved, still, with the father and boy. I go to the kid’s recitals. I help with his schooling, we give each other birthday presents. They’re my other, secret family.

  Yes, and look at you. Even with all that, you’ve been so productive—all your books and teaching and running that big house.

  Just two books, so far. And I’ve been lucky, Lewis, she said. That man whose family I killed happened to be an exceptional human being. He forgave me right away. I’d be nowhere without his generosity. And when I got out of prison and was so sad and lost, Cal took me in and gave me this privileged, stable, secure life. And for the record, he runs the Pondo. I have nothing to do with it. You go to him if you want a room or need a month’s grace on your phone bill. He’s the one who tells the housekeepers to make a vat of soup. He keeps the troops happy. Me, I’d kick ’em all out today, every one, for five minutes of peace and quiet.

  •

&nbs
p; At night, when Cal was already asleep, they delivered themselves to each other in sentences. How they’d lived before, how they lived now, what happened in between. Lewis was chronically single, he said; his last love was a minister who became too involved with her congregation and had no time for him. Patsy was careful when she spoke of Cal; she never complained that he was growing old or slowing up, or that she’d never had a conversation with him remotely like those she and Lewis now had on a daily basis. She groused mildly about Cal’s generic tolerance—You should meet some of the strays he brings home!—and his habit, after thirty-odd years, of attending AA every day. She and Lewis were both down to one or two meetings a week and the monthly panels they took to their respective prisons.

  They talked until it was a fight to stay awake. They signed off, and the next night, picked up where they left off.

  •

  Patsy hoped to keep this conversation going alongside her marriage forever. Not at the same high pitch, of course. The novelty would dim, their fervor would cool, Lewis would probably fall in love with someone at some point, but why couldn’t their steady, voluble friendship continue?

  As if in preparation, they told the stories of their friends and friendships, discussed the odd and unexpected arrangements people made for happiness.

  He had been lovers with Libby, the fiddle player, before her marriage to his sponsor. In fact, there had been a love triangle between Lewis, his sponsor, and Libby. I lost out, Lewis said, and I deserved to.

  But he and Libby had ended up very close—family, he said.

  •

  Sarah’s feelings for her Asian studies guy had quieted to workable levels within two years; the two still drew together at school get-togethers, still fluffed up in each other’s company, but Sarah’s pain and longing had bled off—and this de-escalation was accomplished without a single declaration or kiss. After riding the whole wild arc, Sarah had landed safely within her marriage, her daughters blessedly ignorant. And what had thin-lipped Henry Croft even noticed? He’d replaced their back lawn with grapevines and was learning to make wine.

  Margaret’s young poli-sci major had proved immature and dull; the infatuation died in six months, the whole of it conducted and concluded with only a few inadvertent hand brushes, the great swells of Margaret’s passion having been adroitly redirected to her unsuspecting Sam.

  •

  Well well well, said Cal. What brought this on?

  Accustomed to initiating, he was possibly disconcerted. But he warmed up, and his long, smooth, pale legs nudged hers apart.

  He was seventy-six, calm and thorough. He now made a soft, popping noise when he kissed. The same noise her grandfather had made when she was little. An old man’s kiss.

  His new doctor, a men’s health specialist, had said that Cal’s testosterone levels were remarkably high. I can tell by the blueness and clarity of his eyes, the doctor told Patsy, and also his mental acuity.

  Lewis’s eyes were brown.

  •

  Is there a reason you’ve never invited me to your house?

  Yes, she said. I don’t want to see you of all people go gaga over Cal. And you will. He’s got that AA charisma, like your old sponsor had. He has groupies by the dozen. I don’t want to see you join their ranks.

  His laugh was always surprised, as if the world had found yet another way to catch him off guard. I may not be as susceptible as you think, he said.

  I’m not taking any chances, she said.

  A few weeks later they were in his office, a reconditioned janitor’s closet assigned to the rotating adjuncts. Bookshelves lined the long walls, leaving room for a desk and two plain chairs, but Lewis and Patsy were standing, discussing where they should have dinner.

  So why is it you’ve never taken me to the Ponderosa?

  I told you. I want to keep you for myself.

  How seriously do you mean that?

  I mean it, Patsy said, but catching a new seriousness in his tone, she waved her hand. If you really want to, we could go tonight. I think Haydee made carne asada today. But remember—I’m not sharing you with Cal.

  And what if I don’t want to share you with him? Lewis said in a low voice. In the pitiless fluorescent light, his face was white with fear.

  Don’t! she said. Stop. Time to change the subject! Ding!

  He caught her wrist. This is love, Patsy, he said. In case you didn’t know.

  •

  She had not said what was on the tip of her tongue: I’d never leave Cal for you. She held back because she wanted the moment to last, she wasn’t ready for it all to be over just like that.

  Oh, she said. Oh god.

  Didn’t Lewis know that she wasn’t a person to act on grand passions or inflict gratuitous pain? That she was still working off a backlog of guilt?

  He said, We have to be together, Patsy.

  She shook her head. Not like that, she said.

  Like what, then? Like I’m your brother or your pet? No!

  He caught himself and, bowing his head, gave his scalp a good scratch. He seemed calmer when he looked up. At least think about it, Patsy. Let’s not make a decision now. Let’s just go get something to eat.

  But she couldn’t. She was sweating and shaking, and had to get away.

  What made him think there was a decision?

  I can’t, she said. I have to go.

  It was mid-February, cold and freshly dark. The first stars were pink and overlarge. She was nauseous and elated and furious. If he’d only kept his mouth shut, they could’ve ridden it out to a lower key and gone on for years.

  She hadn’t driven far when she thought, Well, why not leave Cal? His kids—well, at least March—still considered their marriage unseemly. Her family probably did too, but they were too guarded and polite to say so. Of course, in AA she and Cal were regarded as royalty. No harm in popping that bubble.

  Even Lewis had been incredulous: You’re married to Cal Sharp?

  Yes, yes she was. And she did love Cal, for his goodness, his generosity to her, his unfettered acceptance. Oh, he’s not so bad, he’s a good egg—how many times had she heard him say that of one wretch or another? He’d say that about Lewis if he’d witnessed their last scene.

  And how many lost souls and wounded birds, in the sway of Cal’s benignant goodwill, had pulled together a few meager strands of self to prove Cal’s assessment correct? Patsy herself had flourished in the great open field of her husband’s acceptance. He asked little of her except that she enjoy her life, accept his dry pop of a kiss, and be kind to his children. She might not have intense literary discussions with him or love his children and sponsees as much as she’d intended to; she and Cal might never engage in verbal thrusts and parries, but this had rarely bothered her before. They never conversed in depth, never had. She’d had her girlfriends, her colleagues for that.

  She was driving in the neighborhood behind Hallen, up and down the hilly streets, half hoping to see Lewis, slouching and furious, searching for her. She went past the campus again, slowly by the parking lot. His funny little car, a 1969 BMW 2002 with an exhaust problem, was gone.

  She couldn’t imagine nights without talking to him. He’d ruined her for Cal alone. Cal, who had almost no idea what she did, what concerned her, what occupied her day after day.

  The previous week, she’d shown Cal the 1993 film The Age of Innocence, thinking the movie could give him at least some idea of what her next book was about. He said only that Madame Olenska reminded him of Audrey. When pressed for reasons why, it was because both had moved to Paris.

  And later, in bed: That little girl? Cal said. The one Archer married? She would’ve been all right no matter what. She would’ve found someone else.

  Otherwise, he’d had little patience for the plot, found Newland Archer’s struggles with convention unnecessary, overwrought.

  Of course, Cal’s own life had become unconventional; he’d gone from urbane clubman of impressive inherited wealth to AA lion with dwind
ling fortunes and an ex-con wife.

  And those fortunes had seriously dwindled.

  The extravagant family vacations they’d taken had been paid for with capital, as had his children’s educations, everyone’s cars, the down payments on his children’s homes, his and Patsy’s twenty-thousand-dollar Morgan horses. He’d sacrificed the Lyster to stanch a cash-flow crisis. It had taken the shock of losing the Lyster for Patsy to realize Cal was actually profligate. He came from old money, scads of it, but had not mastered the art of preserving it. He would have squandered even more, Audrey told her, if his brothers and nephews hadn’t periodically intervened.

  Even so, she and Cal were not poor. Not by a long shot. They had the Ponderosa, two six-unit apartment houses in Glendale, Cal’s income, and other family trickles, not to mention the very investment funds that, having tanked in ’91, were again picking up speed. Patsy was always able to give away as much of her salary as she wanted and had divided it between Burt’s kids and Martin Parnham, whose father, as a low-level civil engineer, could never have sent him through Flintridge Prep and Pepperdine without loans.

  Cal had been reliably generous to her. He’d never burdened her with money worries, perhaps because he was insufficiently worried himself. What she’d expected of their marriage—security, mutual comfort, the room and encouragement to do her own work—had been freely provided. Cal may never have been a voluble soul mate, but he had never given her any grounds to leave or cause him pain.

  She could, apparently, cause Lewis pain. But he had forced her hand. Why did he have to speak out and name their predicament?

  Once home at the Ponderosa, Patsy went straight to her office. She called Gloria, who said, Hoho, I saw this one coming from about a thousand miles off, ever since you brought Mr. Scruffy Sexy to the meeting some months back.