Blame: A Novel

by Huneven, Michelle

  •

  For a time, post-Lewis, Patsy had tried to think about her marriage, but it was like trying to focus on air or the ground as you were walking someplace. She could only do it for seconds at a time, and didn’t come up with much. It did seem that, with the latitude Cal gave her, she’d wandered too far afield, lost sight of him. So she’d resolved to stick closer. She planted vegetables and had plans drawn up for a smaller, cozier kitchen, with an attached garden room such as Audrey used to have.

  I need more of a home life, she’d told him.

  We’re here, Cal said. Anytime.

  That first person plural irked, and she began the remodel by moving the old six-burner restaurant stove and two refrigerators into the possum trot, making that whole first floor into a kitchen and eating area they’d use during renovation. Afterward, the boarders would have it.

  She’d enlisted Brice for design advice, and together they drove all over the county for appliances and knobs and had a lot of fun, until they quarreled over flooring and Brice quit in a huff. That was near the end of the project, fortunately.

  She started cooking most days. Cal came and ate with her when summoned; he admired her meals, the new garden room and garden; he’d never, he said, seen chard, artichokes, and peppers planted in among roses.

  Some days Patsy came home from Hallen to find he’d already eaten. One of the boarders had offered him pasta or a big salad and he saw no reason to refuse it.

  But Cal, I had dinner all planned, she’d say.

  He was sure whatever she’d planned could keep till tomorrow.

  It was a boarder who left the message on Patsy’s cell phone a year ago: Cal has a headache and can’t see out one eye. I’m driving him to Huntington.

  The stroke was minor, and the slight loss of grip in his right hand had cleared up with a month of physical therapy. But it spooked Cal, and he resigned from his boards, stopped driving at night, and refused to go to Paris to see Audrey that year. He couldn’t face the plane ride, he said, or all that walking once they got there.

  Patsy cited Cal’s health in clearing out the house. We can’t take on so much anymore, she told all four boarders, and since the previous July she and Cal had lived alone, despite frequent inquiries. You can ask, she’d say, but we’re not doing that anymore.

  The crash pad days were over.

  She drove Cal to his meetings and sat beside him as she hadn’t for more than a decade. Her pride had turned protective, tender, vigilant. He was still revered, if also humored. He told his same old stories—of drinking vanilla extract, of his conduct unbecoming an officer. After forty years of sobriety he could hardly be expected to produce a new drunkalog, but sometimes he forgot key details and punch lines, and Patsy caught the glances exchanged, the tight, tolerant smiles.

  She grew tomatoes of all different colors that summer, some the size of small pumpkins. She got Cal out riding most days. She threw him a big seventy-eighth birthday bash in August, barbecued ribs, potato salad. All the kids and grandkids came, and scores of drunks. He announced in bed that morning that he was done horseback riding. His hips. I tallied it up, he said. I’ve ridden close to seventy thousand miles in my life. And that’s enough for any man.

  She thought they should read together in the library at night, but Cal was too drowsy after eating to concentrate, and preferred TV with the volume on high. So Patsy slipped off to her office, where she read on her sofa, a near replica of the one Brice had found for her Lyster apartment—shaved mohair, moss green. Who could predict the objects of future nostalgia? A creature hopping in the brush outside or the laughing bark of a coyote might pull her from the page. She’d frown at the red walls, the shelves of books, assay and regret the long hallways and doors between her and Cal. She’d go to check, and despite the earsplitting action on the screen, he’d be dozing, mouth open, remote in hand.

  She strove to do well by Cal, and she never gave up hope.

  And what was it she still hoped for?

  His full attention.

  Her old P.O., Knock-Knock né Jeffrey Goldstone, had referred Bob to them in the fall—smart guy, Knock-Knock said—and this time, Patsy relented. A wry, underexercised bachelor, Bob had been a high school English instructor until he was fired for teaching while intoxicated. Patsy thought he’d be fun to talk to, and he was. In exchange for room and board, Bob drove Cal to AA meetings and kept an eye on him when Patsy was at Hallen. Cal reeled him in with charm, and in no time, the younger man was a goner—and an almost-free full-time companion, not that Cal required one. Cal still had an ageless, leathery vigor, still chopped wood and hauled bottles of Arrowhead in from the storeroom. His eyes stayed clear and blue and quick.

  But he disliked driving, even in broad daylight. He refused to go to movies at night—I just fall asleep, he said—and he declined Roberta’s invitations to spend weekends in Montecito as well as Audrey’s for weeks in Paris. Come here, he told them. We have all this room.

  Come here, he’d no doubt said to March.

  •

  The finals for Patsy’s twentieth-century cultural history class were the usual mix of passable and lazy, with a few standouts. And your point is? she scribbled in one margin; Wrong Roosevelt! in another. She graded the blue books on her office sofa until she fell asleep, then woke up there the next morning in her jeans, wrapped in the old rag. Bob was already in the kitchen, reading the newspaper. Another chronic sofa-sleeper, his face was puffy, his eyes crusty. He looked at Patsy with a brightness she found irritating.

  Why couldn’t the men in this house boil water, grind beans, pour A through B?

  Bob, she said, cool and brisk. Let me show you how to make the coffee.

  I know. I just didn’t want to make noise, he said.

  It’s a sound everyone in this house is thrilled to hear, she said, and, flicking the switch of the grinder, let it go perhaps longer than necessary. The coffee would be strong.

  I hope I’m not too in the way with the family visiting, Bob said. You live here, Bob, said Patsy. Try not to let March get to you. They’ll be gone soon enough.

  Last night she told me to clear a space in the garage for Forrest’s boat.

  A boat? What boat?

  A shrug. I guess he’s bringing a boat down.

  You didn’t do it, I hope?

  No. I figure it’s not my stuff to move around.

  Good, Patsy said. Because give her an inch and our little program director will run you ragged.

  She carried a cup of coffee into the bedroom, where Cal was sitting up in bed. She set it on the nightstand beside him.

  Why, thank you, darling, he said absently. He was winding his father’s beautiful old watch with the silver link band.

  Patsy pulled open the curtains to a clear, bright, breezy day. Across the stream, long grass rippled on the canyon wall. Cal, she said, why is Forrest bringing a boat down?

  He slid the watch on his wrist, gave it a shake. They’re putting their house on the market, and the Realtor wants it out of the way for the open house.

  Couldn’t they dry-dock it somewhere?

  It’s that boat he’s been building. It’s not finished.

  Oh, right, Patsy said, remembering. Since his buyout, Forrest had been building a sailboat in the rec room of his Sunnyvale home.

  It’ll cost a fortune to ship, she said. No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.

  At her dresser, she pulled out black jeans and a soft gray T-shirt. They’re actually selling? What brought that on?

  Don’t you think it’s time? Cal sipped his coffee, watching her.

  Are they thinking of moving down around here?

  They’d like to. It depends where Forrest finds work.

  That’s good. As long as they’re not moving in with us.

  They may need to for a while, sweetie, Cal said.

  She stood there with her folded clothes. Oh, Cal.

  But not till after the house sells, he added.

  The large, sun-fill
ed master bedroom had two big easy chairs covered in natural linen. Patsy threw herself down in one. I don’t want them here, she said. I finally got this place cleared out. I don’t want it filling back up.

  But this is family, said Cal.

  Which is worse, said Patsy. March has already staked out my new kitchen and is ordering Bob around like he’s a servant. That’s okay for a week or two, but any longer, there’s no excuse. Besides, Cal, if you let them come home every time they hit a rough spot, they’ll never be independent.

  Cal climbed slowly out of bed, sliding his feet right into slippers. Nobody’s moving in tomorrow. The house hasn’t sold yet. Nothing has been decided.

  One thing has. I don’t want them moving in with us.

  •

  Midmorning, Haydee tapped on her office door and asked to clean the room, so Patsy carried her finals—twenty-two down, eighteen to go—to the kitchen table and worked there until three-year-old Ava ran in.

  Head off! Head off!

  Two parts of a baby doll, torso and head, tumbled over the open blue book. A stiff flange at the top of the doll’s neck had to be reinserted into the head’s hole—far too stiff a job for any three-year-old fingers.

  Here you go, Patsy said, delivering the resurrected doll as March came in with Beckett on her hip.

  By the way, Patsy, said March, opening the refrigerator. Spencer and Anna are coming to dinner tonight. With Lily, of course. I hope that’s okay.

  Of course, Patsy said, though your dad and I won’t be here.

  Dad says he will. One-handed, March pulled out a glass bottle of milk.

  He must have forgotten. We’re going out.

  But he wants to see Spence, and Stan’s coming too, with his new girlfriend. March, crouching now with Beckett still on her hip, searched in a lower cupboard. Taking out a large saucepan, she swung it up over her head to set it on the counter, but Beckett grabbed her arm, skewing her aim, and the pan hit the counter’s edge with a loud crack.

  Oh no. Sweetheart, get off me for a sec, March said, prying Beckett’s hands off her arm and giving him a little shove. Go on, now. Go find Ava.

  Even from the table Patsy could see the long, lighter green chip off the counter’s edge, a pale pistachio gash in the smokier celadon.

  Oh Patsy, your counter, said March, fingering it.

  Patsy did feel a terrible, sickening twinge, as if she’d taken the physical insult.

  Don’t worry, she said. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Maybe it’s good to get it out of the way. Don’t feel bad. I knew going in that we’d get dings and stains.

  That’s why Forrest and I chose granite, March said. Stone is beautiful. But, god, it would last about a minute at our house.

  Or less, thought Patsy, who, feeling frail, gathered up her papers to move back to her office.

  Off again! Off again! Ava ran up and pushed the beheaded baby doll into Patsy’s hip.

  Patsy set down her papers and reinserted the neck flange into the head hole. Now don’t keep pulling it off.

  Beckett pulls it off.

  Is there any chance you can ditch your plans tonight? said March. It would be so good if you could both be here.

  Any other time, Patsy said. But this is something we’ve been doing for years.

  •

  All afternoon, as she worked, the chipped counter drifted to mind, a floating afterimage, long and tapered like a narrow lake on a map or the blade of a knife. It made her queasy and, in a small, ridiculous way, grief-stricken.

  She blamed Brice for introducing her to soapstone, then encouraging that extravagance.

  Last time March and family visited, Ava had pulled over a full bucket of ammoniated water Haydee was using to wash windows. It saturated the carpet in the guest suite, and they’d had to run electric fans for days to dry it out and banish the smells of ammonia and wet wool. No telling what water damage lingered in the subfloor.

  Already March’s rooms in the east wing were a mess, clothes and toys strewn everywhere. Motherhood hadn’t made March any tidier.

  But March’s carelessness wasn’t nearly as irritating as her ambition. Every time she visited, she convened large family gatherings, cooked her famously bland food, and presided over the table like a precocious grande dame. Patsy herself had no interest in playing the matriarch, but that didn’t mean the position was up for grabs.

  Cal, she realized, had no idea how difficult these visits were for her. For his sake, Patsy had allowed and endured March’s intermittent incursions with apparent good cheer. To be fair, March made an effort toward Patsy as well, and on the face of it, their relationship had improved so much, Cal assumed it was affectionate.

  And Patsy was fond of March; she was, if warily. Mostly she was grateful that March interacted with Cal, whatever her motives. Cal talked to his three younger children almost every day and took an obvious, deep pleasure in his grandchildren. If Patsy’s own feelings for his offspring were less ardent—Roberta was the only stepchild she adored—she wouldn’t interfere. Time was short, after all. Her own father was now in managed care; he had vascular dementia and no longer knew who she was.

  •

  March was right. Cal had not forgotten about the dinner at Sarah’s; he had decided to stay home with his family instead.

  I wish you’d told me first, said Patsy.

  I should have, he said.

  You’ve always come, she wailed softly. I can’t believe you’re bailing.

  And if you really insist, Patsy, I’ll go with you.

  But she didn’t insist. She never insisted.

  Patsy put on a cashmere shift, stretchy and comfortable, and patterned black stockings, knee-high black boots, clothes Audrey made her buy in Paris the last time they were there. (You dress like a big-bottomed La Cañada matron, Audrey had said. And you don’t even have a big bottom. ) A tortoiseshell clip held her hair in a big loose knot.

  You’re so dressed up, said Sarah at the door. Where’s Cal?

  His kids are home, Patsy said, and handed over a bag of greens. Here. Not organic enough for March.

  The party was all couples.

  This was an ongoing end-of-term tradition. Patsy and Cal hosted at the end of the fall term, Sarah did winter, Anne Davis spring.

  Cal’s all right? Anne asked when they moved into the dining room.

  Fine, said Patsy. Only his daughter’s down, and the grandkids trump us.

  At least the food was good here. In addition to learning everything about wine, Henry Croft had become a serious cook. He served a lamb daube with chunks of bacon, the sauce made with long-simmered cabernet and black coffee. Laughter rose and subsided into the usual academic plaint, then rose again as Henry dispensed his wines. Patsy’s lettuce, dressed with lemon and olive oil, was vigorously praised.

  Cal should have come. He needed to get out more at night, and not just to AA meetings. March would’ve been fine alone with her brothers and their families.

  Afterward they moved into the living room to sit by the fireplace for coffee and truffles. Georges, who taught European culture, said he’d been tapped for the comp lit search committee. You should tell that friend of yours, Patsy, the one who taught here a couple of years ago. Though he was French and Russian, right? Be better if he was German and Russian, but he was good, he should apply. Do you have his e-mail? I’ve been meaning to ask.

  Before Patsy could reply, Sarah rushed in. Oh, you guys missed the boat on that one. He has bigger fish to fry these days. He’s had a bestseller and moved to France.

  Patsy knew all this, of course, through Burt. She’d been the one to tell Sarah.

  And Lewis’s book hadn’t been a bestseller; it had only received many good reviews. Very good reviews.

  Not that we could hire a white male anyway, Georges said. Not with this committee. The chair told us flat out, We want a woman of color, preferably a lesbian, ideally with a not-too-noticeable disability.

  The fire snapped, and a ribbon of smoke cu
rled into the room, which was in fact two-thirds of the ballroom. The partition had been in place since right after Sarah and Henry’s wedding and, with so many couches and bookshelves shoved up against it, seemed permanent. Patsy glanced idly at the high coved ceiling and clad beams above. She’d been so envious of the ballroom!

  Maybe when one of Sarah’s daughters married, the dividers would be folded back and the room returned to its former glory.

  25

  Patsy looked up from a term paper on Friday morning—she’d finished the finals—to see Forrest’s crated boat delivered on an airbrushed candy pink flatbed truck such as transported high-end custom race cars. Couldn’t Cal at least have hired a mid-priced boat hauler?

  Forrest had rearranged the garage.

  The truck and trailer left, and the house grew quiet. The family had gone to the zoo. At noon Patsy took a break and went out to cut some lettuce for lunch. It had rained in the night and now the sun was out, so the world glistened and smelled of sage and eucalyptus and clean, wet granite.

  Since Christmas, rain had been frequent. The fattened little stream filled the canyon with its boisterous crashing, and all the hedges and shrubs had grown leggy and lush. The lettuce leaves were wide and vivid in their greens and bronzes, also tender and given to inhabitants; she had to examine each head for slugs and the thin, lively worms that hid in the Bibbs.

  When the phone rang in the house, Patsy paused. Cal probably had his headphones on and couldn’t hear it, and Bob never answered. At the third ring Patsy set down her knife and ran.

  Caller ID read Joey Hawthorne. Patsy hesitated, not because she wasn’t happy to talk to Joey, but because March was out, and Patsy didn’t have time for a greet-and-catch-up session, not with thirty-odd term papers yet to grade.

  What the hell, she said, and picked up. Joey Hawthorne!

  I hate caller ID, said Joey. How are you, Patsy?

  Good, fine. But you missed March. She won’t be back till late.

  I didn’t even know she was down, Joey said. I called to talk to you.

  Me? said Patsy. How nice. Where are you, anyway?

  Here. West Lost Angeles, Joey said, but just back from Toronto. I flew in this morning. But something came up there that I need to talk to you about. Are you home?