Blame: A Novel

by Huneven, Michelle

  She drove into Pasadena and left one bag of lettuce on Margaret’s porch, another on Sarah and Henry’s back stoop. North, in Millard Canyon, Brice’s door was locked. She put his sack on the porch table along with another full of grapefruit and avocados.

  He’d blown his April cash on a used cashmere coat; she worried he wasn’t eating.

  She peered in at his one room, which was paneled in wide, rough redwood planks. A wall of books. A small iron bed. A woodstove, a tidy stack of split logs. A big, balding Turkish rug on the floor. Perfection, she thought. Even destitute, Brice insisted on beauty.

  Only Joey was home; her family wasn’t eating until later. Don’t you want to come in, see the progress? she said, and led Patsy through the kitchen. The living room was sheathed in plastic; Joey swept one length aside to show off foil-faced insulation between the studs, stacks of drywall waiting to go up. My stepmother gave me the money for this and the taxes, Joey said. The evil Marlene, believe it or not—I didn’t even have to ask. Guess I can’t nurse that grudge much longer. Joey dropped the transparent curtain. Which reminds me, Patsy. I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Has Cal ever said anything about my mom?

  They were friends, from the Mojave Club.

  Yes, but I’m pretty sure there was something more.

  They’d moved back into Joey’s kitchen, and stood beside the cooking island. Gosh, said Patsy. Not that I’ve heard. Do you mean an affair?

  For example, said Joey.

  With Cal? I doubt it. Not since he got sober and entered the sainthood. And that’s thirty-eight years now. Why? What brought this up?

  I saw them kiss, Joey said. That night you pierced my ears. After we took you home, I was wandering around the Bellwood and saw her arrive by ambulance. Cal met her and kissed her, and not just a friendly peck either. Nobody else knew she was there, and because I’d had all those beers and Valium, I wasn’t so sure what I’d seen. I never got up the nerve to ask my dad about it.

  That has to be over twenty years ago, said Patsy.

  I know. But last fall I found a lump in my breast—it was only a cyst, completely benign, but because of my mom’s history, the doctor wanted to see her medical records and figure out what kind of cancer she had. I had to order them from Norwalk, and they finally came two days ago. And there, a couple pages from the end, it said: Released to Bellwood Hotel. Her insurance only covered two-week hospitalizations. So she had to check out for a night, and then a new cycle would start.

  Wow, Patsy said. To find out after all these years . . .

  Not a very romantic explanation, though. Except for the Cal part, maybe.

  The kitchen was warm and smelled of fresh paint and old coffee stewing on the machine’s warmer.

  You never asked him about it? said Patsy.

  Me ask Cal if he had a thing with my mom? I don’t think so.

  Do you want me to ask him?

  I don’t know. Maybe. I’m sort of afraid to find out. My mom was always so angry, said Joey. I assumed that I irritated her. But maybe she just wanted to be somewhere else. Maybe with Cal she was happy—at least I like thinking that.

  Maybe so. Patsy slung an arm around Joey.

  They walked out together and stood side by side at the curb. The homes on Joey’s street were shingled vacation shacks from the 1920s, their yards filled with cactus, citrus, and old trees. Across the street, one small cottage was being swallowed by blue plumbago, magenta bougainvillea.

  Patsy imagined it as an office or studio, where she could come every day for solitude and work. With a friend nearby.

  Hey, Joey, she said. If any of these places come up for sale, would you let me know?

  •

  Patsy MacLemoore? Ricky Barrett’s good-natured baritone again boomed through the phone. I talked to the prosecutor. Of course, he has a thousand other fish to fry and can’t be expected to initiate any action on your behalf. But he was very interested, and he did say if your lawyer filed a motion to vacate the conviction, he’d be receptive to it. Do you have a lawyer?

  Not that I know of, said Patsy. I haven’t talked to Benny since the late eighties.

  Benny Aronowitz? said Ricky. I saw him in court last week.

  Do you think I should follow up on this?

  I’d say you’ve got a darn good shot at it, so why not?

  •

  The Trestle in La Cañada had been remodeled. The burgundy booths were a new, creaky button and tuck; tiny lamps with amber-colored glass shades sat on each table and supplied the only light; waiters dispensed flashlights to those who complained they could not read the menu. Patsy had lured Cal out to dinner on a rainy Thursday night for the monthly steak allowed by his doctor. So many people stopped by their table to say hello to him, she was afraid she’d never get her turn with him. Well well well, look who’s here. How you been, Cal? Oh, hello, Patsy. With so many interruptions, it took them an hour to get through their salads. But with their steaks came a lull.

  Here’s what I think, Patsy said. Let’s give March fifty thousand dollars against her inheritance. With fifty thousand dollars, anybody can make a fresh start.

  Cal was quarrying out the middle of his blood-rare filet. Without looking up, he said, The money would be gone in six months.

  Or less, said Patsy. But we would have done our part.

  I don’t know why you’re so dead set against their being at the house. It’s been smooth and fun. You’re never home anyway.

  I’m scarce because they’re here. And March has been very sweet, but I feel outnumbered, Cal. I miss the quiet and need it. I know you love having them . . .

  It’s more than that, Patsy. All those years Peg was sick, when I was going to ten AA meetings a week and sponsoring thirty men, I was barely thinking about my kids. It was too painful. I let March down especially, right at that age when a girl needs her father.

  Patsy eyed him dubiously; Cal was never one to invoke psychologism.

  March forgives me, he went on. She believes that I was doing the best I could, but I could’ve done much better by her and the boys.

  Was this also around the time you were seeing Millicent Hawthorne?

  Cal grew still. Did Audrey tell you that?

  No, Cal, said Patsy. But other people have.

  I shouldn’t be surprised, he said.

  So what did happen between you and Millicent?

  Oh, Patsy, that was a long time ago.

  Still. I’d like to know.

  I always adored Millie. And with Peg so sick for so long . . . Cal set down his utensils, lowered his voice. Millie was my age, and my set. We understood each other.

  I can’t believe you never told me this, said Patsy.

  Very little happened, Cal said. And then she died. All those years, I worried about Peg—her driving, the booze and pills, her liver—and then Millie, this tall, healthy, beautiful athlete in the prime of her life, goes first.

  Cal put a hand over his eyes briefly, then picked up his fork and knife.

  Patsy let a few moments pass. How come you never told me any of this? she asked again, quietly.

  Water under the bridge, Patsy. All a long time ago.

  Patsy was silenced by competing urges: to drop the subject, as Cal clearly wanted; to argue that it was only a long time ago now and she should have been told about Millicent Hawthorne much earlier; or to introduce herself into the history. What about me? Where do I stand in all of this? How do I fit into the picture? But she was a little afraid of what Cal might say.

  All the more reason I owe my kids amends, Cal went on quietly. For years I put my own needs first. The least I can do is help them out now, when they’re having a tough time of it.

  Except March isn’t a little child anymore, said Patsy, relieved to return to that familiar topic. She’s an adult with a lazy husband. You’re not helping them by giving them a free pass.

  Forrest is lazy, said Cal. But whatever else you can say about March, she pulls her weight. She does what’s expected
of her, and more. She’s a marvelous mom. Why should she and the kids suffer for her husband’s character defects?

  She is a good mother, said Patsy. But she also wants to live above her means, in my house, at my expense.

  Cal’s eyes narrowed, and he started to speak.

  I mean, my emotional expense, Patsy added quickly. Here I am, trying to adjust to a whole new set of facts about my life. I desperately need privacy and refuge, and every time I turn around, there they are.

  But the kids have always come home before. Cal seemed genuinely baffled. Stan. And his ex, what’s her name? It’s always worked out. Anyway, you’re going to Cambridge soon enough.

  Not till fall! Patsy said, putting down her silverware. And we’re going to Cambridge, remember? You’re coming too.

  I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Patsy. I know you want me to come, and I promised to. But I can’t. I can’t face the plane ride, or being gone so long, or the thought of being holed up in a British flat while you work.

  Only a couple hours a day. The rest of the time, we’ll sightsee. I’ve wanted this for years. We have theater tickets.

  And you should go. You will go.

  I’m not leaving you at the Ponderosa by yourself, she said.

  But you see, I won’t be alone. The kids . . .

  Oh, she said, and kept her voice low. I do see. I see what you and March have been up to all along.

  There’s no conspiracy, Patsy. There’s just the way things worked out.

  Patsy made an effort to match his calm. If she grew shrill or angry, he’d revert to his distant, tolerant sponsorial mode. As she steadied herself, an elderly couple appeared at the end of their table. White-haired, frail, in pale clothes, they were the Evanses, who had lived across the street from the Tudor. Their kids had grown up with Cal’s, but Patsy had never gotten to know them. Cal, Cal Sharp, they said with a chime of surprise, as if they’d never dreamed of seeing him again.

  Barbara! Ed! Cal answered, half rising from the booth to clap their shoulders, clasp their hands.

  The names and jobs and whereabouts of all their children were recited in turn, the number of grandchildren totaled and then revised.

  Finally, leaning on each other’s arm, the Evanses tottered off, two shrinking old people with the same color hair and clothes, the same hunch to their shoulders—a matched set.

  Cal watched them go with a smile that grew sad. Patsy waited until silence and a sense of seclusion returned to their booth.

  So tell me, Cal. What if March hadn’t moved back? she said coolly. Would you have come to England then?

  A quick shake of his head. Stan said he’d move in if need be. Or I would’ve made do with Haydee. And Bob, of course. So I had other options, yes.

  Patsy pulsed with anger and powerlessness. Yet even as she seethed, the thought of going to England alone, at this point, was almost a relief.

  •

  Cal must have spoken to March because after the dinner at the Trestle, the family’s presence in the house seemed to recede. March wasn’t in the kitchen as often; she moved Beckett’s jump seat into their room. In the afternoons, Patsy saw March and the children up by the barn, feeding Diotima and Mamie oat grass that had sprouted where hayseeds scattered. Or March nursed Beckett on a bench while Ava poked around with a stick, sometimes getting a few good jabs into Mamie before March noticed.

  Patsy made herself a cup of tea one afternoon and, since the coast was clear, drank it in the garden room and looked through the paper. Sunflowers now peered in the north-facing windows and clashed with long canes of pink roses, the Gertrude Jekylls. She couldn’t remember when she’d last sat there.

  Forrest came into the kitchen and, seeing her, paused—he too must have been coached to give her a wide berth—but she put down the paper and greeted him. There’s hot water, if you want tea or coffee.

  No thanks, he said, and poured himself a glass of milk. After drinking it half down, he came toward her. I don’t want to interrupt you, he said. But I want to say how much we appreciate staying here. I know it’s not easy to have two little kids and us . . .

  I don’t imagine it’s what you want either, she said. I’m sure you’d rather be in your own place.

  He gazed into his milk. Yeah, just I gotta get this thing I’m trying to do—he half shrugged, half gestured toward the dining room—off the ground.

  •

  Benny’s office was now in downtown Pasadena, in a pretty stone building where his name was on a bronze plaque sunk into an ivy-covered wall. Patsy took an elevator to the seventh floor, and in the tiny, three-chair waiting room she checked in with the receptionist and helped herself to a butterscotch candy. A very good one, sweet and salty.

  Benny had gone gray. Never tall, he now stooped, and Patsy, as she shook his hand, felt as if she towered. He led her into his office overlooking the rooftops of downtown, took her folder of papers.

  Ricky Barrett had already filled him in, Benny said. Closing his office door, he sat behind his desk. I find this all very upsetting, he went on. I keep thinking there was something else I should’ve done, back when it happened. Something that would have kept you out of prison.

  What else could you have done?

  I went back over my notes, he said, and the first time I talked to you at the sheriff’s station, you were pretty drunk and incoherent, but in retrospect, a couple of things stood out. You kept asking why you’d been arrested. You also repeatedly said, Where’s the fucking crutch seller?

  The what?

  Isn’t that our man—didn’t Hogue sell medical equipment?

  Oh, said Patsy.

  I didn’t put it together, said Benny. I thought the crutch-seller business was some oblique reference to the victims. It didn’t occur to me that there was another person in the car, let alone a different driver.

  It didn’t occur to anyone, said Patsy.

  Benny picked up a pen and started tapping bullet points on a scratch pad. I’ll put a motion together. I’ll need a declaration from the Simms woman like the one you got from Robinson. Expert opinions couldn’t hurt.

  But wouldn’t I still be an accessory? Patsy had to ask. A woman I knew at fire camp was in the car when her john, some guy she’d met minutes before, robbed a 7-Eleven, and she got more time than he did.

  That’s different, Benny said. All that means is the guy pled out at her expense. Not comparable. Yours was all about your driving. Chances are, if Hogue hadn’t left the scene, if he’d told his story and didn’t have a record, nobody would have been prosecuted.

  So I was prosecuted for what, exactly? Having an accident on a suspended license?

  Pretty much, said Benny. They couldn’t get you for intoxication, so they took what they could.

  The rooftops of Old Pasadena were a study of vent pipes and airconditioning cowlings, odd hutlike assemblages on tar paper, erected without the least regard for appearance. Off in one corner, she saw the squat, onion-domed turrets of the Bellwood Hotel, now the Bellwood Luxury Condominiums.

  Patsy said, Do you think it’s worth going through all this rigmarole when I’ve already served the time?

  It depends on how you feel about the public record, said Benny. It’s really up to you.

  30

  The quarter was flying by. Her students camped out in the hallway outside her office to discuss their midterm projects, then delivered them in class, one wearing an eye patch as James Joyce, another wrapped in green cellophane to be the light on Gatsby’s pier. The job talks by the comp lit finalists were delivered the second week of May: Aimee Song spoke on “Han: Intergenerational Grief, The Postwar Short Story in South Korea”; Fernando Molina on “The Language of Cartoon and Carnival in Asturias’s Mulata de tal”; Lewis Fletcher on “Exiled to the Country House: Provincial Life and Suffering in French and Russian Fiction.”

  Patsy did not attend.

  •

  They’re still there? said Audrey. Haven’t you sent them packing? Did you t
ry the big fat check?

  Cal wants them here so he won’t have to go to Cambridge with me. That’s what this is really about.

  I’m not surprised, she said. What would Cal do in Cambridge, anyway?

  Same thing he does here. Watch TV. Talk to his kids on the phone. Go to British AA. I’m only going to work a couple of hours a day. We’d go out. Besides, he said he’d come. That’s why I rented such a big flat.

  Do you need him there?

  I can’t just leave him alone, Audrey. He’s almost eighty!

  Let March and her dot-com fellow take over for a while. And you, go. Get out, live your life.

  I don’t know, Patsy said. I’d feel derelict leaving him.

  A silence ensued in which Patsy imagined Audrey sitting in her white-painted wood-paneled living room overlooking the Seine, the Pont Neuf, and the pointy tip of Île de la Cité, while nearby, on the gilded-armed Louis Quinze chairs, her housemate’s Pomeranians curled like cushions.

  Patsy said, By the way, did you know Cal had an affair with Millicent Hawthorne?

  A pause. I did know that.

  How come you never told me?

  Cal asked me not to. The daughter was over there all the time—he didn’t want it to go any further. Besides, what difference would it make?

  I don’t know, said Patsy. But some.

  Well, I’m sorry. I was hamstrung. If it’s any consolation, I didn’t tell Gilles either.

  You always said Peggy was his big love.

  She was, at first, and he wanted to help her with all her problems. But Millicent was his great friend. He was never so easy and happy as he was with Millicent. They were two of a kind.

  So why didn’t they just divorce and marry each other?

  Audrey sighed. Kids, houses, alimony, inertia, Cal trying to do the right thing. Though who knows what would’ve happened if Millie had gone to the doctor when she first found the lump instead of waiting three years hoping it would just go away.

  •

  Bob the boarder had taken to heating frozen pizzas in the possum trot kitchen at odd hours and avoiding mealtimes altogether. Ava sniffed him out and demanded slices; they were discovered one afternoon sharing a pepperoni-and-mushroom pie. March rewarded Bob with a nutrition lecture he described to Patsy as Das Vegetal.