Blame: A Novel (30 page)

I know, said Joey. But that was her association to the place. Altadena, Pasadena—she always connected them to her ex-husband’s story. She’s asked a lot of other people over the years, anyone from Pasadena, Burbank, but nobody’d ever heard of a hit-and-run with Jehovah’s Witnesses before.

Patsy stood and walked across the courtyard toward a border of sage and lavender. All the bushes seemed looser, airier, with more space between each leaf. She stifled a sudden hysterical impulse to laugh, then an urge to speak sternly:
This better be for real, Joey Hawthorne.
Because what if Joey had it wrong?

She pulled off a sprig of gray-green lavender, rolled the leaves between her fingers, sniffed. The sharp, soapy astringency momentarily cleared her head.

Joey’s story did seem fantastic. Out of nowhere.

I need to be careful here, Patsy thought, taking another sniff of the soft crushed leaves. And yet exultation gathered in her chest. What if?

Something was already leaving, she almost glimpsed it, half birthed, a snarl of black feathers.

She turned to Joey, who was at a pitch. Flushed, eyes bright and brimming, watching her every move. Of course—to be the bearer of such news!

Their plates were barely disturbed. Lunch was a bad idea, said Patsy. You tried to tell me. But you should eat.

I’m way too excited. But I’ll clean up.

No, no. Patsy sat back down. I’m sorry I’m not more—I’m a little dazed.

Of course you are. It’s a big deal.

Maybe, Patsy said. Actually, I’d really like to hear the whole thing again.

Joey started with the wedding eve confession, the Hilton, the drinking, the oleander hedge. Bill Hogue sold medical equipment, he’d been at a convention: that was the one fact Joey hadn’t mentioned the first time around.

I wonder how he knew they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, Patsy said.

That’s a good question for Lucia.

If I didn’t really do it, Patsy thought, then what a relief. But if Joey’s story is bogus . . . But why would anybody make it up? Careful, careful.

How ’bout this, Joey said, getting to her feet. I’ll help you clean up here, then go and let you process. Make your call. Unless you want me to stay.

Patsy looked up sharply. Joey was smiling, even merry.

No, that’s all right. I’m okay.

I’ll be in the ’hood. I’m picking up Brice—he’s coming to look at my poor wrecked house to see what needs to be done. I’ll have my cell.

You didn’t tell Brice about this, did you?

No. I thought you should be first.

Yes, perfect. Thanks. Patsy stood and put her arms around Joey, hugged her hard, and kissed her head. Letting go, she smoothed back Joey’s fine, streaked hair. In four new piercings, from the top of the ear to the lobe, diamonds flashed orange and ice blue.

•

Alone, Patsy wandered across the property to a stone bench beside the stream, whose juicy roar matched something in her chest.
I DIDN’T DO IT!
But before she gave way to jubilation, she thought, she should call Lucia Robinson and make sure Joey hadn’t glossed over a major contradiction. Although so many details lined up, all but the boy, who was probably the pixie-cut girl. Probably. A fluffy cloud moved off the
sun. Rain had scrubbed the rocky hillside; even gravel flashed with specks of light. A dazzling day. She stood and started back to the house.

They were home. She heard Beckett screeching, doors shutting, March calling for Cal. Patsy was too undone, too burst open, to face any of them, so she nonchalantly veered north, to the corral, where Diotima and Mamie the pony stood in mud. Diotima sauntered over and nuzzled Patsy’s neck, her black whiskers stiff as wire. Hold on, said Patsy, let me get the bridle.

They took the trail that climbed the mountain in switchbacks, east, then west through sage and buckwheat, all of it lush with tender green new growth and heavy with rainwater. Patsy’s jeans soon were soaked through. Diotima’s hooves made sucking noises in the muddy low spots.

She never once had imagined another driver or even dreamed of one.

The trail branched, and Patsy considered going up the arroyo behind the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the first trail she’d taken with Cal. Then she drew Diotima east, away from the deepening privacy of the canyon. She wanted room, and perspective. She thought, This is the last time I’ll ride before others know. When the news is still contained.

Clouds were piling up against the mountains, forming a shelf overhead. She could see out from under it, all the way, in fact, to the Palos Verdes hills, the valley between still brilliant with sunlight.

Assuming the news was true. As a historian, she was well acquainted with the vagaries of oral history and stories that changed, teller by teller, like the game of telephone. In her excitement, Joey could have blurred the details, and in fact, Bill Hogue might have hit someone in Alhambra in 1989.

She’d talk to Lucia soon enough. Until then, she’d at least have this lovely aimless ride in innocence. If Joey’s tale checked out, a slow saunter up a mountainside would only steady her for the great turn to come.

Too bad the news hadn’t arrived before her father’s mind left.

Too bad, too, she couldn’t tell Lewis.

Nobody was better with surprise. He’d stare, dead still; his eyes would slowly brighten, as if with tears. Moments would pass. Then a fast gulp of air and the gratifying, profane shout. No fucking way!

But she’d kept her word and left him alone for the last two years. And he hadn’t called her either.

Patsy nudged Diotima left onto a spur leading to a promontory. Below
, the Ponderosa’s blue slate shingles overlapped like feathers on a bird. Haydee was beating a rug with a broom behind the breezeway. Given the size and pale madder hue, it could only be the old Bokhara from Cal’s office, which probably shouldn’t be thwacked so violently, lest its dry wool weft crumble to bits.

A drop plopped on her head. Diotima’s pointed ears flickered. They headed back down to the barn.

•

Of course she’d put off calling too long. It was already 7:00 p.m. in Toronto, a Friday night, and Lucia Robinson was not home.

Which left the ragged stack of term papers, untouched since before noon, more than half still unmarked.

She worked for an hour, then went into the kitchen and made herself a plate with the now-well-marinated salad she and Joey hadn’t eaten—a few beets, a clump of cold salmon. She put the baguette in the oven, and while it heated, she found Bob and Cal watching the evening news in the dark library. I’m just going to eat something now and keep grading, she said.

You okay? Cal asked. You didn’t catch cold out there on Diotima, did you?

I’m just deep in grading hell, she said.

She wouldn’t tell Cal her news till she’d spoken to the wife. The lawyer in him shared her mistrust of single sources and thirdhand anecdotes. No sense inviting his cross-examination before she’d had her own questions answered.

Cal came to check on her before he and Bob left for their meeting. Don’t stay up all night, he said.

She kept the door to the deck cracked, to hear the rain. After each paper, she looked up and squinted.
What if I didn’t do it?
And excitement would surge, a sensation that, in childhood, she’d assumed was happiness.

She worked on the sofa in her office, wrapped in the old rag. Her comments on the papers tended toward glowing. Checking back through the stack, she saw she’d given A’s to nine of the last ten papers.
Lovely
, she’d written by one title. Lovely?

This is Lucia, a woman said. Cool, crisp.

It was Saturday morning, seven o’clock. Ten in Toronto. It’s Patsy Sharp, she said. I hope I’m not calling too early.

I was hoping it was you, said Lucia, her voice softening. I’ve been up for hours. So Joey told you everything.

Yes, and I’m a little stunned, as you might imagine.

I’ll bet, Lucia said. I’m in a state over this too, and I’m fairly removed.

I really appreciate your taking it so much to heart.

I always had a feeling there was more to Bill’s story, the way he kept bringing it up. Anyhow—A certain crispness returned. How do we do this? Shall I just tell you what I know?

If this is a good time for you, Patsy said, pulling over a yellow legal pad on which she’d jotted questions: Exact dates? Make of car? Died when?

Perfect time. I have a couple hours before my daughter’s basketball game. She’s twelve. Bill’s daughter, Debbie.

I see, said Patsy, and wrote down,
Daughter, 12
.

•

Bill Hogue and Lucia Robinson met in the fall in Chicago in 1987 and were married a year later. The night before the wedding, Bill sat Lucia down. There were things she should know about him beforehand, he said, so they would never surprise her, so no ex-girlfriend could burst into their lives with stories that Lucia hadn’t heard from him first. So Lucia would know what bad came with the good.

He spoke of women he’d been unkind to, or slept with when he shouldn’t have, and other sexual missteps. He felt badly too about an accident
he’d been in years before, a hit-and-run. He still thought of it every day.

He’d gone to a sales convention in Pasadena. On his last day there, after the convention ended, he met a tall, funny blonde in the hotel bar, a wild schoolteacher named Patsy. They had a drink at the hotel, then Patsy wanted to move. She was bossy in an amusing way and his plane didn’t leave until the next morning, so he went along with her to a bar she knew, a dark, old-timer’s dive on the main drag, and after a round or two there, she suggested her house. She was weaving as she walked, so he asked for the keys to her big old Mercedes. She directed him north, toward the mountains, into the town of Altadena. It was getting dark. She told him where to turn. Her driveway, he said, was unexpectedly steep. He pushed down on the gas, and at first nothing happened, so he pumped the pedal, and the heavy sedan sprang. He saw the woman and boy the same instant he hit them, and there was an explosion too, of what looked like white birds.

Pamphlets and papers went everywhere. One person—he couldn’t see which, as the windshield was mostly papered—rolled over the hood and pressed against the glass before sliding off. He never understood what happened next, maybe he hit the gas instead of the brake, but the car leaped again, and he may have hit one or both another time before the car swerved into the bushes.

Patsy was yelling and screaming. Outside, the woman crouched by the boy. Both were moving, and he saw no blood. He intended to help them, but he could barely open his door. He’d run the car into a thick hedge and had to squeeze out, and could do that only by climbing up into the hedge itself.

This is the part that I never understood, Lucia said. Bill said he climbed through the hedge, then found himself in an alley. Does that make sense to you?

Yes, whispered Patsy. There was an oleander hedge along that driveway. On the other side of it was an old trolley line that used to run up to Mount Lowe. The tracks were removed in the thirties, but the old easement still cuts through several blocks.

•

Bill Hogue, Lucia went on, must have been in shock, because his judgment was clearly impaired. He wasn’t one to abandon injured people to
save his own skin. He’d always regretted leaving the scene; he said it was the worst thing he’d ever done.

He walked down the alley, then took regular streets in plain view. Sirens looped nearer, a helicopter stuttered overhead, its beam focused behind him. He didn’t try to hide. If the police pulled up, he planned to open the back door and get into the squad car without a word. But no black-and-white materialized, and soon he came to a wide, busy street and a bus stop. Sitting on the bench, he saw that he clutched a pamphlet.
The Watchtower.

That’s how out of it he was. He’d carried the pamphlet the whole time without noticing.

All night long, he waited for the police to knock on his hotel-room door.

In the morning he caught his flight and was home in Chicago by 10:00 a.m.

I’m sure they were all okay, he told Lucia the night before their wedding. A broken bone or two, at worst. Everyone was moving. He hadn’t been going fast. It really was an accident. He’d had a couple of drinks, he wasn’t drunk. Certainly nowhere near as drunk as the nutty blonde whose car it was.

•

But Patsy, said Lucia, if nobody was hurt, why did he feel so guilty? I bet I heard the story a dozen times. To this day, when I see Jehovah’s Witnesses with their briefcases, I think of Bill and his guilt. Working with TV and film crews, I’ve met a lot of people from the Pasadena area—location scouts, art directors, production assistants like Joey. I always ask if they’ve ever heard of a hit-and-run with two Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’ve probably asked twenty people over the years, and nothing. Then Joey not only knew about it, she knew you.

•

Our marriage only lasted from 1988 to 1991. I moved up here. He saw Debbie on holidays and for weeks during the summer. Then he lost his job and went through a bad patch and couldn’t pay child support. We lost track of him, but a couple of years later, he wrote to say that he’d remarried, and sent some money. He was planning a visit to Debbie
when all of a sudden he was diagnosed with a fast-growing cancer in his spleen, and just a couple of weeks later he was dead.

•

You know, said Patsy, I’m still in touch with the husband and father of the victims—Mark Parnham. We’ve been interviewed in newspapers, on radio and TV about forgiveness, mediated justice, restorative justice. I’ve watched his son Martin grow up; I’ve helped with his education. He’s in law school as we speak.

Jesus, Lucia said. There’s a lot to this, isn’t there?

Yes, said Patsy, and wrote on her pad,
A lot to this
.

•

Patsy, said Lucia. If you need something legal, a deposition or some kind of sworn affidavit—

Nothing so formal, at least not yet. But I’m a historian, I like records and documents. If you’d write a short statement . . .

I’ll do that. And maybe you should talk to his widow. I have her number. She’s since remarried; her new name is Simms. I don’t know what Bill told her, if anything. But I bet she got an earful, and more than once. Here, do you have a pencil?