Blame: A Novel (35 page)

•

Gloria said, I’d take it easy for a while. Don’t make any major decisions. Maybe hit a meeting a day till you’re through some of this.

That advice! The last time Patsy went daily to meetings, her higher power was channeled by that other prospective adulteress, Yvette Stevens. Patsy hadn’t seen Yvette again until a few months ago, when they ran into each other during intermission at a chamber music concert. Patsy had drawn Yvette aside. You probably saved my marriage, she said.

Me? Gosh. That’s funny. How?

Patsy lowered her voice. The last time I saw you, you talked about that curator you liked and how you’d decided to sidestep the insanity. I was so impressed.

Yvette’s dark, round eyes began to flash; she ducked her head, her perfect smoke gray pageboy swung over her face. But Patsy, she whispered, we had eighteen months of insanity. Buzz and I separated, the kids chose sides. I left my job. She laughed softly. Oh, Patsy, you must have caught me on a day I was talking a real good line.

•

Night was sinking down to earth, the hillsides west of the Rose Bowl darkening to black. Clouds sealed the sky. Tall mercury-vapor lamps flickered on around the greens. Patsy considered whom to call next. She couldn’t reach Audrey from this phone. She thought of phoning Lewis. God, how she’d love to tell him her news, although who knew what he’d make of it. He had found her original story, what?—resonant and powerful?—and therefore might find the new revised version (and the present, revised
her
) somewhat less compelling.

Prison was only romantic or dismissible to those who’d never been.

And if she hadn’t gone . . . she probably would’ve gotten tenure two years earlier, then landed a better job. She might have met a man her own age, perhaps the hyperintelligent, talky Jew she’d promised herself in college. They’d have a small, book-stuffed house in some college town, Palo Alto, say, Poughkeepsie or Middlebury.

Assuming, of course, she’d gotten sober. Cal was right: she couldn’t have kept on at the rate she was going. After her second
DUI
, she knew she’d have to quit, and sooner rather than later. Her drinking had even taken on a certain elegiac tone. She might well have quit right around the same time anyway.

And if she’d gone to Pasadena AA two years earlier, she definitely would’ve run into Cal and she would’ve revered him; everybody did back then.
I am powerless over those ink blue eyes.
But without her postprison abjection coinciding with the mere blip of his widowhood, the chances were they never would’ve married.

She remembered with a pang the peanut butter sandwich she’d left on her kitchen counter and, starting her car, drove to Pie ’N Burger in Pasadena. In the overlit, too-warm coffee shop, she sat at the counter among CalTech students and lab workers, ordered what she thought of as the Lewis Fletcher Special—a cheeseburger with grilled onions and boysenberry pie à la mode. She ate all but a puddle of melted ice cream.

Several dozen brown packing boxes arrived and sat stacked in a solid square mass inside the living room.

A good number of those boxes were labeled
KITCHEN.

I don’t like it, Cal, she said. But then, you already know that.

It’ll be fine, Patsy, you’ll see.

She was curious, probably not in a good way, to see how far March, unimpeded, would go.

Unfamiliar canisters of crackers and whole meals appeared on the kitchen counters, along with a baby-food processor, a rice cooker, an expensive espresso machine. The baby’s jump seat was hung from a beam in the garden room. Patsy felt twinges—her new kitchen! her new beam!—but did not intervene.

You’re waiting in ambush, said Gloria. You’re giving her more than enough rope to hang herself. Or martyr you.

Maybe, said Patsy. But it means so much to Cal to have them here, I’m really in no position to deprive him.

Sure you are, said Gloria.

They were driving home with two other AA women from the Women’s Institution at Corona on a Thursday night after taking an AA meeting to the maximum-security unit. There, Patsy had told her amended story from the podium for the first time. She told it in order, her drinking and drugging, her prison time, the twenty years of guilt. Then, about a month ago, I got a phone call from a friend, she said, and found out what really happened.

After everyone else on the panel spoke, the inmates could ask questions. A tall woman raised her hand and said, I’m just like you. I didn’t hurt nobody, but they put me here anyway.

Mmmm, said Patsy.

Another woman said, So how come you here tonight? Why you come back inside if you never have to be here in the first place?

I’m still a drunk and an ex-con, said Patsy. That part hasn’t changed. I still have to carry the message. Which is that alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful. It can make you plead guilty even when you’re not.

•

So March is living here again, she told Audrey. With her family, and boat, and worldly possessions.

How did that happen?

In pieces. They were visiting, their house sold quickly, and now they’re homeless and
here
.

You don’t sound happy about it.

I’m not. But we do have all this room, and it seems selfish to refuse them. They’re dead broke, it seems. Forrest has to find a job, and he’s not the brightest bulb to begin with. Then, his résumé has a three-year hole in it.

But that’s not your problem, Patsy. That’s their problem. You don’t have to put up with them for a minute longer if you don’t want to.

But I’d have to stage a
major
battle to get them out.

And you’d win, if that’s what you want.

I’m not so sure I would win, said Patsy.

Cal’s kids always mattered in ways that she—the third, childless wife—could never hope to eclipse. She’d known her status when she married him. It was the sham of her marriage, really, the don’t-look-too-close fine print of their agreement. A healthier, more self-respecting woman—Audrey, for example—would never have signed on.

A soft transatlantic hum filled the silence.

Oh, but nobody really wants to live with their parents, said Audrey. Just write them a great big check. They’ll leave.

•

On Easter Sunday, March took her brood and Cal over to Spencer’s for dinner. Patsy demurred, citing work. She was reading
Women in Love
, a silly, rant-filled book, although interesting about industrialization and feminism.

She remembered Lewis saying for some reason that the movie didn’t hold up.

He’d been short-listed for the Hallen job, with a Korean-American woman and a Mexican-American man. Which meant he didn’t stand a chance.

Disgusted by her own lethargy, she went outside, dug up a patch of garden. The soil was black and soft and laced with thick pink worms. She filled a few wheelbarrows full of rotted manure, spread it out, turned it under, then planted peas, cabbage, and chard seeds, although nobody but she and Bob would eat from the garden. For the first time in several weeks, she picked lettuce, pounds of it, washing and packing it in individual gallon-sized plastic bags. She gathered avocados and white grapefruits in a shopping bag.

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.