Blame: A Novel (38 page)

Luckily, she had her purse and cell phone. She called directory assistance and asked for the Shell station on Fair Oaks. The operator connected her.

Hello? said a man.

I’m locked in your bathroom, she said. The doorknob doesn’t work.

Do you have the key? he said.

No, I just walked in.

Someone took off with one of the keys, so we’re down to the spare. If you’ve got that one, we have a problem.

I don’t have a key, she said.

I’ll be right there, said the man.

She waited, standing by the door, but off to the side. At any moment she’d hear his voice, the knob would rock and be steadied, a key inserted. If it didn’t work, at least her rescue was begun.

A minute passed. Another minute.

The porcelain sink had rust stains under the spigot. Where the dispenser leaked, a puddle of pink soap was rimmed in soft gray grease. She looked at herself in the mirror. You. You’ll be out in a minute.

She banged on the door.

She had to call directory assistance again to get reconnected. The same man answered. I am still in your restroom, she said.

I went back there with the key, and nobody was there. You must be at another Shell station. This is the one on Fair Oaks at Glenarm.

Oh, said Patsy, and I’m at the one at Walnut. Sorry about that.

That’s
North
Fair Oaks, said the man.

Do you have the number?

Not offhand. No.

This time the directory assistance operator was a man. I show no listing for a Shell station on North Fair Oaks, he said, or on Walnut in Pasadena.

But I’m here, locked in the bathroom, at that Shell station.

I’m sorry, ma’am. Sometimes service stations are listed under another name, like So-and-so’s Shell.

Is there any way you could check that?

I’ve done what I can. Do you want me to connect you with the police?

No! said Patsy. Police seemed excessive. But thank you, she added.

Patsy went back to banging on the door. Hello? Hello? she called. Pausing to listen, she heard only the clattery fan.

She went through directory assistance again and had them reconnect her to the other Shell station, as the man there might know the owner’s name of this one, but he had stopped taking her calls. She speed-dialed the Pondo. Cal or even March might remember the name of this service station, but the voice mail picked up—her own cheerful voice. She phoned Cal’s cell phone, which rang and rang. Oh, Cal, she whispered aloud, pick up! But he’d probably silenced it for an AA meeting and forgot to turn the ringer back on. She tried him twice more before leaving a message. It’s just me, she said. If you get this, call my cell.

She closed her eyes, breathed in the smell of urine and disinfectant, the must of wet paper towels. She wished for more air. There was no window. Just the noisy fan and weak, shivering light. Her heart was pounding. She was beginning to hyperventilate. But this was not prison. This was finite—and funny. To be locked in a gas station bathroom for what, six minutes? By tonight it would be an amusing story. A comedy of errors.
I’m sorry, ma’am, I show no listing for a Shell station on North Fair Oaks or Walnut.

She gave the door a sustained loud pounding and heard herself whimper. She tried Cal’s cell phone again.

She started scrolling through the phone book on her cell phone for someone else. Brice in the B’s.

Hey, Pats, he said. What’s up?

Don’t laugh, she said, and realized she herself was on the verge of
tears. But I’m locked in a gas station bathroom and can’t get anybody’s attention. The doorknob has no torque.

No torque? A pause. Did you say no torque?

Whatever! I can’t get out. Where are you?

Burbank, looking at refrigerators for Joey, but I’ll come spring you.

Burbank was at least twenty minutes away. Patsy said, Or just tell me the name of the Shell station on Walnut and Fair Oaks.

It’s an Armenian name, said Brice.

That’s a big help.

Look, I’m on my way, he said. I’ll call from the car, keep in radio contact.

I hope I’m out long before you get here, she said.

She put her cell phone back in her purse and banged some more on the door. I’m just locked in a goddamn bathroom, she said, but tears ran down her face. What’s more, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Darkness gathered at the corners of her eyes.

There was no lid on the toilet, so she sat sideways on the seat. Beside her, under the sink, in an intestinal curl, the pipe fed into the wall, with lime encrusting each joint. Two feet to the left, the implacable, battered blue door.

Standing, she took the knob in her fingers and, listening like a safe-cracker, turned it a fraction of an inch first to the right, then to the left. Was that the faintest click, like a bone shifting deep in the ear? Holding her breath, she gently, tentatively twisted it again to the right, and yes, there was a little grab, the resistance of a lightly coiled spring. Slowly, with the least possible pressure, she kept turning, as far as it would go. A nudge then, and the door opened. She stepped out into the bright, hot sunlight.

Summer 2001

Dinner at the Ponderosa mostly consisted of the children demanding food, rejecting it, and insisting on something else, with March hopping up to humor each swerve in appetite. Green beans were spurned for applesauce that in turn was ignored for broken-up clumps of garden burger. Beckett screeched steadily when he was strapped in his highchair, and why shouldn’t he, when his sister sat with queenly self-possession on the adult’s lap of her choice, usually Patsy’s.

Tonight’s meal was short, fifteen minutes, with Forrest packing Beckett and Ava off to their bath as soon as sufficient nutrients had been ingested.

Relax, March, I’ll put on the water, Patsy said, and cleaned up, loading the dishwasher, wiping down those stone counters. Brice had shown her how to sand and smooth out the chip, and she could find it only if she ran her hand along the edge, a subtle declivity. She lingered with Cal and March over mint tea until the children reappeared wet-haired in their pajamas to kiss their grandparents and spirit their mother off to read bedtime stories.

Patsy watched the news with Cal in the library until his eyelids fluttered down and he began to breathe with a soft snore. A light was on in the kids’ room, so she poked her head in and waved good night before leaving by the front door.

•

Brice had been right about the house on Concha Street, a roomy two-bedroom Spanish on a deep half acre very close to the mountains: it was the house for her. The front yard was sunny; the backyard had once been a formal garden, but the trees had grown up and the shade allowed only
ivy, ferns, and leggy camellias. A small, ramshackle barn was tucked up in the far corner of the lot, so she could have Diotima. And Mamie to keep Diotima company.

Patsy pulled up to the garage door and parked, then took the path up to the barn to feed them. The day had been hot, but now the air was perfect and abuzz. Under the deodars and redwoods, the ground was soft with needles. A few doors over, in the park, there was a softball game, so the night sky above had the cool purple glow from banks of mercury-vapor lights. Cheers rose at intervals, and once, the crack of the bat.

The move here was easy. She’d encountered no resistance. Cal and his kids seemed chastened by her decision, but no one begrudged her the house or questioned her decision, and why should they, when for the moment, they too were getting what they wanted?

Patsy still dreamed about the Ponderosa. In her dreams she would go back to find corridors she’d never seen, rooms she’d forgotten existed, all of them dusty and neglected, screens rusting, blinds sagging, paint bubbling off the walls. She found odd items like the vacuum cleaner Brice gave her at the Lyster, one of Stan’s tennis trophies, a plastic booze bottle with some dried brown residue. To wake up in her new room with the powder-white plastered walls and mountain view was a relief.

Outside the small two-stall barn, she ran the hose in the corral’s watering trough and gazed up at the black hump of mountain, the light-bleached sky and faint stars overhead.

She was getting used to living in a neighborhood, this neighborhood, again—weekend noise in the park; people stopping their cars in the middle of the street to talk with no way to go around them; the too-loud party three blocks over that the sheriff didn’t shut down till midnight.

But she suffered no remorse. She’d attached herself to the house and recalled it was hers with jolts of pleasure. Like a mother with an infant, she had eyes for no other dwelling; the grand ones were too grand, the tidy ones too tidy. This one, just right.

Still, on Saturday evenings, if she hadn’t made plans, a small buzz of fear could start, a sense of being disregarded or overlooked, of having exiled herself to an out-of-the-way corner of the world.

Joey said she was getting used to living alone, that she must manage loneliness as a chronic condition, like flyaway hair.

One Saturday night, at the last minute, she’d prevailed on Joey; another time she’d run down to Sarah’s. But then she was antsy sitting on Joey’s deck, in Sarah’s ballroom. Antsy and disappointed in herself. In fact, she missed the feeling she was fleeing, that unpleasant fizz of desperation. It interested her.

She stepped inside the barn, which was lit by a single incandescent bulb, and opened the grain bin to the dense, sweet smell of molasses on the corn. She gave each horse a partial scoop and then a half flake of hay, which was so dry and dusty Patsy sneezed breaking it apart.

She stood in the doorway listening to the low molar rumble of the horses chewing, the whisk of hay as they pulled at it. Stepping outside, she checked the street to see if Brice and Joey had arrived. Now that they lived less than a mile away from one another, they were at each other’s houses a couple times a week. They fixed meals together, or on nights like tonight, when she ate at Cal’s, Patsy might meet them later for a movie or an ice-cream run.

Tonight Joey was bringing one of her director’s films to watch. Patsy had the best television set. For a housewarming present, Cal had bought her a new flat-screen TV, a top-of-the-line model Forrest recommended.

Another cheer went up in the park. Diotima made a soft, wet snorting sound.

This was a lovely moment of time. Being in her new home. Spending time with old friends. But it would pass. Was passing. Joey was going on location to rural Mississippi next week, and in a month, Patsy would fly to England.

She had thought about canceling or shortening her trip; she would miss her new home, be eager to get back. But then, Lewis would be at Hallen.

He had written to her when he had accepted the offer, in that same gray ink.

Dear Patsy,

Common decency compels me to violate our no-contact agreement to tell you personally that I took the job. As you know, I’ve been looking for a tenure-track position for years. I can’t turn down the only one I’ve ever been offered.

I will do anything to make my presence on campus easy for you—everything short of turning down the job. (If you are truly, violently against my coming, I suppose I would consider even that.)

As long as I’m writing—Burt told me your astounding news. I can’t imagine how you must feel, how vindicated and relieved. Although I’m sure it’s more complex and far-reaching than that.

Yours
as ever
, Lewis

P.S. As far as I’m concerned, our old agreement still holds.

Burt had told Patsy what Lewis’s reaction was to her news. He’d spit out a whole mouthful of mineral water and started yelling, Un-fucking-believable! Then his eyes had filled with tears.

Burt had no doubt kept him up to date since.

She had written back to Lewis, thanking him for his concern and congratulating him on getting the job and, belatedly, for his book.

We will manage, I’m sure.

So you know, I will be in England through October. This was arranged last Christmas and has no bearing on your coming to campus.

Still, with England, she was buying time.

She had been in the new house only six weeks. No time at all.

Three, even six months were probably not enough to get where she needed to go. She would not be rushed. She had lectures to give, research to do. A book to write. A new life to navigate and know. That low-grade whirr of fear.

Up here, near the top of her property, she could see down to the street on either side of the house, and she saw Brice’s clattery Volvo pull up to the curb. He and Joey got out. Brice took something out of the backseat. A plastic bag—ice cream, she guessed; there was a new gelato place between Joey’s house and hers, and they all had trouble resisting it.

Earlier today Joey had mentioned over the phone that tomorrow was the twenty-first anniversary of her mother’s death.

My parents were so miserable together, Joey said. At least my dad had his crack at happiness with Marlene.

Oh, but Joey, Patsy said, I think Cal might have really loved your mother.

I hope so, Joey said. I hope she felt loved when she died. It’s still hard to imagine her as an adulterer. Or Cal—even though I saw them with my own eyes! Cal always seemed so
good
. Although owning your own hotel probably made assignations easy.

Remembering this, Patsy smiled as, down below, Joey and Brice crossed the street.

Joey’s mom had been gone twenty-one years. An adulthood. An adulthood since that day Patsy had helped Brice babysit Joey. And—regrettably—pierced her ears.

How in love they’d been with Brice! Both of them.

Patsy smiled again to see Brice’s easy, lanky strides, the bag of gelato swinging by his knee. Twenty-one years ago she’d been sure she couldn’t live without him.

Fortunately, she hadn’t had to.

Joey and Brice started up the path to her front door, and Patsy lost sight of them. Latching the barn, she went down to the house to let them in.