Blame: A Novel (8 page)

She’d wait for the murmur of discomfort, the hiss of disbelief, the secular titters, then add—And
that’s it
.

•

In the hot, rank afternoon, the air heavy with stockyard fumes, Patsy left off reading and sank into a sticky near-sleep, where once again she dreamed of taking the big, sweeping left turn to home, only to see in the old Mercedes’ headlights the two in their white blouses and dark skirts, the mother’s mouth round in surprise. Then the booms and thumps, a spray of stars, a veering off, leaves brushing metal, a small white hand sliding off a dark fender.

Jesus fucking Christ. Patsy kicked her legs to wake up, opened her eyes, took more breaths, then turned on her side. In the heat and ricocheting noise, she sought another route to sleep and this time wandered past mansion after mansion under towering elms along broad, deserted streets.

Unlike her mother, who would not accept the extravagantly surcharged collect calls when her father wasn’t there, eternally broke Brice never once turned down the prison operator. Would you do me a favor? Patsy asked him. Would you find out about Mark Parnham?

What about him?

General stuff. He wants to see me, and I want a sense of him first. Don’t talk to him or anything. But if you could check him out somehow, find out if he’s as nice as he seems.

•

Long, loud, too-bright clanging days passed. The deputy warden offered her a job teaching high school history and English geared to the high school equivalency test. She met nine students three times a week for two-hour sessions. Half her students, including Larena, read at or under fourth-grade level. Twenty-seven cents an hour was deposited in her commissary account.

Lying on her bunk in sticky October heat, what Gloria said drifted back to her, about drinking till you were done.
Done.
Could
she
ever be done with alcohol? All that fun! Collapsing into a chair with a good stiff drink. Starting to make dinner by pouring herself a glass of red wine—was there a better moment in the day? If a drink was large enough and strong enough, the very first sip relaxed her, filled her with well-being. Could she ever be done with such fast, effective relief?

Her father’s sobriety had been such an effort, such an event, the great life-changing hinge in the whole family history.
Before
, all was shouting, late-night smashings, and creepy-wet bourbon-scented bedtime kisses.
After
was the incessant low talking and intermittent laughter of men in the house at night, the phone always ringing with calls from
sponsors, sponsees, strangers trying not to drink, a whole household industry of sobriety. And meetings, meetings for everyone, for her dad, her mom, even meetings for Burt and her. How she hated those church classrooms with the small chairs, the too-kindly adult, the other children weirdly eager to describe their parents’ cruelty and misbehavior.

Sobriety was her father’s greatest accomplishment. How pathetic!

But
drinking till you’re done
—the phrase implied a natural cessation, no force or rupture. How appealing to think she might one day have had enough, and walk away into the rest of her life without craving or a thundering sense of loss. The idea offered release, and the mental clarity of a thin, clean pane of glass.

Possibly, she was already done. Hard to be sure. At Bertrin no little jars appeared, no tempting, cloudy tinctures distilled from rotting cornflakes.

Afternoons, before final count, she’d see women in the meeting room, their chairs in a ragged circle. They were laughing in there.

•

Brice was escorted into the visiting hall. A few low whistles greeted him, and he waved jauntily to the whistlers. Stop it, Patsy whispered as he reached her. She dreaded calling attention to herself, even by proxy. I’m not kidding, she hissed. Nobody’s supposed to talk to other visitors. You’ll get us all thrown out.

Hi there, Brice, he said, overriding her. So nice of you to drive four hours just to tell me the poop on Mr. P. that you so thoughtfully unearthed.

So nice, she said. I mean it. It’s just . . . She gave a wild glance around the room, then smiled at his face. You look good, great—that’s a terrific haircut. You’re a marvelous human. Now, tell me everything.

Do you really like the cut? You don’t think it’s a little froufrou in back?

And the sides. And front, especially the front.

Brice grinned and touched his tarnished blond hair.

They sat down at one end of a concrete picnic table. Another couple sat on the opposite end, hands clutched across the table.

She and Brice did not clasp hands. Your guy lives in West Altadena, near the arroyo, he said. I looked him up in the phone book. A
little ranch house, I cruised it—don’t worry, nobody was home. One of those fifties stucco jobs tarted up with wood siding. Fruit trees in the front lawn. Kid’s toys lying around. Guy could use a gardener, and arborist.

Did you see him? Or the kid?

Nobody was home. But—Brice paused dramatically—the house next door was for sale, and I disturbed the occupant. Said I was on the verge of an offer, but since I was moving because of bad neighbors, I didn’t want to repeat the problem. She was young, her husband was at the Jet Propulsion Lab but had been transferred to Cape Canaveral. At first she talked to me through the screen door, but I got her out on the stoop. She told me right away about your guy and what happened. His son is her son’s best friend, and she’d had both father and son over for dinner a lot since the accident. They’d become close, she said, and that hadn’t been the case when the man’s wife was alive. Not that the wife wasn’t nice, but—Do you want to hear this, Patsy? Brice stopped, checked Patsy’s face.

Every word, Patsy said, though she was already weirdly cold.

I guess Mrs. P. was extremely shy. She’d bring this neighbor lady bags of fruit from her trees, but leave them on the porch without knocking. The only time she ever went inside the neighbor’s house was right after she became a Jehovah’s Witness. To convert her.

I can’t believe you found all this out, whispered Patsy.

And that’s just for starters, said Brice, turning to look at a woman at the next table over who was humming at him.

Hah, baby, whispered the humming woman. Hah, handsome.

Brice, Patsy hissed. What else?

He turned back. Let’s see. Yeah, well, I asked the neighbor lady, Isn’t the husband a JW too? And she was like, Oh no, god no, not even close. He hated that his wife got all caught up with that.

He’s not a Jehovah’s Witness?

Defiantly not. Distrusts them. After the accident, a dozen Witnesses got to the hospital before he did. Some janitor there had put the word out. At first your guy was really touched, you know, that her church group had rallied, but soon it was obvious that they’d only come to talk him out of authorizing a transfusion. They don’t believe in transfusions.

I can’t believe she told you all this, said Patsy.

Oh, she was a talker, said Brice. Of course he did authorize a trans-fusion.

Of course, said Patsy. Boy. You hit the gold mine.

Yeah, though I also had to hear about the guy on the other side who parks his RV right by her bedroom window, and the witch across the street . . .

I owe you, said Patsy.

Teach?
Teach!
One of the women a few tables away whispered sharply. He’s on a show, ain’t he, Teach?

Patsy turned further away from the woman.

C’mon, Patsy, called another woman, sotto voce. Just say what show.

She can’t say, Brice stage-whispered to the second woman.

He’s on a show! I knew it, I tole you, the woman crowed.

Don’t, please, Patsy murmured to Brice. I have to live with them.

•

As she courted sleep at night, Patsy drifted now to West Altadena, to the little orchard with the thick grass that the man was too grief-stricken or overwhelmed to mow. Or perhaps the woman had always mowed it, steering a push mower around slim-trunked trees laden with plums and nectarines, the daughter raking up behind. She imagined them in long skirts and long-sleeved blouses, working with the patience of former centuries, gathering fruit into wooden buckets or galvanized pails, fruit for pies and cobblers and preserves in clear glass jars, fruits parceled into bags and distributed through the neighborhood. And then, the orchard was untended, the fruit swelling and softening and falling into the thick grass, where it burst and rotted and was eaten by ants.

•

You win, Patsy whispered to Gloria as they began to say their names around the room. Annie, alcoholic. Rondene, ack-aholic.

Patsy, she said at her turn.

Good to see you, whispered Gloria.

The dad wants to meet with me, Patsy said. I have to do something.

The next afternoon, they asked Patsy to lead the meeting.

In for a dime, in for a dollar, Patsy said, and recounted her life of
heedless careening, only to fill the room with laughter. I went to classes drunk. I lectured undergraduates about my sex life. I lectured bartenders on military history. I peed in my office wastebasket, then held office hours. Drunk, I’d sleep with anyone in my path—boys, girls, husbands, wives, students, teachers. That’s what I’m told. There’s much I don’t remember. I used to call people to find out if I had fun the night before or caused another disaster.

And this kid, Ernest Cruikshank. Funny I remember his name. His chippy little girlfriend was bawling in my office: Your own student. How could you?

I had no idea what I’d done. I told her not to worry—as far as I knew, it never happened. Even my old boyfriend Brice yelled at me once for feeding his little niece booze and piercing her ears. The girl was fine, but his mom—the girl’s grandmother—yelled at him for subjecting her to lowlife like me.

A woman named Nel whispered to Patsy at the break that she too had hit someone with her car in a blackout, in her case, a policeman waving her through an intersection. She’d broken his leg, and a rib that nicked his lung. He was still alive, healed up in fact, and there in court to see her sentenced, the dickhead. Nel got five years, would be out in three, her lawyer clearly not as skilled as Benny.

The next morning, Patsy woke up, sick with shame. In telling her stories, she’d heard them for the first time herself. The ease with which she’d dispensed cruelties! She’d never considered herself thoughtless or immoral. Fun, a little hell-bent, maybe, impulsive, but always amusing. And basically a good person. Now, seeing the miles driven drunk, the pranks, the commitments ignored, the marriages violated, and her obliviousness throughout, she seemed despicable.

Was there ever coming back from such actions? Or does a person round some bend and the path back is lost for good?

And she still hadn’t sent Mark Parnham the questionnaire. The simplest request by her main victim, and she’d put it off.

Gloria told her to write a list of people she’d hurt when drunk, then write letters to them all.
Sorry I got your boyfriend/husband/kids drunk
. . . , she wrote.
Sorry I had sex with . . . Sorry I borrowed your camel coat and those Italian books and lost them. Sorry I smashed your garage door, sorry too about the crape myrtle. Sorry I fed you pills and alcohol and pierced your ears.

Dear Benny,

I want to make amends for my ingratitude and all the ostensibly clever but actually very rude things I said as you were really in there, trying to save my life.

Not all the letters were sent, only those that wouldn’t reopen wounds or injure afresh. It never occurred to her that people would write back.

We’re so proud of you, darling.

I appreciate your forthrightness. But I forgave you years ago.

I was not surprised
, her former best friend Hannah wrote,

to hear you were in prison. Sooner or later somebody was going to have the good sense to lock you up—though I’m sure you’ve already found some married guard to schtup, or someone else’s girlfriend, someone too weak or kind to deflect your freight-train come-ons. Patsy, you say you’re sorry and want to make amends to me? You want to know how to do that? Cross me off your list! Never contact me again! That’s the only true amend you could ever make to me.

Sincerely, H.

And this:

Dear Patsy,

I got your letter. I hope you are all right. I’m fine but I don’t like school this year. I have boring teachers except for English.

I am on a big reading binge lately, are you? The best thing I read lately is The Alexandria Quartet which is actually 4 books in 1 box. Uncle Brice gave it to me for my birthday. (I just turned 14!)

About what you said in your letter. Don’t feel bad about the beer and stuff. You didn’t see me, but I stole a pill from your purse and took the whole thing. That’s why I was so sleepy that night. Don’t worry about piercing my ears, either. I really wanted them pierced. Anyway, the second my grandmother saw me wearing earrings she made me take them out. My ears grew right back.

Yours Truly, Joey Hawthorne

•

Still going to meetings, Pats?

As always, her father was too interested, too hopeful.

Don’t, she said. She hated the flaring of hope in his eyes. Then she hated the fear that replaced it.

I go, she said.

Thatagirl.

What else is there to do? Patsy studied the other families in the visiting room and thought about her list of those she had harmed, one of whom was her father. In college, she’d stolen three hundred and fifty dollars from him. He’d overpaid her tuition one quarter and the bursar sent her the refund check. If she’d told him about it at the time, he probably would have told her to keep the money. But she cashed the check and spent it recklessly, pointedly, paying for drinks and meals until all of it was gone.

Women were in Bertrin for stealing less. Larena got two years for paying rent with a two-hundred-dollar check drawn on a closed account—granted, not her first offense. And fifty-nine-year-old Rondene pulled two years for cashing a $137 welfare check nicked from a neighbor’s mailbox—though Rondene’s case was different. She didn’t even need the money. I jus loves to steal!
Loves
it! she told Patsy. I cain’t wait to get outta this place and steal some more!