Blame: A Novel (12 page)

I’ll wait with you, Sweeney said.

They stood outside the gate. Big plans for the day? asked Sweeney.

A bath, said Patsy. And settling in.

Yes, take it easy, that’s best, Sweeney said.

At the familiar whine and gasp of hydraulic brakes, they stepped aside. The gate swung open and the camp bus rumbled through, a woman’s face in each window, some startled, others jeering to see Patsy there unclaimed.

Never mind, Sweeney said. The fog slowed ’em up. Oh. Listen.

A distant mechanical grind unbraided itself from the bus’s rumble, wove in and out of the folds of the hills, coming closer. They listened until a gold and white Blazer nosed into view, Burt at the wheel. Burt alone.

So her father had not come. He’d asked to, and Patsy suggested he visit later in the week. She wanted to slip back into life without fanfare or reunions. But now, she realized, she would’ve liked to see her father.

Burt, only Burt, in his
BLUE BLUE GRASS OF HOME
T-shirt, his curls uncombed, his face unshaven, grabbed hold and pulled her off the ground.

•

Patsy had twenty-four hours to contact her parole officer. Let’s get it out of the way, she said.

The address was a drab modern building by Pasadena City Hall.

He won’t be nice, Burt said in the elevator. Not at first.

Jeffrey Goldstone was a short, bald, middle-aged man in a wide-sleeved flowered sport shirt. Stacks of papers and books listed around him. A blue curtain sagged off its track. Lacing his hands behind his head, he leaned back and delivered his spiel into the air above her head. Patsy was to phone him every day for thirty days, see him twice a month. She could not leave the county without his permission or go more than fifty miles away for longer than forty-eight hours without first informing him of her whereabouts. She was not to contact anybody she knew from prison for a year. His tone was weary and condescending; he spoke with a breathless rapidity that preempted interruption. He could and would come into her apartment and search it without a warrant at any moment. Morning, noon, or night. A home visit, he called it. So you remember, he said, when I go knock-knock, you open up.

He handed her a pocket-sized directory of local AA meetings and a stack of stiff white forms to be signed at each one she attended. Let’s start with ninety meetings in ninety days, he said. And monthly urine tests.

Wow, I don’t know if—she said, concerned about logistics.

I could make that weekly testing, he said.

It’s just that I don’t have a car and—

We provide rides. He circled some numbers in the back of a handbook and passed it over. This also lists clinics, counseling centers, employment opportunities, he said. I advise you to use our resources freely. The more you do for yourself, the more impressed we’ll be. Five years could shrink to three. Any questions? Then I’ll talk to you tomorrow, and don’t be surprised when I stop by. Remember, when I go knock-knock, you—

She hoped a nod would suffice, but Goldstone pointed at her face. You—

Open the door, she whispered.

•

Next stop was her storage unit. They took an elevator to the fifth floor, walked down a dim, narrow hall. Prison was all people and almost no stuff, and this place was the opposite. Patsy greeted her sofa, embedded upright in a wall of boxes, all of it so efficiently arranged, there was enough room left to lie down. Why couldn’t she stay here, in this muffled, ill-lit room?

She pulled two boxes labeled in her mother’s confident felt-tip scrawl:
SUMMER BASICS
and
SHOES, PURSES ETC
. These for now, she said.

I’ve got the truck.

Brice already furnished the place, she said. Who knows what I’ll need.

•

She’d forgotten—or had she ever noticed—how much the Lyster was a cartoon of a French chateau, with turrets and a pointy steep-hipped roof. Behind the facade sat a plain brick six-floor apartment building, although with tall Parisian-style windows and decorative shutters.

Number 2C had several such windows facing north. The plastered walls were a soft, floury white, the dark old oak floors distressed but waxed to a sheen. Brice had decorated with salvage from the defunct Bellwood: a moss-colored sofa and bobbin-legged mahogany side table. The white wrought iron table in her new breakfast nook, Patsy had last seen on the Bellwood’s sunporch.

We’ve been at it for weeks, said Gilles, a beautiful teenager whose presence among them was unexplained. Sanding, priming, painting, he said with a faintly British crispness of speech. Junking, going to the swapper. Brice found these in a dumpster behind the Pasadena Playhouse, had them recut.

He petted a sage green velvet curtain that puddled on the shining floor.

Nice, she said. And everything’s so clean.

Brice made me take a toothbrush to the baseboards to get out the old wax.

I didn’t make you, said Brice.

He did, Gilles said. He cracked the whip.

The boy’s skin was milky and blushing, with taupe-colored freckles
to match his taupe-colored hair. His dark, plump lips were so prominent, so rosy and beautiful, Patsy could hardly bear to look at them.

Oh god, a fireplace, she said. On the black marble mantel Brice had clustered six white teacups of differing patterns, each as delicate as an eggshell. Picking one up, she saw shadows of her fingers through the porcelain and a hairlike rust-colored crack. Years had passed since she’d held anything so fine.

So? said Brice. What do you think?

Lovely, perfect, she said, wanting all of them, even Burt, to leave, yet afraid that they would. What would roar into the silence once she was alone?

Then they left. Burt and Brice went down for the boxes, and the boy, Gilles-rhymes-with-peel, said he would make tea. She wandered into the bedroom, opened the closet, where a dozen wooden hangers swayed. In the bathroom, thick white towels hung beside a ledge of Bellwood toiletries: French soap, tiny toothpaste, the same little giveaway sewing kit she’d used to pierce Joey Hawthorne’s ears.

Her father had lobbied for El Puente de las Amigas instead; a halfway house, he argued, would see her through the sudden drop of structure, postprison. He was afraid she’d take up booze—and Brice—again. Her
We’re just friends, Dad
had sounded tinny even to her. But he needn’t have worried, not if her hunch about the beautiful teenager proved true.

In the living room, she gazed out at the rooftop
KASORGIAN CARPET
sign on its rusty struts, and beyond that, a gray opacity where mountains should sit.

Is it everything that you wanted? The boy, Gilles, came up beside her.

Oh! I thought you left.

I’m making tea here, he said. In your kitchen. Have you seen it yet? Come.

The walls were paved with subway tiles. On the small apartment stove, a teakettle sputtered water into the flames.

This was such a dirt pit, you wouldn’t believe. Gilles poured a little hot water into a Brown Betty teapot and swished it around. Mrs. Kronberg lived here forty-eight years and got so blind she couldn’t see how filthy it was. We used Easy Off on the tiles, then bleach. Brice said clean was your number one requirement.

Gilles paused to spoon leaf tea into the pot, poured in more water. What kind of teenager knows how to make a proper pot of tea?

And look, he said, you’re stocked up too. He opened an overhead cupboard to reveal Medaglia D’Oro coffee, red boxes of Finn Crisp crackers, ripening avocados. Her old staples. Brice had remembered them, and she had not. In the fridge, a sharp cheddar and half-and-half for her coffee.

And these I made this morning. Gilles pulled aluminum foil up to reveal a plate of stacked tea sandwiches. Jam and butter on the white bread, he said. Cream cheese and watercress on the wheat. Want one?

I’ll wait for—She’d forgotten the names of her brother and former lover. Too many subway tiles, groceries, and this eager-to-please, garrulous boy.

Oh dear, he said. Are you all right? Here, sit down. He guided her backward into the breakfast nook and pulled out a chair. Do you want a tissue?

No, no. Through the glass tabletop her hands writhed in her lap.

I can’t imagine what today is like for you, said Gilles. I hope the apartment is everything you dreamed of. I wanted to tart it up, you know, with pillows and paintings, and I brought over my big old teddy bear for you. I thought he might cheer you up, like a pet, but Brice is so strict.

He is, she murmured, thinking she might have liked the bear.

Gilles set the table: cups, small plates, mismatched linen napkins, the sandwiches. As the shock of his beauty subsided, she saw typically lax teenage grooming—sloppy shave, straggly hair in his eyes. Sixteen, she decided.

You’re so nice to go to all this trouble, she said.

It’s practice for my future catering company. Gilles’s Meals.

Yes. Perfect. Are you French?

My father was. And I lived in France for two years. But I’m from right here. Pasadena.

You live in the building? Patsy asked.

Until Brice gets grouchy; then I go to Mother’s till he asks me back.

A small shock of certainty, a pause in the blood. Of course.

Brice might’ve said something to prepare her—even if disclosures of a personal nature didn’t come easily to him.

Oh—and Brice said to tell you I’m in AA.

You? she said.

Two years without one sip.

How old are you, anyway?

Twenty next week.

You must have started young, she said.

Twelve, he said. But I had talent.

Apparently, Patsy said. I’m two years sober too.

I know. Gilles carried the teapot in its flowered cozy to the table. Brice blew your anonymity. I could take you to meetings, he added. I’ve found all the good ones. I go every morning, early.

How early?

Six-thirty. I like to get it out of the way, first thing.

I’ve been getting up at five.

Shall I come get you, then? Tomorrow? Ten after six?

Yes. Patsy gave a laugh of relief. I was wondering how I was going to do ninety meetings in ninety days, she said.

That’s what I’m doing! Ninety in ninety. Every time I finish, my sponsor says, Oh, you’re doing so well, you’ve come such a long way, why mess with a good thing? Let’s do another ninety in ninety.

Yeah, my parole—

Patsy? Patsy? Oh, there you are, Burt said, and walked straight up to the sandwiches. Those look good.

A phone began to ring.

Is that here? Patsy asked, bewildered.

Gilles pointed to the living room, where a boxy white rotary phone pealed on a side table. Burt tossed her the receiver on its coiled cord. Hello? she said.

It’s me, Brice. I wanted to make sure it worked.

You thought of everything, she said.

•

The four gathered at the glass table to drink the tea and eat the little sandwiches. Brice asked after the old girls who’d pestered him at Bertrin and Malibu. So much for my brief and happy life as a movie star, he said.

The tea tasted like some delicious toasted wood, and she loved the sandwiches, the cream cheese with its fattiness and tang, the sweet berry jam and cold shards of butter. Even after she felt vaguely ill, Patsy kept eating and drank so many cups of tea, her fingers buzzed and she felt feverish and chilled at the same time. Gilles was gathering dishes,
and Patsy couldn’t track what anyone was saying. She wanted to go into the bedroom and put a pillow over her head.

Brice stood. I’m sure you want to unpack, he said. We’re right upstairs if you need anything. Our number is by the phone.

Burt saw them out; then he too had to go. He was due at work. I hate leaving you alone, he said. The kids said I should kidnap you.

You heard Mr. Knock-Knock. I can’t leave the county.

That douche bag, said Burt. God, what a putz.

Patsy kissed her brother’s bristled cheek and closed the door.

Alone! Roaming room to room, she opened and shut cupboards, eyed the telephone, then ran a deep tub foamed with bath oil. Her breasts and knees and toes made pink protrusions in the bubbles. There you are, she greeted them, prison having allowed no time or place for self-inspection. Her legs were the skinniest she’d ever seen them, and muscular from firefighting. She added hot water with her toes, until the heat made her heart race. She got out of the tub and grabbed a towel all too quickly; the air burst into prisms, and she had to sit on the toilet, bent over her knees until the whirling bars of color subsided. Traffic rumbled outside, a bass note to the city’s hum, and above that, she heard a faint ringing, so high-pitched, steady, and beautiful it could only be silence.

Wrapped in the towel, she stretched out on the Bellwood-issue sleigh bed with its plain white hotel linens and down pillows. She wished that Brice had told her about the boy ahead of time instead of parading him in front of Burt like that. Not that she was so surprised. In all the months she and Brice ran around together, they spent very few nights with each other. Two, actually. Two nights.

When you get right down to it, sexual indifference isn’t that mysterious.

During their breakup three years ago, Brice had said,
Thailand has ruined me.
At the time, she’d taken it to mean that he was drawn only to tiny, slim women and that she was too big, too clumsy, too blond and American to suit.

In renting an apartment at the Lyster, Patsy had neither expected nor wanted to resurrect their romance. But she’d had other ideas—silly ones, she saw now—about soldiering on as devoted, mutually single friends, both unfit for love.

The only thing to do, she saw, was to proceed as planned, stay here
until she could move home to Pomelo Street, and keep to her own resolves.

She had resolved to be good, whatever that meant. Her soul, that scrap of energy, was in tatters, no doubt beyond repair. Her only hope was to make herself useful to others, try to balance wrong with right.

Her stomach was still queasy from the sandwiches.

Eating lightly would be good. Possibly some fasting.