Blame: A Novel (22 page)

Patsy couldn’t read through the tears trembling in her eyes.

She’s upset I called her middle-aged, Gilles stage-whispered to Brice.

•

Cal arrived at dusk and laid a fire. His kids were away at school again, and he could stay to eat. Patsy and Audrey set out a small roast and green beans. They ate on trays, with Gilles presiding from his bed like a young, ailing king. Cal and Audrey were in chintz chairs by the fire, while Patsy sat on the brick hearth itself, close to Cal’s knee. He wore old charcoal corduroys, a sweater the same marine blue of his eyes. Through French doors, Patsy saw shapely trees and high hedges illuminated as if by moonlight, though in fact Audrey’d had them lit.

Cal was flying up to San Jose the next day for meetings with the redevelopment agency. The family land company had holdings there.

Is San Jose going to put in an Asw
n dam too? asked Gilles. That was what he called the monumental, doorless regional mall recently constructed near Pasadena’s City Hall.

Something akin, said Cal. But anything will improve downtown San Jose. It’s literally a big dirt pit right now.

Gilles said, Another thing I’m glad I won’t live to see.

Patsy washed dishes with Audrey while Brice and Cal got Gilles to bed. Tired from sadness, she pulled on her camel hair coat, kissed Audrey.

She met Cal in the hallway. Are you leaving? he said.

She stepped aside, against closet doors, so he could pass. He touched her shoulder, and because solace seemed natural, she moved into his arms. He was tall and broad, and made her feel childishly small, a feat. Far too shy to embrace him fully, she held her hands over his shoulder blades, poised as if to subdue any rustle of wings. How soft his sweater was on her cheek. He murmured into her hair, Patsy, Patsy. Then, god almighty. He kissed the side of her head. Cupped against his shoulder, she began to worry that she was the one prolonging, and dropped her arms. He murmured something she didn’t hear and let her go.

In the dim hall light, his fine face shone with suffering and kindness. Her departure was clumsy, a bumpering off a wall, a goodbye called too loudly.

Stars spattered the cold black sky. Patsy drove home in confusion. In the calm gray shadows of her bedroom, confusion churned into hope.

•

I’m not positive, but I might start seeing someone new, she told Silver. And I know what you’re thinking: she no sooner gets out of one mess than she’s into another. But this isn’t like that. It’s not sui generis. I’ve known Cal the whole time I’ve been back, I see him every day, he didn’t pop out of nowhere. The man I was thinking of asking to be my sponsor. Who takes me riding.

Whose daughter was unkind to you.

Patsy gave a short laugh. Her worst fears may be coming true.

She sensed something before you did, said Silver. Her father’s interest.

I thought he just wanted me to ride his dead wife’s horse. Though I’m not positive he really is interested in something more.

Are you interested in something more?

With him? God, I hardly dare think of it. I mean, sure, but so is every woman in AA, every matron in La Cañada Flintridge and Pasadena. He’s immensely attractive, and charismatic. He could have his pick.

And he picked you.

Oh, but I’m not sure yet. I have no idea what he sees in me. What would he want with a cultural historian fresh out of prison?

What would you want with him?

Oh, but he’s beautiful. And unbelievably kind.

She left out rich, lest she sound crass.

•

Cal was out of town all week. Patsy would see him again on Thursday evening, at the meeting he brought to Gilles. She went about her routines with a fullness of heart and elegiac calm. Her morning candle, her spiritual reading, the hours still dark and clear. Teaching. Audrey’s.

Gilles eyed her with suspicion. The Grouper is back, isn’t he?

He meant Ian. No, Gilles, she said.

She did seem calm, even to herself. Calm and stately.

And if she were mistaken, or if Cal thought better of it himself, what would be lost but a vaguely imagined future involving a house in Flintridge, stepkids, horses, and dogs that were not hers. To relinquish such a big life—even before she had it—was in itself a relief. Her own future was so much smaller and simpler: move home to Pomelo Street in March, Hallen ad infinitum.

A committee meeting Thursday afternoon made her late. The AA meeting had started without her. The announcements and book passages that were read aloud were finished, and Vaughn was talking about his job. Only two table lamps were on in Audrey’s living room, and there was a lively, snapping fire. Cal glanced up as she came in, and she knew then, or thought she did. She sat behind Gilles’s bed, almost in darkness. Derek, Caroline, and Binx shared; they were going around the room. Rajid talked about his girlfriend drinking too much. Cal spoke of his trip north, and how he’d run into an old business associate at an AA meeting there. The last time I saw him, we killed two bottles of Scotch and possibly the bartender, he said.

Gilles reported feeling stronger; his T cells were up, his appetite was back. I may be faced with the prospect of living, he said.

When it was her turn, Patsy said, I’m very happy to be here tonight.

The circle was formed, the prayer spoken, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. She gathered the coffee mugs, took them into the kitchen, and waited.

•

I was struck, Cal told her, by how beautifully tall you were. How you looked so dazed and amazed to be free in the world again.

He said, You were so shy and intelligent, so well-spoken. I wanted to carry you off and listen to you talk all day.

•

She saw him every night. They went to Monty’s Steakhouse and the Trestle. She introduced him to Pie ’N Burger.

He wanted to buy her a horse of her own. If she wanted one. And if she didn’t like the Flintridge house, he had two others she could choose from. He could dislodge the tenants. Or buy her a new house altogether.

All this, even before they were lovers.

He had to go to a board meeting in Switzerland in July. How did that sound—a week in the Alps next summer?

•

Well, it turns out that he does like me.

You didn’t know that?

No, I mean, he likes me seriously.

Silver was quiet.

I guess he did have love in mind. He admitted to daydreaming about me.

Silver sat, her lips pursed.

Aren’t you going to say anything?

No, said Silver.

Why not? Patsy said.

I don’t have anything to say.

Her coldness frightened Patsy. Oh, I’m sure you’re thinking a lot of things, she said. I can feel the thoughts seething in that head of yours.

And what are those thoughts?

You’re thinking, Oh, god, here we go again. She’s like a teenager. Some guy looks twice at her, and off she goes like a firecracker. But at
least this isn’t like it was with Ian, where I was a goner from the get-go. This is much calmer, no beeline to the bedroom. I don’t feel like I’m being swept away.

Is that good?

Didn’t you say it’s better not to hit the hay first thing?

Ideally, there’s
some
erotic charge.

Who said there isn’t? I’m saying we’re not being impulsive.

When Silver didn’t answer, Patsy said, You’re awfully hard to please.

But Silver was only taking her time. When she spoke, her voice was quiet and low, in the way Patsy loved. All possibility bloomed in that voice.

The reason I suggest going slow, Silver said, is not to delay sex for the sake of delaying sex. It’s so you don’t burden a new, fragile acquaintanceship with all the expectations and emotions sex stirs up. Going slow allows you to stay current with yourself, and with each other, so you can face your emotions as they arise and not in one undifferentiated swirl. So you know what you feel and what you need each step of the way.

That’s what I’m trying to do. Move at a manageable pace. Though I do think, deep down, all this taking it slow stuff is a myth. I know that once I kiss a guy, I’m going to sleep with him, and if that goes okay, I’ll move in with him. Unless he bails out on me first, this means that eventually I’ll have to break up with him because I never liked him
that
much in the first place. You’d think that knowing all this would keep me from kissing anybody ever again, at least anybody I didn’t completely adore. But you know what I mean.

Not really, said Silver. I think you’re saying you’ve already kissed this man.

Well, yes.

And then, you’re planning to break up with him.

Not necessarily. I’m trying to say that getting involved isn’t as incremental as you suggest. Once juices get stirred up, it’s specious to pretend that some step-by-step decision-making process is in motion. It’s more like two people agree to leap off a cliff.

I disagree, Silver said quietly. What you describe is a proscription, a set pattern, not intimacy. It is possible for people to remain conscious as they get to know each other. That way, commitment comes from affection
and
self-knowledge.

Self-knowledge is overrated, at least for us alcoholics, said Patsy. There’s even a saying in AA:
Self-knowledge avails us nothing!
I
know
that once I fall in love, I’m as blindered and impelled as a racehorse. I only hope that the next guy is kinder than the last.

But isn’t there a higher, truer self, a self that’s free of addiction and obsession, that knows what’s best for you? said Silver. And isn’t that why you come here? To find and nourish that authentic, unenslaved self?

No, Patsy said with wonder. Not at all. That never even occurred to me.

So tell me, Patsy, why do you come here?

Guilt, she said. How to live with guilt.

•

Cal did seem to be taking his sweet time.

He seemed oddly satisfied with a few minutes of kissing on her sofa.

She’d thought Silver would be pleased with their—or rather, Cal’s—pace. But no. Now she had Patsy worried: there should be some erotic charge.

He kissed her in the parking lot of the Trestle, but only for minutes. One night he didn’t even come up to her apartment after dinner for some tea. Stan was home, he said, and he wanted to see him.

She and Cal rode up the arroyo on Saturdays. She packed lunches, which they ate at the waterfall. On a warm day in February he took her down a new trail into a small, sunny meadow. The grass was green and moist. They unrolled the wool army blanket he carried, Patsy got out the food, but she had no sooner poured water than Cal began kissing her. He nudged her down, rolled on top.

Why, Cal, she said, and his hand cupped between her legs.

She was game, sure, and interested—but caught off guard.

She hardly had time to think; it was thrilling, or would be, if she weren’t so self-conscious about being in an open field a few yards off a public trail. Someone might see, she murmured as he unfastened her jeans.

Just take off one leg, he said, and had to repeat it twice before Patsy understood. One
pant
leg, he meant.

As ordered, she peeled her jeans off one leg, and that indeed made her available to him. How did he know this pant leg trick? It seemed so expert and clandestine. And how surprising to discover that yes, he was
sexually proficient; that had come to seem almost too much to ask. Yes, quite proficient, so much so, she was already coming—that was quick, yet lovely too, out here in the sun and smashed grass, Cal gasping beside her. What a relief that he had some gallop left in him, not to mention naughty expertise.

Well. She couldn’t wait to tell Silver.

•

Of course Cal would go for you, and who can blame him? You’re very attractive. You two make quite the pair.

Audrey and Patsy were separating irises in the backyard. It was the wrong time of year, Audrey said, but it needed to be done.

You’re like a good mix of Marjorie, his first wife, and Peggy, she said. Marjorie was sensible and strong, and Peggy so smart, but also fragile and self-destructive. It always amazed me that Peg had three children, with all her illnesses. She had help, of course, a whole cadre of nannies. She never had to do housework—you won’t either. And like you, Peg loved to laugh. She loved her pills too. Half the time she ran on Valium and vodka.

How did Cal put up with that?

Cal has beautiful detachment, you’ll see. And the truth is, Peg had no talent for reality. You seem to have a much better handle on that than she ever did. But what I’m wondering is—have you and Cal talked about children?

Yes, Patsy said. I don’t want any and Cal can’t have them.

He did that after March. Well—I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but you should know—when March was two, Peggy came up pregnant again, and they made a deal. Peggy would take care of the immediate problem if Cal took care of it on a more permanent basis. So you’d better be sure what
you
want.

I’m sure, Patsy said.

You’d be missing out, Audrey said, dropping her voice. Even with all this, she said, and nodded toward her house, I wouldn’t want to miss any of it. How could you pass up the chance to have your Gilles?