Read Online Blame: A Novel by Michelle Huneven - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michelle Huneven
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two-hour wait to see her. Both parents seemed forlorn, old, and fragile, but her mother looked ill, her skin pale, her belly oddly swollen. Patsy wept throughout their visit. Mom, don’t come again, Patsy told her. We’ll talk on the phone, we’ll write. Send Dad and Burt. Don’t go through this again.
We’ll see how it goes, honey, she said.
Her father and Burt alternated after that. Her friend Sarah made the tedious four-hour drive from Pasadena once. Otherwise, Brice was her most regular visitor, showing up every month or so. Patsy first wondered at this constancy, so missing when they were lovers, then came to rely on it. He always caused a stir in the visiting room. Some women were convinced he was a movie star or Paul Newman’s brother. A somebody.
Patsy, and all the others, lived for letters, proof they weren’t forgotten.
I went down to Altadena last week and met with your new tenants,
wrote Burt.
He’s postdoc at Caltech—microbiology—and she’s an economist looking for work.
Your father prays for you every night
, her mother wrote.
I hear him in the kitchen talking to his Higher Power.
Sarah wrote,
I miss you, I worry about you, please let me know what I can do, what I can send you to read.
•
Gloria and Annie half hoisted her between them. Flattered that they bothered, she went along.
Nine women sat in a circle in the classroom behind the guard station. Gloria and Annie, of course, and Ruth too, who wasn’t a drunk but applied the program to her pyromania—
I am powerless over setting fires.
Yvonne told of having her kids taken away and shooting up her pimp with bad heroin. Barbi described waiting tables drunk, spilling soup and drinks on customers. Gail’s mother got her drunk the first time when she was six. All the women sang the glories of AA, of God, of not having to drink.
Patsy recoiled at the loser litanies and simplistic religiosity. She might have a genetic propensity for alcoholism, but she’d always stayed on track, accumulating degrees and honors and publications in spite of a concomitant taste for liquor, pharmaceuticals, and rich boy wastrels. She’d been valedictorian
and
Party Hardiest in high school, the first in her family to matriculate into a University of California grad school
and
a California correctional institution. She, at least, had range.
Not for me, Patsy told Gloria afterward. Besides, I’m not sure I want to give up alcohol for the rest of my life.
How ’bout one day at a time?
That’s sophistry, said Patsy. Everybody knows it means forever.
They do? Gloria shrugged. So drink till you’re done. Then, if you feel like a meeting, they’re around. Oh, look, here’s Ruth with coffee.
After the big show Gloria and Annie had made of dragging her to an AA meeting, she thought, they might have fought a little harder to make her stay.
•
Benny came to see her. This is a surprise, Patsy said.
I told you I was coming.
I mean the sport shirt. I’ve never seen you outside a suit. She pointed to the wall of vending machines. You buying?
They sat at one of the long metal picnic tables, chips and sodas between them. So, Benito, whassup? she said.
In fact, someone would like to visit you, Benny said. Someone not on your list. Mark Parnham?
Fear squeezed her veins shut.
Name ring a bell?
Don’t be sadistic. What does he want?
To talk to you. Get to know you a little. You up for it?
Oh god. What could I say to him? But I should see him, if he wants that.
You don’t have to. Or there can be a mediator.
I’ll see him. But alone.
You’ll have to put him on your list first.
And send him the questionnaire, thought Patsy. That would take at least a month to process. What does he want? she asked. Did he say?
To meet you. Talk. But it’s up to you, Patsy.
How can I refuse him?
•
I have a new boyfriend
, wrote Sarah.
Do you remember Henry Croft, in anthropology? We started talking at a party at Kelley’s and haven’t stopped since.
I got that
We’ll see how it goes, honey, she said.
Her father and Burt alternated after that. Her friend Sarah made the tedious four-hour drive from Pasadena once. Otherwise, Brice was her most regular visitor, showing up every month or so. Patsy first wondered at this constancy, so missing when they were lovers, then came to rely on it. He always caused a stir in the visiting room. Some women were convinced he was a movie star or Paul Newman’s brother. A somebody.
Patsy, and all the others, lived for letters, proof they weren’t forgotten.
I went down to Altadena last week and met with your new tenants,
wrote Burt.
He’s postdoc at Caltech—microbiology—and she’s an economist looking for work.
Your father prays for you every night
, her mother wrote.
I hear him in the kitchen talking to his Higher Power.
Sarah wrote,
I miss you, I worry about you, please let me know what I can do, what I can send you to read.
•
Gloria and Annie half hoisted her between them. Flattered that they bothered, she went along.
Nine women sat in a circle in the classroom behind the guard station. Gloria and Annie, of course, and Ruth too, who wasn’t a drunk but applied the program to her pyromania—
I am powerless over setting fires.
Yvonne told of having her kids taken away and shooting up her pimp with bad heroin. Barbi described waiting tables drunk, spilling soup and drinks on customers. Gail’s mother got her drunk the first time when she was six. All the women sang the glories of AA, of God, of not having to drink.
Patsy recoiled at the loser litanies and simplistic religiosity. She might have a genetic propensity for alcoholism, but she’d always stayed on track, accumulating degrees and honors and publications in spite of a concomitant taste for liquor, pharmaceuticals, and rich boy wastrels. She’d been valedictorian
and
Party Hardiest in high school, the first in her family to matriculate into a University of California grad school
and
a California correctional institution. She, at least, had range.
Not for me, Patsy told Gloria afterward. Besides, I’m not sure I want to give up alcohol for the rest of my life.
How ’bout one day at a time?
That’s sophistry, said Patsy. Everybody knows it means forever.
They do? Gloria shrugged. So drink till you’re done. Then, if you feel like a meeting, they’re around. Oh, look, here’s Ruth with coffee.
After the big show Gloria and Annie had made of dragging her to an AA meeting, she thought, they might have fought a little harder to make her stay.
•
Benny came to see her. This is a surprise, Patsy said.
I told you I was coming.
I mean the sport shirt. I’ve never seen you outside a suit. She pointed to the wall of vending machines. You buying?
They sat at one of the long metal picnic tables, chips and sodas between them. So, Benito, whassup? she said.
In fact, someone would like to visit you, Benny said. Someone not on your list. Mark Parnham?
Fear squeezed her veins shut.
Name ring a bell?
Don’t be sadistic. What does he want?
To talk to you. Get to know you a little. You up for it?
Oh god. What could I say to him? But I should see him, if he wants that.
You don’t have to. Or there can be a mediator.
I’ll see him. But alone.
You’ll have to put him on your list first.
And send him the questionnaire, thought Patsy. That would take at least a month to process. What does he want? she asked. Did he say?
To meet you. Talk. But it’s up to you, Patsy.
How can I refuse him?
•
I have a new boyfriend
, wrote Sarah.
Do you remember Henry Croft, in anthropology? We started talking at a party at Kelley’s and haven’t stopped since.
I got that
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