Blame: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

gathered up her tangled hair. The scissors, dull as chopsticks, sometimes only pinched and jammed. Her arms grew tired, the handles bore into her thumb.
    In the morning, her mother, emptying coffee grounds, would spot the snarled, flaxen, thirty-inch-long ponytail in with the butter wrapper and junk mail.
    •
    At the arraignment, Patsy had agreed to an early preliminary hearing in ten days’ time. Now, with the date looming, Benny appeared bedside in his budget suit, suggesting, then urging delay—Let’s continue it, he said. He seemed tired, gentler, though distant.
    No, she said into the pillow, why put it off?
    Because prison is hideous, Patsy. Because you don’t want to go there before you need to or stay any longer than you have to.
    Let’s get it over with, she said.
    Then Benny’s mood improved. The district attorney was in a bargaining mood, thanks to a hampering technicality: Patsy had killed in her own driveway and not on a public roadway, and intoxication was only a factor on public streets. Thus they could trade murder/manslaughter for criminal negligence. Though for two bodies, he could not get her less than four years—she’d serve two and some with good behavior. How did that sound, two and some?
    Two and some, five hundred and some. All the same to her.
    •
    For the first hour, she sat in the wood-paneled courtroom between her mother and her brother Burt. She held their hands as if they alone tethered her to safety. Then Burt left to make some calls.
    She had been here before, or in an identical courtroom, where the cherry veneer walls were alternately smooth and perforated and the overhead lights looked like giant ice-cube trays. Five or six such rooms filled this floor alone, with many more above and below. The judge may or may not have been the same balding older white man who had revoked her license and fined her a thousand dollars the last time.
    In the front of the room, beyond a waist-high partition, a small industry functioned with no particular urgency; bailiff, court recorder, clerk, and district attorney stayed put as defense lawyers and defendants came and went, their assorted felonies processed one after another. Assault. Armed robbery. Burglary. Nobody was in a hurry. Nobody raised a voice in anger, annoyance, or regret. Another assault. Battery. All but the judge spoke with their backs to the room, so much of what was said was inaudible to those on the long wooden pewlike benches who waited for their cases to be called.
    The bailiff, a big black man dressed all in khaki, followed the proceedings with an alert interest that seemed intelligent to Patsy, as if he, of all the people there, registered everything. Several times, after perusing a paper, he left by a side door, only to reappear minutes later with a prisoner in shackles and faded orange pajamas. Whenever that door opened, Patsy craned to see where they’d come from. A stairwell, an iron banister, ascending concrete steps.
    A woman slid into Burt’s seat, a trim, handsome Latina in a tan leather skirt, a fringed tan sweater, tan high-heeled boots. She touched Patsy’s arm. Do you know how I could find out who’s representing my son? she asked. She did not look old enough to have an adult son. I called Legal Aid. They couldn’t say.
    I’m sorry, said Patsy. I have no idea.
    Nobody does. She lifted her chin to indicate the lawyers, judge, bailiff. Nobody here knows anything.
    A man who’d attempted to rob a small grocery store was given a suspended sentence. A trial date was delayed for a shaved-headed gang member held on three hundred and sixty thousand dollars bond. Led back through the door, the kid blew a kiss, no hands, just kiss and puff. Patsy followed the kiss to an ancient grandmother. After this, another general shuffling ensued. The judge scratched an eyebrow as he turned pages, and the court recorder ate a few quick spoonfuls of yogurt.
    The woman in tan leaned in close. They’re so nonchalant here, shesaid,