by Jenna Blum
Sabine tried some of her drink, but now it tasted spoiled in the glass. "Well," she said.
"I'm not looking for your forgiveness," Mrs. Fetters said. "I haven't even come close to forgiving myself. I'm just telling you what I know. He should have told you. You're a nice girl. You deserve to know what's going on."
"I appreciate that," Sabine said. Parsifal in prison. Parsifal in hell.
Then, for the last time that night, Mrs. Fetters surprised Sabine. She reached across the table and picked up Sabine's good hand and held it tight inside her own. "I'll tell you straight, Sabine, I'll tell you what I want from you. Give me and Bertie one more day. Take us around to the places he went to. Show us what he liked. I want to see how it was for him, give myself something good to think about for a change. Even if it's not good, it will be good, because it will be the truth. I'll be thinking about him, how he really was, not just some idea I had. I want that to take back to Nebraska with me." She smiled at Sabine like a mother. "It's a long winter out there, you know, lots of time to think."
Sabine looked down at the table where her hand was swallowed up. Suddenly she was tired enough to cry, tired enough to sleep. She knew it would come sooner or later. "I need—," she said, but could not finish.
"You need to think about it," Mrs. Fetters said. She squeezed the hand and let it go. "Of course you do. You know where you can find me."
Sabine nodded. "I can tell you in the morning. It would be wrong for me not to give this some thought."
"Sure, honey," Mrs. Fetters said.
Sabine pushed back from the table and stood up. "Good night," she said. She waited but it looked like Mrs. Fetters planned to stay for a while, contemplating last call.
"I'm glad you came over," Mrs. Fetters said.
Sabine nodded and got to the door before she stopped. There was no one left in the bar. Just the bartender. The music was off. It was like speaking across a dining room. She did not raise her voice. "Thank you for going with me," she said, and held up her hand.
"That?" Mrs. Fetters said. "That's nothing."
In the car Sabine turned the music up loud. Parsifal kept the glove compartment stuffed with cassettes, mostly operas, scratchy recordings from the twenties. He liked Caruso. He liked Wagner, the story of Parsifal he had named himself for years before he had listened to the opera all the way through. The name sounded so much more like a magician than the more traditional Percival. The brave underdog knight. The one who finds the grail. The only one, in the end, who is left standing. She did not think of Lowell, Nebraska, then, sailing over the empty freeways home. She did not think of it driving on Sunset Boulevard, which was always awake, the billboard advertisements for new films bright as movie screens, the twenty-foot feces of famous people staring vacantly in her direction. She did not think of it as she drove into the hills of bird-named streets, or locked her car inside her own garage, or walked down the dark hallways of her own house. She did not think of it at all until she was in bed and it was quiet. Nebraska Boys Reformatory Facility. Facility. Boys who habitually stole from grocery stores. Boys who loved fire and burned up dry grass fields in summers, hay barns in the winter. Boys who would not stop fighting, broke the noses and jaws of smaller boys. Mean, stupid boys who could not be taught the difference between right and wrong, never having seen it themselves. Boys who took girl cousins down to the creekbed at family reunion picnics and raped them. Boys who held those same girl cousins under the water later on to keep them from talking. Boys who knew what to do with a lead pipe, knew how to make a knife from a comb. The authorities locked them together in Lowell, Nebraska, let them discipline each other. And then they disciplined them. Parsifal, in his white tuxedo shirt of Egyptian sea-combed cotton. Parsifal, who walked out of the theater when the space alien split through the lining of the astronaut's stomach. He gave money to Greenpeace. Where, exactly, was Greenpeace when the seven boys in the shower went to put their shoes on before kicking you in the stomach, in the back? But he never let on, not for a minute. He picked up checks, wasted time, slept late. In Los Angeles he was never afraid. So maybe that was why he didn't tell her. Maybe it was better to keep it that far away, to never have to look at someone who was remembering when you have made such a concerted effort to forget.
But Sabine would never know for sure. This was one more legacy. Something else to keep watch over.
The field is so flat that she cannot judge its size. It goes on forever and in every direction it is flat. There is no point on which to fix her eyes, just green, a green so tender and delicate it makes her want to bite into it. Sabine is standing in warm water, the new green shoots surrounding her ankles, her feet sinking into a soft mud she cannot see. There has never been so much flatness, so much green.
"Sabine!" Phan says, and waves. In his hands he is carrying a bouquet of Mona Lisa lilies. Their slender leaves reflect the brilliant sun. He walks towards her like a man who knows how to walk through rice. He moves without losing his balance or damaging the plants. His pants are neatly rolled to his knees. They are dry and clean.
Sabine loves him. She cannot remember ever being so happy to see anyone in her life. "I am not alone," she says. She doesn't mean to say it aloud, but it makes Phan smile hugely. The air is humid and sweet. Like the water, it seems to be alive.
"I behaved so badly," he says. He leans over and floats the heavy bouquet beside them in the water and then takes her hands, but she pulls her hands away so that she can hold him in her arms, put her arms around his neck. She can almost smell the sun on his skin as she presses her lips to his ear.
"I'm so sorry," she says. "To think that I could have blamed you for anything. I know you were doing what you thought was best."
"I should have explained—"
"Sh," she says. "Don't think of it." It is such a strong feeling, the joy of being with Phan, who understands, the joy of not being alone, that for a minute she thinks she is in love with him. In love with the dead gay lover of the dead gay man she was in love with. She laughs.
"What?" Phan asks.
"Just happy." Sabine steps back to see him. He looks even better now. He is perfect in this field, breaking the line between the green shoots and blue skies. "Where are we?"
"Vietnam," Phan says proudly. "I was going to come back but I thought, Sabine should really see this."
"Vietnam," Sabine says. Who would have thought it could be such a beautiful place? All the times that Sabine had heard about Vietnam, thought about it, no one had mentioned it as beautiful. "I can't believe it."
"My father came here from France in 1946. Did I ever tell you that?" Phan takes her arm and walks her down the long wet path through the limitless fields. "He was a contractor. He was supposed to come here for two years and build roads but he stayed and stayed. He married my mother, they had a family. In his soul, my father is Vietnamese. He loves it here."
"Your father still lives here?" Sabine says, her toes tracing through the soft muck.
Phan laughs. "Good Lord, Father has been dead forever."
Sabine nods. Clearly condolences are not in order. "When did you leave?"
"My parents sent me to study in Paris in 1965. It was a difficult year. 65. I never came back until now." He stops and looks out at the landscape. "I had a little white dog," he says. "The dog had a red leather collar." When he turns to her there are tears in his eyes and he touches her hair with the very tips of his fingers. "Isn't it funny, the things we miss the most, the things that really can break our hearts?"
"What was the dog's name?" she asks.
"Con Chuot. Mouse. My father said I couldn't take the dog and so he gave me the mouse, a tin mouse to remember my Mouse at home. Do you still have it?"
"Of course," she says.
"I was very loyal to that mouse," he tells her. "I took it everywhere with me. All the time I wanted my dog." He sighs and then smiles. "I'm happy in Vietnam, Sabine. I find it relaxing. We keep saying once things settle down we're going to spend more time here."
Sabine looks behind her. Nothing could hide in this field. "Is Parsifal here?"
Phan reaches up, rubs her neck in the exact place it has been bothering her. "Not this time. He's back in L.A. He stays very close to you. It's just that he's so—well, so embarrassed about all of this."
"But he shouldn't be. My God, with all that happened to him."
"Ah," Phan says, "things happened to you, to me. He shouldn't have kept this to himself. I understand, but still, he should have thought it through."
"You may be underestimating things," Sabine says, but her voice is kind. It is very important not to frighten Phan off, never to hurt him. For one thing, she has no idea how she would get home from Vietnam.
Phan smiles at her. "Death gives a person a lot of perspective."
"Well then, Parsifal should know that he can talk to me, that he should come to see me."
"He will," Phan says, "he's getting there."
Sabine reaches down and brushes the top of the rice with the flat of her palm. The bottom of her nightgown is soaked and it clings to her legs. "But now you want to talk to me about his mother."
"It comes back to perspective," Phan says, "the larger picture. There is a woman with, a good heart. A woman who maybe didn't make all the right choices, a woman who's told a few lies, but really, when did any of us get everything right?"
"But if Parsifal didn't want to have anything to do with her, why should I? I like her fine, I do, but when I think about all of it..." She can hardly make herself think about it. Parsifal not in heaven, not in Vietnam, but in hell.
"In his life Parsifal, like his mother, probably did the best he could. But in his death he wants better. He looks back and sees where there could have been reconciliation, forgiveness. These are the things you think about. But what can he do?" Phan looks away, as if he is looking for Parsifal to walk up out of the field, and Sabine looks, too. "What he can do, Sabine, is ask you to do that for him, and even though he wants it, he can't ask because he knows it's too much. So what does he do? He asks me to ask. That is the way we are joined, you and me: We don't know how to turn Parsifal down. His heart is perfect. It isn't that he wants to take advantage of either of us, but what he wants to do he can't, because he's dead." Phan stops and looks at her closely to make sure she's following everything he's saying. "That leaves you."
"It's all right," Sabine says. "So I take them out. So I forgive her. She says she doesn't need my forgiveness, but I know she does. If that's what Parsifal wants, forgiveness and a day's tour of Los Angeles, I can do that. Tell him I can do that."
Phan puts two fingers to his lips, and then, as if he remembers he no longer has a need to bite his nails, drops his hand. "That's good," he says. "And if—if something else was needed, something you felt you could do, you'd do that, too, wouldn't you?"
"You're not giving me much information here."
"I don't know the future. I have my suspicions, but who can really say for sure? All I care about now is that we understand each other. You know what Parsifal wants—forgiveness, support. And if it took a little more time to achieve this..."
Sabine waits, but he never finishes his sentence. "Of course," she says.
Phan hugs her again. "He does believe there will be a benefit in all of this to you, and so do I." She can hear the relief in his voice. "We worry about you. You spend too much time alone. Too much time on grief."
"It's only been two weeks," she says.
"Still," Phan says. He looks at the bandage on her hand, touches the white tape around the stitches. "I was sorry about this. I saw that knife go straight into your hand. Did it hurt much?"
Sabine thinks about it, but it all seems so far away. "I can't remember," she says. "I don't think so."
"Good," Phan says, and he kisses the bandage over her hand. "That's what we like to hear."
Sabine slept late. Despite the sun in the room and the rabbit nudging at her, wanting food, she did not wake up until after nine. When she did wake up, she felt better about everything. What else was she going to do today, anyway? Work on a shopping mall? Go through the dresser drawers again? Sleep? Why not call Dot and Bertie? All she knew for sure was that the story was complicated, it happened a long time ago, and she was only getting part of it. Parsifal had taken care of them in the will, he had been helping them for years. Wasn't that a sign, a kind of forgiveness? Besides, whatever it was, it was one day. Tomorrow they would be going back to Nebraska.
The phone hadn't made it through one whole ring when Bertie answered. "Hello," she whispered, her voice low and suspicious.
Sabine had almost forgotten about Bertie, who had slept peacefully through all the revelations of the night. "Bertie, it's Sabine."
"Sabine?" she said. "How are you?"
"I'm fine. Your mother and I talked last night about going out today. I could drive you around, show you some places that Parsifal liked."
"Mom's not up yet," she whispered. "It isn't like her, but the room is so dark, and the time change and all. Maybe it just threw her off."
It was an hour later in Nebraska. "We were up pretty late," Sabine said. She found that she was whispering back and stopped it. "After you went to bed, we got together and talked. Have you been out yet? You're not just sitting there in the dark, are you?"
"I don't want to wake her," Bertie said.
Sabine thought about how often she had sat in a dark hotel room, waiting for Parsifal to wake up. All the endless places she had sat, waiting. It must be a family trait. Half of them sleep, half of them wait. "Put your mother on the phone."
"She's sleeping."
"Well, she told me to call her in the morning and wake her up so we could go. I'm just doing what I said I'd do." Enough of waiting for Fetters to wake up.
"Um," said Bertie. The line was quiet for a minute, as if she were really thinking it through. "Okay," she said finally, "hold on." She put the phone down softly. Sabine could hear her cross the short distance between the two hotel beds. "Mom?" she said, her voice still a whisper. "Mama, wake up. It's Sabine. She says we're going out today." There was a pause, most likely for a touch to the shoulder and then a gentle shake.
Sabine wondered how much longer Mrs. Fetters had stayed on in the bar. Last call had only been minutes away, but clearly that bartender liked her. Maybe she should have let her sleep.
"Mama?"
"Hum?"
"Sabine's on the phone."
"Sabine?"
"She's taking us someplace, she says. She wants to talk to you."
There was rustling, the click of the light switch. Sabine could almost feel Dot's bones shift as she stretched. "Hello," Mrs. Fetters said. It was the voice of a late sleeper, someone who would not be awake for at least an hour after they were up and dressed.
"It's Sabine. I'm sorry to wake you."
"You didn't wake me," Mrs. Fetters said.
Just like Parsifal, who slept more than anyone in the world and always lied about being asleep. "I just wanted to tell you, yes, I'd be happy to take you and Bertie around today if you're still interested." It was easier now. They had found something out about each other. They knew, to some small extent, what they were dealing with.
"How's your hand feel?"
Sabine looked down at her hand and was half surprised to see it taped up. She had forgotten about it until the question was asked. "It's fine," she said. She lifted it, turned it side to side. "It feels much better."
Even under these difficult circumstances, Sabine was glad to show off her city. Los Angeles, she felt, was maligned because it was misunderstood. It was the beautiful girl you resented, the one who was born with straight teeth and good skin. The one with the natural social graces and family money who surprised you by dancing the Argentine tango at a wedding. While Iowa struggled through the bitter knife of winter and New York folded in crime and the South remained backwards and divided, Los Angeles pushed her slender feet into the sand along the Pacific and took in the sun. The rest of the countr
y put out the trash on Wednesday nights and made small, regular payments against a washing machine and waited through the long night for the Land of Milk and Honey to get hers. And, oh, how America loved it when it happened. They called in sick to work and kept their children home from school so they could watch it together on television as a family, the fate of a city too blessed. The fires shot through the canyons, the floods washed the supports out from beneath the houses that lined the hills over the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. There were earthquakes. There were riots. America leaned over: "Dangerous," they whispered to their children. "I always told you that." It was true, in the orderly city the boys packed together and murdered one another and then themselves in brutal festivals. There were places you could no longer go at night and then places you could not go during the day. The city kept its head down. Everyone would say, It is not the same.
But Sabine never thought in terms of having allegiance to her country. She loved Los Angeles. Sabine would always choose to stay. She had lived through every tragedy and shame and they only served to draw her and her city closer together. What would she be without the palm trees, without the Hollywood Hills? She had been born in Israel, but she was shaped by tight squares of regularly watered lawns, by layers of deep purple bougainvillea blooming on top of garages. She heard languages she could not identify and they were music. She smelled the ocean. She loved to drive. After she and Parsifal finished a show, they would almost always drive the long way home, up and over Mulholland, to watch the lights in the canyon. "Try getting that in North Dakota," he would say to her. They lived in the magnificence of a well-watered desert where things that could not possibly exist, thrived. They lived on the edge of a country that would not have cared for them anyway, and they were loved. They were home. Do not speak badly of Los Angeles to Parsifal and Sabine.
