The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  "The flight will take it out of you," Dot said, relieved. "And it's not like your life has been so normal lately. You don't need to eat this. Have you had enough?"

  Sabine said she'd never really been hungry at all.

  "Sure, baby. This has been a long day. You go on to bed. If you need anything, sing out. I'll be up for a while still."

  Bertie looked up from her dinner. "I'm sorry about all this," she said. "Mama's right. I could keep it to myself."

  "You have," Sabine said. "I have no idea what's going on."

  They all said their good-nights and Sabine headed down the dim hallway, past pictures of people she did not know and some who looked familiar. The voices of her parents stayed in her ears. What, exactly, could she have been thinking of?

  But in the room that was his room, Sabine felt different. She felt a rush of that privacy that comes not from being alone but from being with the one person you are completely comfortable with. The door was made of hollow plywood, so light that one good slam would take it off the hinges. It had no lock and there was a full inch gap beneath it where the light from the hall came in. But closed, this door was freedom itself. How he must have hidden in that room, begged to be sent there for punishment. There was not a single corner of it that he hadn't memorized, no pale water stain on the ceiling or separation of baseboard and wall that he didn't know. She ran her hands flat over the top of the dresser and felt his hands, small then, reaching for socks inside the drawers. Sabine sat down on the red bedspread. Every night he had slept in one of these beds. On some fortunate weekends, a boy from school had slept in the other, and they would lie awake in the dark and talk about what life would be like once they grew up and left. Parsifal would wake up in the middle of the night and watch that boy sleeping, the warm expansions of his narrow chest, the legs a careless tangle in the sheets; and he wanted to crawl into that bed without knowing exactly why. With his head on that boy's pillow, he knew sleep would come quickly.

  It was a long way from the bedroom she had imagined in Connecticut, the one with the yellow Labrador and the big windows and bunk beds.

  Sabine put on a pair of pajamas she'd bought for Phan to wear in the hospital and slid into the small bed. The sheets smelled pleasantly of laundry detergent, though what had she been expecting? When she turned off the light, she listened to the wind circle the house like a pack of howling dogs. The wind made Sabine nervous. She thought of all that emptiness, Nebraska stretching out flat in every direction like a Spanish map of the world. In her mind she tried to conjure the sounds of helicopters and police cars to sing herself to sleep, the reassuring hum of civilization.

  During the night she finds herself in the middle of a snowfield. She is not in Vietnam, but she is not afraid because her feet are bare and the snow is deep and the pajamas she bought for Phan that he never got around to wearing are thin as the wind presses them hard against her chest, and still she is not cold. This is how she knows it is a dream. The sky is clear and the moon is so bright against the snow that Sabine could read a letter. As long as it is light and she is not cold, there is nothing to be afraid of. She waits less than a minute before seeing Phan, a small black outline moving towards her. His legs are working hard against the drifts. He is wearing the sable hat that Parsifal bought for him in Russia, the hat that is now lying beside her suitcase, which is on the twin bed she is not sleeping in. "Hey," she calls out, and waves as she starts towards him. It is like walking through a field of deep, loose flour that forms itself to the impression of her foot after every step.

  "I can't believe you got here first."

  "I was already here," she says, knowing good and well that even in her sleep she is still in Nebraska. The closer she gets to him through the labor of snow, the lighter she feels. Sabine never had a real lover. There were men she had dinner with, men she slept with, some for long periods of time. But there was never a man she wanted to run to when she saw him, a man in whose neck she longed to bury her face and recount every detail of her day. There was never a man she felt could make every difference simply by holding her to his chest and saying her name. Except for Parsifal, and he was not a lover. Except, now, for Phan, who takes her into his arms and lifts her up above his head, towards the clear night and the stars.

  "I have absolutely no reason to be here," he says. "I just wanted to see for myself how you were doing. Nebraska," he says, gesturing out to the field. "Can you believe it?"

  "No," she says honestly.

  "Growing up, I was Saigon, Paris, L.A. Nothing like this. When Parsifal first brought me here—"

  "Do you come here much?"

  "Parsifal likes it," he says. "He's very interested in his family, very interested in reviewing his life. It's a phase: At first I was in Vietnam all the time, now I only go because I enjoy the country."

  "Have you been to his house?"

  "Oh, sure," he says. "He wants to see his sisters, his mother. One night when we were there we lay down on the beds, those little twin beds."

  Sabine closes her eyes, sees them there in the darkness, fully dressed, their hands clasped formally over their chests as if dead. They were not there with her. They were there together, with each other. "I don't know why I'm here," she says.

  "There's a reason. When you can get some distance, you start to see patterns. Everything Ms into place." He lifts his hand to the darkness. From the moonlight on the snow, Sabine can see his face so clearly. Phan is happy, death has given him that. "It's all so orderly, really, it's shocking."

  "But I don't have distance," she says, her voice failing her for a second. "I'm here by myself. I'm in the middle of it. I can't make sense out of anything."

  He cups his hand around her neck, skims a thumb across her smooth cheek. She does not mean to be comforted, and yet she is. It is what she wants, to be touched and held, to be promised things regardless of the truth. "Everything will be fine," he says.

  He opens up his coat for her, though it isn't cold, and she steps inside it and leans against the soft sweater on his chest. When he folds his arm over her back she thinks, Keep me here, exactly like this. Let me stand here forever. "All right," she says.

  "All right," he says, and rests his cheek against her hair, and if they do not stand there together forever, they stand for a very long time, and Sabine has no memory of it ending.

  There was nothing like waking in an unfamiliar darkness. Sabine blinked, her fingers tried to understand the blankets. Is it home, is it my bed? No. The hospital, then, Phan's room? Parsifal's? No. Am I somehow back in my old apartment, my parents' house, did none of this happen? No. Far away she heard the faintest sound, a second of scraping, a chair against the floor, and she used the sound to navigate her way back to Parsifal's room in Nebraska. She thought she smelled a cigarette and then didn't, but it stayed in her mind. The electric clock said 1:30. Sabine closed her eyes and waited but nothing came. She turned and pushed her head under the pillows and then turned again. Sleep felt like it was over for good.

  There was nothing to do but get up. Barefoot and dazed, Sabine went down the hall. Dot or Bertie, one of them, was smoking a cigarette in the kitchen. Sabine had gone to sleep too early. She should have known she would wake up. If she had been smart, she would just now be going to bed.

  The woman in the kitchen had her back to the door. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was pulled into a ponytail so that her pale neck was exposed. With her head bent forward, Sabine could see the shadows cast from the top vertebra of her spine. She was smoking with too much concentration to know that anyone else was in the room. There were already two cigarettes crushed out in the saucer beside her. A light haze of smoke ringed the overhead light. Even from the back, even without knowing her, Sabine recognized the girl in the picture.

  "Kitty?"

  The woman looked up at her and smiled from her brother's face, the pale blue dog eyes tilting up ever so slightly, the shadow smudged beneath the lower lip. Sabine felt confused, suddenly remembering that she had b
een dreaming and thinking that this was part of the dream: She goes to Nebraska to find Parsifal but he is a woman. The woman was wearing a sweatshirt and slim jeans, socks but no shoes. She was Parsifal's mother, the one Sabine had made up, the one who worked crossword puzzles in the car in Connecticut, the woman Sabine made from his rib while he slept.

  "Sabine," the woman said. She dropped her cigarette in the saucer and rose from her chair. She came right to Sabine and took her in her arms. Sabine had been held minutes ago and it was like this and not like this. The woman smelled like smoke and salt, and beneath that she smelled like soap and powder. Sabine brought up her arms, lightly touched the woman's back. Kitty held Sabine just a second longer than she should have and when she stepped back she was smiling and just beginning to cry.

  "What a good first impression I make," she said. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and laughed. Parsifal always laughed when he cried. He laughed when he was embarrassed about anything.

  "I cry all the time these days."

  "I'm so sorry about dinner. I thought I'd get over here fine and I didn't get here until the middle of the night."

  Did she know how much she looked like Parsifal? Could she see it in the photographs? "I wasn't even hungry."

  "I probably woke you up. Did I wake you up?"

  "I don't think so," Sabine said. Had she been awake? She had the distinct impression of having been outside and she wondered if she would ever walk in her sleep. The thought made her shiver and she peered out the window. In the light of a street lamp she saw two aluminum poles with no clothesline strung between them.

  "It's still going like a son-of-a-bitch out there."

  "I'm not entirely awake," Sabine said.

  Kitty looked worried. Parsifal's face, so completely his face that Sabine could look at it all night. She had watched that face for twenty-two years. She had seen that face in stage makeup, she had seen it with fevers and asleep. She would know it anywhere. "Go back to bed," Kitty said. "You must be exhausted. I know I woke you."

  Sabine yawned, shook her head, sat down at the table. "May I have one of these?" she said, picking up the pack.

  "You smoke? I didn't think anybody in California smoked."

  "I don't, but I'm not in California."

  Sabine tried three times to work the lighter and then Kitty reached over and took it from her. When she pushed the button down, a flame shot out of the blue plastic. "Childproof," she said. The two women sat and smoked, each trying not to stare at the other.

  "I appreciate your being so nice to my mother," Kitty said. "Looking after her when she was in Los Angeles and then coming out here to visit. It's really helped her."

  "Your mother's great."

  Kitty gave a small nod of halfhearted agreement. "She is, but still a lot of people wouldn't have done it. They wouldn't want to be bothered. We're all way back there in the past."

  There was a time when Sabine believed in keeping what was private to herself, but now everything that mattered to her felt spilled. It had all gotten away from her somehow. "I haven't been doing so well with all of this," she said. "Your mother and Bertie were good to me, too."

  Kitty seemed to understand; maybe she wasn't doing so well herself. "I'm sorry about not coming to Guy's funeral. If there had been any way, I would have been there."

  "You didn't know," Sabine said. "I didn't know."

  "I still feel bad about it." She covered her eyes with her hand and shook her head. "I can't believe I'm sitting here talking to Guy's wife."

  Why did there seem to be such a difference between being Guy's wife and being Parsifal's wife? Sabine didn't know Guy. She felt like she was lying, setting herself up for another evening of revelation like the one she'd had with Dot at the Sheraton. She was Parsifal's wife. "Listen," she said. "I just need to be clear about something."

  "Guy was gay."

  Sabine sighed. "Did your mother tell you?"

  "He was always gay," Kitty said, blowing smoke towards the ceiling, her neck stretched back. "I think I may have been the one who told my mother. I can't remember."

  "Okay."

  "I don't care how you worked out being married. What I care about is that you knew him, you were there with him. You were with him all those years when I wasn't. You were with him when he died." Kitty stopped and considered this. "Were you?" she said. "Right there with him?"

  Sabine nodded. She went back to that room again, saw him there in the blank white light of the Cedars Sinai basement, laid out on the tongue of the MRI machine. She pushed the thought away.

  Kitty waited for something else. When nothing came she asked, "And it was...?" Kitty looked at her so hard. Sabine's hand holding the cigarette stayed perfectly still, halfway between the table and her lips.

  "Very quick. He had a headache, the aneurism burst. That was it."

  Kitty's eyes filled up again, and she turned them away. Sabine would have said Kitty looked older than her brother, were it not for the fact that he had aged so much at the end. For years he was younger, for a while they had been the same age, and then, at the end of his life, he was older again.

  Kitty dabbed her nose on the cuff of her sweatshirt. "Did my mother tell you I have a son named Guy? My younger boy. My oldest is Howard, for his father, but my other boy is Guy. I wonder if I should change his name now. I think it's harder to get a good spot on the football team if your name is Parsifal."

  "Might as well leave it alone, then."

  Kitty smiled so slightly, so quickly, that when it was over Sabine wasn't sure she had seen it at all. "Parsifal is a good name for a magician. It's a lot better than anything he had picked out when we were kids. He had a whole school notebook full of names. There were three categories." She held up three fingers to make the point. "There was general alias, that was going to be his everyday name, then there would be a stage name, and then he would pick out a third name that would be his backup, so that if anyone ever found out he changed his name he would give his third name as his real name. The third name was the real genius of the plan. The third name was always deceptively dull. He practiced writing them all the time. He said he wanted his signatures to be convincing."

  No one knew more about practice than Parsifal. Work a routine until it was inside you, until you could feel all fifty-two cards in the deck as separate pieces in your hand. Work it until it no longer looked like work. "You can't always trust what you think, what you know," he would tell Sabine. "But you can always trust your nature. You have to make the tricks your nature."

  "Ted Petrie," Sabine said. "That was the third name. There was no alias."

  Kitty nodded. "That one was on the list. Ted for Ted Williams and Petrie for Rob Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke show. Rob Williams was on the list, too."

  "He must have really wanted out of here," Sabine said.

  "Like you wouldn't believe."

  Sabine's feet were getting cold and she pulled them up on the chair. In Los Angeles it had been hard not to take things personally: What reason did he have to lie to her? But in Nebraska, in this kitchen, it didn't seem so much like lying. He had remade his life, and when he was finished it was the only life he knew. In Nebraska this seemed reasonable, smart, a wool coat with toggles. "What about you?" Sabine said. "Did you have a book of names?"

  Kitty shrugged. The gesture made her seem oddly girlish. "There were a few. I never had Guy's imagination. He had real vision when it came to these things. Sometimes he made up names for me. Assistant names. Ophelia, Candy—we had a big range."

  "Magician's assistant?"

  "I was going to have your job, but that was only on the days he was going to be a magician. He was still thinking of a lot of things back then. If he'd decided to go with being a professional baseball player, there wouldn't have been much of a spot for me. Batgirl, maybe."

  When Guy was twelve years old, there was no Sabine. Sabine was a child in the Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles, drinking orange juice her mother squeezed in their juicer, che
cking out books from the library on the great castles of the world. No one in Alliance could have imagined Sabine. There was no need for her because her part would be played by Kitty, patient in instruction, diligent in practice. What was needed was a girl who could hold a hat and appear amazed every time a rabbit was extracted. A girl who knew how to smile and wave. Kitty was that girl. Spine straight, shoulders back. Kitty had thought, in the way that children think of such things, that this would be what she would do forever. In truth it was not such a great job, but all these years later Sabine felt she had somehow stolen it from this woman on the other side of the kitchen table. The life that Parsifal had left had come down hard on Kitty—marriage, two children, all that work and endless winters. Every day of it showed on her. But had she left with him at sixteen or seventeen, Sabine could see how she would have been the beautiful girl. Put her in lilac silk, wrap netting and beads around her bare shoulders. She would have done fine. She would have done well.

  It was past being late. Even the snow had given up. In every direction there was sleep and stillness and dark. There was no time like this in Los Angeles. It was never this late.

  "I'll admit it," Kitty said. "That night we first saw you on Carson, I thought, That was supposed to be me."

  "But it could have been," Sabine said, and the thought troubled her. "Just as easily you as me."

  "My brother and I were very close when we were growing up," Kitty said. Her voice was tired, as if she'd had enough of going over this. "The plan, our plan, was that we were going to wait out childhood as best we could and then go away together, maybe go to New York, change our names. I know there are kids all over the world who go to bed at night saying that they're going to move to New York and change their names, but you get older and you forget about it, except Guy. He did that, exactly. He did everything he said he was going to do except"—she stopped and smiled to show that she had made peace with everything—"take me with him, and I understand that, you know, I really do. It's like a prison break. There's just a lot better chance of being successful if you go it alone." She put out her cigarette with one clean twist and then lit another one. Her hands were perfectly steady. "That was all a long time ago. I don't think about it now. I have two wonderful boys. I'm very close to my family." She shook her head. "I'm talking too much," she said. "I don't think I'm making sense."