The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  "'Lo," How said. (Howard? Sabine thought. Doesn't anybody around here go by their name?) He shook her hand gently, awkwardly, as if the occasion to shake a woman's hand had not come up in his life until now.

  "Hello," said Guy. His shake was more defined. He looked at her clearly for a minute before dropping his eyes back to the floor.

  "They've been so excited about coming over to meet you," Dot said, completely oblivious to their lack of excitement. Or maybe that was just the way boys were at that age. Sabine couldn't remember. She hadn't been around teenagers since she was one herself, and even then she hadn't had much of an understanding of them as a group. She felt as if she were trying to speak to someone without knowing a word of their language. She fought an impulse to raise her voice.

  "Parsifal, your uncle, he would have loved to have met you." He would have. These handsome boys, Kitty's boys, would have thrilled him.

  "Parsifal," Guy said. "Mom told us he changed his name."

  "He was a magician. That was the name he used for the act, and then it turned into the name he used all the time." Was she pitching this too low? How much information did these boys have, anyway? Uncle Guy killed. Grandpa years and years before you were born, not two feet from where you're standing.

  "I was named for him," Guy said, making the connection just in case she'd missed it.

  "Then you're lucky," Sabine said.

  "I made cookies," Dot said. "Could I interest you boys in some cookies and milk?"

  To Sabine this seemed ridiculous, a parody of some television idea of what goes on between grandmothers and grandsons, but the boys brightened considerably at the mention of food. They made agreeable sounds that were not exactly words, took off their coats, and sat down at the table while Dot poured tall glasses of milk as white as their young teeth.

  "So what did you do all afternoon?" Dot said, laying cookies out on a plate.

  "Looked around at Parsifal's things. I read a book." Sabine hoped she wouldn't be asked what book she'd read, although she wondered if the Hardy Boys would be a topic for conversation.

  "Aunt Bertie says you've got a great place out in L.A.," Guy said.

  Sabine looked back at him, the salmon flush of his cheeks, the brilliance of such thick, straight hair. "It's a nice house."

  "I'd like to go to L.A.," he said. "Maybe get a band together. Could I visit sometime?"

  "Sure," Sabine said, although she couldn't imagine what you did with a teenager if he wasn't your teenager. The chance that a boy from Nebraska would meet with a significantly tragic outcome in Los Angeles seemed nearly certain. And then she remembered Parsifal.

  "What about you, How?" Dot said. "Any interest in Los Angeles?"

  "He'd never go," his brother said for him.

  "I'd go," How said. His cheeks were so red he looked as if he'd been slapped. His mouth was red. His darker hair waved like his uncle's. Uncle—she could not get used to the word. He never knew he was an uncle, but couldn't he have guessed as much?

  "I've got plenty of room," Sabine said. "You could both come."

  "I'm not baby-sitting him," Guy said.

  "Guy." Dot made his name long and low, getting the most out of the three letters.

  "Nobody asked you to," How said, quiet.

  "He's never going anywhere," Guy said to Sabine. He was like a dog. He was on the scent now and could not let go. "He's a mama's boy."

  The absurdity of the insult caught Sabine so off-guard that she smiled hugely before realizing that a smile was not appropriate. This was the cut? The terrible accusation? What could be better, she thought, than a mama's boy? How was out of his chair as quick as Sabine's smile, his body moving over the table towards his brother like it was a thing over which he had absolutely no control. Guy, possibly tougher, was still smaller, and he leaned backwards, away from what was coming.

  When Sabine spoke the room froze. She possessed an intrinsic understanding of men. It was from a lifetime of being beautiful, even to children. "Your mother? I met your mother last night. Did you know that?" The sound of her voice soothed them, made them nearly sleepy. The boys dropped back in their chairs. "The middle of the night, I woke up and she was in the kitchen. She reminded me so much of your uncle. They look so much alike. You look like him when he was young," she said, giving that prize to How. "I had never met your mother before, but she was so much like her brother that I felt like I knew her."

  They did not hear her words as much as absorb them. Magic was less about surprise than it was about control. You lead them in one direction and then come up behind their backs. They watch you, at every turn they will be suspicious, but you give them decoys. People long to be amazed, even as they fight it. Once you amaze them, you own them. What was nearly a fistfight on top of the kitchen table was now completely forgotten. Like the flash floods in Twenty-Nine Palms, it surprised them both coming and going.

  "How long will you be here?" How said, grateful now.

  "I'm not sure. We'll see how it goes."

  It was the wrong thing to say. Dot and the boys all lowered their heads, as if his or her own bad behavior might be the thing that would send Sabine packing.

  "Why don't you boys clear out for a while, and Sabine will help me get started on supper. Do you think you can watch a little television without killing each other?"

  "Sure thing," Guy said. He stood up, stretched, and took a cookie from his brother's plate. His brother, feeling so recently vindicated, decided to let it pass. They walked out of the room together without ever picking up their feet.

  Dot watched them go, shaking her head. "I love Guy, but that boy is turning into his father," she whispered to Sabine. "I'd like to give him a good smack sometimes."

  "Do you want to give his father a good smack, too?"

  Dot raised her hands in innocence. "Don't even get me started on that one."

  "They seem like nice boys."

  "They are. Good boys. How is like Guy—your Guy. Doesn't have his personality, but he's got the sweetness to him. In a kid that age it seems like a miracle. I wouldn't want to have kids now. There's too much going on in the world. It would all be too hard for them." As if harder things had been invented since her children were growing up.

  Dot squatted down and shoved her head deep inside a cabinet beneath the sink. She said something, although there was no telling what.

  "What?"

  She leaned back slightly but kept her eyes straight ahead. "Did Guy ever talk about having children?" Dot said, her face still turned away. "I mean—I know, well, I know. But did he want kids?"

  Not only did he not want them, he hated them. He had rolled his eyes in restaurants, on planes. He had taken Sabine's arm tightly when he saw one on the street, whispered to her dramatically, "Well, at least we were spared that." The mocking was so bitter and constant that in the years that Sabine thought she wanted a child she never once spoke of it. She bit down and waited until it passed. But so many years later, when it was Phan who wanted a child, there were no more jokes. "You feel differently when it's your own," Parsifal told Sabine, explaining his sudden change of heart. They talked about adopting, about surrogate mothers. They even talked about Sabine, and while she knew it would be disastrous for her, she would have leapt at the chance. It wasn't too long after that that Phan had a blood test and none of them mentioned children again.

  "No," Sabine said. "He didn't want children."

  Dot raised herself out of the cabinet, white rose potatoes filling both of her hands. "I think that's my fault. He was afraid he was going to turn out like his parents. He would have been a good father. You could tell by the way he was with his sister. He had it in him. It's too bad." She looked at Sabine, suddenly aware. "That's why you never got to have children. You were waiting around on him."

  "No." Sabine took the potatoes from her. "I never wanted them, either."

  "I don't believe you."

  "How much do the boys know about Parsifal?" Sabine asked in the Fetters family spirit of k
eeping the story straight.

  Dot was peeling now. Her hands were as round and white as the potatoes. "They know about what happened with Albert. That's absolute legend around here. Nobody lives in Alliance without hearing about that. And even if by some miracle the boys missed it at school, their father isn't above screaming it out in a fight, reminding Kitty she comes from a murdering lot." Dot tried to throw the sentence off cavalierly, but the sound of it saddened her and she set the peeler down on the sink. "Kitty's always done a lot to counteract all that. She told the boys what happened, how it wasn't Guy's fault but that he had to go to Lowell anyway. Lowell's got real power when you're a boy. That's the big threat, the worst thing that can happen to you. And of course it makes perfect sense to them that somebody would want to leave this place and never come back, especially if the whole town was talking about you. That one gave them no problems at all."

  "And the rest of it?"

  Dot took a quick look around the door to make sure the boys were stationed in front of the television set, volume up high. "We never told them Guy was gay. That's real important to Kitty. If Howard hounds her about having a murderer for a brother, she'd never hear the end of it if he found out he was a queer, too. God help us all. At least Howard can semirespect the notion of killing somebody. I don't think he was any too crazy about his old man, either."

  Sabine looked at her. She put her own potato down.

  "Oh, come on," Dot said. "I know what you're thinking. You've got to be honest about who you are—Guy was always honest and all. But I'm telling you, there's more than that. You've got to think about who you're living with."

  "Parsifal lived with it."

  "Sabine, some things you just don't tell."

  In Southern California there was very little that went unsaid. People liVed their lives, heads up, in the bright sun. Take it or leave it. "It's your own business," Sabine said. "I'm not going to volunteer information."

  Dot smiled, relieved. "That's all I'm asking."

  Everything happened early in those short winter months. Dot and the boys were home at three o'clock, Bertie was in by four. At five o'clock the moon was visible in the trees and dinner did not seem out of the question. The darkness pushed them together. The boys grew quiet, abandoning television for homework when the news came on. Dot, Bertie, and Sabine stayed at the sink, chopping vegetables, their heads nearly touching. Sabine was glad to have a moment when the three of them were together. To her it seemed just like Los Angeles, although it was nothing like Los Angeles.

  As soon as they finished eating, Kitty arrived, her face luminous in the dark window. She waved to them from the cold before opening the door. What would it have been like to see her standing next to Parsifal? Were they really so much alike, or did Sabine's loneliness just make them that way? Kitty looked better than she had last night. The cold flushed her cheeks. How stood up to help his mother off with her coat.

  "School okay?" she said.

  "All right." How held her small coat close to his chest, as if he were suddenly cold.

  Kitty picked up a circle of carrot from the top of the salad bowl. "This is what I meant to do last night."

  "Enough about last night," Dot said, and smiled. "You've come just in time. We're going to watch the video."

  "A movie?" Sabine asked. Phan loved old American movies, Cary Grant and Joseph Cotten. Watching videos at home was one of the things that Parsifal did with Phan. It was something he did not do later, without him.

  "A movie, and you're the star," Dot said, stacking the dishes into impossible piles.

  "It's your Carson show with Guy," Bertie said. "We thought you'd want to see it."

  "You've seen that a million times," Sabine said, feeling breathless because she so clearly remembered being breathless when they were on the show. "I'll watch it tomorrow."

  Dot looked at her, her face stricken, her hands holding tightly to the plates. "I thought..."

  The boys twisted their napkins in their laps.

  "This is religion." Kitty pushed back from the table and stretched. "We watch it together. It's five minutes. We won't watch the whole show. The whole show we do maybe once a year. Around Christmas, usually. We just saw it not too long ago. Joan Rivers doesn't hold up to repeated viewing. You do."

  "It's cool," Guy said, pushing back his hair with both hands. "He looks like us."

  First there had been the invitation to audition. A scout had seen them doing a weekend show in Las Vegas. They were opening for Liberace after his regular magician was swiped on the cheek by his own tiger during rehearsals. "If you're going to work with animals, remember," Parsifal had told her on the plane going out there. "People, rabbits, and birds. Little birds." After the show, a bald man with a suntan and a sports coat met them backstage. "Next Thursday." He handed P!arsifal a business card. "I think the boss will like you. You come, too, sweetie," he said to Sabine, tapping a careless hand on her hip. "Did you get her here or is she yours?" People thought that magicians' assistants were coat-check girls, Tropicana dancers off for the night.

  "Mine," Parsifal said absently, looking at the card.

  "Yours?" Sabine said.

  The man laughed, clamped a firm hand down on Parsifal's shoulder. In Las Vegas everything was for sale. People were used to touching. "She's yours, all right. I'll see you next week."

  Sabine turned to Parsifal and the tiny gold beads that dangled from her torso turned with her. He held up the card to stop her. As quickly as she saw the word, there were tears in her eyes.

  Carson.

  Trial lawyers wait for their first murder case, painters for a show at the L.A. Contemporary. Actresses wait for feature films, weekly sitcoms, cat food commercials, or a well-attended party. Magicians waited for Carson. There was very little justice. If Carson went down to the Magic Castle after The Tonight Show, had a couple of drinks, there was no telling what assistant-sawing half-rate would be invited back to national television. Still, who could complain? If it weren't for Carson, the only magician America would have access to would have been Doug Henning, his big-toothed grin floating through the occasional special.

  The producers told them to come in costume. Sabine picked her favorite, lilac with blue satin trim. She held it up in front of her, hugged the waist to her waist. "Wear the red," Parsifal had said to her, so distracted that all he could see was a blur of color. She wasn't sure she wanted to have her parents see her on television wearing the red.

  When they arrived for the audition, they couldn't find the man who had given them the card, only a restless crowd of hopefuls packed into the greenroom. The comics were nervous, overeager. The singers sat by themselves, mouthing words but making no sounds. There was a magician there they knew who called himself Oliver Twist, but when they went to him, Twist picked up his things and waited in the hall.

  "I'm so nervous," Parsifal whispered. "I'm afraid my hands will shake."

  "Okay," Bertie said. "It's all cued up. Hit the lights."

  Dot was in her chair. Bertie rushed back to take her place at the end of the couch—Bertie, Kitty, and then Sabine. Guy was in the other chair and How stretched out on the floor in front of their feet like a giant dog. Kitty leaned over to Sabine, whispered, "I'm glad you decided not to go. I've felt terrible all day."

  "Sh," Dot said. "It's coming."

  Kitty, shushed, slipped her hand over Sabine's and squeezed. Sabine was surprised to find she felt the touch travel all the way up her arm.

  Parsifal had put down the phone and thrown his arms around Sabine's back, pulling her in to him so quickly her feet left the floor. "We're in," he said. "We're in, we're in."

  "Play!" Guy said, and hit the button.

  There was applause for someone. Carson was at his desk, smiling his closed-mouth smile that was slightly embarrassed and completely knowing. His pencil balanced delicately between his fingers. Sabine remembered suddenly his handsome face, how he had that particular glow of celebrity that everyone recognized but no one could quite iden
tify. He was wearing a tan suit. His gray hair was cut close.

  Of course Parsifal was in love with him.

  "When we come back, we have a big treat. For the first time on the show, Parsifal the Magician." Carson flipped over his pencil and deftly hit the eraser two times on the desk as if to drive the point home. "So don't go away." Doc Severinsen's band struck up some music that Sabine remembered as completely deafening when she was in the room with it, but on television it seemed quite reasonable. Then the screen was covered by a drawing of a television being chased by a floor lamp. Both of their plugs were undone and whipped up in the air behind them, small, two-pronged tails. The television screen said, THE TONIGHT SHOW, STARRING JOHNNY CARSON. As if they didn't know.

  For an instant there was a color field with a bull's-eye on it. Three, two, one. "That's where they put the commercial," Guy told Sabine. "We didn't get the commercial."

  Behind a multicolored curtain, a man with a headset and a clipboard had stood beside them. They had been prepped, drilled, rehearsed, but still he went over it all one more time. When the curtain opened they were to go, no questions asked. When the curtain opened again they would come back. Joan Rivers and Olivia Newton-John were sitting on the sofa next to Johnny Carson. They were lucky that Carson was hosting the show himself that night. It could well have been Joan Rivers, host, instead of Joan Rivers, guest. When there was a substitute host the numbers went down precipitously.

  Parsifal and Sabine held hands tightly and leaned into each other. "Three, two...," the man with the headset told them, but instead of saying one he pointed viciously at the opening of the curtain. Get out, was the general gist of it. Get out there.

  "There you are," Kitty said.

  Dot's eyes spilled over the second she saw them. She pressed her fingers to her mouth.

  "She always cries," Kitty whispered, her breath a layer of wintergreen mint over a layer of tobacco. "Even if she watches it ten times a day, and some days she does."

  Young. That was the only word. They were young. Slim and tall, handsome and beautiful. Young. Parsifal shone with health. It came like light from his skin. He was an advertisement for milk. For fresh air and sunshine. For life in beautiful Southern California. Sabine had forgotten that such health had ever existed, in him or in the world. It hurt her. She had lost everything without understanding. The life she wanted was on television now. His youth, his life. This was the way she had felt when she was a teenager and saw a man walk on the moon. It was so spectacular that you knew it had to be faked. She could not look away from the perfect structure of Parsifal's bones to see the girl beside him. She saw only her outline, a shadow in red.