The Magician's Assistant (37 page)

“They’re taking it real well,” Dot said, pulling off her mittens and then her scarf. “We had a good talk coming home, didn’t we, How?”

“Sure,” How said, his lovely hair flattened to the sides of his head from the stocking cap his grandmother had made him put on.

Guy stayed inside the refrigerator, his hips swaying back and forth as if he were thinking so hard about loud music he was actually able to hear it.

Kitty went over and hugged How. He was half a head taller than his mother and he rested his cheek against her forehead. When she let him go, she went to Guy and put her arms around his waist, pulling him both towards her and back so that he was forced to come out. “Aren’t you cold enough yet?”

“Not quite,” he said.

“Don’t be mad at me, Guy. I really couldn’t stand that right now.”

He stood up, red faced and sad. He had gotten taller in the last week. “All right,” he said, and put an arm loosely around her shoulder. “See?”

Kitty kissed his cheek hard. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll figure something out. Until we do, I’ve got your room all made up.”

“Where’s Aunt Sabine going to sleep?” How said.

“In Bertie’s room.”

“Then where’ll Bertie be?”

“Enough questions,” Dot said, not wanting to get into the matter of exactly where Bertie was sleeping. “There are plenty of soft surfaces and plenty of pillows. It’s my house and I promise you that every person in it wall get a good night’s sleep.”

“Sounds like a campaign promise to me,” Guy said.

Dot handed him a cookie and he took it like a child. “Then I want to know what I get if I win the election.”

“Sabine’s going to build us a house,” Kitty said. “A model of any house we want. I thought it would be nice if she built her house in Los Angeles.”

“I’ve seen the houses she builds,” Dot said, happy to take the subject beyond failed marriages and who got what bed. “Just exactly like real houses, only miniature.”

“You know how to do that?” How said.

“That’s what I do for a living,” Sabine said, “in California.”

“I thought you were a magician’s assistant,” Guy said suspiciously.

“You can’t exactly pay the rent being a magician’s assistant. I’ve been making architectural models for years. I mostly do it for fun now, to have something to do.”

“Magician’s assistant!” Dot said, and put a hand over her heart in a gesture of mock myocardial infarction. “Do you realize that we haven’t watched the tape since the night after Sabine got here?”

Sabine thought Dot was teasing her, but when all the people in the room held the same panicked look on their faces, she asked them, “So what?”

“We watch it almost every night,” Kitty said, her voice strangely nervous.

“We’ve never gone this long without seeing it,” How said. “Ever.”

They were guilty, Dot Fetters and the three Plates. For more than two weeks they had forgotten to touch the talisman that was their only connection to their dead son, dead brother, dead uncle. They had not paid him homage, their icon. They had forgotten.

“For God’s sake,” Sabine said, pushing Dot lightly on the shoulder. “Snap out of it. So you didn’t watch a video. It’s a relief. No one should watch the same piece of tape every night. It isn’t healthy.”

“You must think we’ve forgotten about him,” Dot said in a voice so small it was not her own.

“But you don’t need to watch it all the time. I’m here. I’m on the tape. You see me every day.” She put her face near Dot’s. “It’s the same thing.”

“Let’s watch it now,” Guy said.

Everyone looked at him. Guy wasn’t one for coming up with answers, especially not the kind that made people feel better. “I’m going to put the tape in,” he said, and went into the living room with crisp authority. The rest of them fell into line behind him, with Sabine at the back, going slowly to take her seat.

“I don’t understand this,” she said. “I know I should, but I don’t.”

“Sh,” Dot said.

Guy hit the button for Play and stretched out across the carpet.

And there was Johnny Carson, still in the same tan suit, still with the same short silver hair and knowing smile.

“When we come right back, we have a big treat,” How whispered. “For the first time on the show, Parsifal the Magician.”

“When we come right back, we have a big treat,” Carson said, balancing his pencil. “For the first time on the show, Parsifal the Magician.” The pencil flipped and he hit it two times, eraser end to desk.

“So don’t go away,” How said. No one stopped him or told him to be quiet. They understood. They wanted to say the words, too. It had been too long since they had seen Johnny Carson last, and the comfort of his familiar voice washed over them like a warm, enveloping breeze smelling of saltwater and lime blossoms.

“So don’t go away,” Johnny Carson said. The music came up and then the picture, the television and floor lamp running in their everlasting dance of love.

When the bull’s-eye came on counting down three, two, one, they counted along. Even Sabine formed her lips around the words, though she didn’t make a sound. She felt a strange sort of anxiousness, the way she would feel picking Parsifal up at the airport after some rare trip when she had not gone along. She would stand at the end of the gateway with all of the other lonely and longing souls and think, I’m going to see him again. She had to force herself to stand still, not push to the front of the line.

The great colored curtain parted like Moses’ sea and they were borne onto stage, onto television, Parsifal and Sabine.

When Dot began to cry quietly, Kitty followed her, and then Sabine. This time she did not think about the way the trick was done, she did not remember how it felt to be there. She cried because she saw the man she loved at the height of his life and she missed him terribly. She cried from the pleasure of having a chance to see him again, even like this, reduced to two dimensions, his whole body the size of her hand. It was right to see the tape again, because tonight it meant something else entirely. It was not a magic trick but a slow, deliberate tango. He took her hand and laid her down. He lifted her feet and ran his hands down her legs in a way that was both tender and obscene. She was still, but not sleeping. She was still because he was making some sort of love to her on the stage, because he wanted her to be still so that he could dance around her. She was lifted by him, balanced on the point of the chair. Magic can seem like love. She was so far above them, her toes nearly scraping the colored gel from the lights. And then, from the very height of it, he brought her back, let her down gently, sweetly, and when it was over, he kissed her there on national television, and while everyone who saw it could feel what had happened in their bones, no one knew how to call it by its name. No small wonder that Johnny Carson would ask her out to dinner after that.

Carson came to them. He took Parsifal’s hand. “Great,” he said. “Just great. That’s one trick you wouldn’t want to blow.”

“I haven’t dropped her yet,” Parsifal said.

He turned to the woman wrapped in the smallest bit of red satin. “And I certainly hope you’ll come back to see us.”

All eyes were on Sabine now, wanting her. She parted her lips to speak, but nothing she said would matter. She owned them all. They would take anything. “Thank you, Mr. Carson.”

“Here’s the windup,” Guy said over Carson’s perfect smile.

“Right back,” Johnny Carson said.

“Lord,” Kitty sighed, happy for the first time that day. “I do love that show.”

How crawled towards the VCR on all fours and hit Rewind. “Oh,” Dot said, wiping her eyes against her sleeve. “Maybe Sabine was right. Maybe it was good to take a break. I felt like I was watching it for the first time again.” She looked at her daughter-in-law, who was mopping her own eyes. “Was he really like that? Was he beautiful like that all the time?”

“Every minute I knew him,” she said in all remembered honesty. “I swear to God.”

“Someday you’re going to have to tell us how you did that trick,” Guy said, but this time his voice was dreamy, full of patience. He would wait as long as it took.

“You never know,” Sabine said.

It was all easier now. The thing they hadn’t realized was missing was back again. The boys went to their homework, the women went to the kitchen to smoke and make dinner. Sabine sat at the kitchen table and sketched out a floor plan of her house to work from. Nothing had to be exact, so she drew without measuring lines. No one mentioned Howard Plate or this recent departure. They spoke of magic tricks, where to buy costumes like the one Sabine wore on television, and how Johnny Carson seemed like a very decent person in real life. Bertie came in and was there for nearly a half an hour before anyone mentioned to her that her room was gone and Kitty had moved back in with the boys.

“I’m awfully sorry about this,” Kitty said to her sister. “Everything falling apart right before you’re getting married. I should have waited. This morning when I left I wasn’t thinking, and then it just didn’t seem like I could go back.”

“I don’t mean this unkindly,” Bertie said, “but you and Howard are always falling apart.” To show that there were no hard feelings intended, she moved a piece of Kitty’s hair out of her eyes and hooked it back behind her ear. “What the two of you do isn’t going to affect me and Haas. I mean, we care, we want you to be happy, but it isn’t going to spoil our wedding.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” Kitty said.

“Where is everybody going to sleep?”

“I know you think that I haven’t exactly noticed that you’ve moved out,” Dot said. “But as far as I’m concerned your room is up for grabs.”

Bertie took a moment to stare at her shoes.

“Sabine’s in your room, the boys are in Guy’s room, Kitty’s on the couch.”

Because there was so much shifting around and so few beds, Sabine thought this would be as good a time as any to broach the topic she had so studiously avoided. “And I’m going home on Sunday, which will free up some space.” At that moment the refrigerator kicked off and Dot stopped stacking dishes, and the room was filled with a quiet unmatched in any windless Nebraska night.

“What?” Kitty said.

Sabine put down her pencil and tried to divide her gaze equally among her three friends. “It had to happen sooner or later. When I came here, I never thought I’d stay so long. You must all have been wondering when I was finally going to go.”

“Don’t say that,” Bertie said.

“The wedding is Saturday and then Sunday I’ll leave. I have to. I have to go home. I have the rabbit and the rug stores and the house to take care of. I can’t just move in here.”

“No one’s talking about moving in,” Dot said. “But you only just got here. You can’t leave when you only just came.” She kept her voice light to let Sabine know she wasn’t taking her talk of departure seriously at all.

“Listen to me,” Sabine said. “I’m forty-one years old. Everything I know is in Los Angeles. That’s where I live. You saved my life, letting me come up here. I was so depressed over Parsifal, but I think I’m ready to try things out at home.”

“So you’re over him now?” Kitty said.

The room turned and looked at Kitty. Sabine’s mouth opened and then closed, silent as a fish. She squeezed a kneaded eraser between her fingers. Over Parsifal?

“Kitty, Jesus,” Bertie said.

Kitty closed her eyes and shook her head. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know what made me say that. I just don’t want you to go, is all. I didn’t mean that. We all want you to stay.”

“We’re not going to talk about this now,” Dot said. She opened up a cupboard and began to sift randomly through cans. “There’s still plenty of time to think this over.”

“I just wanted you to know,” Sabine said, her voice coming out hoarse.

Dot held up her hand. “We’re talking about this later.”

“Sabine,” Kitty said.

Sabine shook her head. “I’m fine.” She picked up her pencil and quickly began to draw her bedroom at home, where she would be sleeping in what was only a matter of days. She marked off the French doors that looked out at the pool. She put in the indentations for the fireplace. She made a walk-in closet. Parsifal’s clothes to the right, Phan’s to the left. She had left her clothes in her bedroom upstairs.

As the evening went on, everything went in reverse. After dinner it was Bertie who left and the Plates who stayed. Everyone thought that Howard might come by, though no one as much as mentioned his name. Every rustle in the backyard made them sit up straight and lean towards the window. They were not afraid of Howard Plate. They worried when they thought he was out there in the cold, freezing to death rather than knocking on the window to come inside.

After dinner Sabine began measuring pieces of board and cutting them out with razor blades. She would keep the house very small, a little jewel box. Small was no good for architects, but it was perfect if somebody was actually going to keep the thing around for a while. Small was also more difficult, and she was interested in time-consuming projects.

“You make it out of posterboard?” How asked. He sat beside her under the swag light, watching her careful fingers trace the lines.

“Posterboard, plywood, playing cards, anything I can find. You should see the box of scraps I have at home. Everything is separated by thickness. I save the pieces of cardboard out of stocking packages, pastry boxes.”

He watched the blade slide past the side of her hand. “Have you ever cut yourself?”

She turned her wrist over. “Once.” The scar was still red and there were the smallest dots on either side where the thread had gone in and come out again.

How extended one careful finger and ran it against her skin. “That’s awfully neat.”

“How can you remember exactly what your house looks like?” Guy said.

“Don’t you know what your house looks like?”

“Sure I do, but I couldn’t draw it. I wouldn’t know where everything went.”

“I have a good memory for buildings, I guess. The same way some people remember faces.” Sabine glued two pieces of board together, recessing the second piece slightly to make windowsills. Tomorrow she could look around for something to use for the glass. Sabine had never made a model of a house she had lived in before. She had very rarely modeled real houses. Making things that were already made meant that you had to suffer the burden of comparison. Usually what people needed to see was the idea of a house, the possibility. Once the poured concrete and supporting beams existed, a tiny reproduction of it was nothing more than precious.