"I'm afraid it is."
"We were together for twenty-two years." Sabine sat down at the table. She took a cigarette out of Roger's pack and lit it. It seemed like a good time to smoke. "So I guess I knew him better than you. That's the kind of thing that comes out after twenty-two years."
"Well," Roger said, thinking it over. "In this case, it didn't."
The cigarette tasted bad, but she liked it. Sabine blew the smoke in a straight line to the ceiling. There had been a swimming pool. Phan was there. He had said he didn't know about it either. About? Sabine looked at Roger.
"There was a letter in his will. He wanted me to tell his family about his death. He's set up a trust for them, the mother and the sisters. You're not going to miss the money. The bulk of the estate is yours."
"I'm not going to miss the money," Sabine said. It wasn't just Parsifal's money she had, it was Phan's: the rights to countless computer programs, the rights to Knick-Knack. Everything had come to her.
Roger ground his cigarette into the soft black dirt around the plant. "I want you to know I'm sorry about this. It's a hell of a thing, him not telling you. Everybody has their reasons, but I hardly think you need this now."
"No," Sabine said.
"What I need to know is if you want to call them. Certainly I plan to do it, but I didn't know how you'd feel about being in touch with them yourself." He waited for her to say something. Sabine wasn't going to be able to keep her eyes open much longer. "You can think it over," Roger said. He looked at his cigarettes, trying to decide if he would be there long enough to make lighting another one worthwhile. He decided not. "Call me tomorrow."
Sabine nodded. He took a file out of his briefcase and laid it on the table. "Here are the names, addresses, phone numbers; a copy of Parsifal's request." He stood up. "You'll call me."
"I'll call you." She did not get up to see him out, or offer to, or notice his awkwardness in waiting. He was almost to the front door when she called to him.
"Yes?"
"Leave me a cigarette, will you?"
Roger shook two out of the pack, enough for him to make it back to the office, and left her the rest on the table in the entryway.
Sabine smoked a cigarette before opening the file.
Mrs. Albert Fetters (Dorothy). Alliance, Nebraska.
Miss Albertine Fetters. Alliance, Nebraska.
Mrs. Howard Plate (Kitty). Alliance, Nebraska.
There were addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers. Miss Albertine Fetters lived with Mrs. Albert Fetters. Mrs. Howard Plate did not. Sabine read the letter from Parsifal, but all it told her was how he wanted the trust structured. She wondered if there were a way the letter could have been forged. Which scenario seemed more unlikely? Three women in some place called Alliance, Nebraska, made up a connection to a total stranger in order to get what was, Sabine noted, not such an enormous amount of money; or the man she had loved and worked with for her entire adult life was someone she didn't actually know? Sabine ran a finger over the names as if they were in braille. Albert. Albertine. She shook her arms out of her bathrobe and let it fall backwards over the chair.
His story had been absolutely clear. They had been working together for two weeks. Sabine had asked before where he was from and Parsifal had told her Westport; but it was when they took a break from rehearsal one day so that they could get some lunch that she had asked him about his family. Parsifal, who had a great deal of youthful melodrama at the time, put down his sandwich, looked at her, and said, "I don't have any family."
For Sabine, life without family, without parents, was inconceivable, a hole of sorrow that made her love him even more. The details of the story came slowly over the next year. The questions had to be asked delicately, at the right time. There could not be too many at once, there could not be follow-up questions. What worked best was soliciting the occasional feet: What was your sister's name? "Helen." To press the subject too hard made Parsifal despondent. She discovered that when he said he did not wish to speak about it, he wasn't secretly hoping she would try to coax him into conversation. There must be other family, uncles, cousins? "A few, but we were never close. They didn't try to help me after my parents' death. I'm not interested in them."
Slowly the small stream of information dried up. The story had been told. It was over, leaving Sabine with only the vaguest details of sorrows best forgotten. Once, many years later, when they were playing in New York, she had suggested that they take the train out to Westport. She wanted to see where Parsifal grew up, maybe they could even go to the cemetery and put some flowers on the graves.
Parsifal looked at her as if she had suggested they take the train to Westport and dig his parents out of the ground. "You can't mean that," he said.
She did mean it, but she did not mention it again. There was a certain perverse benefit to the situation anyway: Sabine was his family. Hers was the framed picture at his bedside. She was always his past, his oldest friend, mother, sister, and finally wife. History began in a time after they had met. She did not complain.
Sabine closed the ñle and tapped it on the table. She needed Parsifal. If he were here, there would be a sensible explanation to this. She ran through the facts until her head hurt. Then she called her parents.
Of course they wanted to see her, to listen to her problem. They told her to meet them at Canter's. For Sabine, they would do anything, do it gladly.
Sabine and her parents had had lunch at Canter's every Sunday that they lived together, and most Sundays after Sabine left home. They knew the menu like they knew each other, two sandwiches named for Danny Thomas and one for Eddie Cantor, the introduction of quesadillas and pasta in the middle eighties. Sometimes they went there for dinner during the week, if Sabine's mother had a math student who needed tutoring after school and there was no time to make dinner. But Sabine could not remember ever going there at three o'clock on a Tuesday. Once she was inside the restaurant, the smell of lox and lean corned beef overwhelmed her. She couldn't remember the last time she had eaten, and she put her hand on the overflowing pastry case and leaned towards the glass, suddenly mesmerized by kugel.
"Wait until after lunch," her mother said, getting up from the booth where her parents were sitting. Sabine kissed her mother and allowed herself to be led back to the table.
"Sabine," the waitress said, and took her hand. "I've heard about your sadness."
Sabine nodded.
"I'll get you something nice," she said. "Something special. Would you like that?"
She said that she would. She would like nothing more than not to have to make a decision at that exact moment.
As soon as the waitress was gone, Sabine told her parents there was news she needed to discuss with them and took the folder out of her purse. Her parents sat on the opposite side of the orange booth, watching, barely breathing.
"Not your health," her mother said. She rested one finger on the edge of the file.
"God, no," Sabine said. "Nothing like that." Although she desperately needed some advice, she hated to tell them. It had taken so long for them to come to accept Parsifal, to love him, that even after his death she felt cautious. She put the story out truthfully: Roger, the lawyer; Guy Fetters; Alliance, Nebraska; a mother and two sisters. Her father looked inside the file. He studied the information so hard she wondered if there were something she had missed.
Her mother shook her head. "Poor Parsifal," she said. Her father sighed and put the folder down.
"Why poor Parsifal?" Sabine asked, certain now that she had missed something.
The restaurant was bigger than an ice-skating rink, but at three o'clock it was nearly empty, just a few old men in pairs who were drinking coffee, and they were all far away. They bent forward over their cups, their bald heads lacy with freckles. Still, Sabine's mother lowered her voice. "Don't you think something must have…" She paused and opened up her hands. They were empty. "Happened to him?"