"I didn't ask you to the funeral because I had no idea where you were. All of that information was in the will. It wasn't opened until later." Sabine couldn't quite bring herself to say that she had thought Parsifal's parents were dead.
"Where to find me?" Mrs. Fetters laughed. "Well, I've always been in the same place."
"I didn't know that."
"I'm sure he didn't tell you. There'd be no sense in that. All I want is to come down and see where my son is and to meet his wife-that is, if you'll meet us."
Sabine's studio was large and mostly empty. She was far away from the light over the drafting table. She would meet them. She might not have called them, but she would certainly meet them. "Of course."
"I went ahead and made reservations. We'll be in on Saturday. I figured I'm coming if you'll see me or not, but it makes it a lot better this way. I've got your address, the lawyer gave it to me. We'll rent a car at the airport and come by your house, if that's all right with you."
"Have you been to Los Angeles before?"
"I haven't been farther than Yellowstone," Mrs. Fetters said. "There hasn't been much reason to travel until now."
"Give me the flight number," Sabine said, leaning over for a pencil. "I'll pick you up."
Sabine would not go to bed until she was so tired that she was making mistakes, putting windowpanes in backwards, spilling glue. She drank coffee and played Parsifal's Edith Piaf records loud to stay awake. She liked the music, the pure liquid sadness in a language she could only partially understand. With proper diversion, there were nights that things didn't start going wrong until after four A.M. Only then would she put down her angle and X-acto knife and stretch her legs. She would take Rabbit, who was already asleep on an old pillow left in the studio for that purpose, under her arm and head down the long dark hallway to Parsifal's room. The rabbit's back legs hung down and gently tapped her side while she walked. Those nights she would lie in the big bed and say Guy Fetters's name aloud. Was that Guy Fetters in the photograph, his cheek pressed close to Phan's cheek, or was Guy Fetters someone else entirely? Did Guy Fetters live in Nebraska and work at a Shell station? Was his name embroidered over his heart in a cursive red script? Did he wear fingerless gloves in the winter as he stood at the window of your car, counting out change? She could not make out his face beneath the white cloud of his warm breath. It was one thing to have spent your life in love with a man who could not return the favor, but it was another thing entirely to love a man you didn't even know.
Some nights she was kind. What if you were born in Alliance, Nebraska, only to find that you looked your best in a white dinner jacket? What if you found that the thing you knew the most about wasn't cattle but the ancient medallion patterns in Sarook rugs? What place would there have been for magic? Could he have sawed apart waitresses in all-night diners along the interstate, could he have made sheep disappear without someone reporting him? "Guy," his mother would say. "Leave your sister alone. If you pull one more thing out of that girl's ear, so help me God." At school he would beg for art history and they would tell him, Next year, next year, but it always got canceled at the last minute, replaced by a section of advanced shop; this semester: The Construction of the Diesel Engine. And then there were the girls, the ones he had to dance with at the Harvest Dance and the Spring Dance and after every rodeo to avoid being found out, to avoid being beaten with bottles and fists and flat boards found in a pile behind the gymnasium. He held the girls close and with deadly seriousness. He had to make up one more thing to whisper into their small, shell-like ears and too-delicate necks. He kept his eyes down and free of longing for the ones he longed for, the ones who danced in circles past him without notice, though he suspected some noticed but could not speak. Finally, alone, at home at night in bed, he read movie magazines beneath plaid wool blankets. He looked at the glossy pictures of Hollywood and Vine, tan boys on surfboards, endless summers. Why wouldn't Los Angeles be the promised land? Eight-lane highways and streetlights that stay on all night, stoplights that don't give up and begin to flash yellow at ten P.M. Think of what he loved and had never had before, festivals of Italian films from the fifties, Italian sodas in thirty-four flavors, unstructured Italian linen jackets in colors called wheat and indigo, the ocean and restaurant coffee at two A.M. and the L.A. Contemporary and men. Suddenly to have the privilege of wearing your own skin, the headlong rush of love, the loss of the knifepoint of loneliness. That was the true life, the one you would admit to. Why even mention the past? It was not his past. He was a changeling, separated at birth from his own identity.
Sabine moved the rabbit off her pillow and rolled over. Other nights were different. Other nights he was a liar: Every minute they were together he had thought of what she didn't know. He had held himself apart from her. He did not notice that she had given up everything for him, that she had put her love for him above logic. He thought she was simple because she fell for the story about the dead New Englanders. It was all he could do to keep from laughing when she took the hook into the soft part of her mouth. Her questions made him impatient. When, exactly, was she planning to let this drop? He fed out enough line to keep her going, a name here, a place, and then, as if the thought pained him too greatly, he closed the story down all together. And she believed him. Lies sprung up like leaks. They were too easy, too inviting. He told her he was going to San Diego when he was going to Baja. No reason, except he knew she'd believe him. He told her the club canceled the date when he didn't feel like working, told her he wanted to be alone for an evening when he'd brought home some bartender whose name he didn't remember. He told her the six of clubs was the ace of diamonds. And she believed him. That was her habit, and every time he lied he slipped further away. Sabine woke up twisted in the sheets, the pillow deep inside her mouth. There would have been no reason to lie, not when she loved him the way she did.
She imagined there would be plenty of answers in the Fetters; probably just seeing them walk off the plane would make it clear that these were people you'd want to cover up. Maybe they made his life hell. Maybe it was worse than that, as her father had suggested. Sabine closed her eyes. What kind of mother would never put her head inside the door to see how you were doing? What kind does not call on birthdays? And sisters! Who were these women who called themselves sisters and didn't even know their brother was dying? Sabine would have felt the loss of Parsifal anywhere in the world.
And so she changed her mind, made it up, and changed it back. She made plans to see friends and then canceled. She saw her parents, who thought that no good could come of a woman knocking around alone in such a big house. She would be better off coming home, at least for a while. What would she do if someone broke in?
She asked them, "Do you think Parsifal scared burglars away?"
A breeze came in on Saturday and blew what little smog there was out of the valley. From the beach you could see the islands, dreamy silhouettes of someplace to be alone. Sabine had called the pool girl, the yardman, and a service of off-duty firemen that came in teams of six and cleaned the house in under an hour. She went to the garden and cut some orchids that had thrived through the period of utter neglect, and put them on the table in the entry hall. She had Canter's deliver.