"It's nice of you to ask us," Mrs. Fetters said.
Sabine could only nod. It was nice of her.
Phan had bought the house on Oriole seven years ago, when he first came down from the Silicon Valley. By then the traffic was thick with people trying]to move away from Los Angeles, and houses that had been bought and sold for hysterical amounts of money only a few years before now waited on the market like pregnant dogs at the pound. The agent was delighted by his call. She had six properties lined up to show him the first day, with plans to show him six more every day of the month, but Phan bought the first one. He refused to see the rest. The house on Oriole was built in the twenties as a contractor's gift to his wife, in a neighborhood where every street was named for a bird, Wren and Bunting and Thrush. Phan had always wanted a Spanish-style house. To him, they looked like California. The creamy stucco swirled like frosting, the red tile roof, the high archways between the rooms, the fireplace big enough for two people to sit in, the careless way in which the house seemed to amble on forever. It reminded him of one of the administration buildings at Cal Tech. "Six bedrooms, a study, guesthouse, mature fruit trees," the agent said, ticking off the points with her fingers; "a pool." Phan went through the glass doors in the back. The water sparkled, hot blue diamonds. Perhaps he would learn to swim.
"You live here by yourself?" Bertie said, tilting back her head in the driveway to try and take it all in.
"I do now," Sabine said.
Bertie stopped and maybe for the first time she looked at Sabine directly. She wrapped her arms around her waist. "I'm sorry. I don't know what made me say that."
"It's a big house," Sabine said, punching in the code for the alarm. The girl who did the yard had filled the planters with white winter pansies.
In the front hall their voices echoed. The Fetters began by complimenting the things that were closest, the curve of the staircase, the little table in the entry hall, the yellow-throated orchids on the table. "I have not seen anything like this in my life," Mrs. Fetters said. "Nothing close."
They went through the house as though they were half starved. They could barely restrain themselves from opening closets. "Is that a guest bath?" Bertie said, pointing to a closed door, and then, "Mama, would you look at this mirror in the bathroom." They picked, up the fancy soaps shaped like seashells and sniffed them. They went through the guest rooms, the study, Sabine's studio. They commented on her interesting work, the perfection of such small trees. They petted the rabbit, who barely woke up, his flop ears stretched in either direction like an airplane. They followed the runner down the hall to her bedroom before Sabine could think about whether or not she wanted them there. But it was in the bedroom that Mrs. Fetters found the thing she had been looking for, the thing she had come to her son's house hoping to find.
"Oh," she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, holding a picture from Parsifal and Sabine's wedding. "Look at him," she whispered. "Look how good he turned out."
Bertie came and sat beside her mother. "He looks just like Kitty," she said. "It's like Kitty with short hair and a suit."
"They always were just alike when they were children. People who didn't know us used to always ask were they twins." Mrs. Fetters touched her finger to the tiny image of his face. "Look at this one," she said, picking up another frame-Parsifal and Sabine in costume for the show. Sabine felt embarrassed; in the picture she looked naked but covered in diamonds.
"You sure do take a good picture," Mrs. Fetters said to her. "Are these people your parents?" Another frame.
Sabine nodded.
"I could see it. Are they still living?"
"About five miles from here," Sabine said.
"And do you see them?" Mrs. Fetters asked. A real question, as if there were a chance Sabine had left her family as well, only five miles away.
"I see them all the time," Sabine said.
"Oh, that's good," she said, smiling sadly. "That's good. I know you must make them so proud. Who's this?"
Parsifal and Phan at the beach, red cheeked, laughing, arms around necks. "That's Phan."
"The man at the cemetery."
"That's right."
"And this is Phan." A black-and-white picture of Phan working. It was bigger than all the other pictures. It was a beautiful picture. Sabine had taken it, a birthday present for Parsifal in a silver frame. Phan was writing on a tablet, his hair had fallen forward. The tablet was covered in numbers and symbols, hieroglyphics that only he would understand. "And this is Phan's family," Mrs. Fetters said, pointing to the portrait from Vietnam. Sabine confirmed this and waited for the next question, some inevitable question about why a friend's family was on her bedside table. But the Fetters were quiet, too busy feeding on photographs to ask.
"If there are more pictures of Guy, I sure would love to see them sometime." Mrs. Fetters got up from the bed.
"Plenty."
The three of them left the bedroom. The tour was over.
"It's perfect," Mrs. Fetters said. "Every last thing. How long have you lived here?"
"Just over a year," Sabine said, speaking for herself.
"You put a house like this together in a year?"
"Parsifal lived here for five years before me," she said, again, peering over the edge into the mire of complications. "It's his house. He was the one with the taste."
"So how long were you two married?" his mother asked. "I should have asked you that before. I don't even know how long you were married."
"A little less than a year," Sabine said, stretching out her six months. "It was after I moved in."
Mrs. Fetters and her daughter looked at Sabine suspiciously, as if suddenly she was not who they thought she was.
"We worked together, we were together for twenty-two years. We'd just never seen the point in getting married before. I'm afraid I'm not very old-fashioned that way." She did not wish to lie or explain. It was, after all, her life. Her private life. "I haven't even offered you anything to drink. Let me get you something. A soda, a glass of wine?"
"So why did you end up getting married? What changed your mind after all those years?"
Sabine put her hand on the banister. These people didn't know Parsifal. They did not know his name. If there were questions to be asked, she should be the one doing the asking. They were probably wondering why the money was all hers, why she had the house, an interloper married less than a year. "We were all getting older," she said. She heard her own voice and it sounded clipped, nearly stern.
Mrs. Fetters nodded. "Older," she said. "I for one am getting older." They all at once understood that the family reunion was over. Everyone had seen more than they had planned to see, no one had gotten what they wanted. "Bertie, I think it's time we headed back to the hotel and got rested up."
"You're welcome to stay," Sabine said, following some code of social interaction her mother had drilled into her from birth. She could not help herself.
"I'm tired," Mrs. Fetters said. "It's bad enough that I have to ask you to drive us to the hotel."
Another trip in the car seemed a small price to pay for getting her privacy back. Sabine already had her keys in her hand.
"I told the travel agent I was willing to pay more for something safe," Mrs. Fetters said when Sabine pulled up in front of the downtown Sheraton Grand. "For what this place costs I think I ought to have a guard standing outside my door. Do you think this is safe?"
"You'll be fine here," Sabine said. "I can come in, make sure you're checked in okay."
Mrs. Fetters held up her hands. "I wouldn't think of it. You've done too much as it is. I know it was hard on you, going out to the cemetery. I'm afraid I was just thinking of myself."
"I wanted to go," Sabine said.
For a minute they all just sat there. Finally it was Bertie who opened her door. "Well, good night, then," Bertie said.