"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 keeping 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."