Sabine did not turn to look at the refrigerator behind her. She knew it to be a Whirlpool side-by-side, ice through the door, in toasted almond. She didn't know the rest of the story, but she knew how it ended. Parsifal got out.
"My father told me to be quiet. He told me to come in the living room with him, to sit still and be quiet. I'm thinking, How long can a person last? How long until he suffocates? I was a kid, kids don't have any sense about those things. Hell, I don't even think I'd know now, how long it would take. I didn't think he could freeze to death, but it would be cold in there. It was summer when this happened, so he was in there in his T-shirt and shorts. My father picked up the paper and started to read. I look back on this now, I think about it as a parent, and there's no way to understand what happened. He read the paper and I sat there. I sat there and sat there and sat there until suddenly I did this little gulp, like a hiccup, and I realized that I hadn't been breathing, and I bolted up and ran into the kitchen and let Guy out. He was sitting on the bottom and you could see the prints of his sneakers on the inside of the door shelves where he'd tried to push it open. He'd cracked the inside of the door. I don't know, maybe he could have stayed in there another six hours. I have no idea. I remember him being perfectly white, but I don't know if that was from not getting any air or from the cold or just from being so goddamn frightened."
"What did your father do?"
"Not a thing. He didn't even look up. I was supposed to let him out. I really think that was the way he had meant for it to go. I told Guy that I'd put the food back, but he was nervous. He thought it was supposed to be his job, and if he didn't do it he'd wind up back inside. He wiped out the refrigerator, got everything all cleaned up. We threw away anything that looked rotten, and then Guy and I put the shelves back in and then all the food. Everything had gotten sweaty and wet. It was hot in the kitchen. Guy was real shaky but he didn't say anything. He wiped off the milk, he put back the milk. I don't remember where my mother was, but when she came home later she thought we'd cleaned out the refrigerator as a surprise."
"Did you tell her?"
Kitty pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. "Much, much later. Whenever I got mad at my mother, I told her everything. Before my father died, we were all a team, me and my mother and Guy. We were together against him. But after Guy was gone and Bertie was born, I blamed it all on my mother. I thought she could have done something to stop it all from happening. I never thought that at the time, but later, once things were quiet and I could think it all through, I wanted to nail her to the wall."
Terrible things had happened to Phan. Hadn't he been sent off alone as a child? Hadn't his parents, his sisters, been killed in Vietnam? Hadn't he lost everything? Phan had stayed alone in the world until he found Parsifal, and yet his face showed none of that. His face, bright and smooth in the sun as he slept next to the swimming pool, was peaceful. When he came home from work in the evenings there was always something in his pocket for the rabbit, a carrot stick from lunch, a cluster of green grapes. He made elaborate birthday cakes with thin layers of jam in the middle. He ironed Parsifal's handkerchiefs. But what about at night? Did they hold each other tightly? Did Parsifal whisper in his ear, "My Love, my father put me in the refrigerator and left me there to suffocate. It was so dark and so cold and I heard the electricity hum." Did Phan then bury his face against Parsifal's neck and say, "Darling, they killed my mother. They killed the boys who sat next to me in school. They killed even the birds in the trees." Did they rock one another then? Was there comfort? Did they stay up until dawn, recounting things too unbelievable to say with the lights on, and then decide in the morning to keep it all a secret? Was there always a brave (ace for Sabine?
For Sabine there was always a brave face. Where had her parents met exactly? Not at the beginning of Israel, but before that. Was it on a train? Was it before that? They came from different corners of Poland, but then all of Poland was swept together. They were not from Poznan and Lublin. They were only from Poland. They were not Polish, they were only Jews. What did they say to each other in bed in Fairfax? What did they remember late at night, their voices dropping to a whisper to spare Sabine? "Darling, do you know what became of your sister?" "My Love, I cannot be reminded by the snow." Did they speak in that other language, the one Sabine studied but did not learn. Did they lull themselves to sleep with familiar words?
"I have to lie down," Sabine said, and pushed out of her chair.
"Don't." Kitty took one of Sabine's hands. She pressed it between her own. "Don't be mad at me. I don't know how to tell you these things."
"Not mad," she said. "I'm very tired." Sabine walked down the hallway to Guy's room, Parsifal's room. She appeared to be pulling Kitty with her, but it was because Kitty had fixed herself to Sabine's hand.
"You tell me something," Kitty said, and when Sabine lay down on the bed, Kitty sat down beside her. "That would even it out You tell me about you and Guy taking a trip or doing a show. Tell me about a time when he was happy." Kitty meant it.
"I can't now. I will later, I promise, but not now."
"I need you to."
Sabine closed her eyes and turned her face away. She hadn't realized that she was crying until she was lying down. "Let me sleep for a little while."
Sabine felt Kitty's feet down near her feet. She felt Kitty's chin brush her shoulder as she stretched out beside her. "Something very small is all I'm asking for. You can tell me about him laughing at a television show. You can tell me he was happy when the pancakes turned out well. He was crazy about pancakes. Tell me about when things were good." Her voice went deep inside Sabine's ear. "It's only fair."
And when Sabine remembered, it was all good. Except for when Phan was dying, except for the loss of Phan, there was something to recount in every single day, twenty-two years of good days. Sabine scanned their life and chose at random. "Okay, this was a long time ago."
"Tell me." Kitty's head settled against the pillow of the single bed.
"He found a Savonnerie rug at the Baldwin Park swap meet, twelve feet, five inches, by seventeen feet, four inches, probably 1840. Absolutely mint. It was in a box under a ratty quilt and a couple of crocheted lap blankets. The guy wanted a hundred and fifty dollars for it." The day was so hot and the smog had clamped down on the San Gabriel Valley like a lid, but Parsifal had insisted they snake their way through every aisle of junk. He said he had a good feeling, there was something out there for him, that nobody went out on such a terrible day and came back empty-handed. "The rug was huge. Parsifal didn't even unfold it. The guy who sold it kept saying he had planned on cutting it up into a bunch of little rugs, the size people could really use. Parsifal paid him in cash and we picked that thing up and lugged it back to the car just as fast as we could go, which wasn't very fast. It was the most beautiful rug I ever saw, before or since. He got more than thirty thousand dollars for it. Every time we went to a meet we looked for that guy. Parsifal wanted to give him more money. He was going to do it, but we never found him again."