The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

couldn’t say I blamed him. I never knew what happened to him, not until fifteen years later, when I saw the two of you on the Johnny Carson show. You can’t imagine what that’s like, thinking your child is probably having some miserable life somewhere because of what you’ve done to him and then seeing him on television, a big famous magician. I liked to fell out. I wrote to the people at the show and asked them to forward a letter on to Guy—Parsifal the Magician. Oh, I was sorry and I told him how sorry I was and how we all wanted him to come home. I just about held my breath every day going out to the mailbox. Then, sure enough, I get a letter with no return address and a postmark from Los Angeles. It was very polite. He said all was forgiven and forgotten and the past was in the past, but the past needed to stay right where it was. He said he just didn’t want to think about it, not ever again, and would I please respect that. He sent us some money. Every now and then more money would come. In the last few years it was a whole lot more money, but he didn’t write to me again and he didn’t write to Kitty, which I think was wrong of him no matter how mad he was.” Mrs. Fetters looked right at Sabine and Sabine did not look away. “So that’s what I did.”
    Sabine tried some of her drink, but now it tasted spoiled in the glass. “Well,” she said.
    “I’m not looking for your forgiveness,” Mrs. Fetters said. “I haven’t even come close to forgiving myself. I’m just telling you what I know. He should have told you. You’re a nice girl. You deserve to know what’s going on.”
    “I appreciate that,” Sabine said. Parsifal in prison. Parsifal in hell.
    Then, for the last time that night, Mrs. Fetters surprised Sabine. She reached across the table and picked up Sabine’s good hand and held it tight inside her own. “I’ll tell you straight, Sabine, I’ll tell you what I want from you. Give me and Bertie one more day. Take us around to the places he went to. Show us what he liked. I want to see how it was for him, give myself something good to think about for a change. Even if it’s not good, it will be good, because it will be the truth. I’ll be thinking about him, how he really was, not just some idea I had. I want that to take back to Nebraska with me.” She smiled at Sabine like a mother. “It’s a long winter out there, you know, lots of time to think.”
    Sabine looked down at the table where her hand was swallowed up. Suddenly she was tired enough to cry, tired enough to sleep. She knew it would come sooner or later. “I need—,” she said, but could not finish.
    “You need to think about it,” Mrs. Fetters said. She squeezed the hand and let it go. “Of course you do. You know where you can find me.”
    Sabine nodded. “I can tell you in the morning. It would be wrong for me not to give this some thought.”
    “Sure, honey,” Mrs. Fetters said.
    Sabine pushed back from the table and stood up. “Good night,” she said. She waited but it looked like Mrs. Fetters planned to stay for a while, contemplating last call.
    “I’m glad you came over,” Mrs. Fetters said.
    Sabine nodded and got to the door before she stopped. There was no one left in the bar. Just the bartender. The music was off. It was like speaking across a dining room. She did not raise her voice. “Thank you for going with me,” she said, and held up her hand.
    “That?” Mrs. Fetters said. “That’s nothing.”
     
    In the car Sabine turned the music up loud. Parsifal kept the glove compartment stuffed with cassettes, mostly operas, scratchy recordings from the twenties. He liked Caruso. He liked Wagner, the story of Parsifal he had named himself for years before he had listened to the opera all the way through. The name sounded so much more like a magician than the more traditional Percival. The brave underdog knight. The one who finds the grail. The only one, in the end, who is left standing. She did