Sabine put one cool hand on either side of Parsifal’s head, and Parsifal cringed. No matter how gentle she was, she was causing him pain and it was something she did not think she could possibly stand. She concentrated on the shape of his ears inside her palms. Beautiful ears. At the count of three they lifted, brought him only a few inches into the air, moved him barely more than a foot. It was gentle, everything was easy, but there were tears pooling up in the corners of his eyes and they spilled into her cupped palms.
“Not so bad,” the technician said. “Raise up your legs now.” He slipped a pillow under Parsifal’s knees. “Is that comfortable? Do you feel all right?”
“I’m sorry,” Parsifal whispered. Now the tears were running into his ears. “I just can’t go in there.”
“He’s claustrophobic,” Sabine said, stroking his arm. She was worried that she was going to faint.
The nurse and the technician looked at one another. They were a comedy team, each responsible for half a sentence. “The claustrophobia we’ve seen in here—,” the technician said.
“—one woman put out her arms and stopped the tray at the last minute—,” the nurse said, spreading his arms.
“—another one just scooted out the bottom and left,” the technician said. “Not a word to us.”
For a moment they were all quiet. They were all waiting for different things.
“This is a problem,” Sabine said finally.
The nurse looked through Parsifal’s file. He was clearly mulling things over. “I can give you a little Xanax, under the tongue. It’s bitter but it makes you feel better right away. That’s going to help you.” He stepped out of the room for no more than half a second and came back holding a tiny white cup, as if the pills were kept in a bucket just outside the door. At some point he had put on gloves, or maybe he had been wearing them all along. Then the nurse did something that surprised Sabine: He put his full open hand on the side of Parsifal’s face, a touch that seemed almost loving, and for a minute Sabine wondered if they knew one another. Parsifal opened his eyes as if kissed awake. “Open up,” the nurse said.
Parsifal parted his lips and the thin, covered fingers of the nurse dipped beneath his tongue. The technician turned without another word and went back into his booth where he sat behind a glass window. He busied himself at a control panel, not watching.
“I don’t like these machines,” the nurse said. “I’ve been in there myself lots of times. They test things out on us. But it isn’t bad.” He kept his hand on Parsifal’s face. He ran a thumb across Parsifal’s forehead in a way that did not seem to hurt him. “You just have to go. Just for a little while and then he’ll let you out. The pretty lady, is she your wife?”
“Yes,” Parsifal said.
“Your wife is going to stand right here at the bottom and she’s going to hold on to your foot.” He turned to Sabine. “Go hold his foot,” he said softly. And Sabine let go of Parsifal’s hand and walked to the end of the table and held both of his bare, sheet-covered feet. “All this is is magnets. There’s nothing in there that can hurt you.”
“I just don’t like being closed in,” Parsifal said.
“Nobody does,” the nurse said. “Nobody does. Is that pill gone?”
Parsifal nodded.
“Then you’re feeling a little better. I’m going to put some earplug? in because it gets noisy in there.” He slipped two small foam corks into Parsifal’s ears and then began putting padding around his head. “This is to hold you in place,” he said, his voice suddenly much louder. “You have to promise to stay still for this so you don’t have to do it again later on.” He put a strap under Parsifal’s chin and snapped the end above his head. “Now, this is the part that I don’t like. I’m going to put a trap over your head, just to keep everything in place. Close your eyes.” Even raised, his voice was sweet, hypnotic. Sabine knew he would have made a fine magician and she knew that even in his pain Parsifal was thinking the same thing. The nurse reached up and pulled a white steel cage over Parsifal’s head. Then Parsifal was Houdini, but he hadn’t practiced. “Now, I want you to stay real still, but if you need something, you say it, we can hear you, and you can hear us, and your wife, she’s right here holding your feet and if anything goes wrong she’ll just pull you out. Is that okay?”
Parsifal didn’t answer. He waved his hand.
“Okay,” the man said, and went behind the door.
The voice of the technician came over an unseen speaker. It filled the room. “I’m going to move the table now. This is going to be very slow.” When the tray moved into the tube, Sabine followed it. Parsifal wiggled his toes and she squeezed them back, and in this way they communicated.
“He’s doing all right in there?” the voice asked.
“He’s all right,” Sabine said. Squeeze.
There is a certain feeling when the spotlight is directly in your eyes. You know the house is full, the manager has told you, but everything in front of you is wrapped in a black sea, so you stop trying. To try and see is to strain your eyes against the light. It will give you a headache. When you look out, you are blind. The only person who knows this is the one standing next to you on the stage. He is all you can see. Together you speak and smile into the blackness. He is blind and he leads you. From this close you think he is wearing too much mascara.
“You’re doing just fine,” the technician’s voice said. “You are holding perfectly still. Just keep holding still.”
There was a drumming in the room, an industrial rhythm of hammers and gears, low thuds that at times seemed so frantic that it felt like something had gone wrong. The test took half an hour. Sabine watched the clock over the tube click along like an oven timer. She wanted to tell Parsifal something, to keep him occupied, but there was nothing to say. It was all she could do to speak. “Are you doing okay?” she called, and he bent his foot by way of acknowledgment.
“You’re halfway there,” the voice said. “You are so still. You’re perfect.” The sound of bedlam, jackhammers and lead pipes on lead walls. And then later, “Three more minutes. One more set of pictures and then you’re out of there.” That was when Sabine felt Parsifal’s toes flex and pull with happiness in her hands.
The nurse came into the room, his blue scrubs dazzling against his black skin. He pushed a switch to set Parsifal free. “Over, over, over,” the nurse said. “Never have to go in there again.” He slid the head cage up and flicked the chin strap loose. It came apart so much quicker than it went together. The padding was gone, the earplugs. Parsifal was free. “You’re feeling okay now. Aren’t you fine?”
“My head hurts so much,” Parsifal said, his eyes still watering. There were wet stains beside his head.
“They’ll know something soon. Come on and I’ll get you back to your room so you can rest.”
“Can I stay here, just for a minute? I don’t want to move yet.” Parsifal tried to smile at the man for his kindness. “I just need a minute to rest.”
“You want to stay on the machine? Wouldn’t you like it better if I moved you onto your gurney?”
“Not yet,” Parsifal said. “If that’s all right. Not just yet.”
“Sure,” the nurse said, patting his shoulder so lightly that they almost didn’t touch. “We’ll be right behind the window. We have a few minutes. You take your time.”
Sabine thanked him and the man left. All those people she met on the most important day of her life and never saw again. Sabine took Parsifal’s hand.
“I wish we were home,” he said.
“We will be. We’ll go home today. No matter what they tell us, we’ll leave.”
“Lean over,” he said. “Come close to me.”
Sabine bent forward. Her hair slipped from behind her ears and fell onto his forehead. His eyes were blue like the sky over Los Angeles in winter.
“Open your mouth,” he said.
And as soon as he said it she felt the cold weight on her tongue and tasted metal in her sali
va. She opened her mouth and he reached up to her and took the silver dollar off her tongue.
“Look at that,” he said, and put it in her hand and squeezed her hand tight around the coin. “Rich girl,” he said.
Sabine waited three more days before calling Dot Fetters.
“Just checking to see how the wedding plans are coming,” Sabine said, but she could not make her voice sound like her voice. It shuddered and broke.
“Sabine?” Dot said.
Sabine put her forehead against the heel of her hand and nodded.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m good.”
“You’re coming out, aren’t you? That’s what you’re calling to tell me.”
“I was thinking...,” Sabine said, but didn’t finish.
“Bertie,” Dot Fetters called, “it’s Sabine, pick it up in the bedroom.”
In the distance, Sabine could hear a scramble. Dot Fetters was no fool; two would be more persuasive than one. In the moments it took Bertie to reach the phone, Sabine saw the rooms of the house on the other end of the line. She saw the living room where Dot Fetters sat in a reclining chair unreclined, pale tan walls and practical carpet with a braided rug over that. The kind of rug that Parsifal referred to as a big doormat. The light was dim and gold and the house was as small as Sabine’s was huge. The halls were hung with family photographs from generations back. The double bed that Bertie was now sitting on was covered in a white chenille spread. She didn’t stop to turn on the light on the bedside table before picking up the receiver.
There was a click and then a breathless excitement on the line. “Sabine! Are you coming?” she said in the dark.
“She’s thinking about it,” Dot Fetters told her daughter.
“You have to come now,” Bertie said. “We could use help with the wedding. You’ve got such good taste and I don’t know what I’m doing. I need help fixing up Haas’s house, too. There’s so much around here that needs to be done.”
“Don’t make her think we want her to come just to put her to work,” Mrs. Fetters said.
“She doesn’t think that, do you, Sabine?” Before Sabine could answer, Bertie went on. Sabine thought of her pink hand clutching the phone, the engagement ring making a brave light. “I’m just making excuses. I’m just trying to make you think that we need you so you’ll come. We just miss you, is all. You don’t have to do anything once you get here.”
“You fly to Denver,” Dot Fetters said. “Then you take the shuttle to Scottsbluff. We’ll pick you up there. Unless you’re afraid of those little planes. If you’re afraid, I’ve got no problem driving to Denver to get you.”
“They plow all the roads to Denver,” Bertie said.
“No problem getting to Denver,” Dot Fetters said.
“Do you have warm clothes?” Bertie asked.
“She’s got warm clothes. There were pictures of her and Guy in the snow.”
“I wasn’t sure. It was so warm in Los Angeles. Well, don’t worry about it. There are plenty of clothes here. Everything’s going to be too big on you but between me and Mama and Kitty there’s a ton of stuff. Don’t go and buy anything.”
“Do you mind the cold?” Dot Fetters asked.
At first Sabine thought she was asking Bertie, but when there was silence on the line she knew it was her turn to answer. “No,” Sabine said.
“It’s cold here,” Mrs. Fetters said. “I don’t want to mislead you about that.”
“I understand.”
“So when are you coming?”
Sabine leaned forward in bed and looked down the hall. It went on forever. It went on so long that it simply got dark and faded into nothing. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Dot Fetters said. “Honey, do you have a ticket?”
From the extension in the bedroom, Bertie made a squealing sound of perfect joy.
“Those tickets are an absolute fortune if you don’t buy them in advance,” Dot Fetters said, her voice bewildered.
“Mama, be quiet,” Bertie said. “Don’t scare her off. Don’t make her think we don’t want her to come.”
Nebraska
“IT’S USUALLY NOT as bad as this,” the woman said to Sabine once the plane had righted itself again. “I make this flight sometimes once a month, and most of the time it’s fine.”
Sabine’s seat was shaking. She could hear the strain in the hardware that bolted it to the floor. She tried to keep her body relaxed, not to take every jolt in her spine. The plane dropped a hundred feet, as if it had been suddenly seized with the realization that it was deadweight, then just as abruptly it was caught by some invisible upsurge in the air. Sabine’s head hit against the window next to her. She touched her temple lightly with her fingertips. She took a deep breath and tried to focus her eyes on the bright white light on the tip of the wing.
“Oh,” said the woman across the aisle.
Sabine looked at her and smiled sympathetically, but she did not speak. Even opening her mouth felt dangerous. The woman smiled back. She was, in fact, not much older than Sabine, but she had lived a different kind of life. With her gray hair and wide lap she appeared to be well past fifty. In this particular circumstance of fear, they were very much united. Sabine had never been afraid of flying, but this felt more like a preparation for crashing. From time to time the stewardess made a low moaning sound from the back of the plane.
Sabine was thinking about her parents, the rabbit tucked between them on the sofa in the living room, getting the news. Hadn’t they told her not to go? Didn’t they cry, both of them, not much, but still a few tears, when she left off the food and the pillow Rabbit used for a bed? Her father had held him in his arms; running his thumb back and forth in the soft dent between his ears. “Sabine is going to a place where they eat nice bunnies like you,” he whispered.
They had asked her very pointedly to forget about Nebraska. They had tried their best to be understanding and kind when she decided to go just the same. That would be the story they would always tell. How they begged her not to go, their only child, and how she left.
“Ladies,” said a buttery voice over the intercom, dropping the “gentlemen” because it was only Sabine, the one other woman passenger, and the stewardess on board the little plane, “this is your captain speaking. It’s a little rocky out there tonight, so we’re going to ask the flight attendant to postpone the beverage service. We’re hoping you can just bear with us and we’ll see if we can’t find a better altitude. In the meantime I’m going to leave the seat belt sign illuminated and ask that you please remain in your seats.”
“I was really thinking about stretching my legs,” the other woman said.
Sabine smiled again in polite acknowledgment. The woman sighed and shook her head. The stewardess was in the center of the very back of the plane, strapped into a jump seat with a crossing shoulder harness. She was flipping through the pages of a magazine, but when the plane pitched sharply to the left for no apparent reason, the magazine flew from her hands. Sabine turned around again and closed her eyes.
Everything would go to her parents. Salvio was staying at the house and she hoped he would have the good sense to take the gay porn videos out of the drawer under the VCR. If she ever got back to Los Angeles, she would make a point of giving them to him. The truth was her parents would deal with the burden of all those possessions much better than she had. They would wait a decent amount of time and then they would go into the house and methodically break it down, save a dozen pictures out of the fox-fur box, and then throw the rest away. They would sell things of value. They would give wisely and generously to charity. They would choose a handful of memorabilia: Sabine’s scrapbook of the magic act, one of the model houses she had built from her own designs that proved what a fine architect she could have been, the real pearl necklace they could not afford when they had given it to her for her sixteenth birthday. They would take a few things they simply liked, the extravagant Savonnerie rug from her dining room, whic
h would fit perfectly in their living room; the pair of brass stags whose antlers held candles at different heights; the small Paul Klee painting that Phan had bought for Parsifal on their one-year anniversary. The rest of it would go. The house would go, even though they liked it, even though they had greatly admired the yard and had always wanted their own lemon trees; they would not move. What Sabine realized as the commuter plane from Denver to Scottsbluff tossed and dived, the wings shearing through dirty clouds, was that her parents would get on with their lives in a way she had been unable to. In spite of whatever immeasurable grief this would cause them, they were the sort of people who picked up and went on. In a wave of nausea, Sabine felt inestimable love. What greater comfort was there than to know that they wouldn’t fold under this potential loss?
When her parents had told her not to leave Los Angeles, she had known they were right. Sabine’s best interest was always what they had in mind. It was for Sabine’s sake that her parents had left Israel. They looked at the baby in the crib and thought of all that uncertainty. A place that was only for Jews was too new, the world would never permit it. All around them countries were full of anger; and much of it, or so it seemed with this child, was directed towards them. Sabine’s father had cousins in Montreal and Sabine’s mother spoke French, and so they thought they had found their place. In August, when they arrived and moved into the little apartment over the cousin’s garage, they felt sure they had done the right thing, but by December they were not so sure. The winter paralyzed them. There were too many unhappy memories in cold weather. As soon as there was enough saved to make a second trip, just barely enough, with nothing left over, they moved to Los Angeles, a place like Israel, so warm that the citrus fruit stayed on the trees year-round. They went to the Fairfax neighborhood, where the public schools closed down for High Holy Days and the menus came standard in Yiddish. They stayed there even after the neighborhood declined, even after there was money enough for a better house in the Valley, because, as Sabine’s mother said, they were through with change. Four countries were more than anyone should suffer in a lifetime. How could one street be so different from the next? If they didn’t feel the need to wander, why should she?