The Magician’s Assistant

  “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 Parsifal 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.”

  “Okay,” Bertie said. “It’s all cued up. Hit the lights.”

  Dot was in her chair. Bertie rushed back to take her place at the end of the couch—Bertie, Kitty, and then Sabin
e. Guy was in the other chair and How stretched out on the floor in front of their feet like a giant dog. Kitty leaned over to Sabine, whispered, “I’m glad you decided not to go. I’ve felt terrible all day.”

  “Sh,” Dot said. “It’s coming.”

  Kitty, shushed, slipped her hand over Sabine’s and squeezed. Sabine was surprised to find she felt the touch travel all the way up her arm.

  Parsifal had put down the phone and thrown his arms around Sabine’s back, pulling her in to him so quickly her feet left the floor. “We’re in,” he said. “We’re in, we’re in.”

  “Play!” Guy said, and hit the button.

  There was applause for someone. Carson was at his desk, smiling his closed-mouth smile that was slightly embarrassed and completely knowing. His pencil balanced delicately between his fingers. Sabine remembered suddenly his handsome face, how he had that particular glow of celebrity that everyone recognized but no one could quite identify. He was wearing a tan suit. His gray hair was cut close.

  Of course Parsifal was in love with him.

  “When we come back, we have a big treat. For the first time on the show, Parsifal the Magician.” Carson flipped over his pencil and deftly hit the eraser two times on the desk as if to drive the point home. “So don’t go away.” Doc Severinsen’s band struck up some music that Sabine remembered as completely deafening when she was in the room with it, but on television it seemed quite reasonable. Then the screen was covered by a drawing of a television being chased by a floor lamp. Both of their plugs were undone and whipped up in the air behind them, small, two-pronged tails. The television screen said, THE TONIGHT SHOW, STARRING JOHNNY CARSON. As if they didn’t know.

  For an instant there was a color field with a bull’s-eye on it. Three, two, one. “That’s where they put the commercial,” Guy told Sabine. “We didn’t get the commercial.”

  Behind a multicolored curtain, a man with a headset and a clipboard had stood beside them. They had been prepped, drilled, rehearsed, but still he went over it all one more time. When the curtain opened they were to go, no questions asked. When the curtain opened again they would come back. Joan Rivers and Olivia Newton-John were sitting on the sofa next to Johnny Carson. They were lucky that Carson was hosting the show himself that night. It could well have been Joan Rivers, host, instead of Joan Rivers, guest. When there was a substitute host the numbers went down precipitously.

  Parsifal and Sabine held hands tightly and leaned into each other. “Three, two...,” the man with the headset told them, but instead of saying one he pointed viciously at the opening of the curtain. Get out, was the general gist of it. Get out there.

  “There you are,” Kitty said.

  Dot’s eyes spilled over the second she saw them. She pressed her fingers to her mouth.

  “She always cries,” Kitty whispered, her breath a layer of wintergreen mint over a layer of tobacco. “Even if she watches it ten times a day, and some days she does.”

  Young. That was the only word. They were young. Slim and tall, handsome and beautiful. Young. Parsifal shone with health. It came like light from his skin. He was an advertisement for milk. For fresh air and sunshine. For life in beautiful Southern California. Sabine had forgotten that such health had ever existed, in him or in the world. It hurt her. She had lost everything without understanding. The life she wanted was on television now. His youth, his life. This was the way she had felt when she was a teenager and saw a man walk on the moon. It was so spectacular that you knew it had to be faked. She could not look away from the perfect structure of Parsifal’s bones to see the girl beside him. She saw only her outline, a shadow in red.

  “Man,” Bertie said, “are you good-looking or what? Not a lot of women who could pull that outfit off.”

  “I wouldn’t have looked good in that when I was fifteen years old,” Kitty said.

  “Hush,” Dot said. “This is the part.”

  “Good evening,” Parsifal said, his voice spilling over the room. “Thank you.”

  As they walked forward a black velvet curtain crept down unnoticed over the bright silk stripes. The audience had been applauding thunderously, screeching their appreciation for two unknown performers who had done nothing to earn it. Sabine hadn’t understood at the time. She was afraid they were mocking. But now she could see it was their youth that was being cheered, their beauty. That was why they got the job. It was her legs, the sweep of his hair off his high forehead. It was something they projected together but not apart. They were in love, or at least that was how it looked on television.

  “My name is Parsifal, and this is my assistant, Sabine.” The camera panned to her face and then stayed there for an impossibly long time. Her mouth was wide and painted the red of her costume. Her eyes were as dark as her hair.

  “Look at you,” Kitty said. As she said it the face on the television broke into a blinding smile, riches of perfect white teeth.

  Sabine looked hard at the face. She could identify it as beautiful because it knew nothing. That face believed the man beside her on the stage would always be beside her, believed she would always be that young. No one had explained anything at that point.

  The camera pulled away abruptly, a man caught staring.

  Parsifal put a board between two chairs, a blanket over the board. He took Sabine’s hand and helped her lie down. She followed obediently, did everything he wanted. There was something about the sight of her body stretched out, so relaxed, eyes closed, that embarrassed her. So much leg. Parsifal crossed her arms over her chest. She did not help him, so limp and doll-like she didn’t know enough to fold her own arms. He bent over to kiss her forehead, at which point her heavy eyelids dropped closed and she was assumed to be in a trance; and maybe for a moment she was, because she could not remember the feel of that kiss.

  Levitation was invented by John Nevil Maskelyne in 1867. He manually placed his wife in the air. The trick then went to Harry Kellar, who sold it, along with the rest of his act, to Howard Thurston upon retirement. After Thurston, it went to Harry Blackstone. Sabine soothed herself with facts, gave her mind over to trivia. Too many people had the trick now. It wasn’t enough to just do it straight anymore. They had all seen a girl in the air.

  Parsifal wrapped her in a blanket and tied it down. He ran a hand through the air across the top of her and beneath her, and then he took the board away so that her head stayed on one chair and her feet on the other and her poker-straight body rested in between. It was a good effect, but the audience hardly found it miraculous. In fact, this was the hardest part of the trick, because Sabine was rigid; she was balanced between two chairs weighted down to hold her steady. Parsifal and Sabine looked careless, but every inch was plotted, retraced, mastered. On the television in Nebraska, Sabine watched the way her feet slipped into the blanket. There would have been no way to catch them. No way to tell the truth of their movement. The black velvet curtain made everything a mystery. Parsifal’s hands swept over her, beneath her. Then he pulled away the bottom chair and held her feet in his hands. Look at the tenderness on his face, the tenderness for her! He lifted her feet to his chest, testing her at first, and then trusting, going higher and higher. He lifted her feet over his head, walked his hands down the backs of her legs and slowly to her back. His hands moved down and her feet lifted higher, and then impossibly high, until Sabine was balanced, tightly wrapped like a papoose, on the very crown of her head on the back of one chair. Oh, the audience loved this. On her head, Sabine heard the applause. The crowd in the living room loved it, too; the women clapped politely, both of the boys made appreciative sounds. Parsifal, silent, kept just the tips of his fingers on her back to give the appearance of steadying her, when in truth Sabine steadied herself. His face was the very picture of caution. So tentatively, so delicately, he pulled his hand away and then put it quickly back; then, with more confidence, took it away again and again, and then altogether. Sabine, eyes closed, hair fanning over the top of the chair, was Venus inverted. All the wo
rk of this trick was hers, staying perfectly still, asleep. Her face was easy, peaceful. She kept herself from swaying, took shallow breaths through her nose while every muscle ripped apart from its neighbor. From the studio audience in Burbank, more hearty applause. Parsifal stepped away from her. For a minute she was forgotten while he bowed. Sabine remembered feeling like the top of her head was going to crack open. Then he saw her again. He studied her, studied the chair. He bent from the waist and, with great effort, lifted the chair with the balanced Sabine up into the air with both hands; but the higher up she went, the lighter she became. Only the chair was heavy. Parsifal the actor. Sabine the gymnast. At waist level Parsifal took a hand away, and then he lifted the chair above his head. The camera pulled back and back. He was tall, and then there was the chair, and then tall Sabine, her toes pointing into the hot stage lights. The audience was not used to looking so far up, and it thrilled them. They were applauding wildly now. Parsifal bowed again, still balancing. Then he ran the entire trick in reverse. The chair grew heavier as it came down. He brought back the second chair and the board. He tipped her down, suddenly careful with this woman he had been waving like a flag. Flat on her back, all her weight returned, he unwrapped her, flicking off the blanket, uncrossing her arms. Gently, sweetly, he kissed her forehead again, at which point the magnificent eyes fluttered and opened. The generous smile spread across her face. With his help, she sat up and stood, waved and bowed. It was a beautiful trick, but it took the whole five minutes they were allotted. They were good, Parsifal and Sabine, their abilities to amaze were limitless. There were hundreds more tricks they weren’t given time for.

  Then Johnny Carson was with them, applauding as he walked across the stage. This was a clear sign of approval. Usually he thanked people from the distance of his desk. They were not stars. They would not be invited to sit on the couch with Joan Rivers and Olivia Newton-John.