The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett
“They’re big enough to get themselves to bed.” Howard’s tone was halfhearted, his anger failing him. He looked at his wife, who was walking away. “You come back here when you’ve got them settled,” he said.
Kitty stopped, her beautiful face suddenly rested and self-assured. Whatever it was was over. Guy had defused it somehow, had made it all different. “I’m going to sleep,” she told her husband. “We’ll talk later.” And then she walked her boys down the hall.
Howard Plate looked at Sabine. She was the only person left in the kitchen. He shook his head in disgust. “She never minds me.”
“It’s late,” Sabine said.
Howard rubbed his hands through his hair, rubbed his face with his hands, as if trying to coax the blood from the pool around his brain. “I only wanted them to come home. That’s where they’re supposed to be. I was in bed and I wanted my wife and my boys to come home.” He looked around the kitchen, trying to figure out where the conversation about sleeping at home had gone so wrong. “You can’t make Kitty do anything. She won’t do anything you tell her to.”
Sabine nodded. It was no time to argue the point. The back door was so close he could be there in a second.
“All right,” he said. “All right. You tell her to call me first thing in the morning.”
“I will,” Sabine said.
Howard Plate, without a coat or hat, stepped into a howling snowstorm of solid whiteness that Sabine had not noticed until he opened the door. She closed it behind him, snow blowing over her bare feet, and turned the lock. It would be impossible to see the road on a night like this. He could drive off the shoulder, and if the car were stuck, back tires spinning great plumes of dirt and ice, and he decided to walk, how far could he go without a coat? How long could Howard Plate wander the streets of Alliance in the snow before lying down to rest for a minute and freezing solid? Everyone would remember this night, how he was half out of his mind when he went out into the weather. People freeze to death all the time, but never on the night you expect them to, never on the night you hope for it.
Sabine went and pried the knife out of the table with a solid tug and then put it back in the drawer so it would not be the first thing everyone saw when coming in for breakfast in the morning. She rubbed the cut in the wood with her finger. Another reminder. Do you remember that night Howard came over and stabbed the kitchen table with a knife?
Sabine headed back to her room but went to the left instead of the right without meaning to; force of habit. The boys lifted up on their elbows from their twin beds and blinked in the darkness.
“Did he go?” How said.
“He went home,” Sabine said. “Everything’s fine.” It was amazingly simple, lying to them. They wanted to believe that everything would be all right, she wanted them to believe it.
“We thought we heard the door,” Guy said. “Was he okay?”
“I think he’d calmed down.” Thanks to you, she wanted to say, but maybe Guy wouldn’t want the credit for sending his father away.
“Gram didn’t wake up?”
Sabine shook her head. “Now you need to go to sleep.” She went to Guy’s bed and then How’s, kissing them both on the forehead even though they were too old. It was not an ordinary night.
“Good night,” How said.
“Good night, Sabine,” Guy said.
Sabine backed out of the room quietly and closed the door. She liked to believe they were already asleep, that they felt so safe with her reassurances that sleep came without question.
Across the hall, Kitty was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
“How’s that cut?” Sabine said.
“I shouldn’t have left you out there with him.”
“It was fine. He left without any problem.” Sabine leaned over and looked at Kitty’s face. She ran her thumb beneath the tear on Kitty’s cheek. It wasn’t so bad. No more stitches, at least.
“He’s always going to be around,” Kitty said, as if she had decided to take the rest of the night to puzzle out her life.
“He’s not,” Sabine said. She sat down beside her sister-in-law and took her hand. “He won’t be in California.”
“Lucky for you,” Kitty said, her voice thoughtful. “He doesn’t seem to like you.”
“I want you and the boys to come back to California with me.” All she didn’t understand was why she hadn’t thought of it before.
Kitty looked at her. “Leave Alliance?”
“In a heartbeat.”
Kitty sat up and pulled a pillow into her lap. She had meant to go with her brother. She had meant to be the magician’s assistant, see the ocean. “Leave Mother and Bertie?”
“Lots of visits.”
“Oh, Christ,” Kitty said. “I don’t know.” She looked up at Sabine. “I’m not so young anymore. I don’t know how it would be to uproot everybody, have everything be different.” She reached up and put her hand on the side of Sabine’s face. Kitty’s hand was as cool as a leaf. “You wait and you wait and you wait for something to happen, and then when it finally does you don’t know what to do about it.”
Sabine closed her eyes and kissed Kitty. A kiss that she liked to think would have been much better if she hadn’t been so tired.
“We don’t have to decide this right now,” Kitty whispered. “It doesn’t have to be tonight.”
Sabine shook her head. “This offer is good. Permanently good.” She stood up and Kitty stood up beside her and together they folded back the blankets. Now the bed was the right size, and Sabine put her arms around Kitty and held her against her chest. This was the thing that everyone had told her about, the thing that she had given up for Parsifal before she really understood what it was. Kitty pressed her face against the side of Sabine’s neck. “I’m going to fall asleep,” she said.
And that was when Sabine remembered what she wanted to tell her. “Just one more thing,” she whispered. “I had an incredible dream about Parsifal and Phan tonight. I never remember my dreams, but everything in this one is still so clear.”
“Tell me,” Kitty said from deep inside the well of Sabine’s arms. “I dream about them all the time.”
***
Very early on the morning of Bertie and Haas’s wedding, two perfect inches of powdery snow fell on Alliance, Nebraska, making all of the snow that was beneath it appear fresh and bright. The plows were back in their sheds by seven A.M. and by eight the sun was out and the sky was clear from Wyoming to Iowa. While the tides of her family rose and fell around her, Bertie stayed focused on what was to be the happiest day of her life. She would be thirty in two weeks and was old enough to remember to put together the proper package for herself: old, new, borrowed, blue. All of the teachers and staff from Emerson Grade School were there, as were the teachers from the high school, where Haas taught chemistry; the middle school; and Saint Agnes Academy. Cousins and second cousins came from Hemingford and Scottsbluff. Two came from Sheridan, Wyoming. Al Fetters’ brother, Ross, came with his wife all the way from Topeka, Kansas, though no one had heard from them in years. In fact, the only member of the family not in attendance was Howard Plate, and no one had expected him anyway.
Kitty and Dot helped Bertie with her dress, which she had bought on a trip to Lincoln when she had first become engaged, more than two years ago. Sabine fixed Bertie’s hair. She had planned to wear her hair up for the wedding but was afraid that the spot that was shaved in the back of her head for the stitches might show. Anyway, she said Haas had always liked her hair better down.
“Look at my three beautiful girls,” Dot said, speaking of her two daughters and Sabine, whom she had come to think of as a daughter. “All of you grown-up and going away.”
“We’re pretty far past grown,” Bertie said, putting gloss on her lips. “And as far as gone, well, Haas and I are only going to San Francisco for five days.”
“And I’m not going anywhere,” Kitty said.
“You’re going to California.” Dot
“I didn’t say I was going to California. You’re getting things confused. That’s what happens when you get old, Mother. It’s Sabine who’s going to California.” Kitty smiled.
“You’re going with her.”
“I said the boys and I were thinking about going to visit for a while.”
“Maybe a long visit,” Sabine said hopefully.
“I don’t know what we’ll do yet,” Kitty said.
“The problem with Kitty is that it takes her forever to make up her mind. Let me have some of that powder, will you?” Dot held out her hand to Sabine.
“This is Bertie’s day,” Kitty said. “Let’s leave Kitty and all her problems out of it for once, shall we?” She attached a white net veil on a crown of white satin roses to the top of her sister’s head. “There,” she said, stepping away. “Will you look at that?”
Sabine brought the bouquet of lilies of the valley from the refrigerator. Everyone agreed that Bertie was a lovely bride.
“I should be crying,” Dot whispered to Sabine as she slipped into the pew after walking Bertie down the aisle. “Pinch me. Make me cry.”
At the reception people ate sandwiches cut into small triangles and a white wedding cake covered in frosting roses. A three-piece band played “What a Wonderful World” while Bertie and Haas danced their first married dance together in the church basement. Haas didn’t look so shy now. He looked happy. When everyone else joined in, Dot danced with her brother-in-law, Ross Fetters, of Topeka. Sabine danced with Guy, and How danced with his mother, though the boys had made their position clear to them on the drive over: Absolutely no more than one dance. The dancing was the entertainment: dancing, lunch, and a champagne toast, even though it was only one o’clock in the afternoon. There was plenty to keep everyone busy, and yet Bertie had asked Sabine a week before if she would do a magic trick at the wedding.
“I’m not sure it really goes,” Sabine said.
“Just one trick,” Bertie said, twisting her fingers together. “Everyone would love it.”
“I’m not actually a magician, no matter how I try and pass myself off around here. The truth is I’ve never performed by myself before. I don’t think I’d be very good.”
“Of course you’d be good,” Bertie said. “Besides, if Guy was alive he’d do it. I bet he’d want to do a trick.”
He would. He never missed a chance to do a little magic. He pulled Rabbit out of the punch bowl at their wedding, which was a hell of a trick. He had to have a special bowl and table made up and the rabbit got soaked coming out and turned a sticky pink. Everyone loved it.
“Just one,” Bertie said.
Sabine relented. All week she had planned to do cups and balls, a complicated version whose finale required a half a dozen eggs and three live baby chicks, which, as it turned out, were not difficult to come by in Nebraska. But as of yesterday morning she had changed her mind.
Haas went onto the dance floor by himself. One wall was lined with heavy boots and coats. Hats, gloves, and scarves spilled from the pockets. He cleared his throat. “Everybody?” he said. “Excuse me.”
The crowd, dressed mostly in brown suits and in dresses ordered through catalogs, shifted towards him. Haas seemed startled by their sudden attention. “We’re very fortunate today because my wife’s”—he paused to nod his head towards Bertie, so newly his wife—“sister-in-law, my sister-in-law, the famous magician Sabine Parsifal, is with us today and we’ve asked her if she would please do a trick for us. Sabine?” Haas put his hands together and began a polite round of applause.
Sabine came forward carrying the base of a wooden podium that seemed to be about the right height. The trick was impossible. She had gone over it again and again yesterday. She’d shuffled the cards until her hands ached. No matter how much or how little she did to arrange them, they came out the same every time. She hadn’t shown it to anyone yet, not even to Kitty. She didn’t think it was such a good idea to do it at a wedding reception in a church basement, except that it was Bertie’s wedding and this was, by a long shot, the best trick that she knew.
Sabine put her hands flat on the table. “I just learned this one,” she said. “So be patient with me. Is there a volunteer? I’m going to need some help.”
People raised their hands. People lived to help. Throughout the semicircle around her hands were pointing up towards the fluorescent lights overhead as if it were school and the whole room knew the answer. She had been hoping to use Bertie or Haas, but, of course, they were too busy holding each other’s hands to raise them. She wanted to call on Dot or Kitty or one of the boys, just to have someone she knew beside her, but then people would be even less likely to believe that what was going to happen had really happened. So she pointed to the fifteen-year-old girl with the purple knit dress and navy blue pumps she was not qualified to walk in, somebody’s bony, awkward daughter who had not appeared to have had a moment’s fun for the entire wedding. The girl came forward shyly, unable to believe her good luck at having been chosen.
“What’s your name?” Sabine said.
“Laney Cole,” the girl said, and twisted a shank of her dark blond hair between her fingers. The Coles, Sabine remembered from the invitations, were the Wyoming cousins.
“Do I know you?” Sabine asked.
“No,” the girl said, shaking her head to reinforce her point.
“Have I set anything up with you beforehand, given you any money?”
Now Laney Cole blushed and looked down at her feet. “No.”
“You promise?”
The girl nodded her head, her face so red that Sabine decided to drop the line of questions before the child had a stroke right in front of her. “Okay. Now I want you to take this pack of cards and look at it. You tell me if the seal is good, if anybody could have gotten into it, and if it looks good to you, I want you to open it.”
Laney Cole studied the package with considerably more care than the task required and when she was certain it was in all ways an average, legitimate deck, she opened it up and handed the cards to Sabine, who thanked her, threw the jokers on the floor, and shuffled them until they felt warm and pliant in her hands. The audience burst into a raving, spontaneous applause. Sabine nodded her head. “Here,” she said, giving them back to the girl. “Now you shuffle them. Cut them up and put the deck in the middle of the table.”
Laney Cole did a very decent basic bridge shuffle and then cut the deck three times and put the pack on the table. She had a nice face. You could tell she was going to pass through this phase and grow up pretty.
“Perfect,” Sabine said. “Now don’t leave. This is the hard part. I’m going to have to ask everyone to remain completely silent.” Sabine wasn’t sure about the silence, or about the enormous strain that had come over Parsifal when he tapped the deck. All she could figure was that it was part of the act, because she found she could give the deck four extremely careless taps under any circumstance of noise with an utter lack of concentration and the aces still raced to the top of the deck like horses to the barn. That very morning she had leaned out of the shower and tapped the deck four times with a soapy hand. Bingo. She ground down her teeth and half closed her eyes and gave four light but ominous touches to the top card. When she was finished she opened her eyes as if returning from a long fever. She shook her head and stepped back. “Okay,” she said to Laney. “Turn over the top card and then hold it out to face the audience.”
Hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades. The aces moved to the gravity of her hand.
The audience turned out a good solid round of applause, but it was hardly the rollicking enthusiasm they’d managed when she had shuffled the deck. They did not swarm forward and carry her out into the snowy streets of Alliance. No one, in fact, seemed to realize that something other than a good, if simple, card trick had transpired except for young Laney Cole, who was holding on to the edge of the podium, the ace of spades still clu
“How?” Laney whispered while the crowd dispersed, many heading back to the buffet table for a second round of cake. Her eyes were bright with tears.
“I don’t know,” Sabine said, touching her wrist. “I swear to you.”
“And she thinks she couldn’t be a professional magician.” Dot came up behind Sabine and gave her a hug. “That was super.”
“I thought you were going to do the one with the chicks,” How said, looking slightly disappointed.
“Hush,” Dot said, and swatted at him. “The one she did was fine. I only wished it was longer.”
“I think you should have made yourself float,” Guy said.
Bertie was bringing Sabine a piece of cake, the plate balanced on her open hand. The crinoline beneath her skirt made a gentle rustling, as if she were moving through a pile of fall leaves, and Sabine thought how wonderful it was to have the bride bring you your cake, the bride who looked so much like a cake herself, shining white and in every way decorated.
“Wasn’t she wonderful?” Bertie said to her sister, who was standing beside her.
“Wonderful,” Kitty said.
Bertie handed Sabine her cake. She had been careful to cut a piece with a frosting rose on top. “And if Guy had been here, I know that’s exactly the trick he would have done.”
Kitty and Dot looked at her. Bertie didn’t know Guy. She had only met him that one afternoon when he came home from Lowell, and she was barely three then. She was always frightened of strangers as a child and when he came inside the house, she cried. “I guess that’s possible,” Dot said.
“No,” Sabine said. “She’s right. He loved that trick.”
Acknowledgments
The Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, The Guggenheim Foundation, The MacDowell Colony, and Ucross supported me at different times during the writing of this novel, for which I am deeply grateful. Other kinds of equally necessary support were given by my agent, Lisa Bankoff, and Frank and Jerri Patchett. I have long-standing debts of gratitude to Allan Gurganus and Nancy Grimes.