The Magician's Assistant

by Ann Patchett

Suddenly to have the privilege of wearing your own skin, the headlong rush of love, the loss of the knifepoint of loneliness. That was the true life, the one you would admit to. Why even mention the past? It was not his past. He was a changeling, separated at birth from his own identity.

“I bought three,” he said. “Three what?” “Three plots.” His voice was gentle, always asking a question. It grew softer every day he was sick. Phan’s hair, so black and beautifully thick, had turned gray in a month and he wore it cut close to his scalp now. “We should all be together. That is the truth, the three of us are family. I don’t want you to be alone.” Sabine kept her eyes down. Through the generosity of the offer she saw that she was alone. Even in death she would be the third party, along for the ride. It got darker every minute they waited. The birds were almost quiet. Phan patted her hand. “It is a very difficult thing to discuss. I imagine that when we are gone your life will only be beginning. You could marry, have a child still. You have so far to go before you’ll know how things will end. So this plot is only insurance. It says that Parsifal and I love you always, that we want you with us; and if you don’t come, it will always mean the same thing. It will stay for you.”

sobbed

“You can’t always trust what you think, what you know,” he would tell Sabine. “But you can always trust your nature. You have to make the tricks your nature.”

“You were his life. There was no one he trusted more than you, but no one tells anyone everything.”

Nothing comes in balance, Sabine. Your kids either vanish or they won’t go away. You pray that one daughter will get married and the other one will get divorced, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about either one of them.”

Her father did not speak of unhappiness. He did not brood late at night, alone in the living room. “What fortune,” he said to Sabine when she finished her dance recitals, showed her report card, walked into a room. “What fortune,” he said when her mother brought the Sunday brisket to the table on a wide oval platter. “What fortune,” he said on the day Parsifal married Sabine. Her father took Parsifal in his arms, kissed his cheeks. “Now I have a son.” They all laughed, but he stuck with it. “Let me speak to my son,” he would say to Sabine on the telephone. “Forty-five years old and I have a father again,” Parsifal would say.

what fortune