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
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what fortune
