The Magician's Assistant

by Ann Patchett

As they walked together towards the store she told Sabine, “I bring the boys here in the dead of winter when the weather is awful and they’re bored, and I come here when I want to be alone. My mother and I come here when we want to talk privately, and Bertie and I come here when we feel like seeing people. I come here when the air conditioner goes out in the summer and I buy popcorn and just walk around. Most of the times I can remember that Howard and I were actually getting along he’d ask me if I wanted to go to Wal-Mart with him, and we’d look at stuff we wanted to buy and talk about it—wouldn’t it be nice to have a Cuisinart, wouldn’t it be nice to have a sixty-four-piece sprocket set. It’s a very romantic place, really.”

“When you’re young and you want to have a baby because babies are so cute and everybody else has one, nobody ever takes you aside and explains to you what happens when they grow up. Maybe they all think it’s obvious. I mean, if you know enough about biology to know where babies come from, then you should know that sooner or later they turn into teenagers, but somehow you just don’t ever think about it, then one day, bang, you’ve got these total strangers living with you, these children in adult bodies, and you don’t know who they are. It’s like they somehow ate up those children you had and you loved, and you keep loving these people because you know they’ve got your child locked up in there somewhere.”