The Magician's Assistant

In death, Parsifal is remembered as unique because he left his family and created his own identity. However, Parsifal’s absence has a secondary impact, for he does not pass on his hard-earned lessons to Kitty, who fails to similarly reinvent herself and instead makes life choices very similar to Dot’s, enduring the constant threat of Howard’s abuse and violence. The narrative also suggests that Kitty’s sons are poised to become recipients of this generational trauma, for as Kitty observes, “[Parsifal] […] went off to California and rewrote his whole life history. […] My boys aren’t like that. At heart they’re followers, and […] they’ll stay exactly where they are for the rest of their lives unless somebody shows them what to do” (297). In this moment, Kitty evinces the same defeated tone that Dot does when she insists that nothing will ever change. However, Kitty’s words hold a grain of hope and a greater sense of agency, for although she admits that her sons are not currently in the best situation, she acknowledges the need for a change, and her contemplations imply that her own inner transformation toward a greater sense of agency is already underway.

Even as Sabine is forced to watch the Fetters family drama, her long stay in Nebraska provides her with unwelcome but essential insights that compel her to deal with her grief and reevaluate the hidden aspects of her marriage to Parsifal. Now, as she watches the recording of her and Parsifal’s appearance on the Johnny Carson show, she grieves openly with Parsifal’s family and mourns the loss of “the man she loved at the height of his life” even as she celebrates his many accomplishments in the midst of adversity (303). For the Fetters, however, the video is their only stand-in for the person they no longer have a chance to get to know; thus, while Sabine finds a form of release in watching the clip, the Fetters family’s experience of the same moment is deeply imbued with regret. Ultimately, the videotape of the performance represents the adult, happy version of Parsifal—the person he became when he fully embraced his most authentic self. By releasing her emotions, Sabine honors Parsifal and embraces the message of the restorative dream in which she sees Parsifal triumphant and happy.

However, even as Sabine finds ways to let go of her grief, she finds herself seeking out substitutes for her relationship with Parsifal, and this pattern becomes the most prominent when she develops a deep friendship with Kitty that begins to border on sexual and romantic love. Because Kitty resembles Parsifal so closely, Sabine’s attraction to her stems from her subconscious desire to cling to some semblance of Parsifal her lost husband. Sabine also sees a version of herself in Kitty due to their shared adoration of Parsifal, but although the two women do find a measure of consolation in each other’s company, Sabine will ultimately find that her desire for Kitty will remain just as unrequited as her romantic love for Parsifal. In the moment when this issue lies openly between them, the narrative states,

There was between the two of them so much disappointment and relief that Sabine found herself taking shallow breaths. Kitty slipped into the hall and closed the door behind her […], and though Sabine waited, […] Kitty did not come back (332-33).

The unspoken truths about their love for one another echo Parsifal’s painful past, in which he felt compelled to keep his true feelings to himself. Thus, it is clear that Sabine’s deep connection with Kitty goes beyond friendship or sisterhood and is complicated by Sabine’s decades of enduring a version of love that her husband could not return. Sabine “had spent the better part of her life in love with one basically unobtainable Fetters. The idea of somehow setting her sights on another one […] was ludicrous” (320). While Sabine hopes to resolve her unrequited love with Parsifal by developing a romantic relationship with his sister, Patchett also implies that Kitty, like Parsifal, is not an ideal fit.