Practical Magic

Frances comes to the porch to better assess her niece's house.

"Modern, but very nice," she announces.

Sally feels the sting of pride. It's as high a compliment as Aunt Frances would ever give; it means that Sally's done it all on her own, and done well. Sally's grateful for any kind words or deeds; she can use them. She was awake all night because every time she closed her eyes she'd see Gary so clearly it was as if he were there beside her at the kitchen table, in the easy chair, in her bed. She has a tape that keeps playing inside her head, over and over, and she can't seem to stop it. Gary Hallet is touching her right now, he has his hands on her as she leans to grab her aunt's suitcase. When she tries to lift this piece of luggage, Sally is shocked to discover she hasn't the strength to do it alone. Something inside rattles like beads, or bricks, or perhaps even bones.

"For the problem in the yard," Aunt Frances explains.

"Ah," Sally says.

Aunt Jet comes over and links her arm through Sally's. During the summer that Jet turned sixteen, two local boys killed themselves for her love. One tied iron bars to his ankles and drowned himself in a quarry. The other was done in on the train tracks outside of town by the 10:02 to Boston. Of all the Owens women, Jet Owens was the most beautiful, and she never even noticed. She preferred cats to human beings and turned down every offer from the men who fell in love with her. The only one she ever cared for was that boy who was hit by lightning when he and his brother went tearing off across the town green to prove how brave and daring they were. Sometimes, late at night, Jet and Frances both hear the sound of those boys laughing as they run through the rain, then stumble into the darkness. Their voices are still young and filled with expectation, exactly as they sounded at the moment they were struck down.

Lately, Aunt Jet has to carry a black cane that has a carved raven's head; she's bent over with arthritis, but she never complains about the way her back feels when she unlaces her boots at the end of the day. Each morning she washes with the black soap she and Frances mix up twice a year, and her complexion is close to perfect. She works in her garden and can remember the Latin name of every plant that grows there. But not a day goes by that she doesn't think about the boy she loved. Not a moment passes that she doesn't wish that time were a movable entity and that she could go backward and kiss that boy again.

"We're so glad to be here," Jet announces.

Sally smiles a beautiful sad smile. "I should have invited you a long time ago. I didn't think either of you would like it."

"That just goes to show that you never can tell about a person by guessing," Frances informs her niece. "That's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood."

"You're absolutely right," Sally agrees.

The suitcases are lugged inside, which is no easy job. Antonia and Kylie shout, "Heave ho!" and work together, under the aunts' watchful eyes. Waiting by the window, Gillian has considered escaping through the back door so she won't have to face the aunts' critique on how she's messed up her life. But when Kylie and Antonia lead the aunts inside, Gillian is standing in the very same spot, her pale hair electrified.

Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies, for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often. The aunts cluck their tongues as soon as they see this grown woman who once was their little girl. They may not have had regular dinnertimes or made certain that clean clothes were folded in the bureaus, but they were there. They were the ones Gillian turned to that first year, when the other children at nursery school pulled her hair and called her the witch-girl. Gillian never told Sally how awful it was, how they persecuted her, and she was just three years old. It was embarrassing, that much she knew even then. It was something you didn't admit to.

Every day Gillian came home and swore to Sally that she'd had a lovely afternoon, she'd played with blocks and paints, and fed the bunny that eyed the children sadly from a cage near the coat closet. But Gillian couldn't lie to the aunts when they came to fetch her. At the end of each day her hair was in tangles and her face and legs were scratched red. The aunts advised her to ignore the other children—to read her books and play her games by herself and march over to inform the teacher if anyone was nasty or rude. Even then, Gillian believed she was worthy of the awful treatment she got, and she never did go running to the teacher and tattle. She tried her best to keep it inside.

The aunts, however, could tell what was happening from the sorry slope of Gillian's shoulders as she pulled her sweater on and because she couldn't sleep at night. Most of the children eventually tired of teasing Gillian, but several continued to torment her—whispering "witch" every time she was near, spilling grape juice on her new shoes, grabbing fistfuls of her hair and pulling with all their might—and they did so until the Christmas party.

All the children's parents attended the party, bringing cookies or cakes or bowls of eggnog sprinkled with nutmeg. The aunts came late, wearing their black coats. Gillian had hoped they would remember to bring a box of chocolate chip cookies, or perhaps a Sara Lee cake, but the aunts weren't interested in desserts. They went directly to the worst of the children, the boys who pulled hair, the girls who called names. The aunts didn't have to use curses or herbs, or vow any sort of punishment. They merely stood beside the snack table, and every child who'd been mean to Gillian was immediately sick to his or her stomach. These children ran to their parents and begged to be taken home, then stayed in bed for days, shivering beneath wool blankets, so queasy and filled with remorse that their complexions took on a faint greenish tinge, and their skins gave off the sour scent that always accompanies a guilty conscience.

After the Christmas party, the aunts took Gillian home and sat her down on the sofa in the parlor, the velvet one with the wooden lion's feet whose claws terrified Gillian. They told her how sticks and stones could break bones, but taunting and name-calling were only for fools. Gillian heard them, but she didn't really listen. She put too much worth in what other people thought and not enough in her own opinion. The aunts have always known that Gillian sometimes needs extra help defending herself. As they study her, their gray eyes are bright and sharp. They see the lines on her face that someone else might not notice; they can tell what she's been through.

"I look awful, right?" Gillian says. There's a catch in her voice. A minute ago she was eighteen and climbing out her bedroom window, and now here she is, all used up.

The aunts cluck louder and come to embrace Gillian. It is so unlike their usual cool style that a sob escapes from Gillian's throat. To their credit, the aunts have learned a thing or two since they were snagged into raising two little girls. They've watched Oprah; they know what can happen when you hide your love away. As far as they're concerned, Gillian is more attractive than ever, but then the Owens women have always been known for their beauty, as well as the foolish choices they make when they're young. In the twenties, their cousin Jinx, whose watercolors can be found in the Museum of Fine Arts, was too headstrong to listen to a word anyone else said; she got drunk on cold champagne, threw her satin shoes over a high stone wall, then danced on broken glass until dawn and never walked again. The most beloved of the great-aunts, Barbara Owens, married a man with a skull as thick as a mule's who refused to have electricity or plumbing put into their house, insisting such things were fads. Their favorite cousin, April Owens, lived in the Mojave Desert for twelve years, collecting spiders in jars filled with formaldehyde. A decade or two on the rocks gives a person character. Although she'd never believe it, those lines in Gillian's face are the most beautiful part about her. They reveal what she's gone through and what she's survived and who exactly she is, deep inside.

"Well," Gillian says when she's done crying. She wipes at her eyes with her hands. "Who would have thought I'd get so emotional?"

The aunts settle in, and then Sally pours them each a small glass of gin and bitters, which they always appreciate, and which they particularly like to get them started when there's work to be done.

"Let's talk about the fellow in the backyard," Frances says. "Jimmy."

"Do we have to?" Gillian groans.

"We do," Aunt Jet is sorry to say. "Just little things about him. For instance—how did he die?"

Antonia and Kylie are gulping diet Cokes and listening like crazy. The hair on their arms is standing on end; this could get really interesting.

Sally has brought a pot of mint tea to the table, along with a chipped cup her daughters gave her one Mother's Day, which has always been her favorite. Sally can't drink coffee anymore; the scent of it conjures Gary up so completely she could have sworn he was sitting at the table when Gillian was pouring water through the filter this morning. She tells herself it's the lack of caffeine that's been making her lethargic, but that's not what's wrong. She's been unusually quiet today, moody enough to make Antonia and Kylie take notice. She seems so different. The girls have had the feeling that the woman who was once their mother is gone forever. It's not only that her black hair is loose, instead of being pulled away from her face; it's how sad she looks, how far away.

"I don't think we should discuss this in front of the children," Sally says.

But the children are riveted; they'll die if they don't hear what happened next; they simply won't be able to stand it.

"Mother!" they cry.

They're almost women. And there's not a thing Sally can do about it. So she shrugs and nods to Gillian, giving her the okay.

"Well," Gillian says, "I guess I killed him."

The aunts exchange a look. In their opinion this is one thing Gillian is not capable of. "How?" they ask. This is the girl who would scream if she stepped on a spider in her bare feet. If she pricked her finger and drew blood she'd announce she was ready to faint and then proceed to fall on the floor.

Gillian admits she used nightshade, a plant she always had contempt for when she was a child, pretending it was ragweed so she could give it a good pull when the aunts asked her to clear out the garden. When the aunts ask for the dosage she used and Gillian tells them, the aunts nod, pleased. Exactly as they thought. If the aunts know anything, they know nightshade. Such a dosage wouldn't kill a fox terrier, let alone a six-foot-tall man.

"But he's dead," Gillian says, stunned to hear that her remedy could not have killed him. She turns to Sally. "I know he was dead."

"Definitely dead," Sally agrees.

"Not by your hand." Frances could not be more certain of it. "Not unless he was a chipmunk."

Gillian throws her arms around the aunts. Aunt Frances's announcement has filled her with hope. It's a silly and ridiculous thing to possess at her age, particularly on this awful night, but Gillian doesn't give a damn. Better late than never, that's the way she sees it.

"I'm innocent," Gillian cries.

Sally and the aunts exchange a look; they don't know about that.

"In this case," Gillian adds when she sees their expressions.

"What killed him?" Sally asks the aunts.

"It could have been anything." Jet shrugs.

"Alcohol," Kylie proposes. "Years of it."

"His heart," Antonia suggests.

Frances announces that they may as well stop this guessing game; they'll never know what killed him, but they're still left with a body in the yard, and that is why the aunts have brought along their recipe for getting rid of the many nasty things one can find in a garden—slugs or aphids, the bloody remains of a crow, torn apart by his rivals, or the sort of weeds that are so poisonous it's impossible to pull them by hand, even when wearing thick leather gloves. The aunts know precisely how much lye to add to the lime, much more than they include when they boil up their black soap, which is especially beneficial to a woman's skin if she washes with it every night. Bars of the aunts' soap, wrapped in clear cellophane, can be found in health-food stores in Cambridge and in several specialty shops along Newbury Street, and this has bought not only a new roof for their old house but a state-of-the-art septic system as well.

At home the aunts always use the big cast-iron cauldron, which has been in the kitchen since Maria Owens first built the house, but here Sally's largest pasta pot will have to do. They'll have to boil the ingredients for three and a half hours, so even though Kylie is always nervous that someone down at Del Vecchio's will recognize her voice as the one belonging to the wiseacre who had all those pizzas delivered to Mr. Frye's house a while back, she phones in and asks for two large pies to be delivered, one with anchovies, for the aunts, the other cheese and mushroom with extra sauce.

The mixture on the back burner starts to bubble, and by the time the delivery boy arrives, the sky has grown stormy and dark, although beneath the thick layers of clouds is a perfect white moon. The delivery boy knocks three times and hopes that Antonia Owens, whom he once sat next to in algebra, will appear. Instead, it's Aunt Frances who yanks open the door. The cuffs of her sleeves are smoky, from all the lye she's been measuring, and her eyes are as cold as iron.

"What?" she demands of the boy, who has already clutched the pizzas tightly to his chest simply because of the sight of her.

"Pizza delivery," he manages to say.

"This is your job?" Frances wants to know. "Delivering food?"

"That's right," the boy says. He thinks he can see Antonia in the house; there's somebody beautiful with red hair, at any rate. Frances is glaring at him. "That's right, ma'am," he amends.

Frances reaches into her skirt pocket for her change purse and counts out eighteen dollars and thirty-three cents, which she considers highway robbery.

"Well, if it's your job, don't expect a tip," she tells the boy.

"Hey, Josh," Antonia calls as she comes to collect the pizzas. She's wearing an old smock over her black T-shirt and leggings. Her hair has turned to ringlets in all this humidity and her pale skin looks creamy and cool. The delivery boy is unable to speak in her presence, although when he gets back to the restaurant he'll talk about her for a good hour before the kitchen staff tells him to shut up. Antonia laughs as she closes the door. She's gotten back some of whatever she'd lost. Attraction, she now understands, is a state of mind.

"Pizza," Antonia announces, and they all sit down to dinner in spite of the awful smell coming from the aunts' mixture boiling on the rear burner of the stove. The storm is rattling the windowpanes and the thunder is so near it can shake the ground. One big flash of lightning, and half the neighborhood has lost its electricity; in houses all along the street, people are searching for flashlights and hurricane candles, or just giving up and going to sleep.

"That's good luck," Aunt Jet says when their electricity goes as well. "We'll be the light in the darkness."

"Find a candle," Sally suggests.

Kylie gets a candle from the shelf near the sink. When she passes the stove she holds her nose closed with her fingers.

"Boy, does that stink," she says of the aunts' mixture.

"It's supposed to," Jet says, pleased.

"It always does," her sister agrees.

Kylie returns and places the candle in the center of the table, then lights it so they can go on with their supper, which is interrupted by the doorbell.

"It better not be that delivery boy back for more," Frances says now. "I'll give him a real piece of my mind."

"I'll get it." Gillian goes to the door and swings it open.

Ben Frye is on the porch, wearing a yellow rain slicker; he's holding a box of white hurricane candles and a lantern. Just seeing him makes a chill go down Gillian's spine. From the first, she's been figuring that Ben was taking his life in his hands each time he was with her. With her luck and her history, anything that could go wrong would. She'd been sure she'd bring disaster to whoever loved her, but that was back when she was a woman who killed her boyfriend in an Oldsmobile, now she's someone else. She leans out the front door and kisses Ben on the mouth. She kisses him in a way that proves that if he was ever thinking of getting out of this, he'd better stop thinking right now.

"Who invited you here?" Gillian says, but she has her arms around him; she's got that sugary smell anyone who gets too close to her can't help but notice.

"I was worried about you," Ben says. "They can call this thing a storm, but it's really a hurricane."

Tonight, Ben has left Buddy alone to bring the candles over, even though he knows how anxious thunder makes the rabbit. That's what happens when Ben wants to see Gillian, he has to go on and do it, no matter what the consequences. Still, he's so unused to being spontaneous that whenever he does something like this he has a slight ringing in his ears, not that he cares. When Ben returns to his house he's bound to find a telephone book shredded or the soles chewed off his favorite running shoes, but it's worth it to be with Gillian.

"Get out while the going's good," Gillian tells him. "My aunts are here from Massachusetts."

"Great," Ben says, and before Gillian can stop him he's inside the house. Gillian tugs at the sleeve of his rain slicker, but he's on his way to greet their guests. The aunts have serious business ahead of them; they'll flip their lids if Ben careens into the kitchen assuming he's about to meet two dear old ladies. They'll rise from their chairs and stomp their feet and turn their cold gray eyes in his direction.

"They arrived this afternoon and they're exhausted," Gillian says. "This is not a good idea. They don't like company. Plus, they're ancient."

Ben Frye pays no attention, and why should he? The aunts are Gillian's family, and that's all he needs to know. He lopes right into the kitchen, where Antonia and Kylie and Sally stop eating the minute they see him; quickly they turn to see the aunts' reaction. Ben doesn't catch on to their anxiety any more than he notices the fiery scent rising from the pot on the stove. He must presume the smell emanates from some special cleaning fluid or detergent, or perhaps some small creature, a baby squirrel or an old toad, has curled up to die underneath the back doorstep.

Ben goes over to the aunts, reaches into the sleeve of his rain slicker, and pulls out a bunch of roses. Aunt Jet accepts them with pleasure. "Lovely," she says.

Aunt Frances runs a petal between her thumb and forefinger to verify that the roses are real. They are, but that doesn't mean Frances is so easily impressed.

"Any more tricks?" she says in a voice that can turn a man's blood to ice.

Ben smiles his beautiful smile, the one that made Gillian weak in the knees from the start and that now reminds the aunts of the boys they once knew. He reaches behind Aunt Frances's head, and before they know it, he has pulled from thin air a chiffon scarf the color of sapphires, which he proudly presents.

"I couldn't accept this," Frances says, but her tone isn't quite so cool as before, and when no one's looking, she loops the scarf around her neck. The color is perfect for her; her eyes look like lake water, clear and gray-blue. Ben makes himself comfortable, grabs a piece of pizza, and begins to ask Jet about their trip down from Massachusetts. That's when Frances signals to Gillian to come close.

"Don't screw this one up," she tells her niece.

"I don't intend to," Gillian assures her.

Ben stays until eleven. He fixes instant chocolate pudding for dessert, then teaches Kylie and Antonia and Aunt Jet how to build a house of cards and how to make it fall down with a single puff of air.

"You got lucky this time," Sally tells her sister.

"You think it was luck?" Gillian grins.

"Yeah," Sally says.

"No way," Gillian says. "It took years of practice."

Just then the aunts both tilt their heads at the very same time and make a very little noise low in their throats, a kind of click so close to silence that anyone who wasn't listening carefully might mistake it for the faint call of a cricket or the sigh of a mouse beneath the floorboards.

"It's time," Aunt Frances says.

"We have family business to discuss," Jet tells Ben as she leads him to the door.

Aunt Jet's voice is always sweet, yet the tone isn't one someone would dare to disobey. Ben grabs his rain slicker and waves to Gillian.

"I'll call you in the morning," he declares. "I'll come over for breakfast."

"Don't screw this one up," Aunt Jet tells Gillian after she's closed the door behind Ben.

"I won't," Gillian assures her as well. She goes to the window and takes a look at the backyard. "It's awful tonight."

The wind is tearing shingles from the roofs, and every cat in the neighborhood has demanded to be let in or has taken refuge in a window well, to shiver and yowl.

"Maybe we should wait," Sally ventures.

"Bring the pot around back," Aunt Jet tells Kylie and Antonia.

The candle in the center of the table casts a circle of wavery light. Aunt Jet takes Gillian's hand in her own. "We have to see to this now. You don't put off dealing with a ghost."

"What do you mean, a ghost?" Gillian says. "We want to make certain the body stays buried."

"Fine," Aunt Frances says. "If that's how you want to look at it."

Gillian wishes she'd had a gin and bitters herself when the aunts did. Instead, she finishes the last of her cold coffee, which has been sitting in a cup on the counter since late afternoon. By tomorrow morning the creek behind the high school will be deep as a river; toads will have to scramble for higher ground; children won't think twice about diving into the warm, murky water, even if they're dressed in their Sunday clothes and wearing their best pair of shoes.

"Okay," Gillian says. She knows her aunts are talking about more than a body; it's the spirit of the man, that's what's haunting them. "Fine," she tells the aunts, and she swings open the back door.

Antonia and Kylie carry the pot out to the yard. The rain is quite near; they can taste it in the air. The aunts have already had the girls bring their suitcase over to the hedge of thorns. They stand close together, and when the wind rustles their skirts the fabric makes a moaning sound.

"This dissolves what once was flesh," Aunt Frances says.

She signals to Gillian.

"Me?" Gillian takes a step backward, but there's no place to go. Sally is right behind her.

"Go on," Sally tells her.

Antonia and Kylie are holding on to the heavy pot; the wind is so strong that the hedge of thorns whips out, as if trying to cut them. The wasps' nests sway back and forth. It is definitely time.

"Oh, brother," Gillian whispers to Sally. "I don't know if I can do this."

Antonia's fingers are turning white with the effort she needs not to drop the pot. "This is really heavy," she says in a shaky voice.

"Believe me," Sally tells Gillian. "You can."

If there's one thing Sally is now certain of, it's how you can amaze yourself by the things you're willing to do. Those are her daughters, the girls she wanted to lead normal lives, and she's allowing them to stand over a pile of bones with a spaghetti pot filled mostly with lye. What has happened to her? What has snapped? Where is that logical woman, the one people could depend on, day after day? She can't stop thinking about Gary, no matter how hard she tries. She actually called the Hide-A-Way to ask if he'd checked out, and he has. He's gone, and here she is, thinking about him. Last night, she dreamed of the desert. She dreamed the aunts had sent her a cutting from an apple tree in their yard and that it bloomed without water. And in her dream the horses that ate apples from that tree ran faster than all the others, and any man who took a bite from a pie Sally fixed with these apples was bound to be hers, for life.

Sally and Gillian take the pot from the girls, although Gillian keeps her eyes closed as they turn it over and pour out the lye. The damp earth sizzles and is hot; as the mixture seeps deeper into the ground, a mist appears. It's the color of regret, it's the color of heartbreak, the gray of doves and early morning.

"Step back," the aunts tell them, for the earth has begun to bubble. The roots of the thornbushes are being dissolved by the mixture, as are stones and beetles, leather and bones. They can't move away fast enough, but still something is happening beneath Kylie's feet.

"Damn it," Sally cries.

Right under Kylie's feet the earth is shifting, falling in on itself, like a landslide, going down. Kylie feels it, she knows it, yet she freezes. She's falling into a hole, she's falling fast, but Antonia reaches to grab the back of her shirt and then pulls. She wrenches Kylie back so hard and so fast that Antonia can hear her own elbow pop.

The girls stand there, out of breath and terrified. Without realizing it, Gillian has latched on to Sally's arm; she's holding on so tight that Sally will have the marks of her sister's fingers on her skin for days afterward. Now they all step back. They do it quickly. They do it without having to be told. A thread of blood-red vapor is rising from the place where Jimmy's heart would have been, a small tornado of spite that disappears as it meets the air.

"That was him," Kylie says of the red vapor, and sure enough, they can smell beer and boot polish, they can feel the air grow as hot as embers in an ashtray. And then nothing. Nothing at all. Gillian can't be sure if she's crying, or if the rain has begun. "He's really gone," Kylie tells her.

But the aunts are taking no chances. They've carried along twenty blue stones inside their largest suitcase, stones Maria Owens had brought to the house on Magnolia Street more than two hundred years ago. Stones such as these form the path in the aunts' garden, but there were extras stored beside the potting shed, enough to fashion a small patio in the spot where the lilacs once grew. Now that the hedge of thorns is nothing but ashes, it's easy for the Owens women to put down a circle of stones. The patio won't be fancy, but it will be wide enough for a small wrought-iron table and four chairs. Some of the little girls in the neighborhood will beg to have tea parties out here, and when their mothers laugh and ask why this patio is better than their own, the little girls will insist the blue stones are lucky.

There's no such thing as luck, their mothers will tell them. Drink your orange juice, have your cakes, keep your party in your own backyard. And yet, every time their mothers' backs are turned, the little girls will drag their dolls and teddy bears and china tea sets over to the Owens patio. "Good luck," they'll whisper as they clink their cups together in a toast. "Good luck," they'll say as the stars rise above them in the sky.

Some people believe that every question has a logical answer; there's an order to everything, which is neat and based purely on empirical evidence. But really, what could it be but luck that the rain doesn't begin in earnest until their work is done. The Owens women have mud under their fingernails, and their arms ache from carting those heavy stones. Antonia and Kylie will sleep well tonight, as will the aunts, who have been plagued by insomnia from time to time. They will sleep the whole night through, even though lightning will strike in twelve separate places on Long Island before the storm is over. A house in East Meadow will be burned to the ground. A surfer in Long Beach who always longed for hurricanes and big waves will be fried. A maple tree that has grown in the Y field for three hundred years will be split in two and will have to be taken down with chain saws to make certain it won't collapse on top of the Little League team.

Only Sally and Gillian are awake to watch when the worst of the storm arrives. They're not worried by weather reports. Tomorrow there will be branches strewn across the lawn, and the trashcans will roll down the street, but the air will be fragrant and mild. They can have their breakfast and coffee outside, if they wish. They can listen for the song of sparrows who've come to beg for crumbs.

"The aunts didn't seem as disappointed as I thought they'd be," Gillian says. "In me."

The rain is coming down hard; it's washing those blue stones out in the yard clean as new.

"They'd be stupid if they were disappointed," Sally says. She loops her arm through her sister's. She thinks she may actually mean what she's just said. "And the aunts are definitely not stupid."

Tonight Sally and Gillian will concentrate on the rain, and tomorrow on the blue sky. They will do the best they can, but they will always be the girls they once were, dressed in their black coats, walking home through the fallen leaves to a house where no one could see into the windows, and no one could see out. At twilight they will always think of those women who would do anything for love. And in spite of everything, they will discover that this, above all others, is their favorite time of day. It's the hour when they remember everything the aunts taught them. It's the hour they're most grateful for.