Practical Magic (29 page)

Gary thinks this over while the rain taps against the roof of the car. They can’t see out the windshield, and the windows are fogged up.

“It was an accident,” Sally says now. “Not that he didn’t deserve it. Not that he wasn’t the biggest pig alive.”

“He went to my high school.” Gary speaks slowly, with an ache in his voice. “He was always bad news. People say that he shot twelve ponies at a ranch that refused to hire him for a summer job. Shot them in the head, one by one.”

“There you go,” Sally says. “There you have it.”

“You want me to forget about him? Is that what you’re asking me to do?”

“He won’t hurt anyone anymore,” Sally says. “That’s the important thing.”

The woman who works in the motel office has run outside, wearing a black rain poncho and carrying a broom she’ll use to try to unclog the gutters before tomorrow’s predicted storm. Sally herself isn’t thinking about her gutters. She’s not wondering if her girls thought to close the windows, and at this moment she doesn’t care if her roof will make it through gale-force winds.

“The only way he’ll hurt someone is if you keep looking for him,” Sally adds. “Then my sister will get hurt, and I will, too, and it will all be for nothing.”

She’s got the sort of logic Gary can’t argue with. The sky is getting darker, and when Gary looks at Sally he sees only her eyes. What’s right and what’s wrong have somehow gotten confused. “I don’t know what to do,” he admits. “In all of this, I seem to have a problem. I’m not impartial. I can pretend to be, but I’m not.”

He’s staring at her the way he did when she first answered the door. Sally can feel his intentions and his torment both; she’s well aware of what he wants.

Gary Hallet is getting leg cramps sitting in the Honda, but he’s not going anywhere yet. His grandfather used to tell him that most folks had it all wrong: The truth of the matter was, you could lead a horse to water, and if the water was cool enough, if it was truly clear and sweet, you wouldn’t have to force him to drink. Tonight Gary feels a whole lot more like the horse than the rider. He has stumbled into love, and now he’s stuck there. He’s fairly used to not getting what he wants, and he’s dealt with it, yet he can’t help but wonder if that’s only because he didn’t want anything too badly. Well, he does now. He looks out at the parking lot. By afternoon he’ll be back where he belongs; his dogs will go crazy when they see him, his mail will be waiting outside his front door, the milk in his refrigerator will still be fresh enough to use in his coffee. The hitch is, he doesn’t want to go. He’d rather be here, crammed into this tiny Honda, his stomach growling with hunger, his desire so bad he doesn’t know if he could stand up straight. His eyes are burning hot, and he knows he can never stop himself when he’s going to cry. He’d better not even try.

“Oh, don’t,” Sally says. She moves closer to him, pulled by gravity, pulled by forces she couldn’t begin to control.

“I just do this,” Gary says in that sad, deep voice. He shakes his head, disgusted with himself. This time he’d prefer to do almost anything but cry. “Pay no attention.”

But she does. She can’t help herself. She shifts toward him, meaning to wipe at his tears, but instead she loops her arms around his neck, and once she does that, he holds her closer.

“Sally,” he says.

It’s music, it’s a sound that is absurdly beautiful in his mouth, but she won’t pay attention. She knows from the time she spent on the back stairs of the aunts’ house that most things men say are lies. Don’t listen, she tells herself. None of it’s true and none of it matters, because he’s whispering that he’s been looking for her forever. She’s halfway onto his lap, facing him, and when he touches her, his hands are so hot on her skin she can’t believe it. She can’t listen to anything he tells her and she certainly can’t think, because if she did she might just think she’d better stop.

This is what it must be like to be drunk, Sally finds herself thinking, as Gary presses against her. His hands are on her skin, and she doesn’t stop him. They’re under her T-shirt, they’re into her shorts, and still she doesn’t stop him. She wants the heat he’s making her feel; she, who can’t function without directions and a map, wants to get lost right now. She can feel herself giving in to his kisses; she’s ready to do just about anything. This is what it must be like to be crazy, she guesses. Everything she’s doing is so unlike her usual self that when Sally catches sight of her image in the cloudy side-view mirror, she’s stunned. It’s a woman who could fall in love if she let herself, a woman who doesn’t stop Gary when he lifts her dark hair away, then presses his mouth to the hollow of her throat.

What good would it do her to get involved with someone like him? She’d have to feel so much, and she’s not that kind. She couldn’t abide those poor, incoherent women who came to the aunts’ back door, and she could not stand to be one of them now, wild with grief, overcome with what some people call love.

She pulls away from Gary, out of breath, her mouth hot, the rest of her burning. She has managed to exist this long without; she can keep on doing it. She can make herself go cold, from the inside out. The drizzle is letting up, but the sky has become as dark as a pot of ink. In the east, thunder sounds as the storm moves in from the sea.

“Maybe I’m letting you do this so you’ll stop the investigation,” Sally says. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe I’m so desperate I’d fuck anyone, including you.”

Her mouth tastes bitter and cruel, but she doesn’t care. She wants to see that wounded look on his face. She wants to stop this before that option is no longer hers. Before what she feels takes hold and she’s trapped, like those women at the aunts’ back door.

“Sally,” Gary says. “You’re not like that.”

“Oh, really?” Sally says. “You don’t know me. You just think you do.”

“That’s right. I think I do,” he says, which is about as much of an argument as Sally’s going to get.

“Get out,” she tells Gary. “Get out of the car.”

At this moment, Gary wishes he could grab her and force her, at least until she gave in. He’d like to make love to her right here, he’d like to do it all night and not give a damn about anything else, and not listen if she told him no. But he’s not that kind of man, and he never will be. He’s seen too many lives go wrong when a man allows himself to be led around by his dick. It’s like giving in to drugs or alcohol or the fast cash you’ve just got to have, no questions asked. Gary has always understood why people give in and do as they please with no thought of anyone else. Their minds shut off, and he’s not going to do that, even if it means he won’t get what he really wants.

“Sally,” he says, and his voice causes her more anguish than she would ever have imagined possible. It’s the kindness that undoes her, it’s the mercy in spite of everything that’s happened and is happening still.

“I want you to get out,” Sally says. “This is a mistake. It’s all wrong.”

“It isn’t.” But Gary opens the door and gets out. He leans back down, and Sally makes herself look straight ahead, at the windshield. She doesn’t dare look at him.

“Close it,” Sally says. Her voice sounds fragile, a shattered, undependable thing. “I mean it.”

He closes the car door, but he stands there watching. Even if she doesn’t look, Sally knows he hasn’t walked away. This is the way it has to be. She’ll be removed forever, distant as stars, unhurt and untouched, forever and ever. Sally steps on the gas, knowing that if she turned to see, she’d find he was still standing in the parking lot. But she doesn’t look back, because if she did she’d also discover how much she wants him, for all the good it will ever do her.

Gary does watch her drive away, and he’s watching still when the first bit of lightning cracks across the sky. He’s there when the crab apple on the far side of the parking lot turns white with heat; he’s close enough to feel the charge, and he’ll feel it all the way home, as he’s high above them in the sky, headed west. With a close call like that, it makes perfect sense that he’ll be shaking as he turns the key in his own front door. As Gary understands it, the greatest portion of grief is the one you dish out for yourself, and he and Sally have both served themselves from the same table tonight, the only difference being that he knows what he’s missing, and she has no idea of what’s causing her to cry as she drives down the Turnpike.

When Sally gets home, her dark hair loose, her mouth bruised by kisses, Gillian is waiting up for her. She’s sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea and listening to the thunder.

“Did you fuck him?” Gillian says.

The question is both completely startling and totally commonplace, since it’s Gillian who’s asking. Sally actually laughs. “No.”

“Too bad,” Gillian says. “I thought you would. I thought you were hooked. You had that look in your eye.”

“You were wrong,” Sally says.

“Did he at least make you a deal? Did he tell you we’re not suspects? Will he let it slide?”

“He has to think it over.” Sally sits down at the table. She feels the way she would if someone had smacked her. The weight of never seeing Gary again descends like a cloak made of ashes. She thinks about his kisses and the way he touched her, and she gets turned inside out all over again. “He has a conscience.”

“Just our luck. And it only gets worse.”

Tonight the wind will continue to rise, until there’s not a single trashcan left standing on the street. The clouds will be as tall as black mountains. In the backyard, beneath the hedge of thorns, the earth will turn to mud, and then to water, a pool of deception and regret.

“Jimmy’s not staying buried. First the ring, then a boot. I’m afraid to guess what’s going to come up next. I start to think about it, and I just kind of black out. I listened to the news, and the storm that’s coming is going to be bad.”

Sally moves her chair closer to Gillian’s. Their knees touch. Their pulse rate is exactly the same, the way it always was during a thunderstorm. “What do we do?” Sally whispers.

It’s the first time she’s ever asked for Gillian’s opinion or advice, and Gillian follows her example. It’s actually true, what they say about asking for help. Take a deep breath and it hurts a whole lot less to admit it out loud.

“Call the aunts,” Gillian tells Sally. “Do it now.”

 

ON the eighth day of the eighth month the aunts arrive on a Greyhound bus. The minute the driver hops down, he makes certain to get their black suitcases from the luggage compartment first thing, even though the larger of their suitcases is so heavy he has to use all his strength just to budge it and he nearly tears a ligament when he lifts it out.

“Hold your horses,” he advises the other passengers, who are all complaining that they’re the ones who must have their suitcases now in order to catch a connecting bus or run to meet a husband or a friend. The driver just ignores them and goes about his business. “I wouldn’t want you ladies to wait,” he tells the aunts.

The aunts are so old it’s impossible to tell their age. Their hair is white and their spines are crooked. They wear long black skirts and laced leather boots. Though they haven’t left Massachusetts in more than forty years, they’re certainly not intimidated by travel. Or by anything else, for that matter. They know what they want and they’re not afraid to be outspoken, which is why they pay no attention to the other passengers’ complaints, and continue to direct the driver on how to place the larger suitcase on the curb carefully.

“What have you got in here?” the driver jokes. “A ton of bricks?”

The aunts don’t bother to answer; they have very little tolerance for dim-witted humor, and they’re not interested in making polite conversation. They stand on the corner near the bus station and whistle for a taxi; as soon as one pulls over, they tell the driver exactly where to go—along the Turnpike for seven miles, past the mall and the shopping centers, past the Chinese restaurant and the deli and the ice cream shop where Antonia has worked this summer. The aunts smell like lavender and sulfur, a disquieting mixture, and maybe that’s the reason the taxi driver holds the door open for them when they arrive at Sally’s house, even though they didn’t bother to tip him. The aunts don’t believe in tips, and they never have. They believe in earning your worth and doing the job right. And, when you come right down to it, that’s what they’re here for.

Sally offered to pick them up at the bus station, but the aunts would have none of that. They can get around just fine on their own. They prefer to come to a place slowly, and that’s what they’re doing now. The lawns are wet, and the air is motionless and thick, the way it always is before a storm. A haze hangs over the houses and the chimney tops. The aunts stand in Sally’s driveway, between the Honda and Jimmy’s Oldsmobile, their black suitcases set down beside them. They close their eyes, to get a sense of this place. In the poplar trees, the sparrows watch with interest. The spiders stop spinning their webs. The rain will begin after midnight, on this the aunts agree. It will fall in sheets, like rivers of glass. It will fall until the whole world seems silver and turned upside down. You can feel such things when you have rheumatism, or when you’ve lived as long as the aunts have.

Inside the house, Gillian feels twitchy, the way people do before lightning is about to strike. She’s wearing old blue jeans and a black cotton shirt, and her hair’s uncombed. She’s like a kid who refuses to dress up for company. But the company’s arrived anyway; Gillian can feel their presence. The air is as dense as chocolate cake, the good kind, made without flour. The ceiling light in the living room has begun to sway; its metal chain makes a clackety sound, as if somewhere a top had been spun too fast. Gillian yanks the curtains back and takes a look.

“Oh, my god,” she says. “The aunts are in the driveway.”

Outside, the air is turning even thicker, like soup, and it has a yellow, sulfury odor, which some people find rather pleasant and others experience as so revolting they slam their windows shut, then turn their air conditioners on high. By evening, the wind will be strong enough to carry off small dogs and toss children from their swing sets, but for now it’s just a slight breeze. Linda Bennett has pulled into her driveway next door; when she gets out of her car, she has a bag of groceries balanced on her hip and she waves to the aunts with her free hand. Sally mentioned that some elderly relatives might arrive for a visit.