Practical Magic (Practical Magic #2)(14)
“Please,” she begged her mother. “I want the aunts. Take me back there. I’ll be good,” she vowed.
By then, Sally was crying too. When she was a girl, the aunts had been the ones to sit up with her all night whenever she’d had an ear infection or the flu; they’d told her stories and fixed her broth and hot tea. They were the ones who’d rocked Gillian when she couldn’t fall asleep, especially at the start, when the girls first came to live at the house on Magnolia Street, and Gillian couldn’t sleep a wink.
There had been a rainstorm the night that Sally and Gillian were told their parents weren’t coming back, and it was their bad fortune that another storm struck when they were in the plane on their way to Massachusetts. Sally was four, but she remembers the lightning they flew through; she can close her eyes and conjure it with no trouble at all. They were right up in the sky alongside those fierce white lines, with no place to hide. Gillian had vomited several times, and when the plane began to land she started to scream. Sally had to hold her hand over her sister’s mouth and promise her gumballs and licorice sticks if she’d only be quiet for a few minutes more.
Sally had picked out their best party dresses to wear for the trip. Gillian’s was a pale violet, Sally’s pink trimmed with ivory lace. They were holding hands as they walked through the airport terminal, listening to the funny sound their crinolines made every time they took a step, when they saw the aunts waiting for them. The aunts stood on tiptoe, the better to see over the barricades; they had balloons tied to their sleeves, so that the children would recognize them. After they hugged the girls and collected their small leather suitcases, the aunts bundled Sally and Gillian into two black wool coats, then reached into their purses and brought out gumballs and red licorice, as if they knew exactly what little girls needed, or, at any rate, exactly what they might want.
Sally was grateful for all the aunts had done, really she was. Still, she had made up her mind. She would get the key at the realtor’s for the house she would later buy, then get hold of some furniture. She would have to find a job eventually, but she had a little money from Michael’s insurance policy, and frankly she wasn’t going to think about the past or the future. She was thinking about the highway in front of her. She was thinking about road signs and right turns, and she just couldn’t afford to listen when Antonia started to howl, which set Kylie off as well. Instead, she switched on the radio and sang along and told herself that sometimes the right thing felt all wrong until it was over and done with.
By the time they turned into the driveway of their new house, it was already late in the day. A band of children was playing kickball in the street, and when Sally got out of the car she waved and the children waved back, each and every one of them. A robin was on the front lawn, pulling at the grass and the weeds, and all up and down the street, lights were being turned on and tables were set for dinner. The scent of pot roast and chicken paprikash and lasagna drifted through the mild air. Sally’s girls had both fallen asleep in the backseat, their faces streaked with dirt and tears. Sally had bought them ice cream cones and lollipops; she’d told stories for hours and stopped at two toy stores. Still, it would take years before they forgave her. They laughed at the little white fence Sally put up at the edge of their lawn. Antonia asked to paint her bedroom walls black and Kylie begged for a black kittycat. Both of these wishes were denied. Antonia’s room was painted yellow, and Kylie was given a goldfish named Sunshine, but that didn’t mean the girls had forgotten where they came from or that they didn’t long for it still.
Every summer, in August, they would visit the aunts. They would draw in their breath as soon as they turned the corner onto Magnolia and could spy the big old house with its black fence and green-tinted windows. The aunts always made a tipsy chocolate cake and gave Antonia and Kylie far too many presents. There were no bedtimes, of course, and no well-balanced meals. No rules were put forth about drawing on the wallpaper or filling the bathtub so high that bubbles and tepid water sloshed over the sides and dripped down through the ceiling of the parlor. Every year the girls were taller when they arrived for their visit—they knew this because the aunts were seeming smaller all the time—and every year they went wild: they danced through the herb garden and played softball on the front lawn and stayed up past midnight. Sometimes they ate nothing but Snickers and Milky Ways for nearly the whole week, until their stomachs began to ache and they finally called for a salad or a glass of milk.
During their August vacations, Sally insisted on getting the girls out of the house, at least in the afternoons. She took them on day trips, to the beach at Plum Island, to the swan boats in Boston, out into the blue bay in Gloucester on rented sailboats. But the girls always begged to return to the aunts’ house. They pouted and made Sally’s life miserable, until she gave in. It wasn’t the girls’ bad temper that convinced Sally to turn back for the house, it was that they were united in something. This was so unusual and so delightful to see that Sally just couldn’t say no.
Sally had expected Antonia to be a big sister in the same manner she herself had been, but that wasn’t Antonia’s style. Antonia felt no responsibility to anyone; she was nobody’s caretaker. From the very start she would tease Kylie without mercy and could bring her little sister to tears with a glance. It was only at the aunts’ house that the girls became allies, perhaps even friends. Here, where everything was worn and frayed, except for the shining woodwork, the girls spent hours together. They collected lavender and had picnics in the shade of the garden. They sat in the cool parlor late in the day, or sprawled out on the second-floor landing where there were thin bands of lemony sunlight, playing Parcheesi and endless rounds of gin rummy.