Practical Magic

by Alice Hoffman

  “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 wise-acre 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 squirre
l 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.