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.
ON THE OUTSKIRTS of the city the fields have turned red and the trees are all twisted and black. There is frost covering the meadows and smoke rising from the chimneys. In the park, in the very center of town, the swans rest their heads beneath their wings for comfort and warmth. The gardens have been put to bed, except for the one in the Owens yard. Cabbages are growing there, although some of them will be plucked from the rows this morning, and cooked with bouillon. Potatoes have already been dug up, boiled, and mashed, and are currently being flavored with salt, pepper, and sprigs from the rosemary that grows beside the gate. The willow-ware serving bowl has been rinsed clean and is drying on the rack.
"You're using too much pepper," Gillian tells her sister.
"I think I can manage to make mashed potatoes." Sally has fixed them at every Thanksgiving dinner she's cooked since she first left the aunts' house. She is completely sure of what she's doing, even though the kitchen utensils are old-fashioned and a bit rusty. But of course, since Gillian is such a changed woman she gives advice freely, even when she doesn't know what she's talking about.
"I know about pepper," Gillian insists. "That's too much."
"Well, I know potatoes," Sally says, and as far as she's concerned, that had better be that, especially if they want to serve dinner at three.
They arrived late last night; Ben and Gillian are staying in the attic, Kylie and Antonia are sharing what used to be a sitting room, and Sally is in the chilly little alcove up near the back stairs on a fold-out cot. The heat's on the fritz, so they've dragged out all the old feather quilts and built a fire in every fireplace, and they've called the boiler man, Mr. Jenkins, to come repair whatever's wrong. Even though it's Thanksgiving morning and Mr. Jenkins doesn't want to leave the comfort of his easy chair, when Frances got on the phone with him they all knew he'd be there by noon.
The aunts keep complaining that too much fuss is being made, but they smile when Kylie and Antonia grab them and kiss their cheeks and tell them how much they love them and insist they always will. The aunts are advised that they mustn't be concerned that Scott Morrison is taking the bus up from Cambridge, since he'll bring a sleeping bag and will camp out on the living room floor; they'll barely even be aware of his presence, and that goes for the two roommates he's bringing along as well.
The only cat left is Magpie, who is so ancient he gets up only in order to get to his food bowl. The rest of the time he's curled onto a special silk cushion on a kitchen chair. One of Magpie's eyes doesn't open at all any more, but his good eye is fixed on the turkey, which is cooling on an earthenware platter in the center of the wooden table. Buddy is being kept in the attic—Ben is there with him, feeding him the last of the carrots from the aunts' garden—since Magpie has been known to catch baby bunnies who cower between the rows of cabbage. He's been known to eat them whole.
"Don't even think about it," Gillian tells the cat when she sees him eyeing the turkey, but as soon as her back is turned, Sally takes a bit of white meat, which she herself would never eat, and feeds old Magpie by hand.
The aunts usually have a broiled chicken delivered from the market on Thanksgiving Day. One year they made do with frozen turkey dinners, and another year they said to hell with the whole silly holiday and had a nice pot roast. They were thinking of doing up another roast this year when the girls all insisted on coming to visit for the holiday.
"Oh, let them cook," Jet tells her sister, who can't stand the clinking and clanking of pots and pans. "They're having fun."
Sally stands at the sink, rinsing off the potato masher, the very same one she used as a child when she insisted on making nutritious suppers. She can see through the window to the yard, where Antonia and Kylie are running back and forth, chasing away the squirrels. Antonia wears one of Scott Morrison's old sweaters, which she has dyed black, and it's so big that when she waves her arms at the squirrels she looks as if she had long woolen hands. Kylie is laughing so hard she has to sit down on the ground. She points to one squirrel who refuses to move, a mean granddaddy who's screaming at Antonia, since he considers this to be his garden; the cabbages they've been gathering he's been watching all summer and fall.
"Those girls are pretty cute," Gillian says when she comes to stand beside Sally. She meant to argue some more about the pepper, but she drops the subject when she sees the look on her sister's face.
"They're all grown up," Sally says in her matter-of-fact voice.
"Yeah, right," Gillian sputters. The girls are chasing the granddaddy squirrel around in a circle. They shriek and throw their arms around each other when he suddenly jumps onto the garden gate and glares down at them. "They look real mature."
In the beginning of October, Gillian finally received word from the attorney general's office in Tucson. For more than two months the sisters had been waiting to see what Gary would do with the information Sally had given him; they'd been moody and distant from everyone except each other. Then, at last, a letter came, registered mail, from someone named Arno Williams. James Hawkins, he wrote, was dead. The body had been found out in the desert, where he must have been holed up for months, and in some kind of drunken stupor he'd rolled into his campfire and been burned beyond recognition. The only way they'd been able to identify him after he'd been brought down to the morgue was through his silver ring, which had melted somewhat and which was now being sent to Gillian, along with a certified check for eight hundred dollars from the sale of the Oldsmobile they'd impounded, since Jimmy had listed her as his only next of kin down at the Department of Motor Vehicles, which, in a way, was more or less the truth.
"Gary Hallet," Gillian said right away. "He slipped that ring to some dead guy who couldn't be identified. You know what this means, don't you?''
"He just wanted to see that justice was done, and it has been."
"He's completely hooked." Gillian couldn't seem to let this go. "And so are you."
"Will you please shut up?" Sally had said.
She refused to think about Gary. She really did. She rubbed at the center of her chest with two fingers, then grabbed her left wrist between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand to check her pulse rate. She didn't care what Gillian said; something was definitely wrong with her. Her heart did actual flip-flops; it beat too fast and then too slow, and if that didn't mean she had some sort of condition, she didn't know what did.
Gillian shook her head and groaned; that's how pathetic Sally had looked. "You really don't know. That heart-attack thing you've been having? It's love," she crowed. "That's what it feels like."
"You're nuts," Sally had said. "Don't think you know everything, because let me tell you, you don't."
But there was one thing Gillian did know for sure, and that was why, the very next Saturday, she and Ben Frye got married. It was a small ceremony at the town hall, and they didn't exchange wedding rings, but they kissed for so long at the counter in the hall of records that they were asked to leave. Being married feels different this time to Gillian.
"Fourth time's the charm," she says to people who ask her what the secret of a happy marriage is, but that's not the way she feels about it. She knows now that when you don't lose yourself in the bargain, you find you have double the love you started with, and that's one recipe that can't be tampered with.
Sally goes to the refrigerator for some milk to add to the mashed potatoes, although she's sure Gillian will tell her to add water instead, since she's such a know-it-all lately. Sally has to push several covered dishes around and as she does a lid falls off a shallow pot.
"Look here," she calls to Gillian. "They're still at it."
In the pot is the heart of a dove, pierced by seven pins.
Gillian comes to stand beside her sister. "Somebody's getting spelled, that's for sure."
Sally carefully puts the lid back in place. "I wonder what ever happened to her."
Gillian knows she's talking about the drugstore girl. "I used to think about her whenever things went wrong," Gillian admits. "I wanted to write to her, to let her know I was sorry I said all those things to her that day."
"She probably jumped out a window," Sally guesses. "Or she drowned herself in the bathtub."
"Let's go find out," Gillian says. She puts the turkey on top of the refrigerator, where Magpie can't reach it, and quickly shoves the mashed potatoes in the oven to keep them warm, along with a pan of chestnut stuffing.
"No," Sally says, "we're too old to snoop." But she lets herself be pulled along, first to the coat closet, where they each grab an old parka, and then out the front door.
They hurry down Magnolia Street and turn onto Pea-body. They pass the park, and the town green, where lightning always strikes, and head straight for the drugstore. They pass several closed shops—the butcher, and the baker, and the dry cleaner's.
"It's going to be closed," Sally says.
"No way," Gillian tells her.
But when they get there, the drugstore is dark. They stare through the window at the rows of shampoos, at the rack of magazines, at the counter where they drank so many vanilla Cokes. Everything in town is closed today, but as they turn to go they see Mr. Watts, whose family has owned the drugstore forever and who lives in the apartment above. He's following his wife and carrying the two sweet potato pies they're taking to their daughter's over in Marblehead.
"The Owens girls," he says when he spies Sally and Gillian.
"Check." Gillian grins.
"You're closed today," Sally says. They trail Mr. Watts, though his wife is waiting at the car, signaling for him to hurry. "What happened to that girl? The one who stopped talking?''
"Irene?" he says. "She's in Florida. She moved there about a week after her husband died last spring. I think I heard she's already remarried."
"Are you sure we're talking about the same person?" Sally asks.
"Irene," Mr. Watts assures them. "She's got a coffee shop down in Highland Beach."
Gillian and Sally run all the way home. They're laughing as they run, so they have to stop every now and then to catch their breath. The sky is gray, the air is raw, yet it doesn't bother them in the least. All the same, when they reach the black gate, Sally suddenly stops.
"What?" Gillian says.
It can't be what Sally thinks. What she thinks she sees is Gary Hallet out in the garden, crouching down, digging at the cabbages, and that just cannot be.
"Well, look who's here," Gillian says, pleased.
"They did it," Sally says. "With the dove's heart."
As soon as he sees Sally, Gary stands, a scarecrow in a black coat who doesn't know whether or not he should wave.
"They did not," Gillian says to Sally. "They didn't have anything to do with it."
But Sally doesn't care if Gillian phoned Gary last week and asked what on earth he was waiting for. It doesn't matter if he's had the aunts' address folded into his coat pocket ever since that phone call. By the time she runs down the bluestone path, it doesn't make a bit of difference what people think or what they believe. There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.
"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.
ON THE OUTSKIRTS of the city the fields have turned red and the trees are all twisted and black. There is frost covering the meadows and smoke rising from the chimneys. In the park, in the very center of town, the swans rest their heads beneath their wings for comfort and warmth. The gardens have been put to bed, except for the one in the Owens yard. Cabbages are growing there, although some of them will be plucked from the rows this morning, and cooked with bouillon. Potatoes have already been dug up, boiled, and mashed, and are currently being flavored with salt, pepper, and sprigs from the rosemary that grows beside the gate. The willow-ware serving bowl has been rinsed clean and is drying on the rack.
"You're using too much pepper," Gillian tells her sister.
"I think I can manage to make mashed potatoes." Sally has fixed them at every Thanksgiving dinner she's cooked since she first left the aunts' house. She is completely sure of what she's doing, even though the kitchen utensils are old-fashioned and a bit rusty. But of course, since Gillian is such a changed woman she gives advice freely, even when she doesn't know what she's talking about.
"I know about pepper," Gillian insists. "That's too much."
"Well, I know potatoes," Sally says, and as far as she's concerned, that had better be that, especially if they want to serve dinner at three.
They arrived late last night; Ben and Gillian are staying in the attic, Kylie and Antonia are sharing what used to be a sitting room, and Sally is in the chilly little alcove up near the back stairs on a fold-out cot. The heat's on the fritz, so they've dragged out all the old feather quilts and built a fire in every fireplace, and they've called the boiler man, Mr. Jenkins, to come repair whatever's wrong. Even though it's Thanksgiving morning and Mr. Jenkins doesn't want to leave the comfort of his easy chair, when Frances got on the phone with him they all knew he'd be there by noon.
The aunts keep complaining that too much fuss is being made, but they smile when Kylie and Antonia grab them and kiss their cheeks and tell them how much they love them and insist they always will. The aunts are advised that they mustn't be concerned that Scott Morrison is taking the bus up from Cambridge, since he'll bring a sleeping bag and will camp out on the living room floor; they'll barely even be aware of his presence, and that goes for the two roommates he's bringing along as well.
The only cat left is Magpie, who is so ancient he gets up only in order to get to his food bowl. The rest of the time he's curled onto a special silk cushion on a kitchen chair. One of Magpie's eyes doesn't open at all any more, but his good eye is fixed on the turkey, which is cooling on an earthenware platter in the center of the wooden table. Buddy is being kept in the attic—Ben is there with him, feeding him the last of the carrots from the aunts' garden—since Magpie has been known to catch baby bunnies who cower between the rows of cabbage. He's been known to eat them whole.
"Don't even think about it," Gillian tells the cat when she sees him eyeing the turkey, but as soon as her back is turned, Sally takes a bit of white meat, which she herself would never eat, and feeds old Magpie by hand.
The aunts usually have a broiled chicken delivered from the market on Thanksgiving Day. One year they made do with frozen turkey dinners, and another year they said to hell with the whole silly holiday and had a nice pot roast. They were thinking of doing up another roast this year when the girls all insisted on coming to visit for the holiday.
"Oh, let them cook," Jet tells her sister, who can't stand the clinking and clanking of pots and pans. "They're having fun."
Sally stands at the sink, rinsing off the potato masher, the very same one she used as a child when she insisted on making nutritious suppers. She can see through the window to the yard, where Antonia and Kylie are running back and forth, chasing away the squirrels. Antonia wears one of Scott Morrison's old sweaters, which she has dyed black, and it's so big that when she waves her arms at the squirrels she looks as if she had long woolen hands. Kylie is laughing so hard she has to sit down on the ground. She points to one squirrel who refuses to move, a mean granddaddy who's screaming at Antonia, since he considers this to be his garden; the cabbages they've been gathering he's been watching all summer and fall.
"Those girls are pretty cute," Gillian says when she comes to stand beside Sally. She meant to argue some more about the pepper, but she drops the subject when she sees the look on her sister's face.
"They're all grown up," Sally says in her matter-of-fact voice.
"Yeah, right," Gillian sputters. The girls are chasing the granddaddy squirrel around in a circle. They shriek and throw their arms around each other when he suddenly jumps onto the garden gate and glares down at them. "They look real mature."
In the beginning of October, Gillian finally received word from the attorney general's office in Tucson. For more than two months the sisters had been waiting to see what Gary would do with the information Sally had given him; they'd been moody and distant from everyone except each other. Then, at last, a letter came, registered mail, from someone named Arno Williams. James Hawkins, he wrote, was dead. The body had been found out in the desert, where he must have been holed up for months, and in some kind of drunken stupor he'd rolled into his campfire and been burned beyond recognition. The only way they'd been able to identify him after he'd been brought down to the morgue was through his silver ring, which had melted somewhat and which was now being sent to Gillian, along with a certified check for eight hundred dollars from the sale of the Oldsmobile they'd impounded, since Jimmy had listed her as his only next of kin down at the Department of Motor Vehicles, which, in a way, was more or less the truth.
"Gary Hallet," Gillian said right away. "He slipped that ring to some dead guy who couldn't be identified. You know what this means, don't you?''
"He just wanted to see that justice was done, and it has been."
"He's completely hooked." Gillian couldn't seem to let this go. "And so are you."
"Will you please shut up?" Sally had said.
She refused to think about Gary. She really did. She rubbed at the center of her chest with two fingers, then grabbed her left wrist between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand to check her pulse rate. She didn't care what Gillian said; something was definitely wrong with her. Her heart did actual flip-flops; it beat too fast and then too slow, and if that didn't mean she had some sort of condition, she didn't know what did.
Gillian shook her head and groaned; that's how pathetic Sally had looked. "You really don't know. That heart-attack thing you've been having? It's love," she crowed. "That's what it feels like."
"You're nuts," Sally had said. "Don't think you know everything, because let me tell you, you don't."
But there was one thing Gillian did know for sure, and that was why, the very next Saturday, she and Ben Frye got married. It was a small ceremony at the town hall, and they didn't exchange wedding rings, but they kissed for so long at the counter in the hall of records that they were asked to leave. Being married feels different this time to Gillian.
"Fourth time's the charm," she says to people who ask her what the secret of a happy marriage is, but that's not the way she feels about it. She knows now that when you don't lose yourself in the bargain, you find you have double the love you started with, and that's one recipe that can't be tampered with.
Sally goes to the refrigerator for some milk to add to the mashed potatoes, although she's sure Gillian will tell her to add water instead, since she's such a know-it-all lately. Sally has to push several covered dishes around and as she does a lid falls off a shallow pot.
"Look here," she calls to Gillian. "They're still at it."
In the pot is the heart of a dove, pierced by seven pins.
Gillian comes to stand beside her sister. "Somebody's getting spelled, that's for sure."
Sally carefully puts the lid back in place. "I wonder what ever happened to her."
Gillian knows she's talking about the drugstore girl. "I used to think about her whenever things went wrong," Gillian admits. "I wanted to write to her, to let her know I was sorry I said all those things to her that day."
"She probably jumped out a window," Sally guesses. "Or she drowned herself in the bathtub."
"Let's go find out," Gillian says. She puts the turkey on top of the refrigerator, where Magpie can't reach it, and quickly shoves the mashed potatoes in the oven to keep them warm, along with a pan of chestnut stuffing.
"No," Sally says, "we're too old to snoop." But she lets herself be pulled along, first to the coat closet, where they each grab an old parka, and then out the front door.
They hurry down Magnolia Street and turn onto Pea-body. They pass the park, and the town green, where lightning always strikes, and head straight for the drugstore. They pass several closed shops—the butcher, and the baker, and the dry cleaner's.
"It's going to be closed," Sally says.
"No way," Gillian tells her.
But when they get there, the drugstore is dark. They stare through the window at the rows of shampoos, at the rack of magazines, at the counter where they drank so many vanilla Cokes. Everything in town is closed today, but as they turn to go they see Mr. Watts, whose family has owned the drugstore forever and who lives in the apartment above. He's following his wife and carrying the two sweet potato pies they're taking to their daughter's over in Marblehead.
"The Owens girls," he says when he spies Sally and Gillian.
"Check." Gillian grins.
"You're closed today," Sally says. They trail Mr. Watts, though his wife is waiting at the car, signaling for him to hurry. "What happened to that girl? The one who stopped talking?''
"Irene?" he says. "She's in Florida. She moved there about a week after her husband died last spring. I think I heard she's already remarried."
"Are you sure we're talking about the same person?" Sally asks.
"Irene," Mr. Watts assures them. "She's got a coffee shop down in Highland Beach."
Gillian and Sally run all the way home. They're laughing as they run, so they have to stop every now and then to catch their breath. The sky is gray, the air is raw, yet it doesn't bother them in the least. All the same, when they reach the black gate, Sally suddenly stops.
"What?" Gillian says.
It can't be what Sally thinks. What she thinks she sees is Gary Hallet out in the garden, crouching down, digging at the cabbages, and that just cannot be.
"Well, look who's here," Gillian says, pleased.
"They did it," Sally says. "With the dove's heart."
As soon as he sees Sally, Gary stands, a scarecrow in a black coat who doesn't know whether or not he should wave.
"They did not," Gillian says to Sally. "They didn't have anything to do with it."
But Sally doesn't care if Gillian phoned Gary last week and asked what on earth he was waiting for. It doesn't matter if he's had the aunts' address folded into his coat pocket ever since that phone call. By the time she runs down the bluestone path, it doesn't make a bit of difference what people think or what they believe. There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.