would do absolutely anything for love. They got all twisted up, like rubber bands, just from the heat of their desire, and they didn't give a damn for convention and good manners. As soon as the aunts saw one of those women walking up the path, they sent the girls straight to the attic, even on December nights, when twilight came well before four-thirty.
On those murky evenings, the sisters never protested that it was too early, or that they weren't yet tired. They tiptoed up the stairs, holding hands. From the landing, beneath the dusty old portrait of Maria Owens, the girls called out their good nights; they went to their rooms, slipped their nightgowns over their heads, then went directly to the back staircase, so they could creep down again, press their ears against the door, and listen in to every word. Sometimes, when it was an extremely dark evening and Gillian was feeling especially brave, she would push the door ajar with her foot, and Sally wouldn't dare to close it again, for fear it might creak and give them away.
'This is so silly,' Sally would whisper. 'It's utter nonsense,' she'd decree.
'Then go to bed,' Gillian would whisper right back. 'Go on,' she'd suggest, knowing that Sally wouldn't dare to miss any of what happened next.
From the angle of the back stairs, the girls could see the old black stove and the table and the hooked rug, where the aunts' customers often paced back and forth. They could see how love might control you, from your head to your toes, not to mention every single part of you in between.
Because of this, Sally and Gillian had learned things most children their age had not: that it was always wise to collect fingernail clippings that had once been the living tissue of your beloved, just in case he should take it into his head to stray; that a woman could want a man so much she might vomit in the kitchen sink or cry so fiercely blood would form in the corners of her eyes.
On evenings when the orange moon was rising in the sky, and some woman was crying in their kitchen, Sally and Gillian would lock pinkies and vow never to be ruled by their passions.
'Yuck,' the girls would whisper to each other when a client of their aunts would weep or lift her blouse to show the raw marks where she'd cut the name of her beloved into her skin with a razor.
'Not us,' the sisters would swear, locking their fingers even more tightly.
During the winter when Sally was twelve and Gillian almost eleven, they learned that sometimes the most dangerous thing of all in matters of love was to be granted your heart's desire. That was the winter when a young woman who worked in the drugstore came to see the aunts. For days the temperature had been dropping. The engine of the aunts' Ford station wagon sputtered and refused to turn over and the tires were frozen to the concrete floor of the garage. Mice would not venture out from the warmth of the bedroom walls; swans in the park picked at icy weeds and still they went hungry. The season was so cold and the sky so heartless and purple it made young girls shiver just to look upward.
The customer who arrived one dark evening wasn't pretty, but she was known for her kindness and sweet disposition. She delivered holiday meals to the elderly and sang in a choir with a voice like an angel's and always put an extra squirt of syrup in the glass when children ordered vanilla Cokes at the soda fountain. But when she arrived at twilight, this plain, mild girl was in such agony that she curled up on the hand-hooked rug; her fists were so tightly clenched they were like the claws of a cat. She threw her head back and her glossy hair fell over her face like a curtain; she chewed on her lip until her flesh bled. She was being eaten alive by love and had already lost thirty pounds. Because of this the aunts seemed to take pity on her, something they rarely did. Though the girl hadn't much money, they gave her the strongest potion they could, with exact instructions on how to make another woman's husband fall in love with her. Then they warned her that what was done could never be undone, and so she must be sure.
'I'm sure,' the girl said, in her calm beautiful voice, and the aunts must have been satisfied, because they gave her the heart of a dove, set on one of their best saucers, the kind with the blue willows and the river of tears.
Sally and Gillian sat on the back stairs in the dark, their knees touching, their feet dirty and bare. They were shivering, but still they grinned at each other and whispered right along with the aunts a charm they knew well enough to recite in their sleep: 'My lover's heart will feel this pin, and his devotion I will win. There'll be no way for him to rest nor sleep, until he comes to me to speak. Only when he loves me best will he find peace, and with peace, rest.' Gillian made little stabbing motions, which is what the girl was to do to the dove's heart when she repeated these words for seven nights in a row before she went to bed.
'It will never work,' Sally whispered afterward, as they felt their way along in the dark, up the stairs and along the hall to their rooms.
'It might work,' Gillian whispered back. 'Even though she's not pretty, it's still within the realm of possibility.'
Sally drew herself up; she was older and taller and always knew best. 'We'll just see about that.'
For nearly two weeks, Sally and Gillian watched the lovesick girl. Like hired detectives, they sat for hours at the counter in the drugstore and spent all their pocket money on Cokes and french fries so they could keep an eye on her. They trailed after when she went home to the apartment she shared with another girl, who worked at the dry cleaner's. The more they followed her schedule, the more Sally began to feel they were invading the girl's privacy, but the sisters continued to believe they were doing important research, although now and then Gillian was confused as to what their goal really was.
'It's simple,' Sally told her. 'We need to prove that the aunts have no powers whatsoever.'
'If the aunts are full of baloney'—Gillian grinned—'then we'll be just like everyone else.'
Sally nodded. She could not begin to express how deeply she felt about this matter, since being like everyone else was her personal heart's desire. At night Sally dreamed of ranch houses and white picket fences, and when she woke in the morning and looked out to see the black metal spikes that surrounded them, tears formed in her eyes. Other girls, she knew, washed with bars of Ivory and sweet-scented Camay; while she and Gillian were forced to use the black soap the aunts made twice a year, on the back burner of their stove. Other girls had mothers and fathers who didn't give a hoot about desire and fate. In no other house on their street or in their town was there a drawer crammed with cameos, given in payment for desires fulfilled.
All Sally could hope for was that perhaps her life was not quite as abnormal as it appeared. If the love charm didn't work for the girl from the drugstore, then perhaps the aunts were only pretending their powers. So the sisters waited and prayed that nothing would happen. And when it seemed certain that nothing would, the principal of their school, Mr. Halliwell, parked his station wagon outside the drugstore girl's apartment, just as the light was fading. He casually walked inside, but Sally noticed that he made sure to look over his shoulder; his eyes were bleary, as though he hadn't slept for seven nights. That evening the girls did not go home for supper, despite Sally's promise to the aunts that she would fix lamb chops and baked beans. The wind picked up and a freezing rain had begun to fall; still the girls stood across the street from the drugstore girl's apartment. Mr. Halliwell didn't come out until after nine, and he had a strange expression on his face, as if he didn't quite know where he was. He walked right past his own car, not recognizing it, and not until he was halfway home did he remember he'd parked somewhere, and then it took him nearly an hour to locate the forgotten spot. After that, he appeared every evening at the exact same time. Once he had the nerve to come to the drugstore at lunch and order a cheeseburger and a Coke, although he didn't eat a bite and instead stared longingly at the girl who'd put a spell on him. He sat there on the very first stool, so hot and amorous that the linoleum countertop on which he rested his elbows began to bubble. When he finally noticed Sally and Gillian watching him, he demanded that the sisters head back to school, and he reached for his burger, but he still couldn't keep his eyes off the girl. He'd been hit by something, all right; the aunts had gotten to him just as sure as if they'd picked him off with a bow and arrow.
'Coincidence,' Sally insisted.
'I don't know about that.' Gillian shrugged. Anyone could see that the girl from the drugstore looked all lit up inside as she fixed hot fudge sundaes and rang up prescriptions for antibiotics and cough syrup. 'She got what she wanted. However it happened.'
But as it turned out, the girl didn't have exactly what she'd wanted. She came back to the aunts, more distraught than ever. Love was one thing, marriage quite another. Mr. Halliwell, it seemed, was not certain he could leave his wife.
'I don't think you want to watch this,' Gillian whispered to Sally.
'How do you know?'
The girls were whispering right in each other's ears; they had a scared feeling they didn't usually have
