Practical Magic

exactly the way Sally would imagine Gary would park his car.

Thinking about him, and his worried look, and those lines on his face, makes Sally even more nervous. Once she's inside the motel office, she rearranges the strap of her purse over her shoulder; she runs her tongue over her lips. She feels like somebody who's stepped outside her life into a stretch of woods she didn't even know existed, and she doesn't know the pathways or the trails. The woman behind the desk is on the phone, and it seems she's in the middle of a conversation that could go on for hours.

'Well, if you didn't tell him, how could he know?' she's saying in a disgusted tone of voice. She reaches for a cigarette and sees Sally.

'I'm looking for Gary Hallet.' Once Sally makes this announcement, she thinks she must really be crazy. Why would she be looking for someone whose presence spells calamity? Why would she drive over here on a night when she's so confused? She can't concentrate at all, that much is obvious. She can't even remember the capital of New York State. She no longer recalls which is more caloric, butter or margarine, or whether or not monarch butterflies hibernate in winter.

'He went out,' the woman behind the desk tells Sally. 'Once a moron, always a moron,' she says into the phone. 'Of course you know. I know you know. The real question is, Why don't you do something about it?' She stands, pulling the phone behind her, then lifts a key from the rack on the wall, and hands it over. 'Room sixteen,' she tells Sally.

Sally steps back as if burned. 'I'll just wait here.'

She takes a seat on the blue plastic couch and reaches for a magazine, but it's Time and the cover story is 'Crimes of Passion,' which is more than Sally can bear at the moment. She tosses the magazine back on the coffee table. She wishes she had thought to change her clothes and wasn't still wearing this old T-shirt and Kylie's shorts. Not that it matters. Not that anyone cares what she looks like. She gets her brush out of her purse and runs it through her hair one last time. She'll just tell him, and that will be that. Her sister's an idiot—is that a federal offense? She was warped by the circumstances of her childhood, then she went out and screwed things up for herself as an adult to ensure that it would all match. Sally thinks about trying to explain this to Gary Hallet while he's staring at her, and that's when she realizes she's hyperventilating, breathing so quickly that the woman behind the desk is keeping an eye on her in case Sally should pass out and she has to dial 911.

'Let me ask you this,' the woman behind the desk is saying into the phone. 'Why do you ask me for advice if you're not going to listen to it? Why don't you just go ahead, do whatever you want, and leave me out of it?' She gives Sally a look. This is a private conversation, even if half of it is going on in a public place. 'You sure you don't want to hang out in his room?'

'Maybe I'll just wait in my car,' Sally says.

'Super,' the woman says, shelving her phone conversation until she has her privacy back.

'Let me guess.' Sally nods to the phone. 'Your sister?'

A baby sister out in Port Jefferson, who has needed constant counsel for the past forty-two years. Otherwise, she'd have every single credit card charged to the max and she'd still be married to her first husband, who was a million times worse than the one she's got now.

'She's so self-centered, she drives me nuts. That's what comes from being the youngest and having everyone fuss over you,' the woman behind the desk announces. She's slipped her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. 'They want you to take care of them and solve all their problems and they never give you the least bit of credit for anything.'

'You're right,' Sally agrees. 'Being the baby does it. They never seem to get over it.'

'Don't I know,' the other woman says.

And what of being the oldest, Sally wonders as she goes outside, stopping at the vending machine beside the office to get herself a diet Coke. She steps over the rainbow-edged pools of oil on her way back to her car. What if you're forever trapped into telling someone else what to do, into being responsible and saying 'I told you so' a dozen times a day? Whether she wants to admit it or not, this is what Sally has been doing, and she's been doing it for as long as she can remember.

Right before Gillian had her hair chopped off, and set every girl in town marching into beauty shops, begging for the very same style, her hair had been as long as Sally's, perhaps a bit longer. It was the color of wheat, blinding to look at under the sun and as fine as silk, at least on those rare occasions when Gillian chose to brush it. Now Sally wonders if she was jealous, and if that was why she teased Gillian about what a mess she always looked, with her hair all bunched up and knotted.

And yet on the day Gillian came home with her hair cut short, Sally was shocked. She hadn't even consulted with Sally before she'd gone through with it. 'How could you have done this to yourself?' Sally demanded.

'I have my reasons,' Gillian said. She was sitting in front of her mirror, applying blush into the hollows of her cheeks. 'And they are all spelled C-A-S-H.'

Gillian swore that a woman had been following her for several days, and had finally approached her that afternoon. She had offered Gillian two thousand dollars, there, on the spot, if Gillian would accompany her to a salon and have her hair clipped off to the ears so this woman with short, mousy hair could have a false braid to wear to parties.

'Sure,' Sally said. 'Like anyone in their right mind would ever do that.'

'Really?' Gillian said. 'You don't think anyone would?'

She reached into the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a roll of money. The two thousand, in cash. Gillian had a huge smile on her face, and maybe Sally just wanted to wipe it right off.

'Well, you look awful,' she said. 'You look like a boy.'

She said it even though she could see that Gillian had an incredibly pretty neck, so slim and sweet the mere sight of it would make grown men cry.

'Oh, who cares?' Gillian said. 'It'll grow back.'

But her hair never grew long again—it wouldn't reach past her shoulders. Gillian washed it with rosemary, with violets and rose petals and even ginseng tea—none of it did any good.

'That's what you get,' Sally announced. 'That's where greed will take you.'

But where has being such a good girl and a prig taken Sally? It's brought her to this parking lot on a damp and dreadful night. It's put her in her place, once and for all. Who is she to be so righteous and certain her way is best? If she'd simply called the police when Gillian first arrived, if she hadn't had to take charge and manage it all, if she hadn't believed that everything—both the cause and the effect—was her responsibility, she and Gillian might not be in the fix they're in right now. It's the smoke emanating from the walls of their parents' bungalow. It's the swans in the park. It's the stop sign no one notices, until it's too late.

Sally has spent her whole life being vigilant, and that takes logic and good common sense. If her parents had had her with them she would have smelled the acrid scent of fire, she knows that she would. She would have seen the blue spark that fell onto the rug, the first of many, where it glittered like a star, and then a river of stars, shiny and blue on the shag carpeting just before it all burst into flame. On that day when the teenagers had had too much to drink before they got into one of their daddies' cars, she would have pulled Michael back to the curb. Didn't she save her baby from the swans when they tried to attack her? Hasn't she taken care of everything since—her children and the house, her lawn and her electricity bill, her laundry, which, when it hangs on the line, is even whiter than snow?

From the very start, Sally has been lying to herself, telling herself she can handle anything, and she doesn't want to lie anymore. One more lie and she'll be truly lost. One more and she'll never find her way back through the woods.

Sally gulps her diet Coke; she's dying of thirst. Her throat actually hurts from those lies she told Gary Hallet. She wants to come clean, she wants to tell all, she wants someone to listen to what she has to say and really hear her, the way no one ever has before. When she sees Gary crossing the Turnpike, carrying a tub of fried chicken, she knows she could start her car and get away before he recognizes her. But she stays where she is. As she watches Gary walk in her direction, a line of heat crisscrosses itself beneath her skin. It's invisible, but it's there. That's the way desire is, it ambushes you in a parking lot, it wins every time. The closer Gary gets, the worse it is, until Sally has to slip one hand under her shirt and press down, just to ensure that her heart won't escape from her body.

The world seems gray, and the roads are slick, but Gary doesn't mind the dim and somber night. There have been nothing but blue skies in Tucson for months, and Gary isn't bothered by a little rain. Maybe rain will cure