Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman [107]
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.