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By Root 596 0

store, Sally kicked at stones. A band of black birds took to following her, screaming and cawing over what a laughable creature she was, and although she cringed each time the birds flew overhead, Sally agreed with them. Her fate appeared to be set. She would forever be scrubbing the floor and calling the aunts in from the garden on afternoons that were too chilly and damp for them to be down in the dirt on their hands and knees. In fact, the days were seeming more and more similar, interchangeable even; she barely noticed the difference between winter and spring. But summertime in the Owens house had its own delineation—that dreadful bird who invaded their peace—and when the next midsummer’s evening arrived, Sally and the aunts were ready for their unwanted guest, as they were every year. They were waiting in the dining room for the sparrow to appear, and nothing happened. Hours passed—they could hear the clock in the parlor—and still, no arrival, no flutter, no feathers. Sally, with her odd fear of birds in flight, had tied a scarf around her head, but now she saw there was no need for it. No bird came in through the window or through the hole in the roof the handyman hadn’t managed to find. It did not fly around three times to announce misfortune. It did not even tap at the window with its small sharp beak.

The aunts looked at each other, puzzled. But Sally laughed out loud. She, with her insistence of proof, had just been granted some powerful evidence: Things changed. They shifted. One year was not just like the next and the one after and the one after that. Sally ran from the house and she kept right on running until she got to the front of the hardware store, where she crashed into the man she would marry. As soon as she looked at him, Sally felt dizzy and had to sit on the curb, with her head down so she wouldn’t faint, and the clerk who knew so much about washing a kitchen floor sat right beside her, even though his boss yelled for him to get back to work, since a line had already formed at the cash register.

The man Sally fell in love with was named Michael. He was so thoughtful and good-natured that he kissed the aunts the first time he met them and immediately asked if they needed their trash taken out to the curb, which won them over then and there, no questions asked. Sally married him quickly, and they moved into the attic, which suddenly seemed the only place in the world where Sally wished to be.

Let Gillian travel from California to Memphis. Let her marry and divorce three times in a row. Let her kiss every man who crossed her path and break every promise she ever made about coming home for the holidays. Let her pity her sister, cooped up in that old house. Sally did not mind a bit. In Sally’s opinion, it was impossible to exist in the world and not be in love with Michael. Even the aunts had begun to listen for the sound of his whistle when he came home from the hardware store in the evenings. In autumn, he turned the garden for the aunts. In winter, he put up the storm windows and filled in the cracks around the foggy old windows with putty. He took the ancient Ford station wagon apart and put it back together, and the aunts were so impressed they gave him the car, as well as their abiding affection. He knew enough to stay out of the kitchen, especially at twilight, and if he noticed the women who came to the back door, he never questioned Sally about them. His kisses were slow and deep and he liked to take off Sally’s clothes with the bedside table light turned on and he always made certain to lose when he played gin rummy with one of the aunts.

When Michael moved in, the house itself began to change, and even the bats in the attic knew it and took to nesting out by the garden shed. By the following June, roses had begun to grow up along the porch railing, choking out ragweed, instead of the other way around. In January, the draft in the parlor disappeared and ice would not form on the bluestone path. The house stayed cheery and warm, and when Antonia was born, at home, since a horrid snowstorm was