Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman [19]
And when a year had passed, to the very day, since the moment when Michael had stepped off the curb, Sally saw green leaves outside her window. It was a delicate vine that had always wound its way up the drainpipe, but on this day Sally noticed how tender each leaf was, how absolutely new, so that the green was nearly yellow, and the yellow rich as butter. Sally spent a good portion of her days in bed, and it was already afternoon. She saw the golden light filtering through the curtains, and the way it spread out in bars across her wall. Quickly, she got out of bed and brushed her long black hair. She put on a dress she hadn’t worn since the previous spring, took her coat from the hook by the back door, and went out for a walk.
Again it was spring, and the sky was so blue it could take your breath away. It was blue and she could see it, the color of his eyes, the color of veins beneath the skin, and of hope and of shirts pinned to a laundry line. Sally could make out nearly every shade and hue that had been missing all year, although she still could not see orange, which was too close to the color of the faded stop sign the teenagers never saw on the day Michael was killed, and she never would again. But orange was never a great favorite of Sally’s, a small loss, considering all the others.
She walked on, through the center of town, wearing her old wool coat and her high black boots. It was a warm and breezy day, too warm for Sally’s heavy clothes, so she draped her coat over her arm. The sun went through the fabric of her dress, a hot hand across flesh and bones. Sally felt as though she’d been dead and now that she was back she was particularly sensitive to the world of the living: the touch of the wind against her skin, the gnats in the air, the scent of mud and new leaves, the sweetness of blues and greens. For the first time in ages, Sally thought how pleasant it would be to speak again, to read bedtime stories to her daughters and recite a poem and name all the flowers that bloomed early in the season, lily of the valley and jack-in-the-pulpit and purple hyacinth. She was thinking about flowers, those white ones shaped like bells, when, for no particular reason, she turned left on Endicott Street and headed for the park.
In this park there was a pond, where a couple of horrid swans ruled, a playground with a slide and swing, and a green field where the older boys held serious soccer matches and baseball games that went on past dusk. Sally could hear the voices of children playing, and she walked into the park eagerly. Her cheeks were pink and her long black hair flew out behind her like a ribbon; amazingly enough, she had discovered that she was still young. Sally planned to take the path down to the pond, but she stopped when she saw the wrought-iron bench. Sitting there, as they did every day, were the aunts. Sally had never thought to ask what they did with the children all day while she stayed in bed, unable to drag herself from beneath the covers until the long afternoon shadows fell across her pillowcase.
On this day’s outing, the aunts had brought their knitting along. They were working on a throw for Kylie’s crib, made out of the finest black wool, a coverlet so soft that whenever Kylie would sleep beneath it she’d dream of little black lambs and fields of grass. Antonia was beside the aunts, her legs neatly crossed. Kylie had been plopped down on the grass, where she sat motionless. All of them wore black woolen coats, and their complexions seemed sallow in the afternoon light. Antonia’s red hair looked especially brilliant, a color so deep and startling it appeared quite unnatural in the sun. The aunts did not speak to each other, and the girls certainly did not