Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman [47]
If Sally and Gillian had been on speaking terms, instead of avoiding each other in the hall and at the supper table, where one would not even ask the other to pass the butter or the rolls or the peas, they would have discovered as July wore on, with white heat and silence, that they were equally unlucky. The sisters could turn on a lamp, leave the room for a second, and return to complete darkness. They could start their cars, drive half a block, and discover they’d run out of gas, even if there’d been nearly a full tank just hours before. When either sister stepped into the shower, the warm water turned to ice, as though someone had played with the faucet. Milk would curdle as it was poured from the container. Toast burned. Letters the postman had carefully delivered were torn in half and their edges turned black, like an old withered rose.
Before long, each sister was losing whatever was most important to her. One morning Sally awoke to find that the photograph of her daughters, which she always kept on her bureau, had disappeared from its silver frame. The diamond earrings the aunts had given to her on her wedding day were no longer in her jewelry box; she searched her entire bedroom and still couldn’t find them anywhere. The bills she was supposed to pay before the end of the month, once in a neat pile on the kitchen counter, seemed to be gone, although she was convinced she’d written out the checks and sealed all the envelopes.
Gillian, who could certainly be accused of forgetfulness and disorder, was missing things that seemed almost impossible to lose, even for her. Her prized red cowboy boots, which she always kept beside the bed, simply weren’t there when she woke up one morning, as though they’d decided to just walk away. Her tarot cards, which she kept tied up in a satin handkerchief—and which had certainly helped her out of a fix or two, especially after her second marriage, when she didn’t have a cent and had to set herself up at a card table in a mall, telling fortunes for $2.95—had evaporated like smoke, all except for the Hanged Man, which can represent either wisdom or selfishness, depending on its position.
Little things were gone, such as Gillian’s tweezers and her watch, but major items were missing as well. Yesterday, she had gone out the front door still half asleep, and when she went to get into the Oldsmobile, it wasn’t anywhere in sight. She was late for work and figured that some teenage boy had stolen her car and she’d phone the police when she got to the Hamburger Shack. But when she arrived there, her feet killing her since she wasn’t wearing shoes meant for walking, there was the Oldsmobile, parked right out front, as though it were waiting for her, propelled by a mind of its own.
When Gillian questioned Ephraim, who’d been working behind the grill since early that morning, demanding to know whether he’d seen someone drop off her car, she sounded on edge, maybe even hysterical.
“It’s a practical joke,” Ephraim guessed. “Or somebody stole it, then got cold feet.”
Well, cold feet was certainly something Gillian knew about lately. Every time the phone rang, at work or at Sally’s house, Gillian thought it was Ben Frye. She got the shivers just thinking about him; she got them all the way down to her toes. Ben had sent her flowers, red roses, the morning after they’d met at Del Vecchio’s, but when he phoned she told him she couldn’t accept them, or anything else.
“Don’t call me,” she told him. “Don’t even think about me,” she cried.
What on earth was wrong with Ben Frye—didn’t he see her for the loser that she was? Lately, everything she touched fell apart—animal, vegetable, mineral, it didn’t matter in the least. It