Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman [97]
“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