“Yes,” Sally says. “It does. It makes a difference to me.”
“Here’s the thing.” Gillian turns her back on the Oldsmobile, because if she doesn’t she’ll remember that Jimmy was singing along to a Dwight Yoakam tape only a few hours ago. It was that song she could listen to over and over again, the one about a clown, and, in her opinion, Jimmy sang it about a million times better than Dwight ever could, which is saying quite a lot, since she’s crazy for Dwight. “I was really in love with this one. Deep down in my heart. It’s so sad, really. It’s pathetic. I wanted him all the time, like I was crazy or something. Like I was one of those women.”
In the kitchen, at twilight, those women would get down on their knees and beg. They’d swear they’d never want anything again in their lives, if they could just have what they wanted now. That was when Gillian and Sally used to lock their pinkies together and vow that they’d never be so wretched and unfortunate. Nothing could do that to them, that’s what they used to whisper as they sat on the back stairs, in the dark and the dust, as if desire were a matter of personal choice.
Sally considers her front lawn and the hot and glorious night. She still has goose bumps rising along the back of her neck, but they’re not bothering her anymore. In time, you can get used to anything, including fear. This is her sister, after all, the girl who sometimes refused to go to sleep unless Sally sang a lullaby or whispered the ingredients for one of the aunts’ potions or charms. This is the woman who phoned her every Tuesday night, exactly at ten, for an entire year.
Sally thinks about the way Gillian held on to her hand when they first followed the aunts through the back door of the old house on Magnolia Street. Gillian’s fingers were sticky from gumballs and cold with fear. She refused to let go; even when Sally threatened to pinch her, she just held on tighter.
“Let’s take him around the back,” Sally says.
They drag him over to where the lilacs grow, and they make certain not to disturb any of the roots, the way the aunts taught them. By now the birds nesting in the bushes are all asleep. The beetles are curled up in the leaves of the quince and the forsythia. As the sisters work, the sound of their shovels has an easy rhythm, like a baby clapping hands or tears falling. There is only one truly bad moment. No matter how hard Sally tries, she cannot close Jimmy’s eyes. She’s heard this happens when a dead man wishes to see who’s next to follow. Because of this, Sally insists that Gillian look away while she begins to shovel the dirt over him. At least this way only one of them will have him staring up at her every night in her dreams.
When they’ve finished, and returned the shovels to the garage, and there’s nothing but freshly turned earth beneath the lilacs, Gillian has to sit down on the back patio and put her head between her legs so she won’t pass out. He knew exactly how to hit a woman, so that the marks hardly showed. He knew how to kiss her, too, so that her heart began to race and she’d start to think forgiveness with every breath. It’s amazing the places that love will carry you. It’s astounding to discover just how far you’re willing to go.
On some nights it’s best to stop thinking about the past, and all that’s been won and lost. On nights like this, just getting into bed, crawling between the clean white sheets, is a great relief. It’s only a June night like any other, except for the heat, and the green light in the sky, and the moon. And yet, what happens to the lilacs while everyone sleeps is extraordinary. In May there were a few droopy buds, but now the lilacs bloom again, out of season and overnight, in a single exquisite rush, bearing flowers so fragrant the air itself turns purple and sweet. Before long bees will grow dizzy. Birds won’t remember to continue north. For weeks people will find themselves drawn to the sidewalk in front of Sally Owens’s house, pulled out of their own kitchens and dining rooms by the scent of lilacs, reminded of desire and real love and a thousand other things they’d long ago forgotten, and sometimes now wish they’d forgotten still.
ON the morning of Kylie Owens’s thirteenth birthday, the sky is endlessly sweet and blue, but long before the sun rises, before alarm clocks go off, Kylie is already awake. She has been for hours. She is so tall that she could easily pass for eighteen if she borrowed her sister’s clothes and her mom’s mocha lipstick and her aunt Gillian’s red cowboy boots. Kylie knows she shouldn’t rush things, she has her whole life ahead of her; all the same, she’s been traveling to this exact moment at warp speed for the duration of her existence, she’s been completely focused on it, as if this one morning in July were the center of the universe. Certainly she’s going to be a much better teenager than she ever was a child; she’s half believed this all her life, and now her aunt has read her tarot cards for her and they predict great good fortune. After all, the star was her destiny card, and that symbol ensures success in every enterprise.
Kylie’s aunt Gillian has been sharing her bedroom for the past two weeks, which is how Kylie knows that Gillian sleeps like a little girl, hidden under a heavy quilt even though the temperature has been in the nineties ever since she arrived, as if she’s brought some of the Southwest she loves so well along with her in the trunk of her car. They’ve fixed the place the way two roommates would, everything right down the middle, except that Gillian needs extra closet space and she’s asked Kylie to do a tiny bit of redecoration. The black baby blanket that has always been kept at the foot of Kylie’s bed is now folded and stored in a box down in the basement, along with the chessboard that Gillian said occupied way too much space. The black soap the aunts send as a present every year has been taken out of the soapdish and has been replaced with a bar of clear, rose-scented soap from France.
Gillian has very particular likes and dislikes and an opinion about everything. She sleeps a lot, she borrows things without asking, and she makes great brownies with M&M’s stirred into the batter. She’s beautiful and she laughs about a thousand times more than Kylie’s mother does, and Kylie wants to be exactly like her. She follows Gillian around and studies her and is thinking of chopping off all her hair, if she has the guts, that is. Were Kylie to be granted a single wish, it would be to wake and discover that her mouse-brown hair has miraculously become the same glorious blond that Gillian is lucky enough to have, like hay left out in the sun or pieces of gold.
What makes Gillian even more wonderful is that she and Antonia don’t get along. Given time enough, they may grow to despise each other. Last week, Gillian borrowed Antonia’s short black skirt to wear to the Fourth of July block party, spilled a Diet Coke on it accidentally, then told Antonia she was intolerant when she dared to complain. Now Antonia has asked their mother if she can put a lock on her closet door. She has informed Kylie that their aunt is a nothing, a loser, a pathetic creature.
Gillian has taken a job at the Hamburger Shack on the Turnpike, where all the teenage boys have fallen madly in love with her, ordering cheeseburgers they don’t want and gallons of ginger ale and Coke just to be near her.