“Well, you should have thought of that before.” This is exactly the advice Sally has been giving Gillian all along, which is why their phone conversations have gone from brief to non-existent in the past few years. This is what she wrote in her most recent letter, the one Gillian never received. “You should have just left him.”
Gillian nods. “I should have never said hello to him. That was my first mistake.”
Sally carefully searches her sister’s face in the green moonlight. Gillian may be beautiful, but she’s thirty-six, and she’s been in love far too often.
“Did he hit you?” Sally asks.
“Does it really make a difference?” Up close, Gillian certainly doesn’t look young. She’s spent too much time in the Arizona sun and her eyes are tearing, even though she’s no longer crying.
“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.