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Gillian was fair and blond, while Sally’s hair was as black as the pelts of the ill-mannered cats the aunts allowed to skulk through the garden and claw at the draperies in the parlor. Gillian was lazy and liked to sleep past noon. She saved up her allowance money, then paid Sally to do her math homework and iron her party dresses. She drank bottles of Yoo-Hoo and ate goopy Hershey’s bars while sprawled out on the cool basement floor, content to watch as Sally dusted the metal shelves where the aunts kept pickles and preserves. Gillian’s favorite thing in the world to do was to lie on the
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that the moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.
There was Cardinal and Crow and Raven and Goose. There was a gawky kitten named Dove, and an ill-tempered tom called Magpie, who hissed at the others and kept them at bay.
She did not ask the aunts for special favors, or even request those small rewards she deserved.
that it was always wise to collect fingernail clippings that had once been the living tissue of your beloved, just in case he should take it into his head to stray; that a woman could want a man so much she might vomit in the kitchen sink or cry so fiercely blood would form in the corners of her eyes.
“My lover’s heart will feel this pin, and his devotion I will win. There’ll be no way for him to rest nor sleep, until he comes to me to speak. Only when he loves me best will he find peace, and with peace, rest.”
The man Sally fell in love with was named Michael.
Antonia would have been perfectly happy to be an only child forever, but three and a half years later, at midnight exactly, Kylie was born, and everyone noticed right away how unusual she was.
life seemed quite wonderful in every way, when the deathwatch beetle was found beside the chair where Michael most often sat at supper. This insect, which marks off time, clicking like a clock, issues the sound no one ever wants to hear beside her beloved. A man’s tenure on earth is limited enough, but once the beetle’s ticking begins there’s no way to stop it; there’s no plug to pull, no pendulum to stop, no switch that will restore the time you once thought you had.
Sally stopped believing in anything at all, and then the whole world went gray. She could not see orange or red, and certain shades of green—her favorite sweater and the leaves of new daffodils—were completely and utterly lost.
It doesn’t matter what people tell you. It doesn’t matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you’re headed in the exact right direction.
Kylie is the sort of tender spirit who cries when someone steps on a spider; in her universe, hurting another creature is an unnatural act.
When you ask about her own marriage, she gets a dreamy look on her face that is completely unlike her usual expression. “That was ages ago,” is all she’ll say. “That was another lifetime.”
The air in the house feels charged, so that the hair on the back of Sally’s neck stands up, and her white shirt gives off little sparks.
Kylie is the only person on earth who seems able to tolerate Gideon. His mother, Jeannie Barnes, went into therapy two weeks after he was born; that’s how difficult he was and continues to be. He simply refuses to be like anyone else. He just won’t allow it. Now, for instance, he’s shaved off all his hair and is wearing combat boots and a black leather jacket, though it must be ninety in the shade.
A halo around the moon is always a sign of disruption, either a change in the weather, a fever to come, or a streak of bad fortune that won’t go away.
visitor. In eighteen years they have seen each other only three times, when Sally went west. Gillian never once crossed back over the Mississippi, just as she’d vowed when she first left the aunts’ house. “It’s really, really you!”
“I’ve got Jimmy in the car.”
“He’s dead.”
“We were about to start a new life, that’s why we were heading for Manhattan. I was going to call you once we were settled. You were the first person I planned to have visit our apartment.”
“All right,” she admits when Sally begins to draw blood. “I killed him.”
mean—I started giving him a little bit of nightshade in his food every night. It made him go to sleep before he could start drinking. He was perfectly fine all this time, but it must have been building up in his bloodstream, and then he just conked out.
How wonderful to say whatever you wanted without having to go over it in your mind, again and again, to make certain it wouldn’t set him off.
He backed off, the way he always does, but it won’t happen a second time. If he ever sees her again he’s going to go right up to her and ask her to marry him, that’s what he’ll do. He’s sick of letting fate roll right past him.
This person has short blond hair and is thin, not in the way that storks are but in the style of women who can make you fall in love with them even when you’ve known them for what seems like forever though you aren’t much more than a kid yourself.
Sally had planned to be understanding, to consider such behavior a passing phase, but now that it’s really happened Sally is stunned to find how angry she is. After all I’ve done for you is lodged somewhere in her brain, and, far worse, it’s in her heart as well. “If this is the way you want to spend your birthday—fine.”
he looks like the sort of man no one in her right mind would want to run into on a night as dark as this. He has a lot of nerve to be on private property, to treat this yard as his own. But, clearly, he doesn’t give a damn about such things as decorum and good behavior. He’s sitting there waiting, and whether Kylie or anyone else approves or disapproves doesn’t much matter. He’s there all right, admiring the night through his gorgeous cold eyes, ready to make somebody pay.
IF a woman is in trouble, she should always wear blue for protection. Blue shoes or a blue dress.
But if a candle burns blue, that is something else entirely, that’s no luck at all, for it means there’s a spirit in your house. And if the flame should flicker, then grow stronger each time the candle is lit, the spirit is settling in. Its essence is wrapping around the furniture and the floorboards, it’s claiming the cabinets and the closets and will soon be rattling windows and doors.
All the same, he’s been making a mess of things. Every time he breathes, horrible things come out of his mouth: Little green frogs. Drops of blood. Chocolates wrapped in pretty foil, but with poisonous centers that give off a foul odor each time he breaks one in half. He’s wrecking things just by snapping his fingers.
That is the moment when they’ll throw their arms around one another and praise simple things and, at long last, consider themselves to be free.
Two
.
Maria Owens’s baby girl never cried, not even when she was bitten by a spider or stung by a bee. Maria’s garden was never infested with earwigs or mice.
But Maria would not go away, she knocked and she knocked, and she didn’t even notice that her knuckles were bloody; welts had already begun to appear on her skin.
Until the day she died, Maria wore a sapphire the man she’d loved had given her, just to remind herself of what was important and what was not.
You can tell just by looking at her that she never backed down or valued anyone’s opinion above her own. She always believed that experience was not simply the best teacher, it was the only one, which is why she insisted the painter include the bump on her right hand, where it had never quite healed.
She knows what kind of men they are; they’re like the one they had to get rid of out in the garden. They get mad the way he does, for no reason at all, except some pain deep inside that they’re not even aware of anymore, and they want to hurt somebody.
Sometime in the future, when they were both all grown up, they wanted to look up at the stars and not be afraid.
ALWAYS keep mint on your windowsill in August, to ensure that buzzing flies will stay outside, where they belong.
On especially hot days, when you’d like to murder whoever crosses you, or at least give him a good slap, drink lemonade instead.
Avoid men who call you Baby, and women who have no friends, and dogs that scratch at their bellies and refuse to lie down at your feet.
Gary’s parents were well intentioned, but young and addicted to trouble and alcohol; they both ended up dead long before they should have.
Gary has been close to people and has a whole town full of friends, but he’d never once felt he’d known anyone the way he felt he knew the woman who wrote this letter.
If you ever come face to face with a woman like this, his grandfather told him, turn and run, and don’t judge yourself a coward. If she comes after you, if she has a weapon or screams your name like bloody murder, quickly grab her by the throat and shake her.
Antonia and Kylie are worried, because their mother is never late, especially on a night when there’s packing left to do, and they both feel guilty eating shrimp and pork at her table. Gideon isn’t helping matters; he’s practicing his belching, which is driving everyone but Kylie completely crazy. Scott Morrison is the worst, gloomy as can be at the prospect of a week without Antonia.
Under certain circumstances, he might be willing to give up everything for Sally Owens.
They’ll have to boil the ingredients for three and a half hours, so even though Kylie is always nervous that someone down at Del Vecchio’s will recognize her voice as the one belonging to the wise-acre who had all those pizzas delivered to Mr. Frye’s house a while back, she phones in and asks for two large pies to be delivered, one with anchovies, for the aunts, the other cheese and mushroom with extra sauce.
The delivery boy is unable to speak in her presence, although when he gets back to the restaurant he’ll talk about her for a good hour before the kitchen staff tells him to shut up.
She’d been sure she’d bring disaster to whoever loved her, but that was back when she was a woman who killed her boyfriend in an Oldsmobile, now she’s someone else.
“This
Ritual
