Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

The place was hot, and even with all the windows open, the heat weighed on the cast. Amy Voegele lost a tooth and was so excited, rehearsal was delayed for several minutes while everybody ran around looking for a container the girl would accept. In the first scene, Lily noticed that Mr. Dugan had poison ivy all over his legs and had smeared the welts with calamine lotion, stiffening the long hairs on his calves into a pink forest. When Jim spoke Lysander’s lines and held Lily’s hand, she saw large sweat spots under the arms of his shirt that she found distracting, but Mrs. Wright told Lily she was finally “natural.” Lily couldn’t help thinking that she had stolen, or at least borrowed, that “natural” performance, that what looked natural wasn’t, and even though Lily felt Hermia’s every emotion as if it were her own to feel, she worried that her performance was somehow counterfeit, that she had no right to be as good as she was. Mabel Wasley inhabited the role, and Lily was enacting Mabel, or rather Mabel as Hermia.

She didn’t notice or think about Martin again until the beginning of Act II, when she was standing offstage fanning herself and listening to Puck. Susie Immel, who had been yawning loudly for several minutes, pulled a rubber lizard out of her pocket and burped loudly. With each noisy, artificial burp, she made the lizard jump. While Lily was hushing Susie, she noticed Martin standing a couple of feet away, waiting to go on. She saw him in profile, his head and shoulders bent, his eyes closed. He breathed in deeply. His preparation struck her as ridiculous — too much for too little — but then he raised himself and walked onstage with the other fairies, and Lily saw that he had changed. Martin Petersen, dressed in his short-sleeved plaid shirt, stiff jeans, thin vinyl belt and sneakers — the staples of his limited wardrobe — moved like somebody, no, Lily thought, something else. Martin towered over the other fairies in the train, all of whom were children, and yet there was nothing overgrown or clumsy about him. He didn’t mince or prance like some of the younger boys.

Jim tugged at Lily’s sleeve and said, “Get a load of Petersen!”

Lily nodded but didn’t answer. She studied Martin’s body, trying to discover what it was that transformed him, but she couldn’t isolate the elements. His posture, his motion, his expression — all of these were different from the Martin who ate breakfast in the Ideal Cafe. Mrs. Wright was watching him, too. And when Martin spoke in Act III—“And I,” he said, “Hail!” and “Cobweb”—he didn’t stutter. Not a single tic or grimace passed over his face, and Lily felt she was witnessing a miracle — like the invalid in the Bible who picked up his mat and walked. And she wasn’t alone. She felt everyone’s amazement. Later, when she met him offstage, she looked into his eyes and hugged him. “You were wonderful,” she said. “Better than that!”

Martin smiled.

And then Lily kissed him. She kissed him on the cheek because she was happy for his success, and she kissed him because she felt guilty for expecting him to fail, and she kissed him because she imagined he would like it. But at the same time, it was a meaningless kiss, and Lily would have forgotten it instantly had she not noticed his expression as she pulled her face away from him. He didn’t smile or blush or look pleased with himself. Pale and solemn, he opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, then closed it tightly.

“Are you all right, Martin?” she said.

He nodded, and studying him for a moment, Lily asked herself why Martin never responded in the way she expected. She wished he would stop looking at her in that meaningful way, but she shrugged off her discomfort and walked away from him.

After rehearsal Mrs. Wright took a champion’s pose, arms above her head, hands clasped, and spouted encouraging nonsense at her actors like “A good start” and “We’ll iron out the wrinkles.” Mothers arrived to fetch their children, and the room emptied fast. Lily was heading for the door when she felt a light touch on her shoulder. When she looked, she saw Martin. He signaled for her to follow him outside and then pointed at the steps. From inside she heard Mrs. Wright say something to Mrs. Baker about “wing wire.” Martin eyed the two women quickly, then turned back to Lily. His lips quivered and he stuttered over an initial D.

Lily tried to hide her disappointment.

“D-d-did you get it?” he said.

Lily looked over at him. “You mean the napkin, Martin?”

He nodded.

“I got it. I can’t say I understood what you meant by it, though.”

Martin shook his head and stuttered again. “It’s what it says, that’s all.” He stared at Lily and moved his face close to hers.

“Is my face dirty or something?”

He shook his head, then stared at his hands.

“What did you mean by it?” Lily said.

Martin talked to his fingers. “W-well, it can only work with that word, you see.”

“Mouth?” Lily said.

Martin jerked his head up and stared at her. “S-s-s-say it again?”

Lily felt her face go hot. “Jeez, Martin. I don’t get this at all.”

He looked at her. “I, I, I wanted your mouth to say the word ‘mouth.’”

Lily wrinkled her nose. “What?”

Martin pressed his two index fingers together. He turned his face away from her. “Because,” he stammered, “the two come together perfectly, the word and what it means.”

Lily was silent. She thought about it. “So?” she said.

Martin looked over his right shoulder. The sound of Mrs. Wright’s key in the lock made Lily glance behind her, and she saw the director and Mrs. Baker step quickly past them. At the bottom of the steps, they paused, and Mrs. Wright waved. “You two were both great tonight. Keep it up!” she said.

“Thanks, Mrs. Wright! Bye, Mrs. Baker,” Lily called after them as they walked to a car parked down the block.

Lily watched Martin’s profile. He opened his mouth and started talking. He stuttered badly at first, but then he seemed to gain momentum and spoke quite fluently. She could hear a lilt in his voice and suspected the music helped organize his speech. “I’m looking for the way in,” he was saying. “I want to find an opening.”

“To what?” Lily said.

“Do you ever feel that nothing’s real?”

Lily looked at him. “Well,” she said slowly, “sometimes I think ordinary things are kind of strange…”

Martin nodded vigorously. “It’s, it’s like there’s a skin over everything, and if you could just get under it, you’d, you’d get to what’s real, but you never can, so you’ve got to look for a way to cut through it. You see?”

Lily didn’t see at all. She felt uncomfortable. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

“W-w-well.” He turned a pale face to Lily. He pushed out the M after several tries. “‘Mouth.’ The word isn’t real, but, but you use your mouth to say it, and then the two meet…”

“Martin,” Lily said, and shook her head.

“F-f-fakes,” he said loudly.

Lily looked at Martin. She didn’t like the word. “Fakes?”

“W-words are fakes — just sounds for something, right? Pictures are fakes, the play is a fake. But maybe, if you push them onto the real thing — they can open each other up.” Martin looked triumphant.

Lily just stared.

“But it has to be right. You have to look so hard that your eyes hurt from looking. Most of the time, it’s wrong. But you can’t stop looking.” Martin paused. “Say it again.”

Lily leaned away from Martin. She shook her head at him and looked into the street. The low branches of big elms darkened the pavement and sidewalk. She could see the night sky between their branches and looked up at it. She felt tired and wanted to be somewhere else. “It’s too weird.”