Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

Lily woke up to the sound of the phone ringing.

It was Ed. She heard his voice on the telephone for the first time, and the sound of it seemed to make her body warmer. She suddenly felt conscious of her own voice and spoke softly into the receiver, trying to sound unconcerned, as if she wasn’t all that glad, but when he invited her out to dinner at Rick’s, Lily said yes right away and laughed, which probably undid all the studied nonchalance that had gone before.

They sat at a table in the corner, and he told her more stories about his life. After art school he had worked as a plumber’s assistant for a year and learned the inner workings of sinks and toilets, a job he said he never regretted, and then he took the money he earned and moved to Amsterdam, where he read and painted and worked at odd jobs like designing sets for plays and painting a brick wall and ten windows for an art movie he never saw. Lily liked the way he talked to her. He didn’t presume she knew Amsterdam, but he didn’t presume she knew nothing either. She liked the way he ate his lasagna. He seemed to enjoy it without paying great attention to it. She liked his neck above the rim of his white T-shirt and his thick hair and his eyes that didn’t wander. Lily didn’t eat much. She looked down at the red, white and brown dinner and couldn’t bother with it. She didn’t feel hungry, and besides, she felt reluctant to chew in front of Ed. Rolf looked over at them several times, not unkindly, Lily thought, but she knew he’d tell Hank, and even if he didn’t, someone else would. Hank was bound to find out anyway. After Ed had paid the check, she told him she was really nineteen, not twenty-one, and he raised his eyebrows.

“I didn’t want you to send me away,” she said, “so I added a couple of years.”

“I see,” he said. Ed breathed loudly through his nose, and then after throwing his napkin on the table, he stood up.

They met Denise Stickle on the way out the door. Lily introduced her to Ed very quickly, pretending she didn’t see the startled look in the girl’s eyes, and said, “See you at rehearsal.”

Out on the street, he said, “You don’t like that girl, do you?”

“Denise?” Lily said. “You can tell?”

“Yes.”

“Denise is all right. I’ve known her forever. We both went to Mrs. Lodenmeyer’s dance school when we were kids, and now she’s back from college for the summer and she tried out for Helena and got the part. At least her looks are right for it. She’s one of those girls that always rubbed me the wrong way. You know the type — cheerleader, technical virgin.”

Ed gave Lily a puzzled look.

“Does everything but, at least in high school. I don’t see the difference.”

Ed sighed.

Lily was silent. She stopped walking and looked up at him.

He stopped, too, looked down at her and frowned. “You seduced me,” he said. “You started it.”

“I know,” Lily said. “And I’m proud of it.” The word “seduced” sounded beautiful to her. She closed her eyes and breathed in the air. It smelled good. She opened her eyes and looked up at the half-moon and noticed how perfectly half it was.

Hours later, when Rick’s and the Corner Bar had closed for the night and the bus for Des Moines had come and gone, Lily and Ed were still talking in his room. She told him about Hermia and about Mabel helping her with the role, and she told him about playing Maria in West Side Story in the high school play and how she had loved singing and dancing onstage. Then Ed asked her for a song. At first Lily said no, but when he insisted, she gave in and ended up singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” And because he looked like he was enjoying it, she didn’t hold back but belted out the words as she strutted across the floor. When the song ended, she winked at him.

He clapped. “You’ve got a strong, clear voice.” He looked at her. “Marilyn was wearing a pink dress in the movie when she sang that song. I’d love to see you in that dress.”

“You think I’d look good in pink?”

He nodded.

Lily thought about Marilyn. Then she said, “It’s a funny thing about Marilyn. Nobody would be very happy if she were alive, except maybe me. You know how in the tabloids they’re always finding Elvis and JFK alive and living in South America or something? But they never find Marilyn, even though she’s just as famous. Well, they don’t find her, because they wouldn’t want to find her old.” She climbed onto the bed with him. “Your ears are beautiful, did you know that? They stick out a little bit, but they’re really nice.” Lily sat back and studied his hair near his neck. Then she reached out and touched his cheek. She liked talking to him, liked saying whatever popped into her mind, liked the way he looked when he was listening. “Sometimes I wish my parents hadn’t moved,” she said to him. “My Dad got a rare and bad cancer in his leg. They saved the leg, but it’s no good. He was a great carpenter. Everybody knew it.” Lily stared at the wall. “He could’ve died, could’ve lost his leg. They couldn’t really stay, I guess. The winters, you know.” She looked back at Ed and lowered her voice as though she were telling a secret. “So they sold our house outside town and moved to Florida — Tampa. It’s nothing like here. A lot of the old folks I grew up with are dead now — my grandparents, their friends. It’s been one funeral after another these past five years. I guess the place didn’t hold them. My parents, I mean.”

“Does it hold you?” he said.

Lily looked at him. “I never really thought about it. I’ve always been saying I’m going to leave, and I will, too. I don’t want to be here my whole life. But I feel close to this place anyway. It must be in my bones.”

Ed didn’t speak for several seconds. Then he said, “The series of paintings, the ones you saw. You know what I’m going to call them?”

“No.”

“Webster.”

Lily nodded.

“You think it’s a bad name?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Lily paused. “I think it’s okay because you’ve got those boxes with the stories in them, and that brings in part of the place. It’s not just pictures of the people.”

“Even if the stories aren’t all true, like Howard’s.”

“This place runs on stories that aren’t true. My grandfather used to say, ‘One man’s fool notion is another man’s truth.’”

“A relativist?” Ed said.

Lily was puzzled. “No,” she said. “He was a socialist. Thorstein Veblen was his hero.”

“Really?” he said.

“Don’t you approve?” Lily said and grinned.

“Are you kidding? I’ve got an uncle who’s great claim to fame was that he licked envelopes for Emma Goldman.”

Lily paused. She wondered whether she should ask who that was, but before she could decide, Ed said, “They were all on the same side, Lily. They looked up at the same stars.”

“Did all this start with your ears?”

“No,” he said. “With Marilyn Monroe.”

The man was in the street that night again, watching and waiting. Lily slept through it, but Ed told her the next morning that someone had been outside, pacing back and forth in the alley and muttering to himself.

The next day the wind shifted. The air turned clear, warm, dry. The new weather sharpened the outlines of every building, every tree and bush and fire hydrant and crack in the sidewalk. Lily thought the edges of every person and object she saw had a clarity that almost hurt and that this hard daylight corresponded to her high, aching happiness with Ed. Before she left work she told Bert what she never would have told Ed, that she was terribly in love with him and could barely stand it. Bert had squeezed Lily’s hand and said, “You’re sure, then? And Hank?” Lily had told Bert the truth — that she didn’t think much about Hank. It was awful, she knew it, but that’s how it was. And Bert had looked at her and said, “Well, heaven wouldn’t be heaven if you remembered your friends in hell.”