Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

Lily looked into the street and sighed. “The funny thing is, Vince, that anything can happen. I mean, breaking up with Hank is ordinary. All kinds of really crazy stuff is going on all the time. You’ve got to expect it.”

“Hank hasn’t learned that yet. He goes by the book. College, graduate school, good job, pretty wife, smart, happy kids.” He looked closely at Lily. “I don’t suppose he ever saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“What I saw right away — the dissatisfied, hungry devil in you that jumps in front of trains and laughs it off.”

“Where’d you hear about that?”

“It’s legend, Lil’.”

“I was just a kid.”

“You were old enough to know better.”

“I don’t do that stuff now, Vince.”

“No,” he said and folded his arms. “You’ve graduated to bigger stuff.”

“Cut it out.”

Vince looked out the window and squinted. “I’ve got lead in my skull. It’s going to rain. It’s going to rain hard and it’s going to blow.”

Lily laughed. “You’ve been out of Philadelphia too long. You sound just like an old farmer.”

“Old farmer, shit,” Vince said. “I’ve had a barometer in my head since I was seven. My grandma used to call me ‘the weather vane.’”

Vince was right. The weather changed. The dawn sky turned a pale green, and not long after that, Division Street was as still as a picture of itself. At six-thirty, Boomer waltzed in, and the three of them served a few early birds who ate fast and hurried home to beat the storm. Black clouds rolled in, a wind came up and it started to howl. At seven, they turned on the radio and listened to a man announce that a thunderstorm warning had been declared for Minneapolis and the surrounding areas, Webster included. Lily called Bert, told her to stay home, and they closed the cafe. Rain pummeled the street. The store awnings cracked in the wind, and it thundered close. For a minute or two it rained so hard they lost sight of the hotel. Boomer pressed his nose against the windowpane and muttered “Yeah” with a moronic regularity that began to annoy Lily.

The three of them sat in a booth and played seven-card stud while eating yesterday’s pie and listening to the screen door rattle on its hook. The gutters flooded, and in the street the fragile new tree, planted only days ago by the Webster Beautification Committee, bent low in the wind. Lily hoped she hadn’t left her window open, and then she thought of Mabel upstairs. For an instant she imagined the little old woman being swept out her window, her body sailing over the rooftops like a handkerchief.

“It’s your turn, Lily,” Boomer said.

She looked at the dishwasher. He never sat still. At that moment he was jiggling his shoulders and head. Lily eyed the Elvis T-shirt he was wearing, “The King” inscribed on it in huge letters. Then she lifted her eyes to Boomer’s face and stared into his eyes behind the thick glasses that had been treated to further home repairs. Aside from the masking tape wrapped around the frames, there was a piece of wire, coiling upward from his right lens like a loose mattress spring. The mad eyewear above the face of the rock-and-roll icon made the boy look like an assimilated extraterrestrial. He whined at her, “You’re holding up the game.”

“Keep your shorts on,” Lily said and studied her hand. She took two cards, and when she saw the straight, she didn’t blink.

Vince meditated for a couple of seconds and pushed a bottle cap into the center of the table. “Did you hear about Dolores?”

“No,” Lily said.

“Arrested.”

“For what?”

“I’ll bet I know.” Boomer grinned.

Lily looked at the boy’s chipped tooth — a little white spike at the front of his mouth.

Vince ignored him and nodded at Lily. “They say she broke into one of the caves outside of town.”

“You’re kidding,” Lily said, staring at her cards.

“Your boyfriend bailed her out,” Boomer said.

Lily held her cards over her mouth and nose and watched Boomer over her hand. “Who told you that?”

Boomer leaned back in the booth and folded his arms. “I got connections in the department.”

“You and everybody else,” Lily said.

“Not anymore, you don’t.” Boomer sang the words in a high, jeering voice.

Lily looked at Boomer’s smug expression. I’d feel sorry for him, she thought, if he weren’t such a little creep.

Vince sighed noisily and scratched his neck.

“Stuff it, Boom,” Lily said. “Are you in or not? I’m raising you three.”

The storm started to quiet around eleven. It stopped raining, but gusts of wind rattled unseen objects in the street, and water continued to rush in the gutters. A thin yellow light leaked through isolated holes in the clouds, and the buildings, sidewalk and parking meters were cast in a shadowless glow that Lily couldn’t remember having seen before. She stood by the window for a minute and looked out. She used to think God was in storms, but she didn’t think that anymore. She stared up at the flat roof of the Stuart Hotel and into the clouds tinged with yellow and gray. She remembered the newsprint photo she had seen the night before, and suddenly the simple fact that people lived and died seemed strange to her, not terrible, just strange. She looked out and remembered her grandfather’s body after he had died in the hospital from the last stroke. He had looked younger. Everybody had noticed it. And then Lily imagined Helen Bodler in her grave. She was clawing at the dirt above her and pushing, pushing up with all her might. And then in Lily’s mind, she managed to dig herself out and sit up. She climbed out of the fresh grave, and Lily imagined her standing beside the long, shallow hole. Clumps of earth hung from her hair, soiled her mouth and nose, filled her lashes and brows. Helen brushed off what she could, turned her back to Lily and began to walk down the driveway and away from the Bodler farm. She didn’t hurry. When miracles happen, nobody hurries. Lazarus couldn’t have run. He stood up, Lily thought, and walked out of the tomb still wearing his shroud.

* * *

The telephone drove Lily out of her room that afternoon. She couldn’t stand looking at the stupid thing any longer. Several times she had lifted the receiver, only to put it back down. “Let him call,” she said to the phone aloud. “He can call me.” Mabel’s apartment was unusally silent — either she was out or had finally fallen asleep after a night of insomnia. When she looked into Ed’s window, she couldn’t see a thing, but she guessed Mabel was there with him, and the thought frustrated her. Lily called Bert instead.

“Let him call,” Bert said.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Lily said.

“Let me put it this way,” Bert said. “You don’t want him if he doesn’t want you, right? It’s better to find out now.”

Lily listened. She didn’t say it, but she thought, Of course I want him. Since when don’t you want people just because they don’t want you? Sometimes you want them more. She said, “Yeah, thanks, Bert.” They talked about the storm for a couple of minutes, and, after a pause, Bert said, “I heard he went to Swenson’s.”

“What?” Lily said.

“Shapiro, he went to the funeral home.” Bert took a breath. “Said he wanted to draw one of the corpses. Well, the only dead guy in there was old Oscar Hansen…”

“Who told you this?”

“Mr. Swenson himself. Said it took him by surprise, you know. Had to ask the family for permission, since Oscar couldn’t say yes or no.”

“Jeez, Bert,” Lily said. “Did they let him?”

“Well, I guess Oscar’s son said, ‘Help yourself,’ more or less, but the daughter isn’t so sure.” Lily heard Bert put down the phone. “If you take one more bite of that pie, Roger, I’ll hog-tie you and send you back to your mother.” Then to Lily she said, “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. I just thought you ought to know somehow.”