Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

Lily was silent.

“Lily?”

“I’m here. I’m thinking about it.”

Bert laughed. “It’s not a crime to draw stiffs, you know. I mean, he’s such a nice guy, and, well, you could see how it would be interesting. I’ve always had a hankering to go in there and have a look around myself.”

Bert’s defense of Ed eased Lily’s mind. “Yeah,” Lily said. She hesitated, then added in a soft voice, “You’re a good friend, Bert.”

“Ah, get out of here,” came the voice on the other end of the line. Lily hung up. She wished that just once Bert would say it back.

Knowing it would be the last time, Lily slid her feet into the burnt shoes. She didn’t wear them long, just long enough to mark the occasion. Then she wrapped them in the white cotton fabric she had used for curtains, put the bundle gently inside her canvas bag and left the room. She locked the door.

Lily pedaled her bicycle through the maze of fallen branches that had been ripped from trees during the storm, their leaves still unwilted. It made her feel good to be returning the shoes. They couldn’t go back into the suitcase or even into the garage, but she would put them somewhere secret and quiet, where they could molder into nothingness undisturbed.

The sky showed new holes of clear blue, and the cool air invigorated her. She raced, pedaling so hard she panted. When she neared the Bodlers’, she spotted their truck and stopped well short of the driveway. She wheeled her bicycle into the ditch, laid it on its side and walked up into the field. Then she turned to look toward the Klatschwetter farm. The sky was immense and clearing fast. She smelled cow manure, an odor she liked, mingled as it was with alfalfa and earth warmed by the sun. Her eyes moved across the road to the horizon past a copse of midget trees, a silo and a red barn, then back again to the Guernseys and Holsteins out to pasture. Slow animals, Lily thought as she watched them — a head to the grass, a tail flicks a fly, and then that bovine adjustment of haunches near the fence. The barbed wire was electrified. She could see the silver ribbon along its lower edge. It may have been the familiarity of what she saw that moved Lily, or the bigness of that landscape that dwarfed her in a way she found comfortable, but she gazed out at the scene with no thoughts at all until she heard a sound behind her, and then she started and whirled around to see what it was.

Frank Bodler was standing about three yards away from her. His eyes were hidden under the brim of his cap, but she could see his grimly set mouth and jaw. Lily couldn’t understand where the man had come from. Only seconds ago she had looked across the field and seen no one. He was carrying a large, half-rusted spade, and he tamped the ground with it twice. Lily watched him nod at her, then signal for her to come. For several seconds she didn’t move. She hugged the bag against her side and waited.

Frank grunted the word “Come.”

Lily went. She wasn’t quite sure why she went, but she followed the man across the field and stared at the large oil stain on the back of his filthy trouser leg. He hunched a little as he trudged forward with the spade over his shoulder. They know, she thought. They’re going to confront me, ask me where the shoes are. They must have seen me. Lily began planning her confession. I’ll tell them the truth, she thought. But the truth sounded insane to her. I’ll confess without mentioning their mother. But how can I explain burning them? I panicked out of guilt. I threw them in the fire. When they reached the kitchen door, Lily paused. She remembered falling, remembered the wet floor against her skin. She heard herself swallow and then crossed the threshold. Disoriented, she walked into a roll of flypaper. The sticky yellow substance encrusted with flies brushed her ear, and she gasped before she could squelch it. Frank paid no attention. He moved through the kitchen into the second room, which had a little more light from two small windows. It reeked of mildew. Frank pointed at a ripped sofa, waited for Lily to sit down on it, opened a door that led to a third room and disappeared, closing the door behind him.

Lily placed the bag between her and the arm of the sofa to conceal it with her body. In the rounded olive screen of a very old television set, she looked at her own distorted image and turned away from it toward the window. Through the cloudy pane, she saw the top of a blooming peony bush. She swallowed again loudly. The room was crammed with objects — two toasters near her feet, a box of rags or clothes at the end of the sofa, a heavy, black rubber cord dangling over the back of a wicker chair. To avoid looking at the cord, Lily eyed the ceiling and noted the elaborate water stains, which resembled the map of some imaginary country. She was still studying its ragged coastline when Frank returned to the room with Dick.

They stood together in the open doorway of the third room. Frank stepped forward, thrust his arm violently in her direction and said in a voice so loud that Lily jumped, “Was it her?”

Dick walked toward Lily. She hunched her shoulders and pushed herself tightly against the bag as she watched Dick coming toward her in a half-crouched position. Apparently he wanted to keep his head at the same height as hers. He stopped, rested his hands on his knees and stared at her closely. Lily could see dust in his eyebrows and dirt in the creases of his wrinkled face. She swallowed and felt sure Dick could hear it. The swallowing had become an irritation. Her saliva seemed to build up so fast in her mouth that she couldn’t ignore it. How was it, she wondered, that she had ever swallowed without thinking about it? Dick continued to examine her. Then he moved his head back.

“Yup,” he said. His voice was high. Lily realized she had never heard him speak and that the timbre of his voice had nothing in common with his brother’s. I’m sunk, she thought. She considered her first line. The words “I’m sorry” began to form themselves in her mouth.

The men seated themselves in two of the several miserable chairs that lined the other side of the room.

“Yer Lars Dahl’s girl,” Frank said.

Lily nodded.

“Know yer dad,” he said. “Good man, yer dad. Knew yer granddad, too.” Then he turned to his brother and yelled, “Lars Dahl’s girl!”

Dick was deaf. Lily hadn’t known this. She looked from one man to the other. “I work at the Ideal Cafe,” she said as loudly as she could without screaming.

Frank narrowed his eyes.

“I’ve waited on you lots of times.” Her voice sounded childlike. Was it possible they didn’t recognize her?

Frank scratched his hairline, and Lily saw gray flakes fall onto the front of his shirt. She looked toward the corner where he had left the spade and made a guess at how long it would take for her to leap over and grab it. Cautiously, she began to inch down the sofa, taking the bag with her. She felt a loose coil poke her thigh and stopped.

“Dick’s the one seen you.”

Lily waited for the accusation.

“Yesterday evenin’ in the field.”

Not last night, she thought. Last night I was at rehearsal and then at Martin’s.… She looked at Dick.

“Guess it don’t matter now,” Frank said.

Dick leaned toward her again. He closed one eye as though that would improve his vision.

Frank was silent. The three of them sat without saying a word for at least a minute. Then, not able to take it anymore, she shouted, “I don’t understand.”

Neither man answered. They glanced at each other. Then, apparently responding to the look from his brother, Dick slowly rose from the chair and shuffled into the kitchen. Intermittent clatter sounded from that room for several minutes. Frank reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved a pouch of chewing tobacco, took a pinch of the tiny brown leaves between his thumb and index finger and lodged the tobacco inside his cheek. As far as Lily could tell, he had no consciousness of her presence. Maybe I can just stand up and leave, she thought. She eyed the spade again, considered getting up, then stayed put.