Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

A week earlier Boomer’s story wouldn’t have touched Lily, and she knew it. It was listening to Boomer after she had listened to Dick, Dolores and Martin that had unnerved her. The stories didn’t match, but they overlapped, and the similarities among them were making her skittish. Either there was a virus on the march in Webster that caused hallucinations or everybody was seeing the same thing and thinking it was something else. When Lily stood in the cafe and watched Bert making lively conversation with Emily Legvold, who had recently left the Moonies and looked like herself again, Lily decided the visions weren’t imaginary. There were too many. Then through the window she saw Mrs. Pointer walking with a group of kids from the Elizabeth Barker School. The children shuffled along in twos and held hands. A chubby boy, who looked about sixteen, broke away from his partner. Turning to the cafe window, he scrunched up his face and then did a little dance for the people inside. He had the distinctive features of Down’s syndrome — small eyes and a flat nose. The silly joy in his face as he wiggled his hips and threw his head back jolted Lily from her meditation, and she laughed. He saw her and bowed. Lily watched the kids laugh and clap. Mrs. Pointer walked calmly through the line and stopped beside him. She took him by both shoulders and started to rub the boy. His face looked frenzied now, and his tongue darted in and out of his mouth. Mrs. Pointer continued to rub his shoulders with strong strokes, and the boy’s expression grew calmer. Then, taking his hand in hers, she drew it toward his partner’s — a girl with two short braids that stuck out on either side of her head — and folded their hands together with a little shake that seemed to mean they shouldn’t let go. She walked back to the head of her class and signaled for them to continue walking, which they did, and soon every child had passed out of view.

Lily saw Bert move away from the cash register holding a copy of the Webster Chronicle. “Have you read the police log, Lil’?”

Lily shook her head. She surveyed the tables to check on her customers. Everybody looked okay. Bert stuck the paper under Lily’s nose and she took it.

“Get a load of the headline,” Bert said.

Lily looked down at the police log on the Records page of the paper. The wits at the Chronicle had given that week’s log the headline “Squealer Apprehended on Division Street.”

“Down here.” Bert’s finger pointed to the entry for Tuesday, June 11.

Lily looked down at the paper. The print seemed out of focus. She had to concentrate on the letters to read.

“Police made a traffic stop.… A fight was reported in Viking Terrace.… A black bag containing insulin equipment was found on Bridge Square.… A man on Albers Avenue reported noises in his basement. Officers discovered a gopher in a window well.… A woman on Dundas Street heard people talking outside her window. Police were unable to locate conversationalists.… A complaint of loud music at the Violetta Trailer Park was received. Officers asked residents to turn it down.… A pig was reported loose on South Division Street. Officers rounded up the critter and returned it to its owner.… A man carrying an injured woman was reported on Highway 19 at the city limits. Police checked the area but found no one.”

Lily stared at the last entry. Then she looked up at Bert.

Bert looked puzzled. “All right, it’s not that funny, I admit it.”

Lily stared at the log again.

“Lil’, hon, you okay?”

Lily looked into Bert’s brown eyes. “Something’s going on, Bert.” She turned to the window. “I don’t know exactly what, but I think somebody’s hurt or even dead. She has dark hair. That’s all I know.” Lily walked toward the window and looked at the inverted neon letters that read “IDEAL CAFE” from the outside, and she felt Bert’s fingers brush her shoulder behind her. At her friend’s touch, Lily felt suddenly pained.

“What are you talking about? Did you see something?” Bert said.

Lily moved her neck and looked at Bert. “I haven’t seen anything,” she said.

“It’s Shapiro,” Bert said. “He’s not good for you.”

Lily made a face. “What does he have to do with it? It’s not him.”

Bert stared at her, her lips slightly parted. Then she said, “What’s going on?”

Lily rustled the newspaper in her right hand. She waved it at Bert. “I’m not sure.”

When Lily wandered into the street after her shift and looked up at the Stuart Hotel for some sign of Ed, she regretted not explaining more carefully what she had meant to Bert. So many strange things happened in the world. All her life she had heard the most unlikely stories that were true. Hadn’t Mrs. Knutsen and Mr. Walacek dropped dead on the same day in houses right next door to each other on Elm Street? How often did that happen? Hadn’t Ernie Applebaum disappeared four years ago without a trace until he turned up last year with the carny people running the Shake ’Em Up ride for Jesse James Days, tattooed from head to toe? And hadn’t June Putkey attacked her mother with a knife in their kitchen on a Sunday afternoon? Had a single person in town known that June (who was known to Lily chiefly for the stickers she plastered all over her purse) had it in her to do such a thing? She snapped, Lily thought. But what had made her snap? Had she really hated her mother, or had she just hated her then? Lily imagined a knife in the girl’s hand and blood in a sink with dirty dishes. And then, Lily thought, there are people who don’t feel anything, people who can do anything, anything at all, like that man in Chicago. Martin had an article about him on his wall. Lily remembered that Gasey had been a clown at children’s birthday parties. Nobody had been able to see what was inside him. But Martin, Lily thought, Martin isn’t like that. And yet when she remembered Martin rocking in that chair as hard and fast as it would go, she wasn’t so sure anymore. Through the glass door of the hotel, she noticed Stanley walking up the stairs with a mop and pail. Just after his feet disappeared, she thought, Martin’s up to something. I can feel it.

* * *

When Lily walked through Ed’s door the next day, Mabel was sitting in front of the window only a few feet away from Ed’s canvas. The figure in the painting was the same size as Mabel herself. Lily looked at the splotches of color and the soft contours of the woman’s body, which were still unfinished. Ed hadn’t flattered Mabel, hadn’t turned her into someone younger or prettier. The woman in the painting was Mabel as Lily knew her, and yet this two-dimensional Mabel had a quality about her that Lily didn’t understand. Standing in front of the picture, Lily felt that Mabel was talking directly to her. The woman leaned forward, holding her thin white hands at either side of her face. Her eyes were narrowed as if to focus better and her mouth was open. He got her, Lily thought — that hot-wired look. But still something in the picture bothered her. She could feel it, and she must have been seeing it, but she couldn’t say what it was. Lily moved very close to the portrait. She sensed that both Ed and Mabel were waiting for her response and that she should have one ready, but she didn’t want to speak before she knew what she was going to say. Then she stepped back three or four feet to examine the painting again. The painting was making her uneasy. It’s her face, Lily thought. She looks wild, almost batty, and then Lily realized that she was looking at someone who was desperately happy, so happy that her expression could easily be mistaken for something else: craziness, pain, even fear. She’s so happy, Lily said to herself, because she’s talking to him. And although Lily had always understood that Mabel was lonely, she had never seen it so naked. “What do you think?” Ed said.