Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

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Standing outside Martin’s house, Lily felt excited. Her excitement outweighed her dread, maybe because Martin’s truck was gone and the house looked unoccupied. She walked onto the porch, opened the door and peered into the room. The rocking chair had been moved back to the corner, and she could see the black cloth, the collage of crimes and advertisements with its blank center. She walked inside. This, too, was easy. You put one foot in front of the other, she said to herself, and you’re in. She touched the black cloth for an instant, but dropped it quickly. The chemical smell remained strong in the house, and again she wondered what it was. When she looked for the knives, she saw that they had disappeared. Lily remembered Dolores yelling about being cut, remembered Martin’s hand, and, as she walked through the open door into Martin’s bedroom, she thought that cuts like the ones she had seen on Martin’s hand couldn’t have come from fixing a fence. Stacks of books lay on the floor, and on a table she saw the copy of Gray’s Anatomy that had been in the other room before, a book of photographs called The Nude, and a fat white book entitled Prosthetics. A fly buzzed past her cheek, and Lily listened for cars on the road, but there were none, only highway traffic in the distance. Lily moved to Martin’s desk, pushed away the chair and opened the desk drawer: bank receipts, several index cards, paper clips, a copy of Playboy. Then, looking down, she noticed a dark heap on the floor, bent over and reached for it. Clothes, she thought, just clothes, but when she pulled out a blue T-shirt and looked at it, she noticed it had a tiny bow at the neck and a tag inside that said “Lady Susan, size 7.” Lily stared at the tag, took a deep breath and threw the shirt back under the desk. From somewhere outside she heard a dog barking, and she ran out of the house. Pedaling up the gravel road toward the highway, she suddenly remembered she had forgotten to shut the desk drawer.

Two cars were parked in the Bodlers’ driveway: the twins’ truck and a Pontiac that Lily thought looked familiar. Lily jumped off her bicycle and ran to the door. She rattled the screen and called inside, “Hello! It’s me, Lily. I have to talk to you!” Yelling into that house, Lily felt that she had temporarily given herself permission to act wildly, but could withdraw that permission at any second if she had to.

She yelled again. “Let me in! It’s important!” Heavy footsteps came from the next room. Frank appeared in the kitchen.

“Hold yer horses,” he muttered. As he trudged across the kitchen floor, he pulled at his trousers, and stopped behind the screen. He raised his bloodshot eyes to her and grunted.

“I have to talk to you again, to you and Dick, about what he saw.” Lily hesitated. She looked intently at him to show the urgency of what she was saying and then added, “It could be a matter of life and death.”

She wasn’t at all sure, but Lily thought she saw a hint of amusement in Frank’s eyes. “Easy does it,” he said and stared at her without blinking. He did not open the screen door.

“Mr. Bodler,” Lily said, “let me in.”

Frank scratched his neck. “Dick’s restin’.”

“This won’t take long.”

Frank rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. Then he lifted a finger slowly toward the ceiling like a person testing the wind and said, “Hold on.”

Frank disappeared. Lily heard voices from inside the house while she waited. Listening, she thought she heard a woman’s voice, but Dick’s voice had the timbre of a woman’s, and it could have been him.

Frank returned, motioned for her to follow him, but said nothing. He led Lily through the second room and then kicked open the door to the third. The kick gave her a start, and she braced herself as she followed him into the bedroom. The room was incredibly dark. She saw nothing but a bar of hazy light straight ahead of her. Two or three seconds later, she realized that the light came from a window, its opening obscured by a tall stack of boxes, and that the visible glass was coated with a thick, yellow film. A hulking dresser with a cloudy blackened mirror above it stood against the left wall, and when Lily turned to look at it, she saw the blurred reflection of two people lying on a bed. The mirror’s distortion confused her for a moment, but she turned to her right and saw Dick Bodler and Dolores Wachobski together on a small bed that sagged under their weight. Dolores was sitting, wedged close to Dick, who was lying down, his head propped on an uncovered pillow. Bolt upright near the end of the bed were Dick’s boots. Their long, creased tongues hung out from between knotted laces, giving them a vaguely doglike appearance. Dolores was wearing a thin pink dress that buttoned up the front, and because that dress was the only clear color in that dark room of muddy browns and grays, her body looked separate from everything else around her. The puking, bloated, whiskey-logged woman of three days ago had been replaced by a steady, sober person in pink. The transformation was so complete, Lily found it almost supernatural. This wasn’t the Dolores she had shaken and slapped the other night. Holding a neat fan of playing cards in two hands, Dolores turned her head to Lily and said, “You look a little mussed up, honey. Anything wrong?” Then she lowered her eyes to her cards. Dick hadn’t shown Lily any sign of greeting or recognition. He lifted a hand that had been hidden behind his thigh and brought several badly smudged cards up to his nose. Then he narrowed his eyes. Lily shifted on the floor, felt her foot knock something, heard a sloshing sound and looked down at the floor. Her toe had knocked into a coffee can that was serving as a spittoon. She smelled rancid tobacco juice and felt thankful she hadn’t spilled it.

Lily tried to focus her eyes. The vague light, the dust that floated in the room made it hard to see, and she felt that the momentum of the afternoon had suddenly been lost. The world had slowed down and then collapsed into this funny, filthy room. But she spoke anyway. “I want to ask you about Martin Petersen.” She took a step toward the bed. Nobody moved. Frank stood in front of the tower of boxes and surveyed the three of them with blank eyes. Dolores and Dick looked at their cards. “Martin Petersen,” she said again.

After several seconds, Dolores patted the bed. “Join us for a game of gin?” Her voice was bright and clear.

I’m tired, Lily thought, really tired. “No,” she said. “I just want to talk.”

“Sit down then,” Dolores cooed. She smiled and motioned with her head to a spot on the bed near the boots.

“I’ll stand,” Lily said.

Dolores threw back her head and hooted.

Dick continued to look at his cards. Then he raised his eyebrows as though he were surprised by what he saw.

Dolores laughed again.

The laugh seemed to remain in Lily’s ear even after it was over. She looked straight at Dolores. “On second thought,” she said, “move over.” Lily crawled over Dick’s legs and nudged Dolores forcefully with her elbow. “Make room, honey,” she said, emphasizing the word “honey.” The bed sank further under her weight, and for an instant Lily thought it might go crashing to the floor. She crossed her legs Indian style and beamed at Dolores. “This is comfy,” she said.

“Well, how do you do!” Dolores said. It was not a question. “For a minute there, I thought you was just a teeny-weeny bit scared of me, or maybe Dickie here?” Dolores patted the man’s trousers, and a small cloud of black dust rose from the cloth.

“No way,” Lily said and wiggled her shoulders in an exaggerated gesture of getting comfortable. Dolores’s sarcasm relieved Lily’s guilt. She really is a bitch, Lily thought. “I want to know exactly what you saw that day in the field — when you said you saw Martin Petersen,” she shouted at Dick. He didn’t look at her. A bird whistled outside, three distinct notes, each one higher than the one before.