Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

Lily looked at Dick and shouted at him, “I have to go now, Mr. Bodler.”

The man stopped his motion instantly, looked her straight in the face and said, “You’re leavin’?” He looked at his brother. “Miss Underdahl is leavin’?”

“Dahl,” Frank said. “Just Dahl.” He didn’t speak loudly enough for Dick to hear. Lily knew he had made the correction not for his brother, but for her.

She crawled over Dick’s legs and got off the bed. The moment her feet touched the ground, he returned to his rocking and noiseless laughter. Lily saw her image wave in the dark mirror ahead of her, and she turned her head to avoid it. When she looked around, she saw Dolores giving Dick’s leg a friendly pat as she moved to the edge of the bed. Dolores’s dress caught the mattress, slid up her thigh and revealed the top of her stocking and garter. Lily remembered then that Dolores hadn’t been wearing a garter the other night.

Lily shook hands with Frank and resisted a momentary impulse to wipe her palm on her jeans. Then she noticed Dick waving at her, and she understood that he, too, wanted to shake hands. She reached out to him. He took her hand, and Lily felt his warm, oily palm against hers, and when she looked at him, she saw recognition in his eyes. He must be mistaking me for someone else, she thought.

Drained of curiosity and somehow wounded, Lily stared at the Folgers label on the coffee can near her feet. Seeing the brothers and listening to Frank had picked at some old sore inside her, and although she felt the pain of it clearly enough, she didn’t know what had caused it. She left the room behind Dolores, and walking through the second room, she noticed the peonies through the window. One fat, fading blossom was pressing against the dirty glass.

On the stone step outside the door, Lily blinked in the sunlight and noticed a dragonfly hover near her knee, then fly to her right toward a junk heap. When she turned to Dolores, she saw that the woman looked different outside. The wind blew the pink dress against her thighs, and the fine wrinkles in her face were plainly visible.

“You got a car?” Dolores said.

“No, my bike,” Lily said, pointing at it.

“Go and get it. I’ll give you a ride. We’ll stick the bike in the trunk.”

Lily didn’t answer. She felt immobile and stared at a wheel in a pile of junk. Then she lifted her eyes toward the telephone wires strung along the highway and looked at a line of sparrows sitting on the wire: a row of small dark bodies. One turned its head abruptly to the left, alert to some invisible sound or motion, and then, an instant later, every bird spread its wings and flew up into the sky.

“Go on,” Dolores said. “Get the damned bike.”

Dolores drove fast, and Lily heard her bicyle bump in the trunk behind them. She stared out the window and thought about the girl’s shirt under Martin’s desk. It’s hers, she thought. She smelled skunk from the road and turned to Dolores. Every time I lay eyes on her, she’s different. It could be the booze, but you can’t pour personality out of a whiskey bottle, can you? Lily studied the woman’s lap, looking closely at her thigh under the dress. She tested her feelings, but she felt nothing, nothing at all.

“You’re spooked,” Dolores said suddenly. “I can see it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say. You’re spooked.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Lily lied to the road.

“I would,” Dolores said. “Only Dickie ain’t quite in his right mind. You can see that, can’t you?”

“He’s a strange person,” Lily said. “But then so are you.”

Dolores opened her mouth and after a moment, she laughed. “Me?”

“Ed said you were unusual or extraordinary or something like that. He doesn’t know quite what to make of you.”

Dolores smiled at the road. “That ain’t the same as strange, honey. He’s an odd duck himself, don’t you think?”

“Ed?”

“Yes, Ed.” Dolores mimicked Lily’s intonation of the man’s name, and this little cruelty put Lily on guard. “Most of the time, that man ain’t here, if you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t,” Lily said. But she was lying.

“He lives in them pictures of his. You must’ve figured that out by now. Then, once in a while, his pecker drags him away.”

Lily stiffened. “So that’s what you think, is it?”

“I do. Nothing wrong with that.”

“He was pretty worried about you the other night, and I don’t think it had much to do with sex. If it hadn’t been for him, you’d have woken up in your own puke down by the river.” Lily’s voice shook as she spoke.

“I’m on the wagon, case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I noticed. I was there, too.”

“I know.” Dolores said. She smiled at Lily. “All I’m saying is, if I wasn’t in paint, I don’t think he’d give a damn.”

“I’m not ‘in paint’ and he cares about me,” Lily said.

Dolores smiled. “How old are you, honey, eighteen?”

“Nineteen,” Lily said.

Dolores nodded. “And our painter friend, he’s ’bout thirty-five, wouldn’t you say?”

“Thirty-four.”

“That man’s got tricks up his sleeves you ain’t even dreamed of yet.”

Lily sat on her hands and looked out the window. She spoke slowly. “That day in Ed’s room when you said he ‘plays rough,’ what did you mean?”

“If you don’t know, I sure as hell won’t tell you. That’s not my job, for Christ’s sake.”

They drove in silence for a minute or two. Lily studied the fields under the big sky through her window, and then she said, “Why did you hide from your mother when you were a little girl?”

“Guess he told you that,” she said.

Lily nodded. “Was it a kind of game?”

Dolores’s foot pressed the gas pedal and the car moved faster. “Told you ’bout that, too, did he? Guess it was foolhardy of me to think he’d keep that to himself. Game? We played the game, all right. I’d lose myself, and he’d find me. I’d hear him stomping around and get real hot—”

Lily cut her off. “He didn’t say that. He wouldn’t say that.” The pain in her voice was obvious, and Lily regretted it.

Neither of them spoke for about thirty seconds.

“Don’t take it too hard,” Dolores said finally. “There’s a whole lot worse in this world than that kind of game playin’. There’s a lot of men right here in town who’ve got a game no one’ll play with them. I oughta know. It don’t do nobody no harm, an’ it’s a comfort to them. I ain’t ashamed of it.” She paused. “The funny thing ’bout it is even weirdos run in types. There ain’t nothin’ new under the sun. Kinda makes you wonder.” Dolores lifted a hand from the wheel and flapped it.

“But hiding’s your game, Dolores, not Ed’s.”

Dolores slowed the car. “It takes two to play, honey.”

But Lily saw the woman’s face go slack with emotion. She’s better-looking when she’s mean, Lily thought. Dolores drove across the railroad tracks slowly, and Lily pressed her nose to the window. When she turned back to Dolores, the woman’s face looked pink and moist with what may have been tears, although Lily couldn’t see any drops in her eyes.

When they turned onto Division Street, Dolores said, “I didn’t take money, you know. Only for the modeling.”

“Right,” Lily said. The car stopped in front of the Ideal Cafe, and Lily remembered she didn’t have a job. I’d better try to make it up with Vince, she thought, opened the door and slammed it shut. “Thanks,” she said to Dolores, who was slumped over the wheel in a posture as dramatic as it was irritating. “What’s the matter with you?” Lily spoke in a sharp voice.