Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

Lily helped Mabel take off her wet clothes. They stuck to her skin, and after Lily had pulled off the shirt and brassiere, she removed a couple of dead leaves from her friend’s white abdomen, which had a long ragged scar across it. It was strange to see Mabel naked — to look at her thinning wet pubic hair and her shrunken breasts on either side of a bony rib cage — but the little old body touched her, and when she wrapped the blanket securely around her, Mabel said nothing. Then Lily moved the palm of her hand along the woman’s cheek, and while she was doing it, she recognized the gesture as her mother’s.

Lily stared at the road ahead of her and drove slowly.

“Something isn’t right,” Mabel said. She was leaning her head against the window, and Lily heard that her teeth were now quiet.

“What are you saying?” Lily let a car pass her.

“Did you notice the way he carried her?”

Lily remembered the form in Martin’s arms, the face and hair.

“She was so light, Lily. Not even a child…” Mabel croaked with hoarseness. “And why did he cross the creek? He was on the opposite bank. He could have gone up that way to get to his truck. Why get wet? Why wade through that water, unless…”

“Unless what?”

“He knew we were there, and he wanted us to see him from the beginning.”

Lily found it hard to speak, to say what she had seen without sobbing. “I saw her face.”

“Yes,” Mabel said. She cleared her throat as if she were going to speak again, but stopped. Then she said, “Lily, there was a resemblance.” She paused. “A strong resemblance, didn’t you think?”

Lily watched the white line on the road, appearing and disappearing under the right car wheel. “A resemblance?”

“To you.”

Lily didn’t speak. No, she thought. No.

“You didn’t see it?” Mabel said.

Lily shook her head, but her stomach seemed to rise inside her, and the chill she felt under her wet sleeves had gone into her bones.

* * *

Lily held the phone with her shoulder as she tied Mabel’s terry cloth robe around her body. She dialed the police station and glanced at Mabel, who sat with her leg up in a pair of navy blue pajamas holding a little makeup mirror in one hand and a towel in the other. She fluffed her hair and Lily marveled at the woman’s vanity. It’s one o’clock in the morning, she just saw a dead body, and now she’s fixing herself up. The next thing I know she’ll get out her lipstick. No lipstick appeared, but when Hank answered the phone at the police station, Mabel was pinching her cheeks to restore some color to her ashen complexion. He recognized her voice and said, “Lily!” The happiness in his tone bruised her.

“It’s not about us, Hank. I wouldn’t call you at work to talk about us. I have to report something.”

Hank didn’t answer this. He listened to Lily tell her story about Martin at the creek. She mentioned Dick and Dolores and the photo of the dead girl. He was so silent, she asked him once if he was still on the line. He said, “Yes,” but that was all.

When she had finished, Hank said, “Is that it?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

Hank took a breath. “Martin Petersen’s running around town in his fairy costume or his cowboy suit, depending on who’s doing the looking, with a dead girl — well, for at least a week now, maybe more. Must be a smelly corpse. And nobody’s missing, Lily, no men, women, girls or boys. A couple of dogs and a load of cats, but no person in the whole county.”

“Well, Dakota County isn’t the world, Hank.”

“That’s right, it’s not the world, is it? Maybe Martin’s knocked off one of your boyfriend’s whores come all the way from New York City. Nobody keeps track of who’s missing there.”

“Mabel saw it, too, Hank.”

“Well, she’s off her rocker, too.”

“That’s not fair, Hank, and you know it. You’re mad at me, so whatever I say now is bullshit.”

Hank didn’t reply to this.

“Tell me one thing,” Lily said. “Who called about a man carrying a woman near the city limits? I read it in the log.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Lily.” Hank sounded terribly angry.

“I’m not.”

“You called. You made that call.”

“What?” Lily looked out the window. In a small voice she said. “No, Hank, I didn’t. I swear to you I didn’t. Did you take the call?”

“No. Pete did.”

“But where were you? It was your shift, wasn’t it?”

“I was taking a piss. That all right with you?”

“Hank,” Lily said. “I didn’t call. Why would someone call and pretend to me? And with you as dispatcher?”

“Maybe you forgot.”

“Oh, Hank,” Lily said. “Please…”

“Good-bye, Lily.”

Hank hung up before she could say good-bye. Lily stared into the room. It was lit by a single lamp on a small table next to Mabel’s chair, and the bulb glowed yellow through the old shade. Mabel clasped the mirror in her limp right hand, her eyelids partly closed.

“Are you asleep, Mabel?” Lily said in a whisper as she stood over the chair.

“No, Lily, just tired.

“It was Hank. He doesn’t believe me.”

Mabel nodded. “I can’t get to the bottom of it myself, but they’ll check it out, believe me, they will.”

Lily washed Mabel’s ankle, wrapped it and made an ice pack. She helped Mabel hobble to her bed and pulled the sheet over her. Mabel’s face was pale as eggshell, and her hair had dried to its familiar whiteness. Lily pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed. Had the girl’s face looked like her own? Wouldn’t she have seen it? Dolores had been seeing herself all over the place.… Had Martin killed her? Maybe he had found her already dead after somebody else killed her — the cowboy, maybe Tex? Could Dolores, drunk on her ass, have seen the murder? No, it’s all wrong, Lily thought. The timing is wrong. Dick’s story. Professor Vegan’s story. But for some reason the muddled theory of Martin’s innocence gave Lily hope. She hoped Tex had done it, or some nameless stranger. Maybe Martin had tried to save that girl. Maybe he couldn’t, and now, distraught and crazy, he had taken to carrying the body around in a tarp dressed as Cobweb.

She sat down beside Mabel on the bed and looked at her. Her placid, exhausted face was suddenly a burden, an annoyance. She didn’t look upset. She looked at ease. She wasn’t taking this seriously. Lily grit her teeth.

“Whatever has happened, Lily,” Mabel said in a low wise voice, “you’re not involved or to blame, except possibly in that boy’s imagination.” Mabel whispered this with her eyes half open.

“Imagination?” Lily repeated. “What does imagination have to do with it? Why are you so calm?” Lily stepped back from the bed. “What’s wrong with you? You were there. You saw exactly what I saw, and yet you don’t care very much, do you?”

Mabel studied Lily intently, but with a quiet in her eyes that Lily read as condescension.

“Well, I care!” she said in a loud voice.

“Lily, don’t you see? He wanted us to look at him. It was a, a performance of some kind, something staged. We called the police. What more can we do now?”

Lily narrowed her eyes. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I don’t even know who you are…” She didn’t finish. Mabel’s face turned whiter. Lily ran out of Mabel’s apartment and slammed the door. She heard Mabel calling her name, but she ignored the voice and fled to her own room.

Through the wall Lily thought she heard Mabel crying. She wasn’t sure, but there were low noises coming from next door. Nevertheless, she did not go back to Mabel that night. She listened to the last of the sniffling sounds and walked to her mirror. There she removed the robe she had borrowed from Mabel and looked at her naked reflection. She examined her body sharply and coldly and then, lifting her right hand, she slapped herself hard in the face. After the slap, she moved closer to the mirror to study the mark on her cheek. And then, before she crawled into bed, she slapped herself again — for good measure.