Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

And then later, when he stood naked in front of the window with a cigar between two of his fingers, and Lily lay on the bed watching the smoke move toward the ceiling, he told her he was going back to New York the next morning to see Elizabeth.

Lily didn’t want to look at him, so she stared at the ceiling and said, “For good?”

“I have to come back. My things, my work…”

“You’re going back to her?”

“She wants to try again.”

Lily heard him inhale smoke, then blow it out.

“Aren’t you going to look at me?” he said.

“No.”

He moved to the bed and sat down. The only light in the room came from the streetlamps outside, and Lily turned her head away from him and studied the shadows on the rumpled sheets near her thigh. “Those things you said about her,” Lily said.

“It’s all true.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I owe it to her,” he said in a soft voice.

“Because you’re guilty?”

“Something like that.”

Lily couldn’t say what came over her at that moment or why she acted the way she did, but she refused to cry or fuss, and that refusal freed her from herself. It had something to do with Martin and the doll and the cave, but she didn’t know why. Maybe she was tired of drama. It wasn’t only pride that kept her from throwing herself at him and begging him not to leave her, it was that she could imagine the scene beforehand: every stupid, sordid moment of it, just like a soap opera on TV, and Lily knew that if she acted desperate, she would never see him again, and that her only hope was her toughness. Whether that toughness was real or not didn’t seem to make much difference. She said, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Ed said.

“Yes, okay.”

“Don’t you have anything else to say?”

Lily shook her head.

Ed opened his mouth to speak, but Lily sat up and put her finger over it. “No,” she said. “That’s what you owe me. The last word.”

Lily slept deeply. The rain came during the night, and she woke to a light spray on her face from the window. Ed was gone. He had left a note on her night table, and Lily switched on the light to read it: “Couldn’t sleep. Went home to pack. I love you. Ed.”

* * *

Before Martin Petersen walked into the Ideal Cafe at seven-fifteen the next morning, Lily’s shift was uneventful. Vince was in a particularly good mood, as was Boomer, whose spirits rose and fell with his boss’s. Boom gave Lily tidbits of gossip — the Hell’s Angels were in town and rumor had it they would crash the dance at Rick’s that night. Linda Waller was reportedly having an affair with Mr. Biddle, the high school basketball coach, and Lily’s ex-boyfriend Hank Farmer was “sticking it to” Denise Stickle. Lily did not respond to this last bit of gossip but stared blankly at the image of Elvis on the boy’s chest smudged with sausage grease and thought that Denise was the perfect choice for Hank’s revenge, if it was revenge and not “true love,” and it did occur to Lily that knowing that Hank and Denise were an item might give more punch to Hermia’s fight with Helena onstage.

When Lily saw Martin through the screen door with a large grocery bag in one hand, she turned cold. She walked quickly into the kitchen, and standing behind the door, she put a hand on her chest to quiet her racing heart. Vince watched her critically but didn’t say anything. She took a deep breath. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Boomer imitate her gestures. She ignored him and left the kitchen. Martin was sitting in his booth. He had placed the bag close to him on the seat. Lily imagined the doll’s head inside it, then remembered Martin’s arms around her neck and she touched the spot on her throat to feel for soreness, but it was gone. He can’t do anything here, she thought. Lily walked over to his booth.

She waited for him to tap or speak or do something, but he didn’t. Finally he looked up at her, and Lily took a short breath. The face Martin had lifted to hers looked waxy. His lips were red, too red, and it took her a moment before she understood that he was wearing makeup, not the drugstore variety, but stage makeup — a light-colored, heavy pancake — and that his mouth was touched with lipstick. She stared at him, and taking her pad from her pocket, she asked him what he wanted.

Martin did not tap. He did not stutter, and there was no music in his voice. “I want what I always want, Lily.”

The ease of Martin’s speech alarmed her, and she thought, Something’s terribly wrong.

In the kitchen, Lily said to Vince, “Martin Petersen’s wearing makeup.”

Vince peeked over the kitchen doors and said, “Well, I guess he’s come out of the closet. I knew there was something of the fruitcake about that guy.”

“That not it,” Lily said. “He’s not stuttering either.”

Vince shrugged. “Well, there’s no law against weirdos, Lil’. This is America. We grow ’em fast and furious.”

Lily nodded. Ed’s gone, she said to herself. And then she felt it, the grief she hadn’t felt last night. She had a sudden urge to run to the bathroom and start bawling in there, but she stopped herself and walked out of the kitchen.

The truth was that Martin had attracted very little attention in the cafe. If Mike Fox, Harold Lundgren or the others had noticed Martin’s peculiar face, they weren’t showing any signs of curiosity, and Lily thought this was a good sign. She served Martin his poached eggs, refilled his coffee and waited on Mr. Berman, who was in early with his Minneapolis Tribune and what looked like a sheaf of order slips. Mr. Berman was the only one who bothered to give Martin a second glance. He raised his eyebrows to register mild surprise for Lily’s benefit, but then he settled into his reading material and didn’t look up.

Lily cleared Martin’s plate. He had eaten all his food. There were lines of smeared egg yolk on the plate, but that was all. She spoke to him in a whisper, the plate shaking in her hand. “It isn’t true, is it, Martin, that you locked me up? It’s just a story, right? Please tell me.”

He looked at her but didn’t speak.

“I want you to understand,” she continued, still in a whisper, “I want you to leave me alone from now on.”

“I know what I know,” Martin said. His voice had no stutter and no inflection to it. When she walked off with Martin’s plate to the kitchen, she noticed Harold Lundgren watching her for a couple of seconds before he brought his coffee cup to his lips. On her way back from the kitchen, she breathed in Mike Fox’s eighth Kent as she passed the counter and saw that Martin had the paper bag on his lap and was unrolling the top. By the time she reached the end of the counter, he had his arm inside the bag and was pulling out what looked like a ratty pink towel. Lily stopped and said, “Martin.” She didn’t say it loudly, and she said it more to herself than to him.

But Martin had carefully set down the paper bag and was now engrossed in unrolling the towel. Lily watched him work with both hands. His bandaged left hand didn’t hamper his movements. Lily started walking toward him. When she reached his booth, she gasped, and the cafe went dead quiet.

Martin had unrolled a gun, an enormous gun she guessed was a forty-five, bigger than the ones at the police station and heavier. It lay on the towel for only seconds before Martin took it in both hands. Lily started speaking silently to herself, stating facts as if what she was seeing had to be affirmed. It’s a gun, but it can’t be loaded. Why does he have a gun? “It’s not loaded?” she said to Martin aloud. Behind her, she heard shouts. Vince was yelling, “Lily! Move! Get down!” But Lily thought, I’m too close to it. I can’t. I can’t move.