Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

Martin was pointing the gun at the ceiling now. His white face had no expression at all, and behind Lily Mr. Berman was saying, “Put it down, Martin. You don’t want to hurt anybody.” And then Lily thought she heard Boomer crying, but it might have been somebody else. Martin moved the gun down and turned it on Lily. He blinked, and she saw his head wobble for an instant. I’m going to die right now, she thought. He’s going to kill me in the Ideal Cafe. Right now, these are my last seconds. Lily felt her face convulse. The glare of hazy sunlight from the window hurt her eyes. This is my death, she said to herself, and looking into Martin’s placid face, she started to sob, “No! No!” but he held the gun on her, and she choked and cried and listened to the screaming behind her and the sound of someone dialing a phone. Urine ran down her leg inside her jeans. She hadn’t felt her bladder give way. She felt only the warm stream that seemed to run on and on. “No!” Lily yelled through the blur of her tears. “Please!”

Martin did not speak, but she saw him look around the cafe for several seconds, and then he turned the revolver toward himself and pushed the barrel into his mouth. Lily watched him. She saw his red lips stretch over the steel and saw his pale blue eyes looking at her. She noticed the awkward position of his hands and elbows as he held the gun. She saw the dirt in the creases of his knuckles, and she heard the blast. Lily saw Martin lose his face, saw skin and bone and blood fly. She saw his ruined head thrown back against the sunlit window. She saw his body stop moving, and she saw the blood continue to run. There’s so much blood, she said to herself. Then the nausea came and Lily grabbed her stomach. I’m dizzy, she thought. I’m so dizzy.

* * *

It was Vince who carried Lily upstairs to Mabel’s apartment, but by the time she regained consciousness, he had gone back downstairs. She saw Mabel, and for a moment didn’t remember what had happened in the cafe, but when she looked down at herself, she saw that her chest was covered with blood and began pulling off her T-shirt. She examined her bra and noticed that a spot of blood had seeped through the shirt, so she yanked off her bra, too. Lily took off all her clothes. Without saying a word, Mabel stuffed every garment into a plastic bag, tied it, and put it into her garbage can. Then Lily took a long shower and scrubbed herself with a cloth. Standing under the water, she rubbed every part of herself methodically, looking closely at her skin as she moved the washcloth over it. Twice she thought she saw blood on her feet, but the stains turned out to be shadows. Then she dressed herself in clean clothes that belonged to Mabel and noticed how pretty the blouse was, but when she emerged from the bathroom, Lily discovered she didn’t want the garbage bag in the same room with her and insisted on carrying it down to the bins in the alley. “Let someone else do it, Lily,” Mabel said. “I would, but my ankle.”

Lily did it herself. When she passed the back door of the cafe, she saw that it was open and heard voices, one of them Lewis Van Son’s, but she did not look in. Every sensual detail of the walk outside into the alley — the light, the warm air, the shine of the silver garbage cans, the muscles in her arms straining as she pushed the bag firmly into the bin — was oddly distinct and measured. Then she turned and walked back up to Mabel’s. The sight of her legs on the stairs moving through space, the pain in her elbows and knees, the stiffness in her neck when she turned her head were present to her, but also absent. She felt her body, saw it, but didn’t believe in it.

She telephoned her parents in Florida from Mabel’s apartment. She heard her voice telling them what had happened, heard her mother gasp, heard her father’s horrified exclamation in the background. She did not tell them Martin had held the gun on her. She said she wanted them to hear it from her before anybody else. “I’m not hurt. Nothing happened to me.” Her mother said they would fly back to be with her, but Lily said no.

Lily and Mabel didn’t talk much after the call, except about what to eat. They listened to the hubbub downstairs, to the police cars coming and going and the noise of other cars, to official voices that barked orders and the exclamations of people who had stumbled onto the aftermath of a spectacular suicide and were getting the dope.

Lily knew what she had seen. She knew that Martin Petersen had shot himself to death while she looked on. This was a fact. She remembered the pink towel, the gun aimed at her and then at himself. She remembered his lips around it, but after the gun went off, she found no image of him in her mind. She couldn’t see Martin dead. She knew there had been a lot of blood, because she remembered telling herself about the blood, and she had seen it on her clothes. Now that she had rid herself of the clothes, only the words remained. The picture had disappeared. Other than that, there was nothing in her. She didn’t feel sorry or sad or even shocked. She did know she didn’t want to say anything to anybody, and Mabel didn’t demand conversation, so Lily kept silent. She sat on Mabel’s sofa and looked at her legs and wiggled her toes. She watched herself move. There was an urgency about this that captivated her full attention. At about five o’clock she suddenly asked Mabel what day it was.

“Thursday, June twentieth.” Mabel was reading with her glasses on, and she pulled them down to look at Lily.

“It’s dress rehearsal!” Lily said. “I’ve got to get ready.”

“No, Lily. You’re in no shape to go.”

It was Mabel’s tone that decided for Lily. It was incontrovertible. Lily was silent.

Mabel phoned Mrs. Wright and kept her voice very low throughout the conversation.

After dinner they heard the band at Rick’s, not the music so much as the bass, a steady pounding beat that went on and on. Motorcycles roared on Division Street, and Lily remembered the Hell’s Angels. It thundered, and then it rained.

At about nine o’clock, Hank knocked at Mabel’s door.

Lily was sitting on the sofa looking at her knees under Mabel’s pajama pants. Hank sat down beside her. She looked up but Hank didn’t speak. A piece of hair had fallen across his moist forehead and stuck to his skin. It thundered again. She had nothing to tell him. Yesterday she had wanted to explain to Hank about the doll, but now she didn’t.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” he said.

“Is he at Swensen’s?” Lily said. “Martin, is he at Swensen’s?”

Lily saw Hank glance at Mabel. “Yes. The funeral’s Saturday.”

“The funeral,” Lily repeated. She had forgotten about a funeral. Of course, there would be a funeral.

Hank hugged her, but Lily didn’t hug him back. She stiffened at his touch and turned her head away. He was trying to be nice, but she didn’t care.

That night, the next night, and for many nights after that, Lily slept with Mabel in the woman’s big bed, surrounded by bookcases on all sides.

* * *

Mickey Berner played Cobweb. He wore the clean and pressed costume Mrs. Baker found hanging in the wardrobe room Wednesday night. Mickey was bad, but then nobody expected him to be good. Martin Petersen had been the best fairy in the play, and everybody knew it. Lily was surprised when Mabel asked her if she wanted to go on after what had happened. Of course she did. She rode her bicycle to the Arts Guild and pretended nobody was staring at her when she walked through the doors. She had expected the cast to be upset, to be amazed by Martin’s death, and they were. But more than that, the suicide seemed to have enlivened the cast like a stimulant. Oren pledged his performance to Martin. Gordon declared loudly that the play would “keep Martin’s memory alive,” and Denise cried in the dressing room. Lily didn’t cry. She had been too close, and her closeness to Martin’s death made the others circumspect and distant. Mrs. Wright had told her how sorry she was, but the awkward expression on her face looked a lot like shame to Lily. Only Mrs. Baker hugged her, and when the woman’s arms came around her, Lily felt a quaking inside her and the threat of real sobs, but she did not give in to them and couldn’t return the embrace. “I’m all right,” she said. “Thanks.”