Siri Hustvedt - The Enchantment of Lily Dahl

“Martin,” she said. “I’m still alive.”

Then Lily heard steps in the grass behind her and turned around. She didn’t move off the grave. She saw that Dick and Frank were walking toward her, and she was glad to see them. In the sunlight she noticed how dirty the two men were all over again. Neither one made any sign that they saw her, but she supposed they did, and she watched as they slumped toward her and stopped.

Frank looked down at her from under the brim of his hat, his eyes the color of wet sand. “Guess you knew ’bout him all along,” he said.

Dick stood behind his brother. He was looking at her with an expression Lily couldn’t make sense of — a fixed but bright stare. She looked at Frank. “How do you mean?”

“That he’d hurt somebody — hurt himself in the end. That’s bad enough.”

Lily looked down at the grave and shook her head.

When she looked up, Dick’s eyes were still fastened on her face, and he was nodding vigorously. Frank wasn’t looking at Dick, but he seemed to feel the nods at his shoulder, and he spoke again.

“Dick wants me to tell you we took care of it.”

Lily looked from one brother to the other. “Took care of it?”

Frank nodded. Both men were nodding at the same time. Dick’s eyes didn’t leave her face. “What Marty left behind.”

Lily crossed her arms on her chest and rubbed the skin above her elbows. “You found it?”

Frank shook his head. “Nope, Marty came with it that morning. Said to burn it.”

“And you did?” Lily had an abrupt, vivid fantasy of the doll burning in the trash bin outside the house and Dick watching it.

Again Frank shook his head. “Dick wouldn’t allow it. Put her in a big long box, lucky we had it, had to fold her up a bit. Then he buried it back of the house. Dick took a shine to it — little slip of a thing, wasn’t she?”

Lily looked at her feet on the grass. One of her shoelaces had come untied and lay on the browning sod. “He told you about the cave?”

Frank nodded but just barely — a single motion of his chin. “Knew we couldn’t keep it round the house, not with Marty gone and his last wish bein’ to burn it, but Dick said he wasn’t gonna burn nothing’ that looked like a girl.”

Lily nodded. She bit her lip.

“Better to lay it down in peace on the property. Don’t s’pose Marty’d really mind that. An’ this way there’s no talk, Miss Dahl, ’bout you and him”—Frank was mumbling now and his eyes had lost focus—“on account of the likeness.”

The three of them didn’t speak for several minutes. Dick moved away from his brother and stood over her. He folded his hands in front of him and looked down into Lily’s face like a man who didn’t fully believe what he was seeing. Their silence wasn’t an awkward social pause in which all the parties are at a loss about what to say. It was the intimate silence of a shared secret, and Lily realized that the doll was merely the form the secret had taken at that moment. It wasn’t the secret itself. The secret was somewhere else, always somewhere else, and as Lily said this to herself, she heard her own breathing and heard Dick’s and Frank’s and it made her feel happy.

Dick was staring at the ground now. Then very slowly, he began to bend, then to squat. Lily couldn’t understand what he was doing. Once he had arrived at a squatting position, he let himself fall heavily forward on his knees, and then he grabbed Lily’s shoelace.

“Oh, Mr. Bodler,” Lily said. “I can do that.” She bent down and reached for her shoe, but Dick batted her hand away and began to tie the lace very slowly. He made a good, tight bow and looked up at her before he righted himself.

“Thank you,” Lily said.

Once he was on his feet, Dick took Lily’s hand. She could feel the calluses on his palm and the oiliness of his skin. He pulled her away from Martin’s grave and walked back through the stones with her as Frank followed them. Dick dragged his feet but moved with stiff determination, his fingers tightly around her own.

He took Lily to his mother’s grave. The headstone was small and gray-white. It looked older than it should have and was stained green by moss near the bottom, but there were trees in this part of the graveyard, and the shade cooled Lily as she stared at the inscription: “Helen Bodler, born December 6, 1899, died June 21, 1932. Beloved mother of Ethan, Frank and Richard Bodler.” Ethan Bodler was buried beside his mother — born January 5, 1926, died February 11, 1926. Looking at the grave, Lily squeezed Dick’s hand. She turned to read Dick’s face. He had continued to hold her hand and was sweating into her palm, his grip so slippery she felt her fingers might slide out of his at any moment. Dick opened his mouth and laughed his noiseless laugh and moved his feet ever so slightly on the ground. Frank didn’t interfere with him this time. Then he stopped and the three of them walked to the road together. When she pointed to her bicycle, Dick released her hand.

Lily didn’t refuse their offer of a ride. She climbed into the cab beside Dick as Frank drove slowly into town and asked that they drop her in front of the Arts Guild. Dick leaned on Lily rather heavily, and the weight of his shoulder was uncomfortable. Why feeling him so close to her should have made her think that Dick had seen his mother killed many years ago, she didn’t know. But Lily did think it. He might not remember, she thought, but I think he was there.

After Lily had hauled her bicycle from the back of the truck, and just before he started the motor, Frank looked out the window and spoke to her. Lily saw and heard him speak but didn’t understand what he was saying until moments later, as though her brain lagged behind her ears. When the truck was pulling away and she saw only Frank’s elbow sticking out the window, she realized he had said, “Dick wants ya to visit.”

Auditions in the Arts Guild had already started. Lily heard a piano from the stage beyond the vestibule doors, but she saw no other rivals for the role of Eliza Doolittle. Mrs. Carter squinted at Lily. “Any later and you’d have missed the whole thing,” she said.

She explained to Mrs. Carter that she’d be right back, raced down the stairs and into the little room at the end of the hallway. She dropped her jeans and sat down on the toilet. While she listened to the rush of urine, she noticed a spot of blood on her underpants. So, Lily thought, there it is, and then she felt tears warm the corners of her eyes. She drew out a long piece of toilet paper. She folded it, placed it on her underpants and hiked up her jeans. As she walked down the hallway, the coarse paper scratched the inside of her thighs, and Lily stopped, hastily sticking her hand into her pants to adjust the wad. She found herself outside the closed door to the costume room. Only weeks ago, Martin had been sitting in there on the floor scribbling down her measurements, quoting the play, asking her to go home with him. Lily imagined the inside of the room now, and saw Cobweb’s costume hanging from a wardrobe rack labeled “DREAM.”

Then from somewhere above her, she heard a woman calling her name in a high voice just like the one her mother had used to call her up from the creek for dinner. “Lil — y! Lily Dahl!”

“I’m here!” she called. “I’m coming.”

The street Lily imagined in her mind as she leapt up the stairs was real, and the fog was real, too. She was singing loudly on a London corner in filthy clothes with a basket of flowers in her arms. I can be her, she thought suddenly. Then Lily straightened her back, lifted her chin and walked quickly through the double doors toward the stage.