The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (18 page)

“And fun, I’ll bet,” Lily said.

Mabel’s face changed, and she stared at Lily. She lifted her hands and went suddenly pale. Lily was afraid the woman would faint again and reached out for her, but Mabel waved her off. “Sometimes,” she said, “when I look in the mirror, I’m shocked that I don’t see that young face anymore, that person I used to be. I know I’m old, near the end of my life, but I’m still surprised.”

Lily closed her eyes. She saw Martin rocking with the black cloth over his head and opened her eyes.

“Did you say something?” Mabel said loudly to Ed.

“No…” His answer came slowly.

With Ed’s “No” still in her ears, Lily heard the door hit the wall and when she looked up, she saw Dolores Wachobski standing in the doorway scowling. She was wearing the same dress she had worn in the portrait—the white one with black polka dots. When nobody spoke, Dolores seemed to grasp the advantage of a surprise entrance, and she waltzed into the room. “Hi, Eddie,” she said. “Long time, no see.”

Ed stood up and walked toward Dolores. “Not that long,” he said.

She’s tanked, Lily thought, but Ed didn’t look angry or nervous. He reached for his pocket, removed a tin of cigars, opened it and stuck one in his mouth. Lily watched the match burn for a second near the cigar. “How are you?” he said to Dolores.

The woman looked from Mabel to Lily with bleary eyes. She lit a cigarette herself and said, “Anybody want a cigarette? Let’s all smoke.” She didn’t offer her cigarettes, however, or wait for a response. She blew the smoke straight at Ed and smiled. He smiled back, but without hostility. Dolores had been in the room only seconds, and already Lily wanted to smack her. Who the hell does she think she is? Lily said to herself, and stood up. Mabel didn’t move.

“I’ve come to get my last pay,” Dolores said and flicked an ash on the floor.

Lily glanced down at the ash and then up at Dolores. She made a face, hoping the woman would see it.

But Dolores was looking at Ed.

“I paid you, remember?” he said.

“I don’t think so, sweetie.” Dolores stretched her neck, then turned suddenly to Lily and barked, “What you laughin’ at, girly?”

Lily knew she hadn’t laughed. “He says he paid you.”

“You his accountant now?” Dolores let one hip loose and laid her hand on it. Ed moved closer to Dolores, but the woman wobbled toward Lily, placing one high-heeled shoe carefully in front of the other. “I’ve got some advice for you, honey. I’d stay away from him. He ain’t what he seems, all nice and sweet.” She shook her head back and forth. One of her ankles buckled for a second, then she straightened it. A flicker of pain passed over her mouth—the first sign of emotion that had shown through the swagger. “Hear?”

Lily smelled the liquor on her breath and moved her head back an inch.

“He ain’t for little girls. He’s got a rough side, you hear me?”

Lily looked at Ed. His forehead was wrinkling, and she saw him put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Dolores,” he said in a quiet voice. “Go easy.”

She whirled around at him and nodded. “Me?”

Lily heard Mabel behind her, but she didn’t turn around. Mabel slipped her hand into Lily’s, and Lily took it.

“Would you like a loan?” Ed said quietly.

Lily stared at him and then at Dolores. She tried to guess the woman’s age. Was she forty yet? The dress showed a lot of cleavage, and the material was thin enough to reveal the roll of flesh around her middle. The skin on her naked arms was white, smooth and only slightly freckled. Dolores adjusted her hip, and the unconscious motion stirred in Lily an awareness of the woman’s body as distinct from her voice or clothes. Lily saw Dolores turn toward Ed and put her arms around his neck. Ed’s hands moved to the woman’s waist, and Lily imagined him pulling the dress down over Dolores’s shoulders. Why isn’t he embarrassed in front of me? She looked at Ed’s face above the back of Dolores’s head, but the man didn’t meet her eyes.

Dolores was whispering now. “Remember, Eddie, I told you about Jesse James. I seen it again.”

Mabel squeezed Lily’s hand, and Lily looked at her. Mabel’s face looked drawn and tired, but her eyes were sharp. Lily felt she would have given anything to listen to Mabel’s thoughts.

Dolores stood on tiptoe and leaned heavily against Ed, whispering uselessly. Lily could hear every word. “I seen Jesse’s ghost with me, Eddie, only it couldn’t be me because I was watching, but there was two of me.” She took a breath. “And when I saw it I hadn’t had a drop. You hear me? I was as clear as a bell and I saw him sitting in the grass outside the cave with the spitting image of me beside him. And Jesse, he was a living ghost, but the ghost of me was dead as a doornail, and I’m telling you now so you don’t forget that I’ve had a sign. My life’s coming to an end.”

She pulled away from Ed, straightened the front of her dress and narrowed her eyes in an expression that seemed both shrewd and distant. “And then,” she said, “I heard music playing right out of the sky.” Dolores moved her head to one side. “What d’ya think of that, Eddie boy?” She took in Mabel and Lily at a glance and spat out the words “Music from heaven!”

She paused a moment, as though waiting for her words to sink in, then swivelled on her heels and walked to the open door, her big black purse swinging from her hand. Ed followed her, and the two of them stopped in the hallway. Lily watched Ed reach into his back pocket, take out his wallet and hand Dolores several bills. Lily couldn’t tell how much money he gave her, but Dolores took it with a smile and brought the purse close to her face. After fumbling with the clasp, she opened the bag and dropped the crumpled paper money inside.

Lily had heard Ed’s offer of a loan to Dolores as proof of his kindness, but when the actual bills appeared, they sickened her. More than seeing the man’s hands around the woman’s waist, the sight of those bills gave Lily a feeling that not only was there intimacy between them, there was some kind of arrangement. He could easily have walked Dolores down the hall. Giving her money would have been a secret then, but he chose not to hide it, and Lily found his openness inscrutable.

She listened to the clatter of Dolores’s high heels in the hallway, heard the sound recede and then vanish. The carpet on the stairs must have muffled their noise.

Mabel excused herself, saying she was “worn to the bone,” and left them. Before Lily could say a single word, Ed lunged at her, lifted her off the ground, carried her to the little kitchen table and laid her down on it. Then he bent over her and started kissing her neck. She had a hundred questions for Ed about Dolores, but she didn’t ask them, not then. I’ve been taken by storm, she thought to herself as she looked up at him. She liked the sound of it: “by storm.” It seemed to suggest that Ed was her own violent weather.

*   *   *

By the time Lily walked into the Arts Guild, the place was both crowded and noisy. She stared at the cardboard trees with tissue paper foliage strung along their branches and at Debbie Larsen and Genevieve Knecht, whose arms were flapping as they pretended to fly across the stage. She heard the quartet tuning and the cast chattering and suddenly wanted to close her eyes and press her hands to her ears to shut it out. How can anybody get into character with all this racket? she said to herself and sat down on a folding chair to wait for Mrs. Wright to call the cast to order. Lily looked down at her hands. Her blisters had turned into tough bits of red skin. She rubbed them, and then, out of the corner of her eye, saw Bottom’s Ass head emerge from behind the curtain—now painted, with tufts of hair for a forelock and scruffy mane. She looked up and saw Martin holding the head in front of him, his face quiet, a white bandage wrapped around his left hand. Loud “hee-haws” came from the stage, and Lily watched Ronald Lovold dart from behind Martin and grin at the head.

That evening the play showed improvement, and Lily began to think it might not be an embarrassment after all. Even Denise was less flat. The new sets and props excited the cast to better performances, and Lily, too, was glad for the painted backdrops, fake trees and artificial moonlight, but when she moved and spoke, she forgot the scenery. She didn’t hear or see Mabel anymore when she played Hermia. Mabel’s coaching had moved inside Lily, and with each rehearsal Hermia changed, her character gained tightness and shape. In the end, the Athenian girl was a tough little broad, and that’s how Lily played her.

It might have been neater if what was outside the Arts Guild would stay out and what was inside would stay in, but that’s not how it worked. When Lily spoke to Lysander, she looked into Jim’s face and gave him the feeling she had for Ed, and Jim responded with an expressiveness she hadn’t seen in him before. And when she watched Cobweb tiptoe around Bottom, she perceived an ominous presence in Martin’s fairy that made him better than the others. He never abandoned character. Even when the little fairies snickered at the ridiculous head on Oren’s shoulders, Cobweb’s white face never faltered from its distant, nearly unconscious expression. Several times during rehearsal, Lily felt Martin staring at her, felt his eyes on her neck or back, and when she turned around he was always there to meet her glance, and Lily wondered if scientists had discovered how it is that you can actually feel someone’s eyes on your body. She worried about his hand. How had he hurt it? She wished she could remember what his hands had looked like in the rocking chair, but she didn’t have any memory of them.

After rehearsal she put her hand on his shoulder and said, “Martin.” She spoke in a low voice she instantly regretted because it sounded confidential, but he turned, looked at her and smiled. His eager expression felt like a trap. “I have to talk to you,” she said and corrected her tone.

Martin didn’t speak, but he took Lily’s hand. She let him do it, but she found the bandage rubbing against her palm unpleasant. As they walked through the door, Martin gripped her harder. She couldn’t understand why he would do this with an injury. She moved her fingers to signal that she wanted him to release her, but Martin only squeezed more tightly. “Your hand,” Lily said. “It’s hurting me.”

Martin let go, but he didn’t say anything. They seated themselves on the steps, and Lily spoke to the street rather than to Martin, explaining to him what Dick had told her. “You don’t think,” Lily said finally, “that Dick made it up, do you?”

“Dick doesn’t lie,” Martin said.

“Well, I mean that he imagined it?”

“No.”

Lily turned to him. “You mean you were really carrying somebody across their field the day before yesterday?”

Martin’s mouth twitched once. “Y-yes.”

Lily hadn’t expected this response. She hesitated, then said, “Who was it?”

Martin turned his face toward hers. He didn’t stutter. “You,” he said. “It was you.”

Lily studied his face to see if he was joking. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then said, “That’s not funny, Martin.”

He looked at her with blank eyes.

“I wasn’t there. You know that. Who was it? Dick was, well.” Lily sighed. “I think he was scared that, that the girl, was hurt, or…” Lily finally said it, “dead.”

Martin shook his head. “Th-there are lots of things w-we don’t understand, Lily.”

Lily gestured with her hands. “That’s bonkers, Martin. I sure as hell know where I am from one minute to the next. I sure as hell know I wasn’t with you in some alfalfa field outside the Bodlers’.”

Martin stared at her without blinking.

“Why are you doing this?” Lily asked him in an urgent whisper. “What good will this do?”

Martin shook his head violently, then looked down at his knees.

Lily grabbed Martin’s shoulder. “Martin, if Dick saw you, then he didn’t see me.”

Martin didn’t answer. His face looked stony.

Martin turned his head away from Lily. He stuttered something Lily couldn’t hear.

“What?” she asked loudly. Then she heard people behind her talking near the door.

Martin’s shoulders were shaking. He gasped. “Ma-mama,” he stuttered.

Lily reached out for him. “Jesus, Martin,” she said in a whisper. “What is it?”

“Everything okay?” Mrs. Wright said from the door.

Lily didn’t answer.

Martin stood up with his back to Lily. His head was lowered and his back rounded as though someone had hit him in the stomach. He grunted and Lily thought she saw saliva hit the sidewalk. Someone ran down the steps behind her. It was Mrs. Baker. She put her arm around Martin, and Lily watched him quake under the steadying arm. “Ma-ma-ma-ma,” he sputtered.

Mrs. Baker held Martin but turned to Lily. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. We, we were just talking,” Lily said. She stood up. She rubbed her face hard and shook her head. “God,” she said and walked over to Martin, who was leaning on Mrs. Baker now, his head still down. “Do you want me to go, Martin?” she said and then looked up at the doorway. A dozen people stared down at her. She turned back to Mrs. Baker.

“Maybe that’s best,” the woman said.

Lily took a last look at Martin, who remained hunched but had stopped trying to speak. He was puffing hard and then Lily saw him bring his hands to his face and cover it. The streetlamp illuminated Martin’s left hand, and she saw clearly the wrinkled Band-Aids and piece of gauze that had been wrapped around his palm. But these only partially concealed numerous long, sharp cuts that ran in all directions between his knuckles and the top of his hand.

Lily hurried away from the Arts Guild, across the railroad tracks. She paused once to turn around and look at the group of people gathered around Martin under the streetlamp and wondered what he was saying, if anything. Her knees shook as she walked. Lily looked up at the moon and thought, How the hell did all this happen? It’s like I’m involved with him now, like we’re in something together. “It was you.” A mysterious leaden guilt settled in Lily’s chest. What have I done? she thought and watched her white sneakers move forward on the pavement. She heard someone walking toward her and looked up.

A tall man wearing a cowboy hat and a gun belt came striding toward her, and for a moment Lily thought she was seeing things. Like a gunslinger in an old Western, the dark figure approached, his hands held inches from the guns on his hips, and Lily guessed it was Dolores’s ghost, or maybe Tex. The man came closer and Lily recognized Hank. He said her name.