The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (28 page)

*   *   *

Lily went straight to Mabel’s apartment. She didn’t knock but threw open the door and said in a loud voice, “It’s a doll.” She saw Ed first, and then Mabel, whose earnest, drawn expression made Lily wonder if she hadn’t interrupted an intimate conversation. Mabel’s hand had been on the manuscript, and when she saw Lily, she had withdrawn her fingers quickly. But Lily didn’t speculate on what had been happening between them. She had a story to tell, and she told it. Lily didn’t know when she began talking that she would omit the part about the refrigerator, but she did. Had she been sure that Martin was lying about locking her up, she would have told it, but she had doubts. Martin thought she had died and come back to life. Could she have lost consciousness and then woken up while he watched? If it never happened, why did the story awaken in her a sense of having been bound and locked in? Why did she recall the panic of losing air and yet not remember any of the details? Kids lock other kids in cellars and chests and closets and even old refrigerators all the time. Hadn’t she heard a story about a girl who died in one? When she had finished, Mabel said, “Should we call the police?”

“Is it against the law to make dolls?” Lily said. Mabel didn’t answer this.

“You could charge him with assault,” Ed said. His voice had more emotion in it than Lily had ever heard. He clenched his fists and leaned toward her.

Lily looked at her watch. Hank was at the police station. She shook her head. “It wasn’t like that, really. Nobody’s dead. That’s the important thing.”

“What did it look like?” Ed said. “The doll?”

Lily tried to describe the doll, but it didn’t translate easily into words, and she couldn’t remember the name of the material Martin had used and baked in his oven. She sensed that she had disappointed Ed a little.

“Was it well done?” he said.

“Yes,” Lily said. She looked into Ed’s face, pressed her lips together and then said, “It was very well done. He said that it took him a year.”

Before Ed and Lily left Mabel, they checked her ankle. Lily squatted in front of the woman’s naked foot. It was better, but still swollen and blue. It was an old foot with protruding veins and corns on the bent toes. Lily made an ice pack and when she placed it under the ankle, she looked up into Mabel’s face, and for the first time asked herself how long the old woman would live.

*   *   *

Lily told Ed she wanted to sleep in her own bed that night. She said it was to be close to Mabel, in case she needed anything, but this wasn’t true. Her neck was still sore from her struggle with Martin in the cave, and Lily felt vulnerable. She wanted to lie in her own bed with Ed, and she wanted to hear Mabel through the wall, wanted to know that she was there.

Ed smiled briefly at the poster of Marilyn when he walked into her room. He had seen it before, but he appeared to take note of it for the first time, and there may have been irony in the smile, but Lily wasn’t sure. Then, without a word, he picked her up, carried her to the bed and made love to her. His touch was different that night. He paid more attention to her face than he had ever done before, stroking her cheeks and eyebrows and mouth with his fingers and then tracing the line of her neck. He reminded Lily of a blind person sealing a face in memory through its contours. And Lily was glad he didn’t hold her too hard. Her skin felt sore and raw, and every muscle in her body seemed to have been strained. Even her bones hurt her, although she didn’t know how that was possible.

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.

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.