The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (7 page)

Lily stared at Hank. “And you believe Ida, windbag of the century?”

“And why not?”

“Because she’s a one-woman gossip factory, that’s why. She churns out hot air faster than anyone can breathe it.”

“And what’s your problem?” Hank squinted at her.

Lily continued to look at him. She pressed her lips together as she paused. “It’s over, Hank,” she said. That’s what people said didn’t they? It’s over. It’s raining. It’s snowing. The weather has changed.

“What?” His mouth opened. He lifted his hands.

“I’m sorry, Hank.”

“You’re sorry?” His chin bobbed in a series of shallow nods.

The phone rang.

“I’m going, Hank.”

He held up a hand, a signal for her to wait. His face looked red.

Lily pushed herself off the desk and stood up.

“Webster Police Department.”

She put her hand on the door and turned around. Hank’s hand was still in the air. He shook his fingers at her and mouthed the word “Wait.” “Yes, Mr. MacKensie, when did you notice it was missing?”

He paused. “Color?” Hank put his fingers to his forehead.

“No, Mr. MacKensie, not all yard deer are brown. We had a blue one stolen a few months ago. Right.”

Lily walked through the door and down the driveway under the streetlight. She expected Hank to come after her, to call from the door, but he didn’t. This surprised her a little, and as she took a step from the pavement onto the sidewalk, her ankle buckled and sent a pain through her calf. For a few steps, she hobbled, but then it was all right.

Rick’s was slow. Lily ordered a hamburger and a Coke at the bar and talked to Rolf, or rather Rolf talked to her. He was on the Jesse James Days Committee and gave her an earful of plans. “They want to change the name to ‘The Defeat of Jesse James Days.’”

“Why?” Lily looked at her fingers through the glass. She moved them to examine the distortion behind the dark liquid.

“They think it gives kids the wrong idea, turns Jesse James into a hero. I told them it was stupid. Doesn’t sound right: Defeat of Jesse James.” Rolf popped a cracker into his mouth. “I’m Frank in the reenactment this year. Plugged right here.” He pressed his index finger into his chest.

“Yeah,” Lily said. “I’ve seen the postcard. Don’t you think it’s a little tacky to sell those photos of the dead gang members, Rolf? And at the Historical Society?”

“Here’s Frank.” He pulled a bent postcard from his back pocket and slapped it down on the bar.

Lily looked at the grainy black-and-white photograph of the dead Frank James. For some reason he wore no shirt. She guessed they had stripped the corpse for the picture to expose the bullet holes in his chest. His eyes were open.

She shook her head. “Remember when we used to play in the caves, Rolf?”

Rolf leaned his elbows on the bar. “Old Jesse found one hell of a place to hide out. He must’ve known about those caves before the robbery. I’ll bet it was part of the gang’s plan.” Rolf gave himself a Missouri accent. “If it all goes to shit, Frank, I’ll meet ya in them caves outside of town.” Rolf smiled and looked Lily straight in the eye. “Remember the rope swing? That was a gas. Out and over the creek and back again. Daredevil Dahl, remember that?”

“Are you kidding?” Lily said. “It’s my claim to fame.” Lily bit into her hamburger and chewed. “I wonder if you could get in there now?”

“The Jesse James Caves?” Rolf shook his head. “After that boy died, they boarded them up.”

Lily nodded. “What was his name again?”

“Larry Lofti.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Larry Lofti.”

*   *   *

The following morning Lily spotted the wig in the Bodlers’ truck. She was watching the twins leave the cafe, and when Dick opened the door on the passenger side to climb up beside his brother, Lily noticed a dark shape on the seat. At first she thought it was a dead animal, but Dick slid his hand inside the hair, and she saw the tresses dangling down his arm. After he was seated, he laid the thing carefully on his lap and slammed the door shut.

“Probably ripped it right off the head of some cancer victim,” Bert said when Lily mentioned it to her. “They watch the obituaries, those two, and whenever someone croaks, they come sniffing around to horn in on the pickings the relatives don’t want.” Bert paused. “Do you think it was real hair?”

“I don’t know.” Lily hadn’t thought about it. The best wigs were real hair. She knew that, but on somebody’s head, all wigs were fake. Real or synthetic, it’s dead hair. Still, Lily thought, maybe all hair is dead, and maybe that’s why I didn’t like seeing it—unattached.

*   *   *

When Lily looked for the pornographic drawing of the Japanese lovers in Mabel’s room the following afternoon, it had disappeared. In its place was a black-and-white photograph of a handsome young man wearing the loose pants of the forties and a white shirt. He held a cigarette between two fingers.

“Do you think your book will be finished soon?” Lily stared at the huge manuscript on Mabel’s desk.

“I’m beginning to think I’ll never finish. I’m beginning to think I can’t finish, or that it will end up finishing me. Do you understand?”

Lily shook her head. She turned to the keys on the pine table. “What are those keys to?” As soon as she said it, Lily regretted the question.

Mabel was silent. Then she said, “They’re the keys to a place where I once lived. I keep them there to torment myself.” She smiled.

Lily narrowed her eyes. She didn’t believe Mabel was insincere, and yet this speech had a prepared quality to it. “You know,” Lily said, “sometimes you talk like a person in a book.”

Mabel eyed Lily for a second, then laughed. “That’s what happens when you read too many.” She paused and said, “I dreamt about the play last night, that I auditioned and was given the part of Bottom the Weaver.”

“Bad casting,” Lily said.

“Well, that’s what I thought in the dream, a part of me rebelled, thought it was unfair and ridiculous. Then I decided it was a good part, and I’d make the best of it. It was one of those wandering dreams, you know, with hallways and stairs and doors that go on and on.”

Lily nodded. “I’ve had those.”

“I was carrying around the Ass head. At first it was very light, and then it got heavier and heavier.”

Lily imagined the papier-mâché head she had seen Mickey Berner working on in the prop room for Oren Fink, and she saw the unpainted form in Mabel’s arms.

“Then it started to bleed.”

“The head?”

Mabel nodded.

Lily changed the image in her mind to a real donkey head with fur. “Was it horrible?”

“No, it was just a fact.” Mabel removed her reading glasses and let them hang from their chain around her neck. “You were in the dream,” she said. “You were in one of the rooms. I didn’t know which. I couldn’t find you.”

Lily didn’t meet Mabel’s eyes. She felt embarrassed for some reason and stared at the bookshelf. After a couple of seconds she said, “Sometimes I remember a little thing, like a picture or part of a conversation, and I think it really happened, and I try to remember, and then I realize it was a dream.”

Mabel straightened her gray blouse and began muttering to herself. “Lost youth, of course, bottom, blood. It’s absurd, really, no subtlety at all.”

Lily had no idea what Mabel was talking about. The woman leaned back in her chair. “There was a man standing outside Berman’s for a long time last night. He was under the awning in the shadows, so I couldn’t get a good look at him, but he parked himself there and didn’t leave for a long time.”

“I heard someone,” Lily said.

“I was sitting by my window, as I often do when I can’t sleep or work, just staring out into the street. Usually there’s not much to see, a few drunk kids, a car or two, that deaf man riding by on his bicycle, but last night this man was there, holding vigil under the awning, and I couldn’t help thinking he wanted something. He looked up at me several times, or so I thought. It’s a wide street. I never saw his face. Then I fell asleep in the chair. When I woke up, he was gone, but our neighbor was there, standing in his window just like the other night, without the musical accompaniment. He stood there for, oh, five minutes, and I thought to myself, something’s finally happening on this street, not an event, exactly, but the preamble to an event—two men just watching and waiting. There’s something in it.” Mabel looked at Lily intently for several seconds. “He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?” She paused. “Our neighbor.”

Lily stared back at Mabel to see if the comment was directed at her or was just a general statement. She couldn’t tell. “I guess so.”

Mabel smiled at Lily. “I’ve always cultivated male beauty. I don’t discriminate. I never had a type. I liked them short and tall, thin and stocky—not fat, although there was a fat man once I found very sexy. Of course he was brilliant, really brilliant, and bulk suited him, like Ben Jonson—a big brain in a big body. Dark, light, bearded, shaven, muscular or smooth and skinny.” Mabel sighed. “I’ve fallen for them all. In general, I suppose, stupidity has always alienated me, but there was a stupid boy I met in an elevator many, many years ago that made me weak in the knees.”

“How did you know he was stupid?”

“I found out, my dear.”

Lily opened her mouth at Mabel. “Were you in love a lot?”

“I was always in love.”

Lily laughed. She looked at the manuscript. “Is it in the book?”

“Yes.”

“Will you let me read it sometime?”

“If you’re very good,” Mabel said.

“Last night,” Lily said. “Did he see you looking at him?”

“Which one?”

“Either one,” Lily said.

Mabel smiled. “Why?”

“I don’t know, just because.”

Mabel laughed. “Because why?” she said. Mabel laughed more, and when she laughed, she wrinkled her nose and her eyes looked very small.

Lily laughed, too.

“Why are we laughing?” Mabel choked out the words.

“Because why,” Lily said and laughed harder.

Mabel laughed until she coughed and gasped.

Lily stood up and pounded Mabel on the back. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It depresses me to think this old carcass can’t even stand up to a good joke. It’s pathetic.”

“It wasn’t good. It wasn’t even funny,” Lily said.

“Oh, it was funny. We just don’t know
why
it was funny.” Mabel moved her eyebrows up and down.

“Don’t start that again,” Lily said.

The two remained silent for about a minute. It would have seemed overlong had they not laughed so hard together, but Lily liked that pause. The room was warm, and the heat seemed to make Mabel’s perfume stronger. Its sweet smell mingled with the dust, and the sun shone through the open curtains onto the coffee table. She concluded that Edward Shapiro had gone to the window to look for her, and this made her glad.

Lily heard a sound, looked over and saw that Mabel had slumped down in her chair. Lily leaned toward her. The woman’s eyelids fluttered. She gasped and looked wildly around her. Her hands trembled. “Help me!”

“My God, Mabel!” Lily grabbed the woman’s shoulders. “What’s the matter?”

“Lysander, help me!” Mabel cried. “Do thy best.”

Lily let go of the woman’s shoulders. “Jesus, Mabel. You scared me to death!”

Mabel straightened up in the chair and adjusted her blouse, which had slid up around her waist. She pressed one lock of hair behind her ear, and then with an expression both prim and satisfied, she said, “Good, now you scare
me
to death.”

*   *   *

Lily looked up at the roof of the Arts Guild and added a steeple where there wasn’t one. The real steeple had been missing for as long as she could remember. Maybe it had been blown off in a tornado, or maybe someone had decided that acting and actors did not belong in a building that looked like a house of God even if it wasn’t, and had hacked off the spire along with its cross. Running up the steps, Lily heard talking, hammering and laughter coming through the open doors. Then someone shouted, “Quiet,” and the noise stopped. In the vestibule Lily looked toward the stage and saw Martin Petersen sitting under a spotlight that turned his blond hair white and erased the color of his eyes. He looks happy, she thought, happy to be the center of attention even for a moment. Then Martin noticed her and his expression changed. He stared hard at her for several seconds and then nodded, as if she should know what he meant by this, as if they had some secret understanding, but Lily ignored him and looked away. “Thanks, Martin,” someone yelled from behind her. The spot switched off, and the room returned to ordinary, dull brightness.

The place was hot, and even with all the windows open, the heat weighed on the cast. Amy Voegele lost a tooth and was so excited, rehearsal was delayed for several minutes while everybody ran around looking for a container the girl would accept. In the first scene, Lily noticed that Mr. Dugan had poison ivy all over his legs and had smeared the welts with calamine lotion, stiffening the long hairs on his calves into a pink forest. When Jim spoke Lysander’s lines and held Lily’s hand, she saw large sweat spots under the arms of his shirt that she found distracting, but Mrs. Wright told Lily she was finally “natural.” Lily couldn’t help thinking that she had stolen, or at least borrowed, that “natural” performance, that what looked natural wasn’t, and even though Lily felt Hermia’s every emotion as if it were her own to feel, she worried that her performance was somehow counterfeit, that she had no right to be as good as she was. Mabel Wasley inhabited the role, and Lily was enacting Mabel, or rather Mabel as Hermia.

She didn’t notice or think about Martin again until the beginning of Act II, when she was standing offstage fanning herself and listening to Puck. Susie Immel, who had been yawning loudly for several minutes, pulled a rubber lizard out of her pocket and burped loudly. With each noisy, artificial burp, she made the lizard jump. While Lily was hushing Susie, she noticed Martin standing a couple of feet away, waiting to go on. She saw him in profile, his head and shoulders bent, his eyes closed. He breathed in deeply. His preparation struck her as ridiculous—too much for too little—but then he raised himself and walked onstage with the other fairies, and Lily saw that he had changed. Martin Petersen, dressed in his short-sleeved plaid shirt, stiff jeans, thin vinyl belt and sneakers—the staples of his limited wardrobe—moved like somebody, no, Lily thought, something else. Martin towered over the other fairies in the train, all of whom were children, and yet there was nothing overgrown or clumsy about him. He didn’t mince or prance like some of the younger boys.