The Enchantment of Lily Dahl by Siri Hustvedt Page A

doesn’t want him, but when he’s not there, she does.”
    “So she doesn’t,” Lily said.
    Vince shook his head. “And he can’t stay away. He’s like a lush sneaking a drink. She kicked him out, but he won’t blame her, takes it out on the husband—not that he ain’t a first-class sleazeball.” Vince paused. “What was that all about?” He pointed with his thumb at the door.
    Lily looked at Vince. “I don’t know,” she said, and she meant it. “He’s beginning to get on my nerves, but what it’s all about, I couldn’t tell you.”
    After serving her first four customers, Lily took a break behind the counter and pulled the map out of her pocket. One glance told her that whatever Martin might have said about “directions” to his house, he had something much more complicated in mind. When she looked more closely, she saw that what Martin had given her wasn’t a map so much as a drawing representing two unfolded maps, complete with creases where the imaginary, not the real, paper had been folded. The maps had been drawn in such a way as to give an illusion of depth, as if one transparent map were floating on top of the other. The uppermost map showed Webster and the area around it and the map below showed Athens and the fairy wood from the play. Division Street was boldly labeled, as were the Ideal Cafe and the Stuart Hotel, but no stores. Beyond the town she saw the Bodler place, Heath Creek, Heath Woods, the Jesse James Caves, and up in the far right-hand corner Martin had drawn an arrow and written “To your Dahl Grandparents.” Not far away from the arrow was the Overland farm marked with a large star and a drawing of an oblong box or chest. Her grandparents were both dead, and there was nothing left of their farm, so the notation struck her as odd. The Overland place was still there, only minutes from where her grandparents had lived, but she hadn’t thought of it for a long time. She had never laid eyes on the children who lived upstairs in that house, and she tried to remember what was wrong with them. They couldn’t speak. Her grandmother had told her the two girls rocked back and forth for hours and hours, each in a corner. But what did that box mean? The drawing irritated her. She sensed Martin was speaking to her again in that roundabout way of his, hinting at things she couldn’t grasp. And then, right before she lifted her eyes from the paper, she noticed that around the edge of both maps, Martin had written the word “Sleep.” Lily puzzled over it for a couple of seconds, looked up at the red booths and then over at Clarence Sogn’s sunburnt head, and wished she hadn’t said the word for Martin. It had been wrong to say it, but why? It was because he had looked so satisfied. When she remembered it, she felt sick.
    Around twelve-thirty, just before her shift ended, Lily cut two pieces of lemon meringue pie for the old Moss sisters.
    “It’s hives, dear,” Leonora said. “I’ve had them a hundred times. It’s that new detergent you used on the sheets.”
    “I’m afraid it’s shingles,” Bessy said.
    “Nonsense, dear. I had shingles just after the war, you remember. They don’t look a thing like hives.”
    Just after Bessy had leaned forward and hissed the words, “Hives don’t crust!” Edward Shapiro walked into the Ideal Cafe. He gripped the counter, and with his nose an inch from Lily’s, he said in a low but clear voice that Bert must have overheard because she dropped the cover to the pie case on the counter: “I missed you.” Lily forgot Martin Petersen then, and she forgot to say good-bye to Bert and Vince and Boomer, and she forgot to take off her apron. She followed the man out the door and onto Division Street, where he took her in his arms and kissed her in full view of every customer in the cafe as well as half a dozen people on the sidewalk. Then he put his arm around her and walked with her up the steps into the Stuart Hotel.
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    That