Neither one said a word for at least half a minute. Then Frank took a breath and said, “Well, that’s that.”
Lily stared at Frank and swallowed. He gave a little push and raised himself from the chair, then started for the kitchen. This was her cue to leave, and she didn’t feel she could ignore it. She set her cup carefully on the floor, nodded at Dick, who didn’t respond, and then followed Frank to the door.
She tried again. “It must have been someone else,” she said. “And if it was someone else, it could be, well…” She didn’t finish that sentence but added another. “I don’t think we can just let it drop like this.” Lily hugged the bag with the shoes in it and looked down at the floor. Frank’s boots had left prints on the linoleum, which was already thick with mud.
He didn’t answer her. Instead, he opened the screen door and held it ajar for her.
Lily walked outside, turned on the stone step and looked at him. “Mr. Bodler,” she said. “If you see anything else, will you promise to call me? I can leave you my number.”
He let the screen door slam shut and eyed her through it. “Ain’t got no phone.”
Everybody has a phone, Lily thought. It doesn’t matter how poor you are. Everybody’s got a telephone.
Frank put his nose close to the screen. “It’s Dick,” he said in a confidential tone that surprised her. “Don’t like ’em, don’t like hearin’ those faraway voices without no bodies. Even before he lost his hearin’, he din’t like it.” Frank shook his head at Lily. “Said it was like talkin’ to a spirit, and what’s the sense of aggravatin’ him with that? We had one. Sold it to Pete Lund. He collects them old phones, and we got a good price for it. Don’t miss it neither. Folks come here or we go there, don’t matter.”
Lily nodded at him. “I see,” she said. “Good-bye, then.”
The man did not say good-bye. Neither brother seemed able to punctuate comings and goings in the usual way, and Lily found the absence of these words unnerving. She watched Frank turn, move across the kitchen floor and disappear. Then, instead of walking to her bicycle, she took a right and headed for the woods behind the house.
Lily chose a spot at the foot of a small cliff that followed the creek. The place was deeply familiar to her. As a child, she had roamed up and down Heath Creek, and the landscape had lived inside her ever since. Still, as she stood at the edge of the steep bank overlooking the water, she felt a change. It had been years since she had visited this spot, and it appeared to have shrunk. It took her several seconds before she realized it was she who had grown and that her new height had changed the proportions of everything else. The current of the swollen creek pushed at countless stalks of snake grass that bent over the water. The light through the trees glinted unevenly on the gray water. After she scrambled down the earth wall, she kneeled near the place she had picked out and dug with her hands. The soggy ground loosened easily, and when the hole was finished, she lifted the shoes from her bag, still wrapped in the cloth, and laid them gently inside it. After pressing them firmly into the hole, she pushed the wet dirt over them and fussed for a few minutes with the look of the surface, patting and smoothing until the spot was round and even. She examined her work, then leaned back on the wet ground and closed her eyes. She heard a woodpecker—a distant dull hammering, then a rustle of foliage from above. Lily looked sharply toward the noise, her ears straining to hear more. Leaves moved, a branch snapped. Would Frank have followed me? she thought. She stared at the cliff. It was one thing to get down, another to get up. If someone was there, by the time she crawled to the top, he would be long gone. She stood up, brushed her filthy hands on her shorts, stamped the mud off her sneakers and stared at the spot. Before she left, she found a smooth, oblong stone and put it there to mark the place.
Grabbing roots to steady herself as she dug her toes into the cliff, Lily scrambled to the top. She imagined Dick chasing Martin across the field on his short, stiff legs, and then Martin carrying a young woman in his arms, a woman with long dark hair like her own. There had to be a resemblance for Dick to make that mistake. Once she had scaled the cliff and was standing at the top, she looked beyond the house into the field and asked herself how it was possible that Dick, slow as he was, hadn’t managed to catch up with Martin. Martin had been carrying somebody, hadn’t he, so how fast could he run? Or maybe Dick had hallucinated the whole thing. Lily walked to her bike and pushed it up to the road. “She’s not alive,” Lily remembered Martin’s words and looked up at the sky. The cool wind blew against her face and then she heard a sound in the grass to her right. A brown rabbit darted past her and she watched him until he disappeared behind a hillock.
Lily rode to Martin’s house. She dreaded going, but she felt compelled to see the little house in daylight. Martin and his truck and his house and the map and the pictures all seemed worse in memory than they had when she was there, and now that Dick had told his strange story, she wanted to see the place again. She turned down the dirt road to Martin’s house and pedaled up a shallow hill that she had barely noticed when Martin was driving and stopped at its crest. She could see Martin’s truck in the driveway, and then Martin himself came running from behind the house, head down, and barreled through the door. Her bicycle bumped on the wet gravel and slid a couple of times as she coasted down the hill to the house.
What will he say when I tell him about Dick? she thought as she walked to the steps. Looking up at the door, Lily saw that it was open. Through the screen door she heard a squeaking noise and then the sound of somebody humming. She walked up the steps and looked into the living room straight at Martin. He was sitting in the rocking chair, which had been moved to the center of the room. The black fabric she had seen the night before was draped over his head as he rocked violently back and forth in the chair. And while he rocked, he hummed. Hectic, low and tuneless, the humming sounded more like an accelerated chant than real music. Lily didn’t understand what she was seeing, but she had a powerful sense that Martin’s rocking shouldn’t be interrupted, that whatever he was doing, he was doing it alone. She saw him push his feet off the floor to make the rocker go fast, heard the excited murmur of his voice and looked at the black cloth swing with his motion. Then she turned around, walked down the steps to the driveway and climbed onto her bicycle. All the way into town, Lily saw Martin rocking in that chair. Why would he do that? Did it mean something? He had run like crazy into the house to rock and hum with his head covered. By the time Lily crossed the city limits, she wished she could keep on riding her bicycle all the way to Florida.
* * *
That night Lily watched Mabel and Ed from her window. They were sitting in chairs across from each other in Ed’s room and didn’t budge from their seats for over an hour. Mabel waved her hands as she talked and Ed sketched. Lily saw his arm move in long, broad strokes, and then she saw him change the motion and shake his wrist. When he finished one drawing, he would rip it out of the large book, throw it to the floor and begin again. While he drew he leaned toward Mabel at the edge of his seat. Once he pushed back a lock of Mabel’s hair with his left hand, but Lily wasn’t able to see the woman’s expression because she was too far away. Several minutes later she watched Mabel cock her head to one side and hold her palms up. The gesture sent a small shock through Lily. She recognized it. They had practiced it together for Hermia when she speaks to Lysander early in the play: “Then let us teach our trial patience, / Because it is our customary cross, / As due to love as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs, / Wishes and Tears, poor Fancy’s followers.”
After work the next day, Lily found herself standing outside Ed’s door. She couldn’t keep herself away any longer. She heard Mabel talking, but she shut her ears to the words, knocked and opened the door before either of them answered it. It looked as though neither of them had moved since the night before. It couldn’t have been true, but they were sitting where they had been sitting, heads together, with sheets of paper scattered on the floor around them. Lily shut the do
or behind her.
Ed turned to her. “Lily?” he said. “Where have you been?”
Mabel looked at her, too. Her sincere expression irritated Lily.
Where have I been? she said to herself and answered, “Around.”
“We’ve called you several times,” Mabel said.
So it’s “we” now, Lily thought, but the fact that they had phoned comforted her.
“I guess I was out.” She took several steps toward them. “How’s it going?”
“Well,” Ed said. “I’ve been listening to Mabel for two days.” He paused, reached out his hand for hers, and Lily gave it to him. He held it tightly in both of his, and looked up at her. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
“Are you?” she asked. Her voice had no irony. She wanted to know.
“Of course I am,” he said. The man stroked her hand, and Lily looked into his eyes. She saw nothing guarded in them, but at the same time she didn’t know what to look for. She thought about Oscar Hansen on a gurney in Swensen’s Funeral Home.
Mabel had turned her eyes away from them, and when Lily looked at her, she saw the woman’s shoulders shake for an instant. Then she moved her hand out of Ed’s grip and looked down at the drawings. In all of them, Mabel was sitting in the canvas chair, her position only slightly different in each one. Her expression, however, was never the same. One fiercely animated face after another looked up at Lily from the floor. Mabel glared in one, squinted and frowned in another, her lips were parted, her lips were closed, her hands were raised from her elbows or splayed at either side of her face. These were images of the intense, shivering Mabel she knew, and despite the fact that they were still, Lily could almost feel them move.
Lily looked at Mabel. “Don’t you get tired of talking? Isn’t it hard?”
Mabel laughed. “I’m exhausted. But I’ve remembered moments in my life I haven’t thought about for years.” She paused. “It’s almost terrifying.”
“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 ha
ve 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.