“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.
Jim tugged at Lily’s sleeve and said, “Get a load of Petersen!”
Lily nodded but didn’t answer. She studied Martin’s body, trying to discover what it was that transformed him, but she couldn’t isolate the elements. His posture, his motion, his expression—all of these were different from the Martin who ate breakfast in the Ideal Cafe. Mrs. Wright was watching him, too. And when Martin spoke in Act III—“And I,” he said, “Hail!” and “Cobweb”—he didn’t stutter. Not a single tic or grimace passed over his face, and Lily felt she was witnessing a miracle—like the invalid in the Bible who picked up his mat and walked. And she wasn’t alone. She felt everyone’s amazement. Later, when she met him offstage, she looked into his eyes and hugged him. “You were wonderful,” she said. “Better than that!”
Martin smiled.
And then Lily kissed him. She kissed him on the cheek because she was happy for his success, and she kissed him because she felt guilty for expecting him to fail, and she kissed him because she imagined he would like it. But at the same time, it was a meaningless kiss, and Lily would have forgotten it instantly had she not noticed his expression as she pulled her face away from him. He didn’t smile or blush or look pleased with himself. Pale and solemn, he opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, then closed it tightly.
“Are you all right, Martin?” she said.
He nodded, and studying him for a moment, Lily asked herself why Martin never responded in the way she expected. She wished he would stop looking at her in that meaningful way, but she shrugged off her discomfort and walked away from him.
After rehearsal Mrs. Wright took a champion’s pose, arms above her head, hands clasped, and spouted encouraging nonsense at her actors like “A good start” and “We’ll iron out the wrinkles.” Mothers arrived to fetch their children, and the room emptied fast. Lily was heading for the door when she felt a light touch on her shoulder. When she looked, she saw Martin. He signaled for her to follow him outside and then pointed at the steps. From inside she heard Mrs. Wright say something to Mrs. Baker about “wing wire.” Martin eyed the two women quickly, then turned back to Lily. His lips quivered and he stuttered over an initial D.
Lily tried to hide her disappointment.
“D-d-did you get it?” he said.
Lily looked over at him. “You mean the napkin, Martin?”
He nodded.
“I got it. I can’t say I understood what you meant by it, though.”
Martin shook his head and stuttered again. “It’s what it says, that’s all.” He stared at Lily and moved his face close to hers.
“Is my face dirty or something?”
He shook his head, then stared at his hands.
“What did you mean by it?” Lily said.
Martin talked to his fingers. “W-well, it can only work with that word, you see.”
“Mouth?” Lily said.
Martin jerked his head up and stared at her. “S-s-s-say it again?”
Lily felt her face go hot. “Jeez, Martin. I don’t get this at all.”
He looked at her. “I, I, I wanted your mouth to say the word ‘mouth.’”
Lily wrinkled her nose. “What?”
Martin pressed his two index fingers together. He turned his face away from her. “Because,” he stammered, “the two come together perfectly, the word and what it means.”
Lily was silent. She thought about it. “So?” she said.
Martin looked over his right shoulder. The sound of Mrs. Wright’s key in the lock made Lily glance behind her, and she saw the director and Mrs. Baker step quickly past them. At the bottom of the steps, they paused, and Mrs. Wright waved. “You two were both great tonight. Keep it up!” she said.
“Thanks, Mrs. Wright! Bye, Mrs. Baker,” Lily called after them as they walked to a car parked down the block.
Lily watched Martin’s profile. He opened his mouth and started talking. He stuttered badly at first, but then he seemed to gain momentum and spoke quite fluently. She could hear a lilt in his voice and suspected the music helped organize his speech. “I’m looking for the way in,” he was saying. “I want to find an opening.”
“To what?” Lily said.
“Do you ever feel that nothing’s real?”
Lily looked at him. “Well,” she said slowly, “sometimes I think ordinary things are kind of strange…”
Martin nodded vigorously. “It’s, it’s like there’s a skin over everything, and if you could just get under it, you’d, you’d get to what’s real, but you never can, so you’ve got to look for a way to cut through it. You see?”
Lily didn’t see at all. She felt uncomfortable. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“W-w-well.” He turned a pale face to Lily. He pushed out the M after several tries. “‘Mouth.’ The word isn’t real, but, but you use your mouth to say it, and then the two meet…”
“Martin,” Lily said, and shook her head.
“F-f-fakes,” he said loudly.
Lily looked at Martin. She didn’t like the word. “Fakes?”
“W-words are fakes—just sounds for something, right? Pictures are fakes, the play is a fake. But maybe, if you push them onto the real thing—they can open each other up.” Martin looked triumphant.
Lily just stared.
“But it has to be right. You have to look so hard that your eyes hurt from looking. Most of the time, it’s wrong. But you can’t stop looking.” Martin paused. “Say it again.”
Lily leaned away from Martin. She shook her head at him and looked into the street. The low branches of big elms darkened the pavement and sidewalk. She could see the night sky between their branches and looked up at it. She felt tired and wanted to be somewhere else. “It’s too weird.”
Martin whispered in her ear, “Cobweb.” Lily turned sharply toward him. “What?”
“Hermia’s father is going to put her to death.”
His abrupt change of subject confused her, but she answered him. “He doesn’t do it, for heaven’s sake. It’s a comedy, Martin.” Lily gestured with her hands. “It’s funny, remember? People are supposed t
o laugh.”
Martin rubbed his hands and then he pressed his two index fingers together. They trembled under the pressure, and Lily took his silence as a chance for her to leave. She stood up and started walking toward her bicycle.
“Will you come and visit me, Lily, come to my house?” he said to her back.
Lily didn’t turn around. “Someday,” she said. “Sure.”
Martin was walking behind her, and suddenly she didn’t like having her back to him.
“Professor Wasley,” he said. Martin seemed to want to cover all territories at once. “She’s your friend.” He said this loudly and clearly in a voice that wasn’t quite his own.
Lily put her hand on the bicycle seat. “Yes, she’s my friend. Why?”
“She’s got the nerves of a bat.”
“What?”
Martin didn’t answer.
Lily grabbed the lock on her bicycle and began to turn the combination. To locate the numbers she had to bend very close to the tiny wheels, and again she suffered from a feeling that her back was vulnerable. She tugged at the lock. It didn’t open. Very slowly, she repeated the combination. The lock clicked, and she pulled it open. She could hear Martin breathing behind her. She turned toward him. “Bye,” she said.
His shoulders moved up toward his ears and he waved his hands in front of his chest as he began to stutter out a word that started with a Th. She felt sorry for him. But enough is enough, she thought, and she wondered where a stutter came from. It must be like wearing a muzzle.
Then he moved his lips close to her ear and whispered, “The Bodler place.”
Lily resisted the temptation to pull away from him, then released the kickstand with her foot and threw her leg over the bicycle. She could feel her heart pounding and hoped Martin wouldn’t sense her agitation.
“B-b-b.” Martin worked the B for a long time. “Before you go, say it again.”
Lily started pedaling. “No!” she said. The “no” seemed to resound in the air and then, in a matter of seconds, she felt her bicycle tires bouncing over the railroad tracks. She wanted to look back at him, wanted to see his dark form standing alone in front of the little building, but she didn’t. Why had he mentioned the Bodlers like that? It was the way he had whispered it that made her feel funny. Almost like he knows about the shoes, Lily thought. She remembered the stillness of the place, the sound of the wind, the big sky, and then the barn, its roof collapsed inward, moss growing between the stones. Had Martin been outside the garage? Had he been the one she’d heard? And then she asked herself whether she would have stripped for Edward Shapiro if she hadn’t put on the shoes. She saw the Bodler farm again, just as it had been that day. A man who looked a lot like Filthy Frank was standing on a mound of newly dug earth. Where were the boys when it happened? Lily asked herself. Were they in school? Suddenly, the story seemed wrong to Lily. The town had turned Helen Bodler’s murder into legend, but what about the details? How could a woman disappear the same day her husband digs a huge hole near his house without making the neighbors suspicious?