The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (27 page)

“What have you done with her?” Lily whispered at him.

Martin narrowed his eyes and turned his head. Lily inched forward into the room to see what Martin was looking at. Against the far wall of the cave, slumped in a wheelchair was the girl Lily had seen the night before.

Lily cried out and clapped her hands over her mouth. She started crawling for the passageway, but she felt Martin’s hands on her shoulders. He pulled her toward him, his grip much stronger than she had expected. She fought him hard, but Martin dragged her across the floor of the cave toward the body. Lily closed her eyes. She hit and wept, and then she felt Martin stop suddenly. He was behind her, holding her arms tightly. She kicked him. “L-l-look,” he said. “L-look.”

“No!”

“Look!” Martin let go of Lily. She opened her eyes and looked at the girl in the wheelchair. She recognized the chair as the one Martin had bought from Frank and Dick. Martin had his hands on either side of the girl’s face, and Lily saw that this was the face of a doll, a beautifully made life-size doll whose proportions, unlike most dolls, were accurately human. And that it was a girl, not a woman, with a small only half-developed body.

“It’s a doll,” Lily said.

Martin nodded. “B-but you knew.”

“It’s a doll.” Lily stared at the modeled face with its painted eyes and parted lips, its long, dark hair that fell over its shoulders. My costume, she thought. It’s wearing Hermia’s dress. And while she looked, she saw—all at once—that the thing looked like her or maybe like her a few years ago. Nobody’s dead, she thought. Nobody’s dead, and she felt a vibration in her jaw and in her temples. She didn’t speak. Neither did Martin. She looked at the doll. There was something wrong with it, but she couldn’t say what it was. It’s cold in here, she said to herself. My mouth is dry. She moved her tongue back and forth in her mouth and then she said, “Where did you get it?”

“I-I-I,” he said, “m-m-made y-you. It t-t-took a long time—a y-y-ear.”

“What?” Lily said. She looked at Martin. Why is he stuttering now? she wondered. I’m dizzy. She took a step backward. Then she tried to focus on Martin. “I thought you had killed somebody, Martin. You showed me that picture. You said she wasn’t alive. Last night…” Lily felt confused. The moving light didn’t help. There’s something wrong with my eyes, she thought. “What have you done?” Lily looked at the doll again. “What is it?”

“H-her face, arms and legs are made from Sculpey—i-it’s pretty new stuff…”

Lily hadn’t meant for him to explain how he’d made it. “No,” she said, but he continued his explanation.

“I-it’s like clay, but you can f-fire it at home in the oven.”

Lily imagined Martin removing the doll’s head from his oven, then an arm. She put her hand to her forehead. “You didn’t ask me. You, you’ve done this behind my back. You were whistling.… That’s Ed’s song.” Lily shook her head and showed Martin her palms, as if they could ward him off. “You’ve been spying on me for, for a long time. I’ve, I’ve heard you sneaking around.” She looked up at him. He seemed taller in the cave. “Why?” Lily stepped backward and heard plastic rustle under her feet. The air inside the cave was hurting her lungs.

But Martin did not answer the questions. He walked toward her and said, “You spy, too. You spied on him.”

Lily watched Martin’s face. He was the whitest of all white men, and he was everywhere at once, seeing, knowing. “Who are you?” she asked again. “What do you mean by this? What is it for?” She took a step toward the doll. The thought that it might have some purpose seemed terrible.

The doll was resting on the back of the chair, its face turned upward toward the cave’s moist, dripping ceiling, and Lily looked down at the long hair that fell over the chair’s cane back. The wig, she said to herself. The grotesque possibility that Frank and Dick had known all along raced through her. “Do the twins know about this?”

Martin shook his head. “O-only you. L-Lily, you must listen to me.”

“Tell me, then,” she whispered and lifted her face to his. “Tell me.”

Martin seemed to find this command funny. He laughed—a short, bitter burst of humor, and then it vanished. He lifted the doll out of the chair and held it in his arms. Mabel had been right—the body was lighter than a child’s. “Sit down,” he said smoothly.

Lily shook her head. She didn’t want to sit in the wheelchair, didn’t want any part of it. “I’ll stand.”

Martin’s face registered disappointment, but only for a second. He placed the doll gently back in the chair, arranged its hands in its lap and then let the head droop on its chest as though it were asleep. He talked to her in that rhythmical intonation she had become accustomed to, rubbing his hands and fixing his eyes on her as he spoke. He stepped toward her, but Lily backed away. “She’s the one between, Lily.”

“Between?” Lily said. She dug her feet into the cave floor.

“Between you and me, between Becky and you, between Dahl and Doll, between the word and the flesh, between you and you.”

Lily looked at her fingers, which were oddly yellow in the kerosene glow. “What are you saying?”

Martin rubbed his mouth. He seemed disappointed and began to explain slowly as he stepped toward her.

“Stay back. Don’t come near me.”

Martin looked hurt, but he didn’t approach her. “I, I,” he stuttered and winced. “I made you, so she, you, is between us. And between you and Becky—older than Becky, younger than you, the way you were, the way Becky would’ve been.” He rocked his shoulders to his own voice, turning his speech into an incantation. “She is the in-car-na-tion,” he said, giving each syllable the same weight, “of your name into its thing…”

Lily shook her head. “That’s the oldest joke in the world, Martin—a stupid pun. That’s all I ever heard on the playground. It’s stupid—”

He interrupted her. “N-n-n-no! It’s very important.” Martin worked to control himself. “The word becoming flesh, Lily—the in-between moment, before—”

“No. It’s not flesh! It’s not real! It’s a doll!” The words came back to her, high, crazy. Lily felt a tear rolling heavily down her cheek.

Martin seemed to grow calm with her anger. “It’s doll flesh,” he said. Lily thought he looked smug.

“And, Lily, it’s you before—”

“Before what?” She spat at him. She didn’t mean to, but she saw saliva fly.

“Before you changed.”

“Changed?” Lily took another step backward. “How do you mean changed?” She whispered the last sentence. I’m cramped in here, she thought. It’s too small. I can’t see.

Martin wrinkled his forehead and stared at her. “It’s you in another form.”

Lily didn’t answer him.

“You’re a woman now,” he said softly. “But you didn’t used to be,” he said in a low, conspiratorial voice. “D-d-d-d,” he sputtered. “D-A-H-L,” he spelled. “I’m Dahl, too. Underdahl. Don’t you see? It’s all part of it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“H-E,” Martin spelled. “It’s in Hermia; it’s in Helen; it’s in Underdahl.” Martin motioned with his hands. He turned to the doll.

“The letters?” Lily said. “You think ‘H’ and ‘E’ mean something?”

“There are lots of ‘H-E’s’—they keep moving, from one to the other, depending—Hermia’s father. Helen’s husband … Becky’s father … Hal Dilly.” Martin smiled.

Lily breathed out several times. “That name,” she said, “who does it belong to?”

“I went between you and me. You were my disguise.”

“What?”

But Martin kept talking. “They would’ve killed him, you know.”

“Who?”

“He’s a Jew, Lily. The Nazis would’ve killed him.”

“Ed wasn’t even born yet.” Martin hadn’t moved, but Lily said, “Stay away from me.”

“I-If he’d been there, they would have killed him.” Martin was whispering at her now, his face gold in the lamplight.

“Don’t say that, Martin.” Lily felt like crying.

Martin held himself and rocked back and forth a couple of times. He chanted again to keep his stuttering in check, and he said, “She’s the under-doll, Lily, you.” The singsong intonation of his voice had become unbearable, and Lily shook her head back and forth at him.

Martin took a step toward Lily. “You never forgave me for the refrigerator.”

“The refrigerator?” Lily said. She put a hand to her forehead.

“At the Overlands’. The refrigerator in the garage.”

“What?” she said.

“Snow White.” Martin said. He walked toward her.

“Get back,” she said.

Martin stepped back.

But Lily stood very still. “The drawing,” she said slowly, “is a refrigerator?” Did she remember a refrigerator? Had something happened at the Overlands’? Snow White, she thought. I was Snow White in the third-grade play. She remembered Andrew Wilkens only pretending to kiss her, because he didn’t want to get girl cooties. But Martin?

“In the garage,” he said. “I tied you up and shut you in the old refrigerator. It was lying on its back.”

Lily stared at him. “Was it a game?” she said. She was trying to remember. She didn’t speak or move. Do I remember playing with Martin? Snow White? Wasn’t it my cousin George who I played that game with? Hadn’t it been George who slobbered her face with kisses behind the grapevines? Lily remembered a pinched sensation between her legs as if she’d had to pee. Had she been in the darkness of a shut refrigerator, closed in, unable to breathe? Was that it? Or was she remembering George? She had played girl to his boy, and the funny thing about it was that there was as much pretending in playing that girl as if she hadn’t really been a girl to begin with. There was something, though, some vague sensation of being shut in. Or was it her grandparents’ outhouse? George had closed the door and left her there, and she’d heard him laughing about the poop and the stink. “It wasn’t you,” she said.

Martin didn’t blink. “Y-you never forgave me. At first you wanted to get in. I dared you. I dared you, and I stuck you down and closed the door. I-it was s-so heavy.”

Lily shook her head. “I don’t remember,” she whispered at him. “Why were you at the Overlands’?”

“To be with you, Lily.”

Lily leaned toward him. “Have you made this up, Martin? Are you lying to me now?”

Martin started to shake his head back and forth quickly. “You, you died, Lily.”

“What?” Lily turned her head and looked at the opening in the cave wall that would take her out.

“I-I-I suffocated you. Th-there wasn’t air for you to breathe in the refrigerator. I sat on it.”

“But I’m here, now, Martin. Don’t be stupid. Even if it did happen, we were kids, right, playing a game?” Lily examined Martin’s face. Stubborn, inward, his expression blocked her words and their meaning.

“I tied you up.”

“No,” Lily said. It made her uneasy. Had he tied her up? Had she ever been tied up in her life? Why did she feel as if she had? Why did she know the sensation of rope chafing her ankles and wrists? Had it happened?

Lily looked into Martin’s eyes. They were wide open. “Th-th-then after a long t-time, I looked inside, and, and it was over.”

“No, Martin,” Lily said. “No.”

“Y-you were d-d-dead. I killed you.” He paused. “A-and then I kissed you, and y-you stood up in your white dress—”

“No,” Lily said.

Martin nodded. He whispered, “Like Hermia.”

“I didn’t even own a white dress when I was a kid, Martin. My mother hated white. It got too dirty, and out there…” Lily shook her head.

“Y-y-you did,” he said forcefully. “And so did Becky. She wore it in her coffin.”

“Stop it, Martin,” Lily said. “Stop it!”

Lily felt tears running down her cheeks. “It isn’t true. You’re saying it to”—she paused—“to…” She couldn’t finish. Why would he say it?

Martin bent over the wheelchair and lifted the doll into his arms again. Lily could see that its body was stuffed with some kind of cotton fill. When she stared at the face, she saw that the color of its eyes was wrong. The kerosene lamp flickered in the draft and Lily took a deep breath. “The eyes are blue,” she whispered at Martin. “They’re blue.”

“I-I gave her my color,” he said. Martin held the doll up toward Lily. She moved backward and stopped. He was offering it to her, and for a moment Lily thought it looked like some poor princess being sacrificed to the giants. Martin’s chin trembled and his white eyelashes fluttered. “I-I want you to have her.”

Before she could stop him, Martin had rushed forward and thrust the doll at her. She grabbed it and felt its hair brush her arm. It’s just a doll, she said as she looked down at it. It’s a thing. Lily fought the dread that welled up inside her.

“I can’t, Martin. Take it back.” Lily tried to return the doll to Martin, but he lifted his hands in the air and stepped away from her, the white gauze of his bandaged hand waving before her.

“I, I want you to take her!” he said in a loud voice that reverberated inside the cave. “It won’t work otherwise.”

Lily stared at him. “What? What won’t work?” The doll couldn’t have weighed much more than fifteen pounds, but its arms and legs were awkward to hold and its head rested heavily on her right arm. She looked down at its placid face and noticed that its red lips were slightly parted and drawn together, and this expression, whatever it was, revolted her.

Lily dropped the doll.

Martin screamed. He screamed like a woman, and the noise broke something inside her. She turned around and was about to run, when she heard Martin scream again. He grabbed her ankle and tripped her. Lily clawed the cave floor, but Martin had thrown himself on top of her, and pulled her around by the shoulders. He still had the doll, and he pressed it into her while he held her down, its hard head between them, pressing against Lily’s throat until she gasped for breath, but Martin didn’t release her. “I c-c-can’t breathe,” she choked out. His embrace was powerful, and Lily could see the muscles in his arm bulging as he squeezed her. She fought him, jerking her head back hard and fast to free her throat, and once her head was away from his grip, she slapped at his hands and hit the doll several times. Then Martin started crying. In the shifting light of the lamp, she saw him shaking and heard his sobs.

Lily threw herself toward the passageway. She scraped her knee but didn’t stop. She crawled through the tunnel across the first room and out the little door. She didn’t shut it. The light astonished her. No noise came from the cave, and walking to her bicycle she had a sense that her legs wouldn’t hold her, that they had gone bad all of a sudden, and she asked herself how she could ride home. She sobbed as she trudged up the embankment to the road, and that was when the dog appeared. A Border collie came trotting along the road toward her. She didn’t know him, but she bent down to pet his neck, and as she looked into his face, she suddenly found it curious that he couldn’t speak. The dog cocked his head to one side in a gesture of confusion or sympathy, and Lily pulled the animal toward her. She pressed her face into his neck and cried. The dog stood very still and whined a little until she let him go.