The Enchantment of Lily Dahl by Hustvedt Siri

Author:Hustvedt, Siri [Hustvedt, Siri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, Mystery, Romance, Art
ISBN: 9780312423391
Amazon: 031242339X
Barnesnoble: 031242339X
Goodreads: 125497
Publisher: Picador
Published: 1996-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

3

Walking up the stairs, Lily heard scraping noises from Mabel’s apartment. She should be at Ed’s now, Lily thought. Something’s gone wrong. Mabel was sweating when she came to the door, and Lily realized that she had never seen the woman perspire even in the worst heat, but now drops of sweat stood out on her upper lip, and her forehead shone with moisture. She was wearing a big white shirt rolled to the elbows, and her thin white arms were trembling.

“Mabel,” Lily said. “What’s going on?”

“I moved it back.” She gestured at the room with a limp hand and sighed. “The whole room.… I didn’t know where I was anymore. It was so stupid of me. I thought it was time for a revolution, you know, a new order, but I found it awful, just awful.… I was so unhappy with the sofa over there.” She pointed. “It was like trying to learn Russian at fifty-seven. I did try that. My brain had calcified by then, and I simply couldn’t do the cases, much less those sounds. It should have been a lesson to me, but oh, no, I had to be clever and bold and disrupt it all. My nerves simply couldn’t take it, and pushing all that heavy furniture around…”

“You moved the furniture? When did you move the furniture? Are you crazy? You should have asked me to help you.” Lily looked at Mabel’s hands. The knuckles were red and swollen. She studied Mabel’s face. “Dolores says thank you for the food, and she said that I was supposed to tell you she’s glad you told her what you did, that you’d know what she meant.”

“You’ve been to see her, too, have you?” Mabel looked closely at Lily.

“No. I ran into her at Frank and Dick Bodler’s.”

Mabel looked puzzled. “You don’t mean those men with the bags who look like they just crawled out of a mine?”

“Yup,” Lily said and folded her arms. Then she said softly, “Why did you go to see Dolores?”

“I wanted to ask her about Ed and, and the portrait.”

“Why didn’t you ask him?”

“I wanted the other side. And I wanted to know about the ghosts.” Mabel wiped her upper lip. “I have to sit down.” She sank into the sofa and sighed, her legs straight out on the floor in front of her.

Lily sat down beside her. “What did she say?”

“Not a thing. I talked. I guess she heard me. I wasn’t sure.”

“She’s fresh as a daisy now,” Lily said.

“The portrait’s bothering me, Lily.” Mabel rubbed her cheek gently, as if it were another person’s skin. “I don’t know what to do. You should see it now. We worked today. It’s, it’s, oh, I don’t know, when I look at it, I feel upset. I’m well aware that no one’s going to care one way or the other about the identity of the old lady in Edward Shapiro’s painting, and yet I feel that I’m being pulled into a crisis a part of me willed and another part resists.

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