The Enchantment of Lily Dahl by Siri Hustvedt Read Free Book Online Page B

eleven o’clock.” Mabel narrowed her eyes. “You’d have to be deaf not to have heard it.”
    “I heard it,” Lily said. “Don Giovanni.” She addressed the wall. “I didn’t know what it was.”
    “Mozart,” Mabel said.
    Lily nodded, then turned to the steps.
    “He stood in that window like he’d been turned to stone.”
    Lily was tempted to look back at Mabel’s face but didn’t. “Who?” she lied.
    “Our neighbor from across the street. Shapiro. If it were possible to die standing up, I’d have said that fellow went into rigor mortis right then and there.”
    Lily said nothing.
    “By the way, how was rehearsal?”
    Lily stopped and turned to look up the stairs. Mabel was standing on the landing. Her hair had been pinned into a loose bun. Little wisps flew out all over her head. “It went great,” Lily said. “Thanks to you.”
    Mabel looked down at Lily and smiled. “Shall we work again today or tomorrow?”
    “Tomorrow,” Lily said.
    Mabel said, “Good.” She turned to the door and opened it, her back rod-straight and her arm bent at a graceful angle. Lily knew this was an exit meant to be seen. The door closed with a click, and Lily wondered why Mabel was so interested in her. The woman’s loneliness was palpable, and that explained part of it. No children, she thought. I hope I can have children, at least one, and if it’s only one, I want it to be a girl. Lily had been an only child. It wasn’t that her parents hadn’t wanted more children, it had just turned out that way. Outside the door to the cafe, Lily stopped. She remembered the day she drove home with her father from the lumberyard. He had explained the weather to her in the car, the way it blew through the Dakotas and arrived in Minnesota a day or two later. She remembered walking through the door and calling for her mother, but her mother hadn’t answered her, and she remembered her father picking up a note that lay on the kitchen table. She remembered the stricken look on his face, which she wasn’t meant to see. Mrs. Daily had driven Lily’s mother to the hospital. The doctor had told her that after three miscarriages she shouldn’t get pregnant again. As a child, Lily had often thought about those children that were never born. She had even named them: Reginald, Alexander and Isabella. The names belonged to nobody Lily had ever known. She had stolen them from English novels for children, but the names reverberated even now, as signs of what never was. She remembered her mother telling her that she couldn’t have more children, that she felt lucky to have her Lily, and then she never spoke of it again. Maybe I’ll have two children, she thought, revising the number. She wondered why Mabel hadn’t had children. She wondered why she had moved to Division Street. She had said the house on Orchard Street had been too much for her, but of all the places to come to, why this little brick building with warped floors and bad plumbing? The woman wasn’t poor. And now she had seen Edward Shapiro standing in the window. Mabel Wasley was no dummy. She might be old, but it was obvious to Lily that the woman’s brain was as sharp as ever. Lily had the uncomfortable notion that Mabel might suspect what had been going on last night. At the same time, unless Mabel had hung herself out her own window, she couldn’t possibly have seen into Lily’s. Of course Mabel knows the name of the damned opera, she said to herself and pushed open the door.
    *   *   *
    As she moved in and out of the kitchen from table to table, the memory of herself naked in the window filled Lily with awe. Every few minutes, she glanced over at the Stuart Hotel, shabby in daylight, and recalled the way it had looked only hours before—the illuminated window, the light of street lamps on the dark brick—another place altogether. He’s asleep now, she thought, and paused for a moment. She was standing with her back to the counter, a plate in her right