The Case of Lena S.

by David Bergen

  “I am,” Seeta said, and she took Mason’s hand and smiled. “I’m a polyandrist.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Danny said.

  Mason felt the smoothness of Seeta’s palm and held her little finger.

  “What’s a polyandrist?” Maryann asked.

  “The female version of a polygamist,” Mason said.

  “You’re joking,” Danny said. He was looking at Mason, who shrugged. The attention was nice. Seeta was lovely. Mason liked her very much, even though she was eighteen and would, in several months, leave him, and he knew that she wasn’t now and never would be his girlfriend. She liked older men, someone like Danny, who was eyeing her now.

  “Love is not a joke,” Seeta said.

  “That’s a fact,” Maryann said, placing a hand on Danny’s neck. “What’s the problem?” she asked him. Her nails were streaks of neon. “Are you jealous?”

  Danny laughed.

  Mrs. Crowe said, “I take it this is an arranged marriage, Seeta?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Crowe.”

  “And you don’t mind talking about it? It’s not too intimate?”

  “It’s just different. Not intimate. At least, not yet.” Her small shoulders went up and down. The vertebrae moved in her neck. “I’m used to it,” she said.

  “That polyandry part, that was a joke,” Danny said.

  “Of course.” Seeta let go of Mason and placed her own hands back on the table. “People feel sorry for me. I hate that part.”

  Danny asked, “You have no choice?”

  “Of course I have choice.”

  “Yes, yes, about who. I understand that. But whether to do this or not. Ultimately, I mean. Can you choose, finally?”

  “I believe in free will.”

  “She believes in free will,” Danny announced.

  Mason said to Seeta, “Ignore him. He thinks he knows something about everything. Tonight it’s philosophy.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. Her eyes were bright. She didn’t seem to mind Danny’s mockery.

  “My husband studies philosophy,” Seeta said. “My future husband, I mean. That’s why I call him Nietzsche. When I’m talking to Mason.” She was moving her hands, trying to locate her enthusiasm. Her bracelets banged.

  “Live dangerously, that’s what he said.” Danny smiled at Seeta when he said this.

  “Who?” Maryann asked.

  “Nietzsche,” Danny said.

  “Christ,” Mason said.

  “That’s what we do, isn’t it, Silas?” Mrs. Crowe said, and she looked at her husband and smiled, though it was not a happy smile.

  “Did he?” Seeta asked Danny. She sat up expectantly and said, “I’m trying to find out anything I can about philosophy.” She smiled. “Possible pillow talk. Practice.”

  “Will your sister marry a stranger as well?” Mrs. Crowe asked, looking at Sadia, who was leaning on her elbows.

  Sadia smiled and shook her head.

  “Yes, she will,” Seeta said.

  “Arranged marriages fascinate me,” Mrs. Crowe said. “Don’t more of them last?”

  “Sure they do,” Danny said, “But look at their origin. Submission. The whole idea is based on submission.”

  “That’s terrible,” Maryann said. “You’re calling Seeta submissive.”

  “That’s okay,” Seeta said. “Maybe I am.”

  “No, you’re not,” Mason said. The conversation, the dinner, was out of control. It was Danny who said, “And you know?”

  Mason hated him right then. Danny’s chin was long, his eyebrows thick. In fact, everything about him was thicker, as if he’d been drinking too much. He liked to drink.

  “What’s wrong with submission,” Mr. Crowe asked. “You talk as if it were a poison.”

  “Could be,” Mrs. Crowe said. She looked at her husband and then turned away.

  “Who knows,” Danny said, right at Seeta. “Maybe it’s a good thing.”

  “Oh God.” Maryann rolled her eyes. She had a long neck and thin shoulders. She was a model. Danny had explained that. She flew to New York and Paris and Italy and was famous. Danny had said, “There aren’t many international models from Manitoba, and Maryann’s one.” He was quite proud, as if it were his accomplishment. Mason imagined that Maryann spent a lot of time taking care of herself. She had small breasts, no hips, a long neck. He wondered if she liked Danny. It didn’t seem so at the moment. She had a big mouth, bigger than Seeta’s and her lips were bigger, too. She said, “You’re full of shit, Danny.”

  Mr. Crowe lifted a hand and looked at Maryann. He waved and said, “Enough.” They all returned to their food and the cutlery scraped across plates and Mason heard Seeta chewing her steak, a faint rolling of her molars around the meat, and this filled him with immense joy and, surprising himself, he pressed the back of his hand against her leg. Her thigh.

  Seeta neither responded nor pulled away. She said, addressing Mr. Crowe, “This is why, you see. It’s the pity.” She looked at Danny and said, “You don’t have to marry my future husband, but you do seem concerned, and for that, I thank you. I may only be eighteen, but I’m not stupid.”

  “Of course you’re not, dear,” Mrs. Crowe said. “We should be celebrating. Silas, get that bottle of champagne from the fridge.”

  Mason’s father rose and from the kitchen came the crack of the cork. He returned and filled the glasses and Mrs. Crowe said, “To Seeta and her husband,” and the glasses were raised and as they banged together gently Seeta reached down and held Mason’s hand. Didn’t let go until her glass was empty. And, later, when he drove her home in his father’s Parisienne, which smelled of naphtha from the Coleman stove in the trunk, they held hands again, Seeta asking, “Do you mind?” and Mason said, “I don’t.” Sadia sat in the back and Mason could feel her presence, the mouselike lightness of her. She said nothing, just as she had said nothing throughout the evening save for a brief and feverish comment on a movie that the group had been discussing. At that point Seeta had whispered in Mason’s ear, “Sadia’s mad about movies.”

  Mason drove with his left hand, down Wellington to Waverley and then all the way up past Corydon. Seeta said that Danny was handsome and Maryann was a thin doll with small beautiful breasts. “Didn’t you think?” she asked and Mason said he’d never noticed and Seeta said, “Sure.”

  “Danny gets what he wants,” Mason said.

  “I can see that.”

  Seeta’s house, when they arrived, offered one rectangle of light from a front window.

  “My mother’s waiting.”

  Sadia got out, said, “Thank you,” and walked into the house.

  “I’m sorry about my brother,” Mason said. “He’s aggressive. Thinks he owns the world.”

  “He was nice,” Seeta said.

  “Don’t be fooled. He’s a drunk.” Mason turned on the radio. He didn’t want Seeta to leave. The small space of the car was like a cocoon, dark and warm. For a brief moment Mason imagined himself as Nietzsche and he would lie beside Seeta every night, watch her bathe, undress, dress, sit across from her at meals. Side by side, they would brush their teeth.

  “Your mother is unhappy,” Seeta said.

  This surprised Mason. He nodded as if he’d known this all along.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “Too beautiful,” Mason said. “I walk down the street with her and men are always hitting on her. I mean, she’s my mother.”

  “Maybe that’s why she’s unhappy.”

  “No. No. She likes the attention. What did you see? Did she say something?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just whenever your father spoke she’d cut him off or she wouldn’t listen to him. It was like she was tired of him.”

  Mason said that that wasn’t a surprise. His mother was happiest when his father wasn’t home. “Maybe that’s what happens when you marry,” he said.

  “Is that a warning?” Seeta asked and then she laughed, a little chirrup that filled Mason with hope. She climbed
out then and Mason walked around to join her and she went up on tiptoes and kissed him on the temple and said, “Funny boy.” She slipped away and Mason climbed back into the Parisienne and sat and waited, watching the house until the lights went out, then on again and finally out, a signal sent from a foreign place.

  “She was pretty,” Mrs. Crowe said. “You wouldn’t be able to tell they were sisters. Sadia was so quiet. Almost scared. Though I liked her.”

  It was the following night and Mason was at home with his mother. His father had left on a road trip to Kenora and Danny was working at the restaurant. Mason and his mother sat in the dim light of the study, and she offered this information quietly, as if it were something to be treated with care.

  “She’s like that,” Mason said. “Just sits and watches. Still, she’s not scared.”

  Mrs. Crowe asked then what Mason thought would come of him and Seeta. What did he imagine could be gained by spending time with a girl who was engaged?

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Mason said.

  “I guess not. What is she?”

  “I don’t know. She’s a girl I like to be with.”

  “I felt sorry for you.”

  “Don’t. I didn’t.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Nothing to get, Mom. She’s not my girlfriend. I don’t need a girlfriend. Anyways, she felt sorry for you.”

  “She did? Oh, my.”

  “She thinks you’re unhappy.”

  “Really? What did you say?”

  “Not much. I told her that Dad was often gone and that you didn’t mind that.”

  “Huh.” His mother touched her knee and tilted her head and said, “Is that what you think?” Before Mason could answer, she announced, “Lots of adults are unhappy. That happens.”

  “But are you?”

  “Actually, there are times when I’m very happy.”

  “And Dad? Is he happy?”

  “Sometimes I think that he isn’t smart enough to be unhappy.” She stood and walked to the sink and washed a glass. She was wearing a short red skirt and black tights and a black top. She said she was going out with Rhonda, and when she spoke, her back was to Mason and he didn’t know if she was telling the truth. He wondered who she danced with, if the men were young or old, and he wondered why a woman would fall into the arms of a strange man, a man who could hit and hurt her.

  His English class had just been reading Turgenev’s First Love, about a boy who falls in love with a girl who ends up loving the boy’s father. Not actually loving the father, but there was adoration and a hint of sexual perversion, and this interested Mason and the rest of the class. It was a short book and the teacher, Ms. Abendschade, got excited about the possibilities, especially near the end, when the father hits the girl and she opens her arms to him. Ms. Abendschade asked, “Do you understand what is happening here? This is a young boy whose first love has been taken from him by his father. And then, when the father treats the girl badly and hits her with his riding crop, all of which the boy witnesses, the girl falls into the father’s arms, only the boy believes his father is still beating her.” Ms. Abendschade paused. “Why does she run back to the father? What power is this that makes her want to go to him, to be with him, to lose herself with him there in the darkness of the garden, with the rustling of the trees and the murmur of the fountain? What should a boy of sixteen believe?” she asked, and she looked at Mason, or perhaps Mason believed she looked at him.

  They read another story which, Ms. Abendschade said, “ambled arm in arm” with First Love. It was a short story by Joyce called “Araby.” Ms. Abendschade read it out loud to the class and when she was done she did not speak for what seemed like five minutes, though it was certainly shorter, and when she finally did talk, her voice was husky and she asked, “What makes this story so sad?” And then, not waiting for an answer, because the answer offered would have been wrong, she said, “It’s the hope, the expectation, and ultimately the failure. And not simply the failure, but the awareness of the failure and then the anguish. With love, hope is a voice crying out, ‘If only.’ Vladimir waits for Zinaida. In “Araby” the boy waits for Mangan’s sister, watching as the soft rope of her hair tosses from side to side. We all wait. The person waiting could wait forever. That is passion. Vladimir is not waiting for a taxi, or a haircut, or a meal in a restaurant. He is waiting for something unnamed.” And then she reread the passage from “Araby” in which the young boy spies on Mangan’s sister.

  Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

  When Ms. Abendschade talked her face became both serious and excited. She had a long neck. Sometimes Mason imagined that he and Ms. Abendschade were lovers. She was thirty-four. He was sixteen. He reasoned that this was not a wide gap until Lena Schellendal pointed out, with cold-hearted math, that that would be like him dating someone who wasn’t born yet.2 They were talking about this outside during class break. Lena was smoking and leaning against the fence. Mason was looking around for Seeta, hoping to catch a glimpse. He said, “You think Abendschade has a boyfriend? She gets so excited about Zinaida and Vladimir. Like it was her own life.”

  “She’s a prude,” Lena said. “Bet she just goes for the straight-ahead fuck.”

  Mason didn’t pursue this. Lena was bright and haughty and all-knowing. She leaned into her answers and seemed so sure. When a test was given on First Love she got a perfect mark. Mason failed. A paragraph was offered and analysis required. The passage arrived from out of nowhere, oblique and esoteric, and on one of the pages, a previous student had written in bold black letters, trent medland fucked me up the ass, and, more demandingly, STICK YOUR COCK IN MY BELLY BUTTON. These were not new images for Mason but they seemed hard and cold on the pages of Turgenev. Mason lost interest in discussing the question and proceeded instead to write a poem titled “Belly Button Kissing.” After class, he showed the poem to Lena and described the phrases in his book. She sighed and said that kids were stupid. “How can you not love Turgenev? I predict that the boy who wrote that will end up in prison.”

  “How do you know it was a boy?” Mason had imagined a girl, wan like Lena, who was secretly wild.

  “Because it’s perverted shit.”

  In the distance Seeta approached. Her shoulders swayed.

  Mason said, “See there?” but no one heard him.3

  They still played tennis through the last weeks of May and into June. Seeta had taken to wearing shorts and her legs crisscrossed like dark twigs and she began to charge the net, her runners emitting little barks as they bit the tarmac. Sadia, for her part, had stopped reading, and now sat on the bench and observed her sister flail about. Seeta astonished Mason. She was so bright about everything, so willing to try, and her frailty, the inconsequence of her small body with the sharp elbows and thin ankles, seemed to require attention. In the moments when they sat, resting and drinking water, he took to touching her shoulder with a finger, or patting her on the back, or wiping the sweat from a slash of eyebrow. He was a hesitant swimmer testing the water with a toe.

  One Saturday evening Seeta, Mason, and Sadia went to a house party in Charleswood. Seeta suggested it. Mason had his mom’s car and they were driving around and Seeta said, “There’s a party at Lonnie Finkle’s,” so they went. The house was all lit up. In the back there was a pool and some kids were swimming and others were dancing on the lawn. Mason looked around. Seeta had disappeared. He wandered into the house and Sadia followed. In the kitchen he poured rye into glasses and added ice.

  “Did
you see Seeta?” Mason asked.

  “See Seeta,” Sadia said. “See Seeta walk. See Seeta run. Poor Mason.”

  In the front room, a cavernous space with a centre fireplace, couples were dancing. Sadia and Mason sat against the far wall and watched and drank and Mason refilled their glasses and they drank some more.

  “You surprise me,” Mason said.

  Sadia looked at him. She shrugged. She took out a cigarette and lit it and blew the smoke up above his head. Mason watched her. He asked, “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Does Seeta talk to you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Does she say anything? About me?” Mason felt that he was walking out into a dangerous lake, but the alcohol had made him both brave and foolish.

  “Never.”

  “Never?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mason surveyed the dancers. He said, “You wanna dance?”

  Sadia put out her cigarette and shrugged. “I’m not very good,” she said.

  “Look around, you don’t have to be good.”

  They stood and walked out into the crowd and faced each other. Mason moved his feet and watched Sadia. Her arms were folded across her chest and she stood, unmoving.

  “Go like this,” Mason called out, and he shuffled a foot sideways and back and then dipped his knees.

  “Dancing’s stupid,” Sadia said.

  “Sure it is. Here.” Mason took her hands and pulled her arms outwards. He liked the idea of teaching Sadia something. Her hesitance, the first faltering step that led to another, pleased him. She had a cold sore on her lip.

  “There,” he said. He let her go and closed his eyes. The rye had left him woozy. When he opened his eyes again Sadia was leaning against the wall, watching him. He went over to her and sat down.

  When Lena Schellendal walked by he saw her shoes and her ankles and he looked up at her face and she nodded at him and then kept walking. He said to Sadia, “That girl there, see her? Her name’s Lena,” Mason said. “She’s in my English class and thinks she’s smart. Which she is. It’s just she likes to show off.” He paused and watched Lena dance with a short boy. Lena put her hands on the boy’s shoulders and the boy talked up at Lena’s chin. She was very composed.4