The Case of Lena S.

by David Bergen

  Billy looked at the money and he picked it up and put it in his shirt pocket. He said, “That was your boyfriend, then.”

  Lena was aware of Billy’s long hair, the way he pushed it behind his ears and how it curled and touched his neck. He was tall and thin and his face was long and dark. She said, “What do you want from me, Billy?”

  He grinned. Said, “I like you, Lena. You’re interesting.”

  She stood and walked to her room. After a few minutes there was a knock and then the door opened and Billy entered. Lena didn’t look up, just said, “Close the door.” They sat on the bed and looked at each other and Lena told him to suck on her fingers and he did as he was told. He tried to touch her breasts but she said, “No.” She took his head and pushed his face against her chest. Her hands felt his ribs. She pushed him away and unbuckled his jeans, pulled them down to his knees. Then his underwear. A dark little boner that she touched and studied. His breathing was quicker. She worked at him until he came into her hand.

  She didn’t eat her dinner that night. Green beans, a pork cutlet, and applesauce stared up at her from the tray. She stuck a spoon in the pudding and left it there. Billy passed by her room and stopped and then kept walking. That evening he strutted around the ward.

  “Little rooster,” Carol said.

  Billy grinned and eyed Lena, who turned away.

  The following morning Lena’s mother appeared on the ward. Billy had bragged and the doctor had been informed and Lena’s parents had been called. Her mother entered with a hard stride and she berated the nurses and threw Lena’s clothes into her suitcase and then sat on her bed and said, “Why?” Lena didn’t answer. Dr. Deane was called and she arrived breathless and harried and she closed the door to the room and sat across from Mrs. Schellendal and said, “Pull yourself together.”

  “You,” Lena’s mother said, “are supposed to be taking care of my daughter, and this is what happens? Unbelievable.”

  Dr. Deane looked at Lena and then at Mrs. Schellendal. She said, “Forget about yourself. For just a moment. And take your daughter for a while and love her.”

  Lena was standing by the closed door. She saw her mother’s black boots and her navy skirt and her freshly manicured nails and she imagined her mother sitting on a chair in a salon, yesterday or the day before, while Lena was in the hospital.

  “You got your nails done,” Lena said.

  Mrs. Schellendal looked at her hands. Seemed surprised. Nodded and sighed and said, “Come, Lena.”

  In the car, which was located in a three-storey parkade opposite the hospital, Mrs. Schellendal placed her gloved hands on the steering wheel and said, “I want to take you out of town for a few days, just the two of us.”

  Lena panicked, looked around the car, and considered for a moment stepping back outside and running through the gloomy parkade, back to the ward where Billy waited for her. “Where?” she whispered. Her knees were cold. She placed her red woollen mittens on them.

  “Oh,” said her mother, too brightly – Lena would realize later, when it became clear that this was not her mother’s idea of fun – “to that nice little hotel in Gimli which looks out on the lake.”

  “Why are we going there? What about everybody else?”

  “Your father suggested it. I agreed. Your sisters would be jealous if they knew.”

  “Take them, then. I don’t want to go,” Lena said. Her mother was severe, acting in a manner Lena did not recognize. The weight of everything on her neck, right there, where her head bent slightly as she leaned out the window to receive the receipt for parking. She closed the window, looked over at Lena, and sighed.

  “Oh, Lena,” she said and then she said no more. When they reached the outskirts of the city she pulled into a doughnut shop and slipped from the car and returned with juice for Lena and coffee for herself.

  Back on the highway, Lena huddled against the passenger door and looked out the window. A clump of trees, a farmyard, a dog in the ditch, its tail in the air. The snow on the fields was like a desert, with the drifts and waves shaped by the wind and the emptiness.

  Lena’s mother spilled some coffee on her skirt. She scrubbed at it with a dry Kleenex and said, “I just dry-cleaned this. My goodness.” She put the ball of Kleenex on the dash, placed both hands back on the wheel, and looked straight ahead. After a lengthy silence she said, “I have to tell you something but I’m afraid to. I’m afraid because it’s something sad and God knows I don’t want you upset. You have to promise me, Lena, that when I say what I have to say, you won’t do anything rash. Okay?”

  Lena had turned towards her mother. The leather of the seats creaked and she saw her mother’s profile and the width of the sky beyond the driver’s window. “You’re leaving Dad,” she said.

  “Oh. Oh, Lena. No. No, no. Not at all. I love your father.” She laughed, though it seemed to Lena that it wasn’t really a laugh but more a moan. Her mother continued, almost breathlessly. “It’s Nana. You know that she was old and she had problems with her heart.” She paused, swung her head towards Lena and then back at the road.

  Lena was aware of her mother’s hands and the tremor in her voice. “What happened?”

  “It was in her sleep.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nana died.” She reached out and took Lena’s hand.

  Lena was quiet for a bit and then she said, “Nana’s dead?”

  Her mother nodded. “She had a heart attack ten days ago, in her home, at night. Your father called her the following day and when he got no response he went over and found her. I’m sorry, Lena.” She was wiping at her eyes and, seeing this, Lena turned her head away and forced herself not to cry at the same time as her mother.

  “You didn’t tell me,” Lena said, “It happened ten days ago and you never told me.”

  Her mother had stopped crying. “Believe me, Lena, I wanted to. But Dr. Deane thought that the timing was bad. She was worried about your response, how you’d handle it. I thought you should know; however, I was in the minority.”

  “The funeral.”

  “We had it last week, Lena.”

  “Poor Nana.”

  Her chest felt like it was being crushed.

  Their room was on the third floor and it looked out over the ice of the lake. Twin beds, twin desks, a bathroom for two with twin towel racks. Lena took a shower and after, she stood in the sunlight that arrived in stripes through the half-opened Venetian blinds. Her body was pale. Her knuckles and knees and elbows were dry. She studied her breasts. Touched the anchor on her thigh. Thought of Mason and wondered if he’d known, when he came to visit, that her Nana was dead. She walked out into the room wearing the white bathrobe her mother had bought her. Sat at the foot of her bed and watched TV while her mother read in the bed beside her. That night, as her mother slept, Lena listened to her snore and hearing this, she began to weep. When she finally fell asleep she dreamed briefly and bizarrely of a woman who spoke only German and wanted to cut off all of Lena’s hair. In the morning, at breakfast, she asked her mother what Ewigkeit meant.

  “Eternal. Eternity.” Her mother was eating a soft-boiled egg in a cup. There was butter and pepper and salt and her mother’s wrist and a band of gold where her watch hung like a bracelet. “That’s interesting. Your father and I were talking just the other day about you studying German.”

  “I don’t want to study German. That’s Dad’s language. Full of Ichs.”

  Mrs. Schellendal waved her spoon. “You’re too hard on him. He loves you. In many ways he has always protected you.”

  Lena lifted her eyebrows and blew out her cheeks. “That card he gave me, with that quote. Was that your idea?”

  “No, he wanted to send you something.”

  “But the words. You gave them to him. At least guided him toward them.”

  “Is that so bad?” her mother asked. “We don’t know what to do, Lena. If there were something magical we could say, we’d say it. But we don’t know.”r />
  Lena said, “Talking isn’t everything. You think if I told you things then all would be fine. It wouldn’t.”

  The waiter appeared and took away Lena’s plate and cutlery. He had big forearms and Lena was aware of his bulk and the way he walked, lightly, as if tiptoeing across soft ground. She watched him till he had disappeared through the kitchen door and then she said, “Did Nana know? About me being in the hospital? And everything?”

  Her mother shook her head. “No. She didn’t. We never told her.”

  Lena thought about this. She said, “That’s good.” Then she looked away and back at her mother. “Your nails are nice,” she said. “Absolutely perfect.”

  She spent the day in her room, looking out at the lake and watching TV. Later in the evening she went down to the pool and swam and then sat in the hot tub and watched a boy of about sixteen swim with his younger sister. She closed her eyes.

  The next day she and her mother walked around the town. They stopped at an antique shop where her mother bought a piano lamp, bronze with a green base. Outside, the wind was cold, and loose snow swirled through the streets. There was a dog in the shop, a setter with mournful eyes. Lena sat on a stool and held the dog’s ear and said, “Hey, how are ya?”

  They ate dinner that evening in the hotel dining room. There was music playing and Lena recognized some of the pieces from her piano lessons and from her sisters practising after school. She was wearing a tight skirt and she shifted now and pulled at its hem. Her feet were bare in her fat-soled shoes. She looked around the restaurant and wished that it were more full.

  “Empty restaurants are depressing,” she said.

  “Should we go?” her mother asked. “We could go out to that pizza place across the street. Though we’d have to get our coats.”

  Lena said, “No, I was just saying.” Then she said, “Remember the time we came here as a family? I was ten and one afternoon we walked down to the beach and you and Dad were arguing. I remember what Dad said. ‘Can you keep just one thought in your head? Is that possible?’ That’s what he said. You were arguing about how often you had sex. Even at that age I was aware of what you and Dad talked about. You stomped off and left us alone on the beach for the afternoon. Dad was super nice to all of us girls. It was like we were you for the afternoon. I remember loving it.”

  “I don’t think we stayed here,” her mother said.

  “We did,” Lena said. “On the second floor. I remember shooting pool with Dad. It was our special time together after all the other girls were sleeping.”

  Then her mother asked what had happened in the hospital.

  “What do you mean?”

  “With that boy. What happened with that boy?”

  “Nothing important, Mom. We were together for five minutes.”

  Her mother wanted to know if it was true. “Did you have sex with him?”

  “Huh. Is that what the doctor said?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What did she say? She never asked me for the facts.”

  “Dr. Deane said that the boy said you had had sex.”

  “Well, we didn’t.”

  Her mother was pleased and relieved. “I thought so,” she said. “The idea was preposterous. That’s what I told your dad.”

  “I beat him off,” Lena said.

  “Oh, Lena.” Her mother looked away. Then she frowned and asked, “Did he force you?”

  “Actually, no, Mom. He didn’t.”

  “Lena. Why?”

  Lena shrugged. She said, “I was curious. It didn’t have anything to do with sex. I didn’t take off my clothes. He didn’t touch me. There’s nothing wrong with me and nothing happened to me.” She lifted the glass of wine her mother had poured her and drank from it. She put the glass down. A little wine had spilled and it spread across the white tablecloth. The music was playing. One of the songs was Borowski’s “Adoration” and Lena lifted her head and said, “I played this for Mason. When we first met.”

  Her mother’s mouth moved into what appeared to be a smile. Lena’s throat was not working properly. She swallowed and closed her eyes; opened them and said, as if this were an answer to a question she had been asked, “That day on the bridge, when I tried to jump, I was scared.”

  “Of course you were,” her mother said.

  “No, no, you don’t understand. The thing is, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to die, that I would live. That was the awful thing.” She stopped.

  “Oh, Lena.” Her mother reached out and took her hand. She said, “I want us to be happy. I want you to be happy.”

  Now they were all alone, the couple that had been sitting in the corner had left. The music played.

  The following afternoon, walking by herself along the pier that gave out onto the frozen lake, she saw herself as others must have seen her: a girl in a dark-green coat stepping carefully along an icy walk. She felt a sudden lightness that was unfamiliar, and for a brief moment it was as if a window had opened, let in the light, and then shut again.

  13 In her journal she sketches pictures of herself naked and draws arrows and then labels her body parts. When she looks at herself in the mirror she cannot tell the difference between ugly and beautiful. She writes, “Ein Affe hinein guckt” (An ape looks in).

  14 Mason is, in fact, more surprised than disgusted. Whereas Lena desperately wants to lay claim to Mason, he has anal sex with her because she suggests it and because other boys and girls are doing it and he wonders what it would feel like. His face is registering both pleasure and dread.

  15 This book was not one of the ones he’d stolen. Mr. Ferry actually gave it to Mason. He told him to fetch it from the upstairs library and then he advised Mason to read all of Joyce. Read this and pass it on, he said. So, Mason read it and is now passing it on to Lena. He thinks she might like the religious sections, the dark guilt, the plunging into the depths, the soul as a basketful of water – lamp and basket, lamp and basket. He does not expect anything from Lena. In fact, he is surprised when she comes to the door. He has been talking to Rosemary at school and she has been giving him bits of information about Lena.

  In the spring, when the river-ice melted and the water rose and flooded the banks and the trees grew leaves and the grass offered up its musty scent, Mason’s brother Danny came back from Montreal. He had left with great hopes and he was returning empty-handed: he had no job and he had no money. His failure – and this is what he called it, “my perfect failure” – had left him subdued and drifting.

  A few weeks earlier, Mrs. Crowe had moved out of the house, and was now living with Aldous in his condominium by the river. One evening when Mr. Crowe was at work, Danny sat down across from Mason at the kitchen table, pulled the wrapper off a beer bottle, and said, “I talked to Dad yesterday. He’s pretty devastated by Mom and this Schmidt.” He said Schmidt as if it were an unfortunate or foul name. “If I were Dad I’d slash the tires on his car.”

  “A Boxster,” Mason said. “A beautiful red Boxster.”

  “All the better. The thing is, it’s like Dad just sat there. Didn’t he know what was going on? She must have come home smelling of some other guy?”

  “ ‘I’m going dancing with Rhonda.’ ‘Rhonda and I are going out for drinks.’ That’s what she’d say. Anyways, Mom had all kinds of time to herself. She wasn’t very happy.”

  “Oh, you know that?” Danny asked. “She confessed this? Sat you down one day and said, You know, Mason, I’m not a very happy woman so I think I’ll fuck this man Schmidt who drives a red Boxster.”

  “She didn’t look happy. That’s all. Now she does.”

  Danny grinned. “She likes things and Schmidt gives her things. Bingo. Happiness. I told Dad he had to do something beyond work. Like a hobby. Or go out with friends.”

  “He doesn’t have a lot of friends,” Mason said. “There was Mom. That’s what he had.”

  Danny waved his hand, as if announcing the termination of that topic. He drank from his beer an
d then reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag and rolled a joint. He lit up and said, “Wanna?” and Mason took it and they passed it back and forth without talking. The lamp above the table was yellow and it cast a sombre hue over Mason’s books. His pen lay on his notebook and pointed at the last word he’d written, heinous. He was writing an essay on Crime and Punishment for Ms. Abendschade, who had, in the last few months, become shrill and impatient. Beth Ly figured she was perpetually PMS, Sally Hayes said it was early menopause – “Look at her fiery cheeks,” and Jane Fenske, who seemed to know, said it was way too early, Abendschade was only thirty-six. “She’s pregnant,” Fenske announced, and blinked her wide eyes.

  “The crime was heinous.” Or, “A heinous crime.” Definite, or indefinite? Ms. Abendschade liked clarity. She liked short, quick sentences because, as she said, most high school students didn’t know how to write long sentences that looped back on themselves and inevitably the sentences, like snakes, ended up meeting their own tails and the arguments became circular and dangerous, if not downright poisonous. She seemed pleased with her extended wit. The fact remained that the crime was heinous: a young man kills two women by splitting their heads open with an axe.

  The best part of the novel was the murder. The axe falling, the second killing, the escape, the blood. Ms. Abendschade did not seem particularly pleased with the novel. It was a chore. She was, she said, not a big fan of Dostoevsky and would have rather taught Tolstoy or Pushkin but neither of those writers was available in the book room and so it was the epileptic Russian (her words) that the class would read.

  “In the scope of Russian literature,” Ms. Abendschade said, “if you use the metaphor of light, Dostoevsky would appear as a distant star to Tolstoy’s sun.” She had said this on a Monday morning, a few days after Mason had visited Lena in the hospital. Because of his troubled state Mason had challenged Ms. Abendschade and said, “Who cares. Both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are dead. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh, Mason. Oh. But it does matter.” Ms. Abendschade’s cheeks burned. She was wearing a grey cardigan with tiny sheep stitched along the hem. The sheep were white with large cloven feet and their ears were erect and too small. They looked like pigs. Her cardigan was zipped up past her stomach and so it was impossible to see any slight swelling where the fetus would have been pushing at her abdomen. Abendschade pregnant. It made her soft and pliable and sleepy and round. Her impatience might have been fatigue. Jane Fenske had said all pregnant women get extremely tired in the first trimester. And it was with this fatigue that Ms. Abendschade had looked at Mason as he challenged her. She shook her head quizzically, impatiently, paused as if to reveal something profound, and then said, “The point is not the author’s life but the book’s life.”