The Case of Lena S.

by David Bergen

  A bird hopped along the branches of an apple tree and Danny said, “There’s a family of wrens that come back here every year. I’d like to build a house for them.”

  “That’s so sweet,” Lena said. She slipped out of her boots and removed her socks. “Hot,” she said, and put her feet on a free chair. Danny looked at her, then at her feet. He said, “Does Mason ever talk about me?”

  She was aware of Danny’s size, the bulk of him. “My swarthy brother,” Mason had said once. She giggled. Time slowed. “No,” she said, “Why would he?”

  “Because I’m his brother.”

  “What would he say?” Lena squinted into the sun. It was hotter now and she was sweating between her breasts and under her arms.

  Danny shrugged. He stood and went through the patio door and when he came back he was carrying two beers and he handed one to Lena.

  “I shouldn’t,” she said. “If I smoke and drink I get sick. Once I thought I was going to die.” She opened the beer and drank and looked at Danny who was looking at her.

  “You’ve got great feet,” he said.

  She looked at her feet. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.” She giggled again and lifted a foot and held the cool bottom of the beer bottle against her left arch. Then she said, “Does Mason ever talk about me?”

  Danny said he did. “At first I thought he talked too much about you but now that you’re sitting across from me I understand what there is to talk about.”

  “Fuck off,” Lena said. “What does he say? That I’m crazy? That I tried to jump off a bridge?”

  “He never told me that. Is it true?”

  “It was true. Still is true, I guess. It doesn’t go away. That was another life, though sometimes I think it still is my life. I woke from a dream the other night where I was sitting on the bridge again. Does life repeat itself? Can exactly the same thing happen to you today that happened a year ago?”

  “A memory of something?”

  “No, an actual event. Something real that happened.”

  “It could, but it wouldn’t be the same.”

  “It could be the same.”

  Danny drank from his beer and studied Lena. He said, “If you say so.” He leaned forward and touched Lena’s instep. Ran his finger along it and then sat back.

  “Don’t,” Lena said.

  “I’m sorry,” Danny said. He shrugged. Pushed a hand through his hair and puffed up his cheeks and blew out. “Jesus.”

  “What’s with you Crowe boys, taking the Lord’s name in vain?”

  Danny shook his head and finished his beer. “Weird,” he said.

  “The thing is,” Lena said, “You don’t just touch someone without asking. It’s pretty personal. You know?”

  “Oh, may I touch your foot?”

  “No,” Lena said and she grinned and Danny looked at her and he began to laugh and then Lena said she was hungry so Danny took her into the kitchen and slipped her into an apron, tying it behind her, just at the small of her back where her short shirt met her jeans and she felt him fumbling with the bow. Then he stood and opened the cupboard and said, “We’ll make a coconut curry. What do you think? Do you like a coconut curry?” He directed her to open the cans of coconut while he chopped the tenderloin. Then he spilled the coconut into the wok, and mixed in the paste. Lena stood by the stove and watched while Danny moved about the kitchen. Once he brushed hips with Lena, and another time, passing by her on the way to the fridge, he touched her waist lightly with both hands and said, “Sorry,” and she said nothing.

  They ate out on the patio. The dish was spicy and Lena drank a lot of water as she ate. They were sitting on green plastic chairs at the glass-topped table and Lena was aware of Danny’s hands and of his nipples, which were hairless and dark and small. She wanted to push a finger against his chest. She looked away and then back at Danny.

  The front door banged then and, turning around, Lena said, “Who is that?”

  “Somebody,” Danny said.

  Then Mr. Crowe walked into the kitchen, stepped out onto the patio, surveyed the scene, and said, “Hi, Lena.”

  “Hello, Mr. Crowe.”

  He looked around. “Where’s Mason?”

  “At school,” Danny said.

  Mr. Crowe looked at Danny and then over at Lena and then he nodded as if in agreement or as if he recognized the possibility of something, and he asked Lena, “How are you?”

  “I’m good, Mr. Crowe. Really good.” She put her feet back on the patio deck and sat up straight.

  “Great,” Mr. Crowe said. He lifted a hand slightly and in that motion, a polite gesture that indicated both shyness and confusion, Lena recognized Mason. Mr. Crowe turned back to Danny and suddenly became all business. He said he was leaving and wouldn’t be back for a few hours and he reminded Danny to mow the lawn and clean up the kitchen and, if he had time, to paint the soffits on the garage. Then he dipped his head towards Lena and he left.

  Lena waited until he was gone and then she said, “Oh, God, he thinks I’m a slut.”

  “Nooo, I don’t think so. My dad doesn’t think along those lines,” Danny said.

  “He thinks that, I can tell.” Lena reached into her backpack and pulled out her cigarettes. She lit one and said, “Mason’ll be home soon and then what? He’d be hurt if he knew we did this.” She waved at the table.

  Danny said, “What’s so special about my brother?”

  Lena did not hesitate. She tapped at her head and said, “He knows and understands me. And he’s patient. For the longest time he watched me when I went to voice lessons. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t chase me, he just sat and watched.”

  “So, you like to be watched.”

  “I liked it that it was him watching me. If it’d been a freak like Randy Burt I would have been scared. Mason Crowe, no problem.”

  Danny pushed his empty bottle onto the table. Lena saw the hair under his arms.

  “What about me?” he asked. “If I watched you?”

  “It wouldn’t be your idea, would it?” Lena said.

  “So, you like enigmatic, good-looking boys spying on you?” He grunted. “Go figure.” Then he stood and he said he’d be right back and he went into the house. Lena sat and watched the wrens. She heard Danny moving around in the house. When he came back he had a pencil and a sketchbook. He sat down and he opened his book and began to draw.

  Lena said, “You’re so obvious, Danny.”

  Danny paused. He should have been embarrassed but he wasn’t. He said, “So are you,” and then he said, “Esse is percipe.”

  Lena went, “Whooaaa, who’s smart,” but she was also content with the situation; the bit of Latin, the heat of the sun on her head, Danny’s eyes studying her. A fly had found the leftover curry on the plate and it crawled about, rubbing its legs. Lena watched this for a while. Then the fly flew away and came back with a friend. Lena listened to the scratch of Danny’s pencil. She saw herself as Danny would see her: the forehead, the line of the jaw, the mouth. At one point she said, “This makes me sleepy,” but Danny did not answer. One fly climbed onto the other’s back. They sat like that for a while and then flew off. Danny kept drawing her. When he was done he closed the sketchbook and laid it on the table. Lena waited for Danny to ask if she wanted to see what he’d drawn, so that she could say she didn’t care, that she didn’t like to look at drawings of herself, but he never asked and because he never asked she found herself wanting to see.

  At the door later, as she was leaving, Danny said, “You can come back any time.”

  Lena said that she couldn’t come back. “Even if I wanted to I couldn’t. Not that I didn’t have a good time. I did. It’s just kind of odd. You’re Mason’s brother and I’m Mason’s girlfriend, or was, and I’m sitting on the deck and we’re talking and all of a sudden you’re drawing me and that’s way too strange. If I were a slut I’d come back and you could draw me naked or something. But I’m not.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting anythi
ng,” Danny said. He was standing too close to her.

  “Yes, you were. You’re probably thinking I owe you a hug or a kiss, just because you gave me lunch.”

  Danny raised his hands in defence. “Hey, I don’t know what you want. Okay? I had fun. You’re great. I certainly don’t see any madness.”

  “Don’t you? Well.” She hesitated and then asked, “You going to tell Mason I was here? I mean if you want to, it’s fine. I was just wondering.”

  “No. No I’m not.”

  Lena turned to go, but then she faced Danny again and said, “Okay,” and then she left.

  Mason loved the Winnipeg sky. It was a wide clean blanket laid out over a flat sprawling city. There was more sky than earth, and birds overhead were smudges; jet trails appeared like chalk lines and were then erased. Mason, walking home from school on a bright day in June, was aware of the silver dome above him, but was also thinking about cake, and eggs, and if there were enough eggs in the fridge to bake a white cake for Lena, who was coming over in an hour, at 5:00 p.m. after she’d seen her doctor, and Mason was wondering if, when he got home and there weren’t eggs, he’d have time to go out and buy some.

  Over the last while, he had seen her several times. Once, she was sitting alone at Cousins and he had stood by her table and they had talked briefly and easily, and another time he had seen her on the street. He had been walking with a friend, it was a warm day, and he had sensed her presence and turned and there she was on the other side of the street. She saw him and waved and then she turned the corner and disappeared. Another time he’d left his house to go see his mother and suddenly she was walking beside and behind him slightly so that he had to turn and look back at her. She was wearing pants that were too short so the bottoms swung around her ankles and she was slightly stooped, as if carrying a heavy load. She wore a thick jacket, in spite of the weather. Her face was thin and pale.

  “Here I am,” she said.

  “Hey, Lena,” Mason said.

  “I’m walking,” she said. “My doctor says I should walk and of course I obey my doctor. She’s quite smart. The other day she asked if I saw myself as an exhibitionist and I said that I didn’t know. Do you think I’m an exhibitionist?” She stumbled and caught herself and giggled, “I’m clumsy. I know that.”

  Mason wanted to take her hand but wasn’t sure if she would let him. He looked down at her arm and then at her feet and he said, “I never thought that. You’re curious, that’s all.”

  “Really? Do you think so?” They walked on and up to a park which bordered the river and they went into the park and followed the footpath. Mason said that his mother had moved out and was living with Aldous Schmidt, the man they had seen her with once in the shopping mall. He was going over there now. “Do you want to come?” he asked. “My mother’s home but she wouldn’t mind.”

  Lena said, “No, I don’t want to see anyone. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.” Then she said, “Rose says she sees you in school. That you seem happy.”

  “Sometimes,” Mason said. “Yesterday afternoon I wasn’t happy. Right now I am.”

  She lifted her face and for a moment it was radiant. She said, “Ten or twenty years from now, when you’re married, you might regret doing what you did with me.”

  “That’s stupid,” Mason said.

  She touched Mason’s hair. “Your hair is getting longer. That’s good, I don’t want you to be dull.” Then she said, “I have to go,” and she turned and walked back along the sidewalk, her clownish pants spinning at her ankles.

  The next day Mason phoned her in the evening, to ask her to come over, and she said, “The time is late,” and her voice went up as if this were a question, and then she said, “How about Friday, around five?”

  And so, thinking of cake, Mason boldly hurried home towards the girl who had clapped her hands over his eyes.

  There were eggs. He cracked three into a bowl and added sugar and scalded milk and vanilla, and then he mixed in flour and salt and beat the batter and poured it into a pan. When the cake was in the oven he made an icing and tasted it and added more icing sugar. Then he went downstairs and took off his T-shirt. He sniffed his underarms and put on more deodorant. Looked in the mirror. There were a few hairs growing near his nipples and he wished it weren’t so. In his closet he found a shirt that Lena liked and he put it on. When he came back upstairs Lena was inside the front door calling out. She lifted her nose and sniffed and said, “Cake.” She was wearing corduroy pants that were the right length and a loose white top with three buttons near the neck. She was barefoot in her sandals. She had braided her hair and had pulled the braids to the back of her head and attached them there.

  “I like that,” Mason said and he reached out and traced one braid.

  “Rose did it. It’s my pulled-together look. Sort of, ‘Hi, I’m a hippie and I’m earthy and grow bean sprouts in my bedroom and I’m not hard.’ What kind of cake?” She went up on tiptoes and pushed her nose against Mason’s ear. “Hmmm.”

  Mason held his hands in the air. He said, “White cake. My mother taught me how to make it.” He took Lena into the kitchen and poured her tea and handed her a piece of cake on a plate and he sat across from her and said, “It’s strange, kind of like we’re starting all over again, you know?”

  “You like that?” Lena’s mouth was full of cake. “I was wondering if you’d think that or if I was thinking that. I was reading Dr. Seuss yesterday, Oh, the Places You’ll Go, and I realized that you should read it. It’s really philosophical, about being alone and choosing the right path. I’m not sure what I’m saying.” She nibbled at her cake and shrugged.

  Mason took her hand and asked, “Is this okay?”

  Lena said that it was fine. She liked it. Then she said, “You seeing anyone?”

  “No, I’m not seeing anyone.” Mason thought he might have answered too quickly. Two of Lena’s fingertips had Band-Aids.

  “I was just wondering,” Lena said.

  “You saw me with Sadia Chahal, didn’t you? On that rainy day. I saw you looking in through the window of the Bagel Shop and it was like I was drifting back in time. Not drifting. Flying. I saw you there. I ran into Sadia and we stopped for a drink. That’s all.”

  “You didn’t plan it?”

  “Actually, we were playing tennis. I used to play with her sister, Seeta, and all of a sudden I was playing with Sadia. She asked me to. I said, Sure.”

  “All of a sudden.” Lena was smiling. “Did she kiss you?”

  “No. Why do you think that?”

  “Girls like you. I know what I know and I know what girls like and they like you. It’s okay if she kissed you.”

  Mason was about to argue but he didn’t get a chance because Danny entered the kitchen at that moment and he stood near the table and said, “I’m Danny, Mason’s big brother.” He held out his hand.

  “I’m Lena.” She was looking right at Danny’s face as she shook his hand. She didn’t look over at Mason.

  “What do you want?” Mason said.

  “Just saying hi,” Danny said.

  “It’s all right,” Lena said, “I know about you. You’re a chef.”

  “Was,” Danny said. “I was in Montreal working and one night I had a sniff of my own mortality and so I thought, ‘I gotta get outta here.’ Now I hang around here and I draw. You want me to draw you some time, I’ll do that.”

  Mason said, “He doesn’t draw. He talks about drawing. There’s a difference.”

  “Runs in the family,” Danny said. “One of us wants to be a poet, the other an artist.”

  “Mason’s a good poet,” Lena said.

  Danny looked Lena up and down. “You a fan, or are you just loyal?”

  “Like Mason’s dog, you mean?” Lena asked, and she went “arf arf,” and Mason wasn’t sure if she was mocking herself, or him, or Danny, or if she was trying to please Danny in some way. Mason put his feet on the only available chair and waited for Danny to leave. He said, “Don’t you
have to mow the lawn, or something?”

  “Listen to him,” Danny said. He nodded at Lena and then he wandered off into the living room where he turned on the TV. Mason said they should go to his bedroom. Downstairs, Lena lay on Mason’s bed, her arms like wings beside her head. Mason sat on a chair, his feet against the bed, and said, “Danny’s a prick.”

  “Forget your brother.” She put her foot on top of Mason’s foot. “Talk to me,” she said.

  Mason saw the shape of her knee through her pants. He said, “Yesterday, at school, Shauna Guard checked out my aura. She used two wire hangers and walked backwards away from me and when the hangers swung sideways that was where my happiness ended and my sadness began. I had fifty feet of happiness surrounding me. I was surprised because I’ve always thought I was dark and serious but now I find out I’m an optimist. I guess that’s a good thing.”

  “Shauna Guard. I don’t know her.”

  “She’s in Grade 10 and thinks she’s a radical. Wears McShit T-shirts and sticks padlocks through her earlobes.”

  Lena didn’t seem to be listening. She sat up and touched Mason’s foot, as if she were testing the temperature of an object. She was thinner now. Walking down the stairs earlier Mason had been following her and he’d noticed that her pants hung loose and her shoulders were bony. He wondered if her breasts were smaller and what they would feel like in his hands. His throat was tight.

  “Things are still pretty fucked up,” Lena said, holding his toe now. “I mean I don’t have fifty feet of happiness like you. Maybe two feet. Some days, none. You’re probably wondering, what’s happening here? We gonna get naked, that sort of thing, but I’m still walking around with this big space between me and other people. I’m holding your toe but it doesn’t mean anything. To me. To how I feel. It might as well be a rock or a piece of bread. Before, I would have been thrilled and I would have taken off your sock and sucked on your toe and you would have sucked on mine and I’d have had little bumps on the backs of my arms but now there’s nothing.” She paused, still holding Mason’s toe.