The Case of Lena S.

by David Bergen

  Outside it was dark. Mason turned on the lamp at Mr. Ferry’s elbow and asked Mr. Ferry if he wanted something to drink besides wine. Water? Tea? He said he didn’t. Mason looked around the dim room. He was depressed. Mr. Ferry took things much too seriously. The story, the room, the lack of light, the books on the shelves, all this depressed Mason. He found it hard to breathe.

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Ferry said, “I’ve talked too much. I do that. I’m full of nonsense sometimes. Here.” He reached for Mason’s hand and held it. Patted it. “You want to read? What would you like?”

  “I’m not sure, Mr. Ferry. The books we’ve been reading lately haven’t been much fun. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, no, don’t be sorry. We’ll read something else. More upbeat. A happy author. We’ll think of a happy author. You choose.” He motioned at the shelves.

  Mason sat and waited. Mr. Ferry still held his hand. He wanted to pull it away but he didn’t know how. Mr. Ferry squeezed and held on.

  “The thing is,” Mr. Ferry said, “Happy books aren’t as interesting. They want us to believe that everybody lives forever.” He turned his blind eyes onto Mason’s forehead.

  “I have to go,” Mason said.

  He got up and went into the foyer and put on his jacket, boots, and hat, said goodbye, and went out the front door. He stood in the wind and then instead of going home he walked over the Maryland Bridge and turned down towards Lena’s house and when he got there he stood on the sidewalk and looked at the bright windows. The curtains weren’t drawn yet and he could see Margot playing the piano. Emily passed before the front window. He didn’t see Lena. It was snowing and his face was cold and the wind hurt his ears. He walked up to a corner store and looked at the chocolate bars. A man came in the store. It was Lena’s father and he was with Emily. Mason watched them buy a loaf of bread and argue about gum that Emily wanted. In the end Emily got the gum and she pushed her small face against the sleeve of her father’s coat as he bent towards the cashier and counted out the change. His head was large and he seemed very content with who he was. He said, “No, no, not at all,” and then he said, “Every Tuesday,” and he touched the top of his daughter’s head. As they turned to leave, Emily saw Mason and she pulled on her father’s sleeve and nodded across the aisle. Mr. Schellendal stopped and looked over his shoulder and when Mason responded by lifting his hand, Mr. Schellendal turned and, pulling his young daughter, left the store.

  The following day Mr. Schellendal phoned Mason and asked him to come by the bank. Mason didn’t want to but Mr. Schellendal was forceful and convincing. He sensed Mason’s hesitation and said that there was nothing to worry about. He wasn’t dangerous. He said, “There are some things we need to talk about and I’d like you to meet me here at the bank some time soon.” They arranged a time and Mason hung up and stood by the window. Two garbage trucks idled on the street outside and three men stood beside the trucks and talked and looked around and then talked some more. They smoked and laughed and Mason thought about the men. They either had wives and babies or they lived alone and went out drinking in the evening looking for women. They would not be bad men. They were collectors of garbage and that didn’t make them good or bad. Mason thought they might be nothing, really. They weren’t important in any large sense. Perhaps they were important to their children or to the women they met or even to themselves but they weren’t important to him or Lena or the president of some company or the prime minister of Canada, who was, when the cameras weren’t trained on him, also of no consequence. A nobody.

  When Mason arrived at the bank the following day he sat in the lobby and drank coffee and watched a dark-haired woman in a skirt and jacket answer the phone. Lena’s father swung out into the waiting area and called to Mason and brought him into his office. Then he said he’d be right back and he left Mason by himself. Mason looked around. There was a photograph of the Schellendal family on the wall. They were standing in front of a silver camper trailer and there were mountains in the background. Lena was younger, maybe fourteen, and she was holding her father’s arm and looking up past his chin at something outside of the picture. Her sisters were smiling and her mother was wearing a baseball cap and a halter top and shorts. Mrs. Schellendal was beautiful. He could see that. On the desk were a sheaf of business cards and a pen and an empty cup of coffee from Tim Hortons and a basket of golf tees. Lena’s father returned and he sat down on the same side of the desk as Mason. He leaned forward and said, “You know why you’re here so let’s get to it. I am not an ogre. I am simply a father who is concerned about a daughter who is complex and difficult and who is searching. That’s what she’s doing and I’m not sure how to deal with it. Do you understand?”

  Mason looked at his own hands and said, “I think so.”

  “With Lena you have to be very sure. She can’t abide uncertainty.” Mr. Schellendal leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and laid an index finger across his cheek. “Did she tell you that I don’t want her seeing you any more?”

  Mason nodded. “Yes.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “Because I’m not a Christian?”

  Mr. Schellendal shook his head. “That’s not true. That’s a convenient reason. She’s done that to other boys. Made them memorize and then quote Scripture as if I were a Bible-thumping gatekeeper full of revenge. I’m not.” He paused and waved a hand and said, “How old are you, Mason?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “You should be playing football, running around with other boys. You’re young.”

  “I don’t like football.”

  “Well, tennis then. Lena told me that you’re an excellent tennis player. That’s what she said, Excellent. Usually she tells me nothing. In any case, all this to say that you’re too young to be worried about girls.”

  “I love her.”

  Mr. Schellendal raised his eyebrows. “No, you don’t, Mason. You have no idea what love is.”

  “I think I do.”

  Mr. Schellendal sighed. He said, “Lena’s not well, Mason. Physically she looks capable but the body has a soul and a mind and that’s the problem here. You are not the first boy who has loved her nor will you be the last. She is very lovable. I love her. She is unpredictable and out of control and I imagine she makes your life exciting but she is not well. For several years now she has been seeing doctors. She takes medication and sometimes the medication makes her impetuous and irrational. Do you see?”

  Mason didn’t, but he said he did.

  “Has she asked you to marry her?”

  Mason looked away.

  “Again, you are not the first. She actually tried to marry a boy named Kevin. This when she was only fifteen. That’s right. Is that normal?”

  “I don’t believe you,” Mason said.

  “Of course you don’t. And you shouldn’t. You’re young. Love is wonderful and exclusive and why should Lena betray you? Good for you.”

  “May I go now?” Mason asked.

  Mr. Schellendal rose and said, “The thing is, we don’t want her hurt or pregnant or dead in a car crash or doing drugs or anything else that would ruin her chances. Do you see?”

  Mason nodded and let Mr. Schellendal guide him from the office. They walked through the lobby and Mason saw Mr. Schellendal’s dark square shoulders and he wondered what his own father would look like in a suit. They parted near the cash machine, Mr. Schellendal ducking his head slightly and saying goodbye as Mason turned and stepped outside. Snow fell. Large flakes scudded sideways. He thought he should write a poem called “The Death of Lena Schellendal.” Send it to Lena’s father and have him understand some things.

  Mason didn’t go to school the next day. His mother left early in the morning and his father went out at midday to run some errands. Just the week before, Danny had moved his boxes and stuff back home, quit his job at the restaurant, and left for Montreal. During that week Danny had commanded a lot of attention and Mason was glad now to be alone in the house. He woke late and s
at in the kitchen and ate Shreddies and thought about Lena and he thought about Mr. Schellendal’s warnings, and the fact that Lena could not abide uncertainty. And so in the afternoon he phoned Lena and left a message for her to call. She came by and found him watching TV. She sat down beside him and looped an arm around his neck.

  “Hey,” she said. “You okay?”

  Mason shrugged.

  Lena tried to touch him but he pulled away.

  “Okay then,” she said. She stood.

  “I saw your Dad yesterday,” he said.

  “Oh, poor Mason. That’s why. He said nasty things about me and you believed him.”

  Mason shook his head. Lena kneeled on the couch and kissed his forehead and eyes and cheeks and his mouth. Her own mouth was wet and soft and Mason saw that nothing mattered.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I said I didn’t believe him.”

  “Of course you didn’t. He makes things up.”

  “He told me about Kevin.”

  “Oh, man.” Lena laughed, a guilty hiccup.

  “That you tried to marry him.”

  “That was a lark. I was sixteen.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Okay, fifteen.”

  “Am I a lark?”

  “God, no.” She paused. “What else?”

  “He said he doesn’t want you dropping acid or smoking crack.”

  Lena smiled. “Yeah, right.”

  “Okay, okay, at least not pregnant and smoking crack,” Mason said. She was still on her knees as if she were praying or begging. Mason touched her forearms. Ran his hands down to her elbows. “You’re amazing,” he said. “You won’t get pregnant, will you? Or die?”

  “Never. Never.” She looked up at him, expectant. “And?”

  “That’s all,” he said. “Hold me.”

  They lay on the couch and Mason crushed Lena to him. He put his face against her neck and breathed in and out and after a while he felt himself slipping into a space where he and Lena were one and all fears of madness and escape disappeared and he could feel her hip against his crotch and the buckle of her belt and an elbow in his ribs. She smelled of cooked food and cigarette smoke and the van and Mr. Koop’s. Her arms, her face, had the smoothness of eggs. Her blood beat through a vein in her neck and Mason marvelled at the intricacy of Lena’s body, what she was made of.

  In the week that followed, Mason phoned her house, went by, called The Nook, but always he either had just missed her or was put off by a cautionary tone or the words, “She’s gone.” A wall had been put up around her. He went, on a Wednesday afternoon, to the Bagel Shop on Academy and he bought coffee and watched for Lena as she passed by on her way to music lessons but she neither came nor went and he wondered if her lessons were a thing of the past. He did not know and this surprised him that he did not know. He met Rosemary, the second-oldest sister, in the street one day. He said, “Lena,” and she looked away and then back at him again. She had a silver nose ring and Mason saw that she was softer than Lena, not as pretty. She was plain and short and her feet were small.

  “Is she okay?” Mason asked. “I haven’t been able to find her. She doesn’t call me back. She’s not working.”

  Rosemary wrinkled her nose. “She said you were sweet.”

  “Did she?”

  “She does stupid things,” Rosemary said. “She’s all happy and hey-ho and then she locks herself away. She’s in a lock-up phase. What are you doing?”

  “Nothing, I suppose.”

  “Want to walk with me up to voice lessons?”

  He said he could do that. Rosemary was different from the night of the dinner, more talkative and confident, and this surprised Mason. As they walked he imagined the Schellendal girls as interchangeable, a throaty chorus line, a quartet that traipsed this familiar path to Mrs. Malcolm’s house and stood, backs straight, and practised scales. Did they all sing? Was Lena like Rosemary like Margot like Emily?

  They walked over the bridge and past the Lutheran Church with its “Little Lambs Nursery” sign and on down past the Bagel Shop and left on Elm and while they walked Rosemary said, “The thing is, with my parents, they can’t stand Lena’s boyfriends. It’s not you, believe me, they hate them all. Nothing is good enough. Especially my father, who gets so sad. I had a boyfriend once and nobody knew. Nobody cared. Jimmy Mutch and he had this tattoo on his shoulder. The jack of spades. He was really smart. He took Calculus and Theory of Knowledge and quoted Descartes, I think, therefore I am, only with Jimmy it was, I drink, therefore I am. And nobody cared. See?” She lifted her shoulders and tossed her hair. She moved her music books to her other arm and pushed her free hand into the crook of his elbow. She was wearing a long scarf of many colours and one end floated behind her like a tail and because she was so short Mason had to look down at the top of her head and he thought that anybody passing them by might see them as brother and sister.

  “Could you tell Lena to call me?” Mason said.

  “Sure,” Rosemary said. “I’ll shove a note under her door. Call Mason.”

  “If I write a note would you give it to her?”

  “Yeah. Sure, I could.” Rosemary lifted her face and looked at Mason and he saw that she had eyebrows like Lena and he had a thought that maybe Lena wasn’t the right Schellendal girl for him and when Rosemary said, turning her head to talk to the air, as if this were an afterthought and not a serious thing to be considered, “If you wanna hang out some time, you know, call me,” Mason saw that the future was shaped by forces greater than himself and he said, “Sure. Whatever.”

  He didn’t have a pen and so Rosemary had to search her pockets and backpack. She came up with a scrap piece of paper and a red pen and he held the paper against his knee and didn’t know what to say. He thought about Mr. Ferry’s words about how a story wasn’t a map to point the way and he thought how, no matter what he said, he’d sound desperate. So he wrote, Hey, you in your fortress, let me in. He folded the paper and gave it to Rosemary. The tips of his fingers were cold. He blew on his hands. Rosemary pushed the note into her pocket and said goodbye and then she walked on and Mason turned and went back the way he had come.

  When he got home his mother was in the living room with the man she’d been holding on to at the mall. She stood and said, “Mason, this is Aldous,” and she turned her left foot out at an angle. Aldous stood and shook Mason’s hand and said his name as if it were a foreign word. Perhaps it was. He was German. His speech was thick and truncated, though he spoke English well. His last name was Schmidt. He told Mason this as they shook hands. He was a carefully dressed man and only a little taller than his mother, whom he called Penny. He said, “Penny has talked about you. She’s very proud of you.”

  Mason looked at his mother who said, “Don’t look at me like that. I won’t have my evening ruined.” She turned to Aldous and said, “Another?” and then she wagged a wrist and said, “Mason, can you get Mr. Schmidt another Coke? Just Coke, with some ice.”

  Mason took Aldous’s glass and went to the kitchen and poured Coke into the glass and dropped two ice cubes in and he returned to the living room and handed the glass back to Aldous, who said, “Thank you.” He had a long face and long hair. He said, “How old are you, Mason?”

  “Sixteen.”

  Aldous said, “At sixteen I quit school and worked on the oil fields in Alberta. I never finished high school. I don’t have a university degree.” He looked at Mason’s mother. “Did you know that, Penny?”

  “No, I didn’t.” She was standing in the middle of the room, wearing a dark suede skirt, and she kept running one hand down the side of her thigh. She had her boots on; they were shiny black with low heels and they came up to just below her knees, so there was a slash of her legs between the skirt and the boots, but it was a striking slash because she was wearing dark purple tights. Mason wondered what would happen if his father came home. His mother was looking at Aldous with big eyes. She said, “Aldous is a millionaire. Many times over. He h
as no education but he’s successful. How does that happen?” She was looking at Mason now.

  “It’s not that amazing,” Aldous said. “It’s a combination of luck and vision. I saw that mud was the answer, and, bingo, I was right.”

  “Aldous sells mud to drilling companies,” Mrs. Crowe said. “Isn’t that strange? Making millions off of mud?” She was very excited by the word millions.

  Mason asked Aldous, “So, you drive a Porsche, or what?”

  “Don’t get snippy,” Mrs. Crowe said.

  “Oh, that’s fine,” Aldous said. “The whole point of being young is to rebel. To protest. Isn’t it?”

  It wasn’t clear to whom he had addressed this question and Mason refused to respond. His mother was moving around the room like she was the only woman in the world. He said, “I’m going to my room, okay?”

  “Good,” his mother said. Then she said to Aldous, “Mason’s a big reader. He’ll go to his room now and read and he’ll be fine.”

  “What do you read?” Aldous asked.

  “Mein Kampf. Pornography.”

  Aldous looked at Mrs. Crowe, who gave Mason a withering look. Then she said, “Let’s go out. You want to come, Mason? We were thinking Chinese food, weren’t we, Aldous?”

  Mason said he wasn’t hungry. He said he was expecting Lena to call and he didn’t want to miss her.

  “Lena,” Mrs. Crowe sighed. Mason thought he might cry so he turned his face away. His mother and Aldous left quickly, and in their wake Mason experienced the vacuum of the house, a silence that swirled around him and darkened the rooms. He watched TV and opened a Caramilk bar and sucked at it slowly as evening came. He fell asleep on the couch and woke to the phone ringing. It was Lena. She said that her heels and fingertips were cracking. The dry weather attacked her feet and hands and they bled and at night she applied Vaseline and then put on socks and mitts. Mason imagined her as a mummy. He said, “Did Rosemary give you the note?”