by David Bergen
He directed her. Up Kenaston and onto Grant. Down through Charleswood and then left towards the Perimeter.
“You sure this is the right way?” Lena asked. She wouldn’t find her way home. She was shivering. Her head ached.
“I’m sure. It’s my place.”
“A house?”
“Yeah.”
They crossed the tracks and stopped at the Perimeter. “Straight through,” Steve said.
“There’s no house,” Lena said. “I don’t see a house.” She was breathless. The alcohol had made her breathless. She was scared now, aware of Steve’s size. The way he’d pushed against her earlier in the bar.
“Down that road,” he said.
A tractor-trailer passed. A car. A pickup. Lena was holding the wheel with both hands and the darkness surrounded them and she began to cry. Not loud or hard but there were tears. “This is nowhere,” she said. “You brought me out here to fuck me. Didn’t you? You don’t have a house out here. Please don’t fuck me. This is my mother’s car.”
“Aww, man,” Steve reached out to touch her arm.
Lena screamed, “Don’t.”
“Okay. Okay, listen. I won’t touch you. We’re almost there. Watch the traffic. It’s divided. Then go straight. My house is orange. It’s 49.”
“You’re not lying? You won’t hurt me?”
“Lena. Lena.”
“My father’ll kill me.” She drove again. Crossed the divided highway and followed the thin road up past a few unlit houses and when Steve pointed out his orange house with the single lit window she slowed and aimed for the driveway and drove into the ditch. The car settled, leaning slightly on the driver’s side.
“I missed,” Lena said.
“You’re drunk,” Steve said.
“My dad’ll kill me,” Lena said. She looked around, as if suddenly aware of the mess of the evening. “Oh, fuck.” This was her voice and she was surprised at the sound of its despair.
“Not the end of the world,” Steve said. “Come in and we’ll call a tow truck.”
“This isn’t good. Nobody’s going to come out here at this time of night. Aww, man.”
“Well, come in anyway, you can’t sit out here.”
She climbed out into the ditch and pushed her way around the nose of the car and called out to Steve who was walking to the house. “Could we push, do you think?”
He ignored her and kept walking. She followed him and entered the house. There was a boy sleeping on the sofa in the living room. Steve had disappeared. He came back and motioned at the boy and said, “My brother Mick.”
Lena looked at the boy, who was young, not more than thirteen.
Steve took her coat and hung it up. He said she could use the phone and call for a ride. Or she could sleep in the chair. He said that her age surprised him, now that he could see her in a normal room under normal light, and if he’d known she was so young he’d have left her alone.
“So, I ruined your evening?” she asked.
“You should be at home. What are you thinking?” Then he said he was working in the morning, the early shift, and he was going to bed. “Call someone. Your parents, or that sixteen-year-old boyfriend. Okay? Good night,” he said and he left her standing in the middle of the room.
She sat down and waited. She heard Steve in the bathroom, the flushed toilet, the brushing of teeth, a tap running. A door opened, another closed. All was quiet. She was more clear-headed now and she realized that she had failed in some way and that the failure was poignant and memorable. The room she sat in had the one sofa and two chairs and a painting of black-and-white squares diminishing into the distance. There was a phone. She stood by the window and looked out at her car. A wind was blowing and new drifts were forming against the passenger door. The house, the yard, the land out there, was desolate. She considered calling someone but wasn’t sure who. Julianne had no car and she couldn’t phone her parents. Mason would do something. She knew that. She picked up the phone and punched in Mason’s number. It rang a long time. Then Mason answered. Lena said, “Mason, I’m stranded and I need your help. I went out for drinks and then I was driving home and I hit the ditch. Can you come get me?”
Mason’s voice was still caught in sleep. “Where are you?” he asked. Lena imagined him in his shorts, his limbs bare. She was sorry. She wanted to be with him.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Out in the country. Somewhere. South of the Perimeter.”
“What are you doing out there? Are you okay?”
“I was driving someone home. And then I hit the ditch. I was on the road and then swoosh, I was off the road. It was simple. Can you come?”
“Who?” Mason asked. “Who were you driving home?”
Lena sighed. “A guy. Steve. From the bar. It was no big deal. Nothing happened. He’s old, about twenty-five, and he’s got a little brother called Mick.”
Mason didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry, Mason. I am. Can you come?”
“I can’t,” he said. He sounded pleased. “My mom’s car’s not here.”
Mick was awake and watching Lena. He lifted his hand and made a visor. “What do you expect me to do?” Lena asked. “I can’t phone my father.” Then she said, all business. “What about your father?”
“He’s at work. How would I get him? The night dispatcher’s a bitch.”
“Tell her it’s an emergency. Your sister’s in trouble or something. Okay? Mason, okay?”
Mason was thinking. Lena watched Mick, who was rubbing his eyes. Mason said, “I need your address.”
Lena put the receiver against her chest. She called out to Mick, “What’s the house number here? This street.”
Mick rolled his head towards her. His face was chubby, his eyebrows dark. He gave the address and Lena passed it on to Mason who said, “I don’t believe you. That nothing happened.”
Lena was watching Mick who was watching her. She was tired. She said, “It’s true, Mason. All of it is true.”
“I’m upset,” he said, “You know?”
“Sure. I know. I’m sorry.”
“Are you? How do I know that? You’re in trouble and so you call me. But you never called me earlier. You say we have all kinds of problems and then you tell me to go away when I show up at your house and now, when you get yourself into some stupid mess, you call.”
“I think about you all the time, Mason. I was planning on calling you earlier tonight but then Julianne suggested checking out that new nightclub and we headed downtown and all this other stuff happened. Look, can I give you my phone number, or what?” She read it off the phone in front of her and asked Mason if he got it.
“You fuck things up, Lena. I don’t know what to do.”
“Call your Dad.” Lena hung up and looked at Mick. “I’m Lena,” she said.
Mick shrugged. Kept watching her.
“You’re Mick,” Lena said, pointing a finger at him. “Steve told me that. Your brother.” She looked around the room. “How old are you, Mick?”
“Twelve.”
“You go to school?”
Mick nodded.
“I remember when I was twelve. Grade 7, I think. I went to this little school with really high ceilings, and I had a teacher called Mr. Hatfield. He read The Call of the Wild to us. It was about Buck, a dog. Buck gets sold up north where he’s a sled dog and he gets tossed from owner to owner and some beat him and some don’t and all the time he tries his best. I remember that. I remember that it was a sad book but it ends happy.” She stopped, then said, “So, your brother takes care of you?”
Mick nodded again.
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here, eh?”
“You’re Steve’s friend.”
“I guess. I gave him a ride home and my car got stuck. If you look out the window you’ll see. It’s in the ditch.”
“Are you Jessica’s friend?”
“I don’t know. Who’s she?”
“My brother’s gi
rlfriend.”
“Oh. No, actually, I don’t know Jessica. I have a boyfriend, his name’s Mason. I just talked to him on the phone.” Lena paused and leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and looked at Mick, who looked at her. Neither of them spoke. Mick yawned. Lena said, “You’re tired. Go back to sleep.”
Mick closed his eyes. After a bit his arm jumped and his fingers moved. Lena watched him and thought of Emily, her sister. Then she must have slept too because Mr. Crowe shook her awake. He was standing over her. He had his boots and jacket on and he was bent forward and when she opened her eyes she said, “Mason,” and she smiled.
Then she sat up and said, “Oh, hi, Mr. Crowe,” and she stood. Mick was still sleeping.
“I walked in,” Mr. Crowe said. “I knocked but nobody answered. I saw your car out there so I knew you were here. Who’s that?”
“Mick.”
Mr. Crowe said okay and looked around the room. Then he said, “You’ll want a ride. Mason called the dispatcher. I was out by the airport and she radioed and said my daughter, Lena, needed a ride. She gave me the address, so I came. Are you okay? I called Mason but he didn’t really tell me what was going on other than there was some guy called Steve and you were stuck at his house.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Crowe. I didn’t know what to do. My dad’ll kill me.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Though he’s probably worried about you right now. Did you call him?”
“I can’t. He’ll just rant and I won’t be able to say anything. I’ll talk to him at home.”
They left the house together and walked towards the taxi that was standing on the road, engine running. They passed by Lena’s car and Mr. Crowe looked at it but Lena kept walking and got into the taxi. The car was warm and the dashboard lights glowed. Lena felt safe. Mr. Crowe got in and blew on his hands and said, “Miserable.” He started to drive and he didn’t say anything for a long time. Lena wanted to explain herself but she wasn’t sure how to start and so, finally, she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Crowe.”
“It’s okay.”
Lena said, “I guess you think I’m pretty awful.”
“I don’t think that.”
“Well I am. I was really stupid to drive Steve home. I didn’t even know him and there we were in the middle of nowhere and he could have done anything.”
“He didn’t though, did he?” Mr. Crowe said.
“No, he didn’t.” She said, “That boy on the couch. Mick. He was living with his brother because his mom and dad were dead. He was so sweet. I told him to go to sleep and he did. Just like that.”
Mr. Crowe didn’t say anything though he seemed to have been listening. The taxi was warm and Lena liked the bigness of it, the legroom. It was like a cave. Mr. Crowe drove with one finger. He had a jaw like Mason’s, kind of wide and obvious. Lena thought that Mason would be like his father some day, maybe even drive a taxi, and she would be married to him and he would come home to Kraft Dinner that she’d made and they’d eat it in front of the TV and talk about the day. She’d be in school, medicine maybe; that’d make her father happy.
She said to Mr. Crowe, “It’s weird, if you were my father you’d be lecturing me right now. Blah, blah, blah about responsibility and danger and the evils of the world.”
Mr. Crowe looked at her. Said, “I’m not your father.”
“So right.”
“Mason was pretty upset,” Mr. Crowe said. “He’s sixteen and I guess he can’t quite figure out why you’d be driving home a strange guy. I figure he’s got a point. Unless you know something he doesn’t.”
“I don’t know any more than he does,” Lena said. She saw that things were not simple. She wondered if Mr. Crowe knew about his wife seeing another man. And if he was doing anything about it. She said, “Sometimes adults think they know everything. But they don’t. There are lots of things taking place. Apocalyptic things. When you were a kid you probably didn’t have to worry about the polar ice cap melting and Ebola and cloning sheep.”
Mr. Crowe nodded at this. He said, “I don’t think any of that will touch your life, Lena. At least I don’t think you should let it worry you. I think if we all took care of the little world around us then the larger world would be fine.”
“Do you think it’s possible to love more than one person?” Lena asked.
Mr. Crowe pushed a hand through his hair. He said, “Perhaps, though I think there are things more important than love. Not greater, I wouldn’t say that, just more important.”
“My mother told me once that she could have loved another man. She said she didn’t love my dad when they married. She grew to love him. That’s weird.”
“The word is overused,” Mr. Crowe said. “It’s thrown about like so much nonsense. People sometimes don’t know what they mean.”
They were in Lena’s neighbourhood now. The dimly lit streets, the bare trees, the dark houses. Mr. Crowe pulled up in front of Lena’s house. The living-room light was on. Lena could see her father sitting on the couch. His head, the lamplight pouring down over his crown. He shifted, looked out at the street.
“That’s my Dad,” Lena said. She waited and then turned to Mr. Crowe and said, “Thanks, Mr. Crowe. Tell Mason I’ll call him, okay.”
Mr. Crowe nodded and said, “Good luck.” Lena stepped out onto the street, closed the taxi door, and Mr. Crowe drove off. She watched the car disappear and then she turned to look at her house. Her father was still looking out the window but he could not see her and she stood for a long time and watched him as he waited for her to come home.
Nothing happened. Or at least nothing obvious or tangible. There had been no screaming, no lecture, no consequences. Lena’s father had the car picked up by a local tow-truck driver and it was delivered the following day when Lena was in her room. She had just woken and she stood in her nightgown by the window and watched her mother’s car being backed into the garage. Over the next ten days, since the night out with Steve, she did not leave the house. She slept and ate packages of dried apples and drank water and several times her mother came into her room and attempted conversations but Lena only answered with elliptical comments and the occasional yes or no. Her sisters circled her. They allowed her control of the bathroom and they whispered down the hallway. Mason did not call her, neither did she call him. One night Rosemary crept into Lena’s room and sat on her bed and said, “Mom and Dad are talking about you. They really do want to send you somewhere.”
Lena had been lying on top of her blanket, staring up at the ceiling. She was dressed. She had her shoes on. Her coat. As if she had imagined the possibility of leaving, even though she knew it wouldn’t happen. She lay there and didn’t speak for the longest time. Then she whispered, “Where?”
“To a hospital. Dad said.”
“Huh,” Lena went. She held up a hand. It was shaking.
“That’s crazy. Why don’t you just do something? Get up. Go back to school.”
Lena took Rosemary’s hand and said, “Don’t worry. I will. I promise.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” Then she asked, “How’s Mason?”
Rosemary shrugged. “Why ask me?”
“Has he kissed you yet?”
“Why do you keep asking me that?”
“I can’t remember what he looks like. I try to picture him, thinking that’ll make me happy, and I can’t find him. He’s a zero.”
“He looks the same. You saw him a couple of weeks ago.”
“I know he looks the same. It’s just I can’t picture him.”
“Are you okay, Lena? Should I call Mom?”
“She can’t do anything. Anyways, it’s all so sad.”
“It doesn’t have to be sad, Lena.”
“You can say that again and again but it still is, you see.”
“You want me to sleep with you?”
“You don’t want to. I smell.”
“That’s okay.”
“So, I do smell. I thought it was something in the g
arbage and then I realized it was me. This morning Mom said I should shower and I planned on it but I kept waiting for the right moment.”
“You want me to help you? Here, come.” And Rosemary took Lena and pulled her up so she was sitting at the edge of the bed. She held her arm and walked her down to the bathroom and Lena stood with her arms at her side as Rosemary undressed her. When she was naked Rosemary told her to pee. She sat down and watched as Rosemary turned on the shower. Rosemary asked, “Can you do it yourself?”
Lena didn’t answer. She was looking at the caulking on the shower wall. Mould like a blue flower. Rosemary undressed, helped Lena into the shower, then climbed in behind her. “Get your hair wet,” Rosemary said. She pushed Lena’s head under the nozzle and then pulled her away and lathered shampoo in. She scrubbed Lena’s head for a long time and then rinsed her off. Then she soaped Lena’s body and scrubbed her armpits and crotch. Lena looked down at Rosemary’s hand between her legs. “Thank you,” she said. Rosemary said, “I’m going to shave you,” and she switched the shower off and ran water into the tub. Sat Lena down at the edge of the tub and Rosemary kneeled in the water and spread their father’s shaving lotion over Lena’s calves. She used their mother’s razor. “You’ll be all perfect,” Rosemary said and planted a kiss on Lena’s knee.
“Am I beautiful?” Lena asked.
“Very beautiful,” Rosemary said. “Here, raise your arm.” She shaved her right armpit and then her left and as she worked Lena watched her arm move back and forth.
“Your elbow is amazing,” Lena said.
Rosemary helped Lena out of the tub and dried her off. Lena felt the towel and looked at Rosemary’s arms and head and legs and said, “Oh, you’re naked.” Then she said, “Do you want to know something funny? Mason and I had anal sex.” Rosemary took her own housecoat from the back of the bathroom door and put it on Lena.
“I wanted to try it,” Lena said. “I don’t think he did. He did it for me. I wanted to eat him up. Haven’t you ever liked a guy so badly you wanted to devour him?”
Rosemary didn’t answer. She guided Lena back to her bed and tucked her in and placed a hand on her forehead and then climbed in beside her and wrapped an arm around her stomach and said, “There now, go to sleep.”
