by David Bergen
This type of comment from Ms. Abendschade normally would have pleased Mason, but he was thinking of Lena. Of Lena deciding. Sitting in her room she writes a list and it is either long or not and she closes her eyes and points with her pen and hits “bridge,” or she is seduced by the word itself, a movement from here to there, crossing over, better than razors and pills and gas and guns. In his selfishness Mason wanted to believe that she is thinking of him, that she sits on the bridge, her legs dangling out over the river, her head twisting round, checking the passing traffic, “Look, you fine happy commuters, I’m going to kill myself,” and somewhere in the chaos she considers Mason Crowe, boyfriend, minor poet, Mr. Ferry’s reader, the lover she pushes onto the floor of the van and says, all grace and beauty, “We can have sex, but we have to watch the eggs.”
Perhaps, Mason thought, the idea had always been incubating in her head, a smooth oval shape in the shadows of her brain that one day cracked open and offered oblivion. Sex and death lie in the dark. Lena in his mother’s orange skirt, Lena turning her head back to guide his cock into her, Lena swivelling on the bridge. It is Mason and Lena lying together naked on his bed and Lena saying, “No one knows who I am. I can smile at you but really I am thinking I would like to die.”16
Danny, who was hungry, had found some peanuts and chips. He also had a bowl of ice cream before him and he was spinning his spoon and watching Mason. He confessed, without any prompting, that he missed Maryann. His voice was low and despondent. He said, “You still seeing that girl? Lena, right?”
Mason nodded. He said, “Right,” but he didn’t commit either way. He didn’t want to share Lena with Danny, even if at this point Lena was out there somewhere, unconnected. Since she had gotten out of the hospital he had seen her several times, once, briefly at a party on the weekend and they had talked and Lena had seemed interested in being near him. They had danced and Lena had looped her arms around his neck and asked, “Do you miss me?” and he had said, “Yes,” though he wasn’t sure what the right answer was. She had said, “I’m better now. Almost. Whole. For a while I was just parts. A hand. A leg. A face. Now I’m one piece.” And she hugged him and he’d wondered if she remembered her last words to him in the hospital.
Just yesterday he had seen her as he walked to school and this was odd because his path to school did not lead by Lena’s house, but there she had been, like a stalker, and they had stopped and exchanged some words and Lena had said, as she walked away, “It was nice to see you again, Mason.” She said his name clearly and slowly, as if, he thought, by holding it in her mouth she could maybe possess him again.
Danny was talking, going on about his drawing and his art and how he figured that might be his future. “Being a chef is lousy,” he said. “You create something that gets devoured in half an hour. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And then the next day it gets shit out. With art, at least, it lasts. You can look at it one day and a year later it’s still there.”
Mason didn’t think his brother was a very good artist. He’d seen some nudes of Maryann, pencil sketches and a few in charcoal, and though they were precise and vaguely erotic, they certainly wouldn’t make Danny famous. Perhaps it was a fact, Mason thought, that everyone in the Crowe family was doomed to fail and only by getting out, like his mother had done, would they save themselves.
His mother had moved out on a Friday night. The week, unusual for late March, had been humid and hot and the air was closed in and heavy. Mason was home alone with his mother, sitting on her bed watching her pack suitcases and boxes. She was barefoot and wore shorts and an old T-shirt. Her hair was tucked under a blue bandana.
“I know this girl, Jane Fenske,” Mason said, “who became narcoleptic after her parents broke up.” This was true. Wide-eyed Fenske was not really so wide-eyed. Several times in class she’d fallen asleep and it was common knowledge, confessed by Jane herself, that her sleeping disorder had been brought on by her parents’ divorce.
Mason’s mother said, “Oh, Mason.” Then she sat beside him and hugged him and whispered, “This isn’t about you. You have to understand that.” His face pressed against her shoulder. The smoothness of her neck. She stood and held him at arm’s length. “You can come visit any time. Stay the night, keep some clothes at the apartment. Will you do that, Mason?”
He said he wasn’t sure. He would think about it.
There had been many pairs of shoes and underwear and there were garters and skirts and dresses and jeans and more shoes and sandals and silky things and bottles of body wash and perfume and all the paraphernalia of hygiene. Mason had kept his eye open for the vibrator but it didn’t appear, perhaps already ferried to Schmidt’s grand palace where it could be used willy-nilly with no fear of a son marching in on the perversions.
Mason carried bags and boxes out to his mother’s car. It was around 7 p.m. and the sun had just disappeared but it was still warm and the sky was still more light than dark. At Aldous’s place, in the parking lot, two boys were shooting baskets, their voices calling out to each other in tones of camaraderie. Up in the condo it was cool and there were fresh-cut flowers in a crystal vase on the dining-room table and Christmas lights flickered on the railing of the balcony. Mason’s mother had explained that Aldous was gone for the weekend. She surveyed the room, released her hair from her bandana, and sighed. Earlier, she had offered Mason her car, and now she dangled the keys in her left hand. “Are you okay, sweetie?” she asked.
He looked around at the clean brightness of his mother’s new place. He looked right at her, thinking that he should sound convincing, and he said, “Yes. I’m okay.” He took the keys and she moved towards him and he saw over her shoulder the almost-dark sky and the tiny lights.
“Come here,” she said. She held him, and her voice, muffled in his collar, came to him from some other place: “This is my chance. I want this to work.” At the door, she said, “You can stay, we’ll watch a movie,” but he was past the threshold aiming for the elevator and she sang out, “I’ll pick up the car tomorrow morning, all right?”
Downstairs he climbed into his mother’s Nissan and stared out through the windshield. A couple, both dressed in black, crossed in front of him and passed on. He drove around by himself for an hour, criss-crossing the centre of the city, stopping to buy cigarettes at one point and catching sight of a group of Squeegee kids from school who hung out by the Gas Station Theatre. He saw Crystal, the lover of Baudelaire, holding hands with one of the boys. She was tossing her heavy mane sideways as she talked. Mason drove on, down Corydon and past Bar Italia where Turbine liked to go, pretending that he was both an artist and good at pool, a yellow Gitane dangling from his mouth. He eventually wound his way back to Wellington and parked close to the Rehabilitation Centre for Children. He walked down to the back of the hospital and climbed the metal ladder to the roof. Found himself sitting with his feet dangling over the edge, looking out towards the river. He smoked a cigarette and when he was done he spun it out into the darkness; a flaring arc and then nothing. He thought about his mother, sitting in her new place, away from his father and him and Danny. She might be bathing right now, or folding her clothes, or sitting out on the balcony looking out over the river. Maybe she would think about him. He lit another cigarette and thought that if he had been brave he would have stopped by Lena’s. Or called her and said, “Hi, Lena. I have a car and I’d like to take you out for a while.” He considered this and then put the idea away. He lay back against the tarred roof and looked up at the inkiness of the sky.
Over the following weeks, Mason got into the habit of borrowing his mother’s car. Sometimes he just drove aimlessly, once he parked on the street across from the Schellendal house and he watched for Lena or her sisters but saw nothing. He hadn’t seen Turbine at school in the last week so one night, on a Friday, he phoned him. Turbine’s mother answered and when Mason asked to speak to Turbine there was a long silence. Finally, he heard her speaking to someone else and then she came b
ack to the phone and asked, “Who is it?”
“Mason Crowe. I’m a friend from school.”
A shorter silence this time and finally Turbine answered.
“What’s going on?” Mason asked.
Turbine’s voice was quiet and his speech was less quick. He said that his parents were taking him out of school and sending him to a boarding school in Ottawa.
Mason waited for an explanation and when it didn’t come, he asked, “What for?”
“Huh, well. My parents were out of town last weekend and I had that party, remember, and the condo got trashed? Where were you?”
“I couldn’t make it. I had stuff. You know. Sorry.”
“No, hey, that’s fine. The party was amazing but really you didn’t miss much. Anyway, my parents want some reformation in my life and it’s not happening here, so Ottawa is supposed to cure me.”
“Jesus.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.” Turbine laughed and then he stopped laughing and said, “My parents have clout. They got me into this fucking boarding school. I have to wear a uniform. All-boys.”
“No way. You poor shit.” Mason was trying to be nonchalant, but he was also thinking about how hard it would be for Turbine, and he was feeling sorry for him. “I guess I’ll miss you,” he said.
“You want to come over and give me a hug?” Turbine snorted through his nose to indicate that he wasn’t being serious.
“We could meet at the rehab hospital,” Mason said. “Have a last ritual something. Or we could go to a party. There’s one at Cindy Duong’s.”
“My parents won’t let me out.” Turbine paused and then said, “Hey, how are things with that Schellendal girl? Lena, right?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Lena.”
“Very nice, Mason. You have taste.”
“I guess. I just never had much luck.”
“And now?” Turbine laughed.
Mason considered the question and then he said, “I feel lucky.”
Turbine said that he felt lucky, too. Then he said, “I figure good things will happen to me.” They talked a bit more and then Turbine said he had to go. He said that he would phone Mason in a few weeks. Let him know what was up. They could e-mail maybe. Then they said goodbye.
After Mason hung up he thought about Turbine and then he thought about Lena and what he’d said about Lena, about feeling lucky. He left the house and got into his mother’s car. Finally, he went to Cindy Duong’s house. He drove by the house and saw the lights on, kids standing and drinking and smoking on the front lawn. It was a big house. From the upstairs balcony a boy leaned over the parapet and called out. Mason drove around the block, parked, and walked back towards the house. He moved past the gauntlet of football players and drama queens and entered a large house that was well on the road to being destroyed. A young boy with long hair hung on to a massive chandelier from which dangled a bra, a sock, a pink shirt, boxer shorts, and an orange skirt that reminded Mason of Lena. He left the apelike creature who, on the verge of letting go, was calling for help, and he entered the inner room, where he found Gary Kessle, a boy from one of his classes, drinking tequila with a girl half his size. The girl was chattering in Spanish and Gary was nodding and taking deep breaths and exhaling slowly.
“María,” Gary said, and grinned stupidly. He moved his hand in tiny circles as if feeling for something.
“Hola,” María said. She looked at Mason. She licked at the salt on her wrist, drank quickly from a small glass, and then sucked at a lime.
“María’s from Santiago,” Gary said. “She’s very good.”
Mason looked down at the dark part in María’s hair and backed out of the kitchen. As he left, he poured himself a glass of Smirnoff and soda. He stood in the large front room. A boy in a Maple Leafs jersey stood at the top of the stairs and silently fell backwards. His large body knocked out part of the banister and he came to rest in the foyer, his head lying on the tile floor. Kids stepped over and around him.
Mason danced, briefly and for no particular reason, with a girl who looked barely thirteen. She was chubby and wore a very short skirt. Amy. She pretended to be drunk and held onto Mason’s neck and rubbed her nose against his jaw and ground her hips against his. He held his half-full glass behind her back and tried not to spill.
“I know you,” Amy said. She pressed her breasts against his rib cage. “You’re Rosemary Schellendal’s sister’s boyfriend. Rosemary’s in my class.”
Mason reached his glass over Amy’s head and drank. She looked up at him. “Sorry,” Mason said, and he freed himself and wandered back into the kitchen. In the art studio – a beautiful glassed-in area off the kitchen which held an easel and a firing oven and a long table with pastel drawings and half-finished oil canvases – a girl was standing on top of one of the paintings and she was dancing and taking off her clothes as boys and girls gathered below her and chanted. The girl stumbled and a tall boy caught her and pushed her back up onto the table. A wide-faced blond-haired girl near Mason stamped her feet and hollered and tossed an arm over her boyfriend’s shoulder and kissed him on the mouth. The girl on the table took off her shirt. She reached behind her back and unclipped her bra and let it drop. Mason stepped back and looked away. He caught sight of Sadia Chahal’s face at the entrance to the studio. Sadia saw him and turned to go. Mason slipped back through the kitchen and caught up to Sadia beneath the chandelier, now without the hanging boy.
“That was stupid,” Mason said. He was walking beside Sadia, brushing up against her shoulder. She exited the house and he kept up with her as she cut across the lawn out towards the road. Mason asked her if she was alone and she said she was. “I came with some friends from school, but they left. You’ve got a car?”
He said he did. He gestured down the street.
“You have plans?” she asked, and the way she asked it indicated that she had none, and Mason said he could drive her somewhere if she liked.
“I’d like,” she said.
When they were in the car Mason became more aware of Sadia: her sharp nose, the outline of her jaw, and her small shoulders. She was wearing jeans and a short tight top. As he drove the air came in through the open window and she held her long hair back from her face with her right hand. He saw the angle of her bent arm and he said, understanding the callousness of the question, but wanting to ask it, “Your sister. Seeta. How is she?”
Sadia looked at Mason. “Of course,” she said. And then she looked out the window and turned back to him and said, “She’s changed. Does whatever Ajit says. He’s selling RVS and he wears a suit and polishes his shoes every night. He’s not a philosopher. My parents don’t like him.”
Mason nodded, as if this were a kind of justice. “They didn’t like me either. There was a time, and you’re gonna think this is weird, but there was a time when I believed that I would marry your sister. I pictured us in a little apartment downtown and she’d work or go to university and I’d have graduated from high school and be going to university too.”
“That’s not weird. Impossible, but not weird. I used to imagine living with Mr. Anthony, the woods teacher. Whenever I was in class and working at this little wooden urn I was building, he’d come over to the band saw or the lathe and show me something and try to look down my top and stupid me, I thought it’d be fun to get pervy with him.”
Mason tried to picture Sadia with Mr. Anthony. It wasn’t easy.
Sadia said, “Seeta’s happy, though. She’s coming to visit next week. You could see her if you want.”
Mason said that he wasn’t sure. “What would we talk about? Tennis? Danny? Your father’s rake?”
“Hah, Seeta told me about that.” She gave a quick snort and pushed a fist lightly against Mason’s shoulder. Mason drove on. He sensed the evening closing in on him: the few minutes dancing with chubby Amy; the girl on the table unclasping her bra; even this moment here, sitting beside Sadia Chahal, pretending it meant something but wishing for more than this. He was suddenly an
d fiercely aware of Lena’s presence out there somewhere and he wondered if he should get rid of Sadia, drop her off at home, and go find Lena.
And then Sadia, who had been looking out the window, sat up and said, as if she understood Mason’s thoughts, that she didn’t want to go home. She wanted to be dropped off at Brenda Darby’s house. She directed Mason and they ended up in a large gated area. The stone house, the grounds, the coach house, the metal sculptures. Sadia got out and poked her head back into the open door and asked Mason to wait. She disappeared and Mason waited. It was one in the morning. He was sitting in his mother’s car, alone. Sadia reappeared. She ran down the sloping driveway, her heels slipping out sideways, and she called out in a fluted, whispery voice, “It’s okay. Brenda’s awake. Her parents are out. I called my mom and said I was spending the night here. Brenda says if you want, you can come in. We can go for a swim. They just got the pool going this weekend.”
Mason was tired. He said he didn’t have anything to wear. Sadia said Brenda’s Dad would have something. Or her brother; she had an older brother. “Let’s,” she said, and she closed the door and walked away, looking back and waving for Mason to come. And so he joined her and, for several hours, the time between 1:30 and 5:30 on that Saturday morning, he let the richness of Brenda Darby and her life swallow him up. He hadn’t met Brenda before. Sadia had explained that she went to a private school and observing her Mason figured that she knew about things he couldn’t begin to guess at, but she let him come into her house and she said, “Hi, Mason,” and handed him a pair of baggy black swimming trunks and told him to change in the downstairs bathroom. He rose from the basement, walked past a pool table and a steam room, and out onto the patio, where the milky pool lights revealed Brenda and Sadia floating on their backs, bodies shimmering. The green water, the dark sky, the strange bathing suit against his skin, the humid air, Brenda’s soft slow voice, Sadia’s dark narrow waist; he felt, for a moment, that he was hovering above the scene and watching a boy called Mason Crowe stand at the edge of a pool in which two girls swam. A sharp quick loneliness that he shook off. The pool was a bright hole. The warm water slid over his head and he sank into the silence, hearing the occasional echo of the girls talking above him. He swam alone, near the deep end, and then joined the girls on the deck where the three of them shared a joint. Again, he thought of Lena, but then the thought of her disappeared and he lay on his back and looked up at the sky. At some point Brenda served croissants and olives and grape jelly in tiny jars that crowded the plates. There was no alcohol because Brenda’s father didn’t allow drinking and swimming. Brenda said this and smiled at Mason. She was wearing a green-and-white-striped two-piece and only once, when she was walking away from him towards the house to get more croissants, did Mason study her body. She was slightly thick-waisted and she had a small bum that made her look oddly proportioned. Before Brenda came back out onto the deck, Sadia said, “Isn’t she gorgeous,” and Mason said, “Yes, she is,” though it was not a beauty he wanted to hold in his hands. She was rich and refined and Mason saw that this was the life his mother wanted and now had. Brenda was polite, asked Mason questions, not too personal, and she paid attention to him, and when he went back into the pool he saw Brenda and Sadia sitting and talking and laughing and he knew that he was not in danger, and that the night would not end badly.
