Me and Mr. Stenner

2.

I really didn’t like him.

First of all, he was always kissing my mother. Everytime I turned around, there he was kissing her. And his breath smelled of tobacco. And on weekends, he didn’t shave. And on weekends, he always went around with these ratty sweaters on. One of them had a hole in the sleeve that was eaten by Singapore the cat, who was a Siamese my father had given me on my seventh birthday.

I blamed Mr. Stenner for Singapore getting killed.

I blamed him because he was always mean and rotten to the poor animal, who after all didn’t know better than to eat holes in woolen things. Mom asked about it at the pet shop, and also at the veterinarian, and they told her that some Siamese cats did eat wool, they didn’t know why, perhaps it was a vitamin deficiency. It was my guess that eating wool was simply Singapore’s way. She was, after all, a poor dumb creature. I don’t mean stupid, I merely mean dumb. And if you’re mean to a creature, the poor thing is going to leave the house and go running down to the dirt road all the time, and sooner or later get hit by an automobile, which was what happened to poor Singapore. Because he was mean to her, and only because the poor thing was eating holes in some of his socks and sweaters.

As a matter of fact, Singapore had also eaten a hole in the woolen afghan Grandmother Lu had sent from Palo Alto, California, which was practically my favorite thing in the whole world, but I hadn’t said a mean word to Singapore about it, had I? No. Because I loved that cat. And Mr. Stenner didn’t. And that’s why the poor thing got killed. Or at least, that’s the way I doped it out. Mr. Stenner came out back with me and helped me dig a little grave under the big elm tree and also made a box to put Singapore in. He even helped me figure out what to say when we buried the cat. But I still didn’t like him.

He wasn’t like my father.

Before the split, I used to go riding with my father. He used to take me for riding lessons on Saturday mornings at Highland Estates — that was the name of the riding academy. The road that ran past the house we rented after the separation was a dirt road, and Mr. Stenner said that was because a lot of people living on the road kept horses and wanted to ride them around the entire hillside. He said the reason his car had got stuck in the mud the month before was because the people who kept horses always signed petitions every time the town tried to blacktop the road. He was so funny that night his car got stuck in the mud. He came walking up to the house with his pants all dirty and his shoes dripping water, and his hair sticking up, he looked like some kind of monster in a horror movie. And he started ranting and raving about spending an hour and a half on the train from the city, and then getting stuck in the mud, people who kept horses should be shot! Mom calmed him down and made a drink for him, and I sat on the couch with my homework spread out on the piano bench in front of me, and stole a look at him, and thought he probably would shoot a horse. In cold blood.

Then one Saturday morning, when I was walking around the hill with him, a man came by riding a horse, and Mr. Stenner watched the horse and rider, and then said, “God, that was a beautiful horse, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but you don’t like horses,” I said.

“Who says I don’t like horses?”

“You said horses should be shot.”

“No, I said people who keep horses should be shot.”

“That’s the same thing,” I said.

“It’s not,” he said. “Let’s take in some of these leaves for Mommy, shall we?”

I shrugged.

But I helped him find some pretty leaves for her.

Let me tell you about her conversation with the woman from the telephone company. This was when we first moved into the house Mr. Stenner had rented for us. The house was furnished, and there were phones already in it, but the owner wanted us to contact the phone company to inform them that we were now renting the house, so that we’d be billed for the service each month, instead of him. Mom called the phone company, and asked for the business office, and explained the situation, and figured that was all there’d be to it — from next month on the bills would simply come to Lillith O’Neill on Canterbury Road. But the woman in the business office said, “Have you ever had a telephone before, madam?”

“Yes, certainly,” Mom said.

I was sitting on the kitchen floor, playing jacks, and hoping Mr. Stenner wouldn’t be coming for dinner as usual. I heard only Mom’s side of the conversation, but at the table later she repeated the whole thing to Mr. Stenner, and that’s how I learned what the woman in the business office said during the conversation.

“In whose name was your previous telephone listed?” the woman asked.

“My husband’s.”

“And will this telephone be listed in his name?”

“No,” Mom said. “We’re separated. We expect to be divorced soon.”

“Ah,” the woman said. “Then this telephone would be listed in your name, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” the woman said. “Tell me, Mrs. O’Neill, are you at present employed?”

“No,” Mom said.

Mom had been employed at a literary agency during the first year and a bit more of her marriage, and then she’d got pregnant with me, and from that time on she’d been employed as a wife and mother while Dad climbed the architectural ladder. As she had just told the woman in the business office, how ever, she was at present unemployed. In fact, she was at present a woman separated from her husband and living in a rented house with her daughter and the man she hoped to marry as soon as a couple of divorces were out of the way. This was a very difficult thing to explain to a woman in the business office of the telephone company. Besides, Mom felt it didn’t have to be explained.

“Will your husband be paying for this service?” the woman in the business office asked.

“No, he will not,” Mom said. “I just told you we’re separated.” She was beginning to realize where the woman in the business office was going, and she didn’t like it. “I’ve had my own telephone for the past thirteen years,” she said. “I certainly...”

“Yes, but it was in your husband’s name,” the woman said. “He was paying the bills.”

“So what? I was doing the dishes and changing the diapers,” Mom said.

“Have you any credit references?” the woman asked.

Had this been last month, or the month before, Mom could have reeled off at least a dozen credit references, because that was how many little plastic cards she’d carried in her wallet. But my father had cut off all her charge privileges the moment she’d told him she was leaving him. She now told the woman in the business office that she did not at present have any credit references.

“I see,” the woman said. “In that case, we shall require a sixty-dollar deposit from you. Before we can begin service in your name.”

That was when Mom slammed down the telephone receiver with all her might. At dinner that night, Mr. Stenner said, “One of these days the United States is going to declare war on the telephone company.”