Me and Mr. Stenner

4.

The weekends I spent with my father made me happy, and they also made me sad. He would drive up the road to the rented house on top of the hill, and park the car outside the front door, and toot the horn. It was the same car he used to drive when the family was still together. In fact, there was still one of Mom’s lipsticks in the glove compartment. He would wait out there in the cold while Mr. Stenner carried my bag downstairs and out to the car.

“Hello, Frank,” Mr. Stenner would say.

“Hello, Peter,” my father would say. “Ready to go, Abby?”

Mom would come out into the cold, hugging herself, and she would give Dad quick instructions about one thing or another — homework I had to finish, or what time I had to be in bed, or what time she expected me back on Sunday — all clipped and precise. It was very hard for me to imagine that they had ever been married to each other. The truth of the matter, of course, was that they were still married to each other. Mom was married to Dad, not Mr. Stenner. Yet it was Dad who came to the house Mr. Stenner was renting, to pick up his own daughter, while Mr. Stenner stood there in the driveway with clouds of vapor coming from his mouth and the trees rattling in the wind. It was somewhat eerie.

Because even though Mom and Mr. Stenner weren’t married yet, as I drove away from that big old house every other Friday, I honestly felt as if I were leaving home. As if those two people standing at the top of the driveway watching me leave were really my mother and my father, though I knew that wasn’t true. The father part, I mean. Mr. Stenner was not my father. He wasn’t even my stepfather yet. He was just a man who was living with Mom and me. And helping me with my homework. And telling me not to go charging through the house like a herd of buffalo. And showing me how to do headstands against the wall. And making candles with me from the set Aunt Harriet had sent me for my tenth birthday. And carrying my suitcase to the car, and saying “Hello, Frank” to my father, and then saying “Have a good time, Abby,” and standing in the driveway with my mom while the car pulled away.

The house looked warm and cozy up there on top of the hill.

The house I used to live in with my mother and father was smaller than the house we were renting, and my room was downstairs, alongside the laundry room. I have to tell you the truth about this, I didn’t like the room I had in my father’s house. I’m not sure whether or not I liked that room even when my mother and my father were still living together, but I’m positive I didn’t like it when he was living there alone. To begin with, it was downstairs, and I could hear the furnace going, and also I could sometimes hear raccoons prowling around outside the window — if they were raccoons. In the dead of night, they sounded like creatures from the black lagoon, and I would lie there with the covers pulled practically to my eyes, listening to the sounds of the monsters outside, and the moaning of the wind didn’t help, either, and the creaking of the floorboards, and the furnace going off like a rocket to the moon. Finally, I’d get out of bed and go running barefooted to the steps at the end of the hall, and then go upstairs to my father’s bedroom (the one that used to be his and Mom’s) and knock on the door, and he’d put on a robe and come out into the living room and we’d talk till I got sleepy enough to go downstairs again.

There wasn’t much to talk about. It was very hard to talk to my father. In fact, I did most of the talking. Mr. Stenner was a chatterbox, it was hard to get a word in edgewise when he was around, but my father was a quiet sort of man who never let you know very much about him. I don’t remember if we’d had trouble talking to each other before the separation, or if that started afterward, when I was visiting every other weekend. I do know that the conversations we had together were... well, uncomfortable.

I remember one weekend — Mom had hired this Norwegian housekeeper, a big husky woman named Berit, and Dad was delayed picking me up. Mom and Mr. Stenner had a dinner date, so they left me with Berit, and Dad came for me later. He was very quiet all through dinner, but I didn’t think anything about that because I was the one who usually did most of the talking anyway. He was also drinking a lot. I guess maybe the drinking had something to do with what happened when we got back to his house.

He was trying to make a fire, but there was some problem with the flue or the draft or whatever, and he couldn’t get it going. It flared up and was fine for a few minutes, and then the flames died down, and the logs began smoking. He put more paper in, and it flared up again and then died again, and I guess he was becoming more and more frustrated. I wasn’t even watching him. I was reading a book. I was very interested in the book, as a matter of fact, and I guess he was crying for maybe two or three minutes before I even realized it.

“Dad?” I said.

He didn’t say anything, he just kept crying.

“Dad?”

I got up from where I was curled in the leather armchair across the room, and I went to him where he was sitting on the stone floor in front of the fireplace. He was sitting cross-legged, like an Indian, with his hands resting on his knees and sort of dangling limply. Tears were streaming down his face.

“What’s the matter?” I said. I was beginning to get frightened. I’d never seen my father crying before.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Then why are you crying?” I said.

“I’m not crying,” he said.

“Dad...”

“I said I’m not crying!” he shouted.

“Well, then...”

“Do you know something?” he said. His eyes were full of tears, the tears kept brimming over and spilling down his cheeks. He kept gasping for breath as he talked. “Would you like to know something, Abigail?”

“Yes, Dad,” I said, “but please stop crying.”

“Your mother is going to divorce me, did you know that?”

“Yes, Dad.”

His nose was running now, he reached for his handkerchief and blew his nose and said again, “Did you know that, Ab?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“She’s not going to be my wife anymore,” he said.

“I know.”

“She’s going to marry that...” He blew his nose again. “Did you know she’s going to marry him?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“That son of a bitch,” he said. “Do you know how long we’ve been married, Ab?”

“Thirteen years,” I said.

“That’s right,” he said, sniffing. “How’d you know that, Ab?”

“Mom told me. Dad, why don’t you...?”

“That’s a long time to be married to somebody, Ab. Thirteen years. And now she’s just going to get herself a divorce, she’s just going to wipe it all out, just like that,” he said, and tried to snap his fingers, but missed somehow. “They’re going to steal my girl from me,” he said.

“No, Dad.”

“Yes, they’re going to steal my little girl from me,” he said, and burst into a torrent of fresh tears. “Do you love me, Ab?” he said.

“I love you, Dad.”

He clutched me to him then, and he kept crying into my hair, not saying anything, just crying and crying, and gasping for breath, and holding me very tight.

“Dad,” I said, “shall I call Mr. Harkins?” Arthur Harkins was the man who lived across the road. His wife was named Josie Harkins, but she worked for the UN and traveled a lot, and probably wasn’t home. “Dad?”

“No,” he said. He was still clinging to me, his arms wrapped around me, his tears hot and wet against the side of my neck. And then I got really frightened because in between the tears he just began to ramble, just began saying things that had nothing to do with Mom divorcing him, or at least didn’t seem to have anything to do with it. Instead, it was as if somebody had opened a pipeline straight into his head. He was talking all this, while crying at the same time, but it sounded instead as if he were thinking it, do you know what I mean?

“Build things, that’s why,” he said. “Put them on paper, see them go up, that’s the meaning of it. Two kinds, creators and destroyers, that’s all, nobody else, just those. Be different if, sure, but no, not what she wants, oh no. When I told my mother, face lit up, just lit up, architecture, my, my, architecture. Build things. My, my.”

“Dad, please let me call Mr. Harkins.”

“Couldn’t believe it, just couldn’t believe it. Come home, nobody here, note on the kitchen table, what kind of way is that? Dear Frank, son of a bitch, dirty rotten son of a bitch...”

He shoved me away from him then, shoved me across the room, and then picked up an ashtray from the coffee table and threw it against the stone wall of the fireplace, and I ran out of the room and called home. Berit answered the phone, and she told me that my parents weren’t back yet. At that time, she didn’t know Mom and Mr. Stenner weren’t married; in fact, she quit the minute she found out. But she’d heard them mention that they were eating at a restaurant called The Cops and Robbers, and I could probably get them there if it was important.

“Berit,” I said, “there can’t be a restaurant called The Cops and Robbers.”

“That’s the name,” Berit said, and hung up. Berit spoke English with a heavy accent, and besides was the kind of woman who thought all children were nitwits.

In the kitchen, I could hear my father cursing as he took a tray of ice cubes from the refrigerator, and tried to get the cubes out of it, and spilled them all over the floor. I heard the tray when it fell, and heard the ice skittering over the tiles. I looked up The Cops and Robbers in the phone book, and couldn’t find it, and then I dialed O for Operator and asked her for The Cops and Robbers, and first she thought I wanted her to connect me with the police. But when I told her. I was looking for the number of a restaurant called The Cops and Robbers, she told me to dial 411 for Information, which I did, and of course there was no listing for any such place as The Cops and Robbers. So I looked in Dad’s little black book alongside the telephone, and I called Mr. Harkins after all, but I didn’t want to tell him Dad was out in the kitchen crying and talking to himself and yelling and whatnot, so I asked him instead if he knew of a restaurant called The Cops and Robbers, and Mr. Harkins began laughing, and said, “The what?”

“The Cops and Robbers,” I said.

“Honeychile,” Mr. Harkins said, “there couldn’t possibly be a restaurant called The Cops and Robbers.”

“I know,” I said.

“You’re not thinking of Cobbs Corners, are you?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “Thank you, Mr. Harkins.”

I hung up, and opened the phone book again, and of course it was Cobbs Corners, however Berit had got The Cops and Robbers from that was beyond me. I dialed the number and when somebody answered the phone, I asked to talk to Mrs. Stenner, please. This was the first time I’d ever referred to my mother as that. The person said, “Just a moment, please,” and in a minute or so my mother came on the line.

“What’s wrong?” she said immediately.

“Daddy’s acting funny,” I said.

“Funny how?”

“He’s swearing and crying and yelling,” I said. “Can you come get me, Mommy?”

“We’ll be there right away,” my mother said.

They picked me up about ten minutes later. My father didn’t even come into the driveway to say good-bye. As we drove off, I could see him through the sliding glass doors of the kitchen. He was sitting at the table, staring at his hands, and I suddenly felt I had done the wrong thing by asking my mother to come get me.

When we got home, my mother and Mr. Stenner had a hushed talk in the living room, and I heard Mr. Stenner saying, “I think we’d better call that guy across the road, Lil. What’s his name?”

“Arthur Harkins.”

“Yeah. Let’s call him, okay?”

“Yes,” Mom said.

They both went upstairs then, to use the phone in their bedroom. They closed the door behind them, but I could hear Mom’s voice anyway. She was talking to Mr. Harkins. She was telling him that Dad seemed to be in pretty bad shape, and would he just go over to make sure everything was all right.

What I couldn’t understand was why Mr. Stenner had suggested calling Mr. Harkins. If he really cared about what kind of shape my father was in, then he shouldn’t have stolen Mom away in the first place.

It was all very confusing.