Me and Mr. Stenner

8.

Did I tell you about the bronze cats?

I guess not.

It’s funny how things that are really important can slip your mind.

Mr. Stenner tried so hard to make pancakes a tradition with us, but failed. Instead, without his having to try so very hard at all, the bronze cats did become a tradition. He gave me the first one on Christmas Day — the day Dad gave me the tape recorder and I was opening all my gifts and telling Dad what they were, which I now realize was a very cruel thing to do. I did what may seem like a cruel thing on their wedding day, too, but maybe if you understand what was going on in my head you won’t think it was so cruel. Anyway, the only person I was really cruel to was myself. Both days.

On Christmas Day, I was cruel to myself because I was trying so hard to make sure Daddy shared everything that I almost missed what was happening. I mean, how can you really enjoy opening presents when you’ve got to give a blow-by-blow report to a tape recorder because you’re afraid your father is all alone in a big empty house weeping by the fire. Which he wasn’t. Actually, he spent Christmas Day with his brother in Mamaroneck. The one thing I didn’t describe to the tape recorder was the bronze cat Mr. Stenner gave me.

The box was marked “To Abby from Mr. Stenner.” It was a small box, maybe two inches square and an inch high, but whatever was in it weighed a ton! What was in it was a gray-striped tabby lying on his back on two puffy blue pillows, and playing with a red ball. The pillows were enameled bronze, same as the cat, but they looked so soft it was almost impossible to believe they were made of metal. I opened the box and was reaching for the record button on the machine when I suddenly realized I shouldn’t be telling Dad about something Mr. Stenner had given me, because this might get Dad angry or depressed. Or maybe I just felt this was something private, between me and Mr. Stenner — something Dad shouldn’t share. I really don’t know.

But in that second when I saw the little striped pussycat holding the red ball between his front paws and sinking into those stuffed pillows, I thought of Singapore the cat who’d got run over, and I thought about Mr. Stenner helping me to bury Singapore out back, and about him helping me with the right words to say at the funeral. And I thought it was very kind and sensitive of him to buy me a miniature bronze cat for Christmas, something special from him to me, even though I had no idea at the time that we were starting a tradition.

That was the first of the cats.

I got the second cat on the day they were married.

Early that morning, Mom came into my bedroom wearing her serious face, so I knew we were going to have a meaningful talk. She sat on the edge of my bed, took my right hand between both her hands, and said, “Well, Abby, here we are.”

“Mm,” I said.

“How do you feel?” Mom said.

I shrugged.

“Are you happy?” Mom asked.

“Oh, Mom,” I said, “do you have to marry him?” and threw myself into her arms like a three-year-old and began weeping. “I don’t want you to marry him,” I said. “I don’t want him to be my stepfather, I want us to go back to Daddy, I want to live with Daddy, I want both of us to live with Daddy, I don’t like Mr. Stenner, I hate Mr. Stenner, please don’t marry him, Mom, I’ll do anything you ask in my entire lifetime, I swear to God, if you just wont marry him, just do me that one favor.”

“No,” Mom said.

“Mom, please, I’ll throw myself out the window if you marry him, I’ll throw myself in front of a car, I’ll...”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Mom said.

“Mom, can’t you see it’ll make me miserable? Can’t you see I’ll hate him as long as I live, I’ll...?”

“That would be a terrible shame,” Mom said. “He’s a good man, Abby. You’d be missing a lot by hating him instead of loving him.”

“Shit, I love Daddy!” I shouted.

Mom didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t even fine me ten cents. She just kept hugging me close and patting my shoulder and whispering things against my hair. Just before she left the room she said, “Will you be all right, darling?”

I nodded.

“Bless your heart,” she said, and went out.

When Mr. Stenner came in about ten minutes later, I was still crying. Mom always told him everything, but I could tell she hadn’t told him about the conversation we’d just had. He seemed honestly surprised to find me crying.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s the prob, Lum?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Need a handkerchief?”

“No.”

“Why the tears?”

“None of your business,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “Here’s something for you.”

“What is it?” I said, and sniffed.

“Little present,” he said, and handed me a small box wrapped with white paper and tied with a pink ribbon. “Commemorate this happy occasion,” he said, and then said, “Sob, sob.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” I said.

“Who’s making fun of you? Those are tears of joy, aren’t they?”

I shot him an angry look, and then loosened the ribbon, and tore the wrapping paper off the box, and lifted first the lid and then the square of cotton that was lying on top of the present. The present, of course, was another bronze cat. A striped tabby. Two inches tall. Standing on his hind legs. His tail trailing behind him on the floor. In his left paw, he was holding a bright red rose against his chest.

“That’s because you’ll be handing out the flowers,” Mr. Stenner said.

“I know,” I said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said.

The day could not have been more perfect.

The wedding and reception were to take place in Arthur Randolph Knowles s eighteenth-century house, and he kept telling the assembled guests that he had ordered the day months in advance just to be absolutely certain of cloudless blue skies and balmy breezes. “One can’t be too careful when making requests of the Supreme Being, now can one?” he said, and I still thought he was an ass. My mother thought so, too, I could tell; but I guess she was willing to put up with almost anything on this, her wedding day.

There were some fifty guests in all, including “a giggle of little girls” (Mr. Stenner’s expression) who had been invited especially for me, friends of mine from the neighborhood where Dad still lived. There were four of them, including Julia D Amiano. It felt strange seeing the D’Amianos at the wedding; they d been friends of Mom’s and Dad’s before the split. Funny thing — I kept expecting to see Dad there. Expected him to walk through the door, shake hands with Mr. Stenner, kiss Mom on the cheek, do just what all the other guests were doing. It was weird. I mean, I knew Dad hadn’t been invited, knew in fact that it would’ve been positively ridiculous to have invited him. Yet I expected him to be there.

“Which one is Mr. Stenner?” Julia asked.

“The one with the eyeglasses. Standing near the fireplace.”

“With the brown hair?”

“Yeah, and the eyeglasses.”

“He’s nice-looking,” Julia said.

“You think so?” I said, and shrugged.

“Yeah,” she said. “Does he beat you?”

“Mr. Stenner?” I said, and burst out laughing. “Of course not!”

“Then maybe it won’t be so bad,” Julia said, and shrugged. “Getting married again, I mean.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Are you going to keep on living in this house?”

“We don’t live in this house,” I said.

“I thought you lived here.”

“No. Mr. Stenner’s lawyer lives here.”

“Which one is he?”

“The one over there in the gray suit.”

“The fat one?”

“Yeah, the pudgy one.”

“Yeah,” Julia said. “Him?”

“Yeah. His name is Arthur Randolph Knowles.”

“How come they’re getting married here, instead of in a church?” Julia asked.

“Well, there’ll be a minister and all,” I said.

“Which one is the minister?”

“The one over there. Near the window.”

“Why is his nose red?”

“Mom says he’s a drunk.”

“Why’d they hire a drunken minister?”

“He’s not drunk now,” I said. “And you don’t hire ministers. He married Mr. Knowles s son here in this same house, and Mr. Knowles thought it would be appropriate if he did the job for Mom and Mr. Stenner, too. Since it was the same house and all.”

“Oh,” Julia said, and hesitated for a long time. Then she said, “What does ‘appropriate’ mean?”

“Suitable,” I said.

“Yeah,” Julia said.

“Do you see that redhead over there?” I said.

“Which one?”

“In the low-cut dress.”

“Yeah.”

“She almost bit Mr. Stenner’s finger off.”

“Why?”

“Because he was pointing.”

“Oh,” Julia said. “Well, you shouldn’t point. Here come two more people. Do they get flowers?”

“Yeah,” I said. “They’re my stepbrothers.”

It was Luke and Jeff. They were supposed to get red flowers. This is the way it worked. Mom and Mr. Stenner had asked the florist to make up little nosegays for all the women guests who were members of the family or close friends. For the menfolk, there were red carnations and pink carnations. The red carnations went to family and the pink carnations went to close friends. Not everybody had a carnation or a nosegay. But nobody felt bad if they didn’t get one, because they understood about family and close friends and all that. In fact, the only close friends who got carnations were Mr. Knowles, whose house the wedding was taking place in, and Mr. Flanders, who was Mr. Stenner’s best man. Mom’s maid of honor — or matron of honor, I guess — was Mrs. Alice Jackson, who’d gone to college with Mom, and who’d been her good friend ever since.

Luke and Jeff came in looking sort of stunned.

Jeff, the oldest son, the one who looked like Mrs. Stenner and had a beard, was wearing a rumpled corduroy suit and a shirt open at the throat. I remember thinking he shouldn’t have looked so sloppy for his own father’s wedding. Luke was wearing a plaid jacket, and gray flannel slacks, and a shirt and tie.

I said, “Hi,” and they said, “Hi,” and I handed them both red carnations, and Jeff said, “What’s this for?” and I said, “You’re supposed to put it in your lapel,” and Luke said, “Here, let me help you, Jeff,” and as they pinned on the flowers, they looked around the room. There were people there they knew, friends of their father from the old marriage, and people they’d met in the house we were renting, and of course Mr. Stenner’s agent who they knew from when they were just this high.

I watched them as they walked deeper into the room. Mr. Knowles had put on some classical music, I heard it only as something in the background. They were shaking hands with people, these two boys who within the next half hour would become my legitimate stepbrothers. I could say to people, “These are my stepbrothers.” I had always wanted a brother. When I was looking up all those names in the baby-name book, it was mostly boys’ names I had looked up. I didn’t know how I felt about having a pair of stepbrothers, though. They looked embarrassed. I suddenly understood what they were feeling. They were feeling, even though they were much older than I, even though they were almost grown up, they were feeling just what I was feeling. That the wrong two people were getting married today. It shouldn’t have been Mom and Mr. Stenner. It should have been either Mom and Dad, or else Mr. Stenner and Joan Stenner, but it should not have been these two, it should not have been my mother and their father who were about to get married here today.

“Come on, Julia,” I said. “Let’s go outside.”

We went outside to where Mr. Knowles had a swing hanging from a branch of an old oak tree, not a worn-out tire, but a real wooden swing that seemed to fit exactly the mood of the house. From the outside, the house itself looked like pictures I’d seen of houses in England. It didn’t have a thatched roof or anything like that, but there were gables and leaded windows and huge chimneys. A rolling lawn ran from the back of the house to a stream below, and as Julia pushed me on the swing and I soared up into the sky, I could see a lonely horseman riding past far down on the other side of the stream. I thought back to that day when Mr. Stenner and I were walking around the hill, and he’d commented about the horse and rider, and then the swing came down again, and Julia pushed me up into the air, and I heard laughter, and then I heard Mr. Knowles’s voice saying, “Of course I hired the horseman, got him from Central Casting,” and there was more laughter, though I didn’t get the joke.

I heard piano music coming from somewhere in the house, so I got off the swing, and Julia and I went to see if we could find out who was playing. In the music room we found the redheaded model who had almost bitten off Mr. Stenner’s finger, and she was playing the bass hand to something while a man sitting alongside her on the bench was playing the melody. It was nice music, though not as good as rock. The wedding invitation had specified three p.m., and all of the guests were assembled by a quarter past — with the exception of one fashion editor who Mr. Stenner said was always late for everything. She arrived at three-thirty, and by three thirty-five the minister was ready to begin the ceremony. Mom came into the music room to tell everyone they were about to begin, and then she came to me and said, “Abby, darling?” and I said, “Just a second, Mom,” and she said, “Everybody? Please come,” and smiled, and gestured toward the living room, and went out.

You’ve got to visualize this next scene.

Standing under the old oaken beams in the living room, the bay window streaming bright afternoon sunlight, Mom and Mr. Stenner heard the words and responded to them for the second time in each of their lives.

“Peter Stenner, will thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony? Will thou love her, comfort her, honor and cherish her, in sickness and in health, prosperity and adversity, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will,” he said.

“Lillith O’Neill, will thou have this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony? Will thou love him, comfort him, honor and cherish him, in sickness and in health, prosperity and adversity, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will,” she said.

“The wedding ring is the outward and visible sign of an inward bond,” the minister said, “which unites two loyal hearts in endless love.”

“In token of the vow made between us,” Mr. Stenner said, “with this ring I thee wed.”

“In token of the vow made between us,” Mom said, “with this ring I thee wed.”

“Forasmuch as Peter Stenner and Lillith O’Neill have consented together in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this company, I pronounce that they are husband and wife together.” The minister looked at them, and smiled, and said, “May God bless your union and grant to you the wisdom, strength, and love to nurture and sustain it forever. Amen.”

Behind her, my mother heard Grandmother Lu’s voice repeating the word “Amen,” and then Mr. Stenner kissed Mom, and the minister leaned toward her and said in his gentle voice, “May I have the honor, Mrs. Stenner?” and kissed her on the cheek. Mom later told me she was thinking only Mrs. Stenner, I am now Mrs. Stenner, when suddenly she heard a shriek, and thought I’d hurt myself somehow, fallen from a chair, perhaps — had I been standing on a chair while watching the ceremony? And then it occurred to Mom that she hadn’t seen me since several minutes before the ceremony, when she’d gone into the music room to tell me they were ready to start. She saw me pushing my way through the crowd now, clutching the nosegay Mr. Stenner had ordered specially for me, tiny pink roses and baby’s breath. My face was contorted in agony, and tears were streaming down my cheeks.

“I missed it!” I said.

“What?” Mom said.

“What?” Mr. Stenner said.

“I missed the wedding!” I said, sobbing. “You didn’t tell me the wedding was happening!”

“But I did tell you, darling. I came into the music room...”

“You didn’t!” I said. “I missed the divorce, and now I missed the wedding, too!”

“Well,” Mr. Stenner said, “if you missed it, you missed it.” He took a fresh handkerchief from his pocket, dried my tears, and then said, “Now stop crying, or you’ll miss the reception, too.”

Mom watched him as he took my hand and walked to where his sons were standing. Both of them embraced him as he approached, and then Luke awkwardly patted me on the head.