Evan Hunter - Me and Mr. Stenner

“It’s elephant hair,” Mr. Stenner said. “It’s supposed to bring good luck.”

“Like a forever,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” I said. I went to Mom’s little traveling kit and took the scissors from it, and carried it back to the bed where Mr. Stenner was sitting up against the pillow. I held out my wrist. I didn’t have to say anything, he knew right off, same as I’d known when he was taking pictures of people taking pictures. He cut off the forever that I was wearing, and then slipped the new forever onto my wrist.

It meant something.

I was shaking.

It all began going beautifully after that.

The plan was to spend six days at Porto Santo Stefano, a peninsula off the coast, some ninety minutes north of Rome. Then we would drive back to Rome on the night before our departure, check in the rented car, spend the night in a hotel there, and taxi to the airport early the next morning. The hotel in Porto Santo Stefano was one Mr. Stenner had stayed at before. On the day we arrived, we were sitting near the pool, Mom and Mr. Stenner drinking whisky-sodas, me drinking a silvery confection that looked like liquid mercury — when a woman suddenly said, “Peter?”

Mr. Stenner looked at her, and then jumped out of his chair. “Wenefride!” he said, and hugged the woman to him, and then kissed her on the cheek, and asked immediately, “Where’s Emile? Is he here with you?”

“But of course he’s here with me,” the woman said, and laughed. She was in her early fifties, older than Mr. Stenner, and she glanced at Mom now with open curiosity.

“Wenefride,” Mr. Stenner said, “let me introduce you to my wife and my daughter. Lillith, this is Wenefride Gastuche. Wenefride — Lillith and Abigail.”

“How do you do?” Wenefride said, and extended her hand first to Mom and then to me. “Come, let’s find Emile! He will be so happy to see you again.”

The Gastuches were Belgians Mr. Stenner had met on his last trip to Italy. They didn’t seem at all surprised that he and the former Mrs. Stenner were now divorced. (“I could sense it coming even then,” Wenefride said to him.) I liked Wenefride a lot. You should have seen the stuff she had with her. She was only going to be away from home for two weeks, but she’d taken with her enough clothes to last eight months! That very afternoon, she showed me all the gowns and wigs and jewelry she’d brought, and it was like being in the best department store in the world. Her husband Emile was a little baldheaded man who was the director of a bank in Brussels. When he saw Mr. Stenner, he threw his arms around him and hugged him like a bear. In a minute, they were making plans. Emile said he had found a wonderful place to go swimming, and he told us to be ready at seven p.m. sharp, at which time he would personally drive us all there.

“You’ll love it,” he said, and waggled his eyebrows.

Mr. Stenner doubted very much that we’d enjoy swimming in the ocean after sunset, but Emile was a man of many surprises, and the spot he took us to was a thermal spa that bubbled up out of the ground and tumbled over a waterfall to dozens of little pools below. Sitting with Mr. Stenner in one of the pools, I said, “This is the best time I ever had,” and then slid over the polished rocks to join Wenefride, where she was splashing in a pool some fifteen feet below.

Mom sat down beside Mr. Stenner.

“Are you happy?” he asked her.

“I’m very happy,” she said. “Are you?”

“I’m very very happy.”

“So am I!” I shouted up to them.

Mr. Stenner burst out laughing. “Do you know what I like best about you?” he shouted.

“What?” I shouted back.

“Your ears!”

The next night, Emile drove us to a rustic old inn high in the mountains. He got lost on the way there, and we didn’t arrive till almost ten o’clock, but ahhh, what a feast! To start the meal, we had a breaded vegetable soup called zuppa alla Certosina. And then we ate fresh rock mullet in tomato sauce, and lamb roasted on a spit, and fried zucchini, and funghi alla Fiorentina , which were mushrooms prepared in the Florentine manner. The wine was delicious, the bread was hot and crisp. There was a blazing fire, and laughter from the kitchen, and laughter at the table, and I felt happier than I ever had in all my life.

In the morning, Mr. Stenner rented a fifty-one-foot ketch with a captain and two crew members and he took us and the Gastuches for a sail up the coast to a cove where we swam till noon, and ate sandwiches the hotel had made for us, and then dozed on the beach till the sun grew weak. He danced with Mom in the hotel lounge that night, and when he got back to the table, I said, “Aren’t you going to dance with me?”

It was all going so damn beautifully.

Until, you know, I went and spoiled it again.

On the morning we were supposed to leave Porto Santo Stefano, I went into the room next door, and told Mom I wanted to talk to her privately. Mr. Stenner was still in bed, half-asleep. Mom was sitting at the dressing table, putting on her lipstick. I whispered in her ear.

She looked at me.

She put down her lipstick.

“I think you’d better discuss that with him,” she said.

“You tell him,” I said.

“Tell me what?” he asked, and raised himself up on one elbow.

“Never mind,” I said.

“What is it?” he asked Mom.

“She wants to give you back the bracelet,” Mom said.

“What?” he said.

“Before we go home. She doesn’t want her father to see it. She’s afraid it’ll upset...”

“What?”

He got out of bed in his pajamas, and walked into the bathroom. I could hear the water running in there. Mom looked at me and shook her head. I went back to my own room. In a little while, I heard the door to their room opening and closing, and I peeked through my window and saw him walking down to the sea. I watched him. He went all the way to the edge of the ocean, and stood there on the rocks looking out at the deep blue cove. A sailboat was anchored just offshore, bobbing on the choppy water. The sky was overcast, the wind blowing fiercely. I saw him pull the shawl collar of his cardigan high on the back of his neck, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. I put on one of his old sweaters over my long pink flannel nightgown. He’d given me the sweater a long time ago, it was the blue one with a hole eaten in it by Singapore the cat. I put on his leather hat, too, and pulled it down low on my forehead, almost hiding my eyes. Then I went out of the room.

He was climbing back up to the hotel when he saw me standing at the top of the winding steps cut into the rock ledge.

“Get back to the room,” he said. “You’ll catch cold.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“The hell with it,” he said.

“Can’t you tell I’m sorry?”

“No,” he said.

“It’s just...”

“Save it,” he said, “I’m really not interested.”

“It’s just I have two of you, and it’s hard. I don’t want to hurt either of you, don’t you see? I love you both.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

“Oh, please believe me,” I said. “I love you.”

He told me later that he realized something in that instant. He realized that never in all the time he’d known me had he said those same words to me. I love you. I was only twelve, I was far too young to treat those words cheaply, they were to me treasured words. I love you. In Milan, Mom had asked him, “Have you ever tried loving her?” As he climbed those steps in Porto Santo Stefano, he wondered if he ever had.

I stood silhouetted against the sky. He climbed to where I was standing, and we looked at each other silently and solemnly, and then he put his arm around me, and together we began walking back to the hotel.