Evan Hunter - Me and Mr. Stenner

“Gee, I wonder why,” Luke said suddenly. “What does that mean, Luke?” Mr. Stenner asked.

“Well, it is a pretty unusual arrangement, Pop.”

“Really? I thought kids today were used to all sorts of arrangements.”

“Just one difference, Pop,” Luke said.

“Yeah, and what’s that?”

“You’re not a kid.”

It was Jeff, though, who started the hassle later that night. Aunt Harriet had called from New Mexico, and I’d gone to the phone to talk to her, and I overheard the beginning of the conversation while I was thanking Aunt Harriet for the silver and turquoise bracelet and ring. Jeff had asked his father why he’d stopped sending Mrs. Stenner money, and Mr. Stenner said he had not stopped sending her money, he had simply stopped sending her as much money. Jeff wanted to know why he’d done that, did he want her to starve? Mr. Stenner very calmly answered that Jeff’s mother was not about to starve, and that he was only following his lawyer’s advice in reducing the monthly payments to her, a move designed to get her to negotiate again.

“If you’re so hot to negotiate,” Jeff said, his voice rising, “why the hell don’t you talk to her personally, instead of through the goddamn lawyers?”

In the kitchen, I suddenly began trembling.

“I have nothing to say to her personally,” Mr. Stenner said.

“Do you realize you’re the only one who wants this divorce?” Jeff said. “Mom doesn’t want it, I don’t want it, Luke doesn’t want it...”

“That’s right,” Mr. Stenner said. “ I want it.”

“That’s pretty selfish, isn’t it, Pop?” Luke asked.

“Yes, it’s selfish,” Mr. Stenner said.

“She still loves you, do you realize that?”

“Luke...”

“No matter what you’ve done, she still loves you,” Jeff said.

In the kitchen, I held my breath, waiting for Mr. Stenner’s answer.

“I don’t love her,” he said softly.

“Well,” Luke said, and sighed.

“Well, the hell with it,” Jeff said. “Let’s go home, Luke.”

After they left I saw Mr. Stenner sitting alone in the living room, staring at the flames in the fireplace. Once, he glanced up at the painting of the British cavalry officer on the wall.

Then he looked back at the fire again.

In January, a lot of trouble started.

First of all, my father went to France for two weeks to talk to a company about designing a big industrial complex for them in Marseilles, wherever that was. I missed him dreadfully, even though he sent a postcard each and every day of the week, including Sundays. But I knew what hotel he was staying at in Marseilles, and I also knew the time difference, because I’d asked Mrs. Jovet, who taught French at Hadley-Co. So one fine Friday night, when Mom and Mr. Stenner went to a movie and left me with a sitter, I picked up the telephone and made a collect, transatlantic, person-to-person call to Mr. Frank O’Neill at the Grand Hotel et Noailles in Marseilles. It was eight o’clock at night when I made the call, but like magic it became two o’clock in the morning when Dad picked up the phone. He sounded very sleepy and fuzzy at first, but then we had a nice long chat. I told him I missed him and wished he would hurry back home, and then we said good night to each other, though for him it was already morning, and I went downstairs to tell the sitter I was going to bed.

In the morning, at the breakfast table, I mentioned that I had called Dad in Marseilles.

“You what?” Mom said.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I reversed the charges.”

“Who gave you permission to call Marseilles?” my mother asked.

“I didn’t know I needed permission,” I said. “You said I could call Dad whenever I wanted, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but...”

“Well, I felt like calling him, so I called him.”

“What was so urgent that you had to call all the way to...?”

“Nothing was urgent. You said I could call him whenever I wanted to, so I called him. Isn’t that what she said, Mr. Stenner? That I could call Dad whenever...”

“Yes, that’s what she said.”

“See? So I felt like calling, so I...”

“ But,” Mr. Stenner said.

I looked at him.

“You’re taking advantage of a technicality,” he said.

“What does that mean?” I said.

“It means you know very well what we meant when we...”

“We? Who’s we? It was Mom who made the decision about the phone calls.”

“No, it was Mom and I together.”

“It was Mom who told me I could call Dad whenever...”

“Yes, it was Mom who told you. But it was Mom and I who...”

“What’d you have to do with it?”

“Mom and I make all the decisions together around here.”

“Even decisions about my father?”

“Yes, even decisions about your father.”

“I don’t see why you should have anything to say about calls I make to my father. If I want to call my own father...”

“Abby,” Mr. Stenner said, “we’re not going to get into a contest with your father. We told you it was okay to call him whenever you wanted, but I think you know that didn’t mean calling him in France.”

“You’re not to do that again,” my mother said.

“Well, where can I call him? Can I call him in Germany or Spain or...?”

“Is he going to Germany or Spain?” Mr. Stenner asked.

“I don’t know where he’s going. I’m just saying...”

“Then don’t worry about it.”

“I’m trying to find out what’s okay and what isn’t okay around here. I make a lousy call to France — that you didn’t even have to pay for — and next thing I know...”

“Abby,” Mr. Stenner said, “it is not okay to make any long-distance calls without first asking our permission. Does that clarify it for you?”

“What’s considered long distance? Is it long distance to call...”

“You know what long distance is.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then pick up the phone and ask the operator what the local dialing distance is. Anything outside of that is long distance.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” I said.

“You knew how to call Marseilles,” Mr. Stenner said, and put his napkin on the table, and got up, and went out into the living room.

The Rules List went up the next morning.

I think I already mentioned that when you came into the house the first thing you saw was a staircase going up to where the bedrooms were. The side of the staircase formed a passageway that led to the kitchen, and was paneled with wood. Mr. Stenner had decorated the wood paneling with black-and-white enlargements of pictures he had taken, though he was afraid Mr. Mauley would come in one day and tell him to take the pictures down.

Mr. Mauley had come around on New Year’s Day to wish us a happy new year, and while he was in the house, he’d gone up to my room to check on a storm window that was flapping. He’d noticed that Mr. Stenner had put up a mobile I’d made, and he started fussing and fretting about making holes in the ceiling, and about how difficult it was to repair ceilings when tenants put holes in them. Mr. Stenner very slowly and precisely told Mr. Mauley that the mobile was made of string and cardboard and was light enough to be held to the ceiling with a simple straight pin. Mr. Stenner had, in fact, very carefully and gently hammered the straight pin into the ceiling for me, being careful not to damage anything up there — as if a straight pin could damage anything. He had in fact bent fourteen pins before he got one to go in right.

Mr. Mauley hemmed and hawed and harrumphed a lot, but I think he got Mr. Stenner’s message about not bugging us over a simple little pinhole in the ceiling. But Mr. Stenner was worried now about the photographs he’d put up on the side of the staircase. Anyway, that’s where the Rules List was. Mr. Stenner had taken down one of the photographs, the one I loved of the swan, and had put the Rules List up in its place. The list was hand-lettered. He was pretty good at stuff like that, though not as good as Dad. This is what it looked like: