Stephanie Says

Spending the summer with dear old dad...

In the summer of 1976 when I was thirteen my father decided I should spend my summer vacation with him and his new wife Stephanie. My parents had divorced three years earlier and my mother readily agreed to my father’s plan, only too glad to get at least one child off her hands for a couple of months. The idea was to get closer to old dad–who for all intents and purposes was a stranger to me–while losing some weight at Young People’s Day Camps. I was a fat kid WAY before it was popular and I always felt like my parents–my father especially–found my weight personally embarrassing.

You might remember the commercials for Young People’s Day Camps that seemed to blanket the airwaves that year, featuring a poorly-poorly-animated talking balloon listing all the great activities your kid would get to do. Softball. Hiking. Swimming. Canoeing. Arts & Crafts. The kids in the commercial seemed to be having fun but when my parents sprung this plot on me I was not happy. Not happy at all. I hated gym class and this seemed like all-day gym class. I wanted to stay home and play my new Ibanez guitar. Or ride my Schwinn Varsity to the Sunrise Mall with my Cousin JD. Or go the hobby shop and listen to “Radar Love” on the jukebox while I ran the slot car track. But one lovely July morning I found myself shoving a few clothes into an old Samsonite case along with a pile of Mad magazines, two model kits (a Harley-Davidson chopper by Revell and a Don “The Snake” Prudhomme Funny Car kit by Monogram), plenty of Testor’s paint, two tubes of glue and my Evel Knievel Action Stunt Bike. My dad and Stephanie (we never called her mom or would allow anyone to refer to her as our step-mom) came and got me and we drove up to Scarsdale. I was sullen and quiet and felt like I was being kidnapped. When I got to Scarsdale I set my models and paint up on the dining room table, turned the TV on and began building.

On weekdays I’d get up around seven, have some breakfast with Dad and Stephanie, and then go basking in the glory that was Young People’s Day Camps. I’d be picked up at eight by a college kid in a cruddy little yellow school bus and bruise my kidneys for the next half hour as we bounced our way from one stop to the other, ending at whatever public park we’d be deposited in for the day. The counselors (more college kids) would break us off into small groups, usually the kids you were with on the bus (because they didn’t care enough to think up another way), and then they’d send us off to “play”. And what did we do for “play” at Young People’s Day Camps? Why, softball of course. We played softball from sunup to sundown, interrupted only by a pathetic lunch break of baloney sandwiches so thin they were translucent, a cup of Hi-C, and an apple. We played softball day in and day out every day. We played softball because it was the cheapest thing the cheap bastards running Young People’s Day Camps could think of to do with us.

My position was left field–I was too slow to play any of the important positions–and I spent my time envisioning how cool my models would look when they were finally built.  I also tried to remember every page of my brother’s Playboy, which I discovered before I left for Dad’s. I wondered when I’d see another naked woman. And I thought about my Schwinn and how I wished I could’ve brought it with me. And I wondered what school would be like when I got back. And I tried to see whatever my dad saw in that annoying rotten bitch Stephanie. I had lots of time to think about things because the ball was never hit to me. I mean never. One time a ball started coming my way but the hot shot in center field came racing over to snatch it away, as aware of my athletic ability as I was. I got plenty of turns at bat, though, and could usually be counted on to connect with the ball. I couldn’t run very fast but I could hit far and get runs in. I imagined the ball was Stephanie’s head and the harder I hit it the better I felt. Stephanie was the most unappealing person I’d ever known. I didn’t hate her because she broke up my “happy home.” She wasn’t the woman my father was having the affair with. THAT ended and THEN he met Stephanie. The rumor amongst my brothers and sisters and I was that Stephanie’s father was filthy rich (he had something to do with Pepsi) and she was part pig because her nose was so upturned you were forced to stare directly into her nostrils. Her nostril holes seemed cavernous and I always had a desire to put my index and fore-finger up them and pull her around the room by her nose. The more time forced to spend with her the more I began to hate her. The way she’d pronounce my father’s name with a soft “A”–“MAH-REE-O”–made my flesh crawl. His name was MAA-REE-O. When Stephanie directly addressed me I’d look at my feet and start stammering and wish she’d get a brain hemorrhage and die. She never did. I’d come back every day from Young People’s Day Camp and have two hours to myself during which I’d work on my models or read my Mad or watch TV. Then Stephanie would arrive and we’d avoid each other for another hour until my father came home. Then we’d have a big dinner. Afterwards I’d return to my models or my Mad or the TV. My dad directed my TV viewing even when he wasn’t around. I had a big argument with him about watching Yellow Submarine. He insisted it was about drugs and that Yellow Submarine was drug slang for pills. I just liked the music and that it was a cartoon. My father put his parental foot down on that one and I moped around for days. The next time we actually spoke was when he asked me about Young People’s Day Camp and what I was getting up to there. I told him. I told him about the never-ending, non-stop, ongoing game of softball and he was incredulous.

“What about the go-karts?”

I shook my head no.

“What about the horseback riding?”

I shook my head again.

“What about the hiking trips?”

No.

He had pulled out the brochure.

“What about the swimming?”

No.

“Well, uh, what do you do there all day? I mean what do you do?”

“Dad, I go stand in a field and wait for a ball that never comes. That’s what I do.”

When my Dad threw a fit you really just wanted to be out of his way. He got on the phone with someone at Young People’s Day Camps and started chewing them out.

“I’m not paying all this money for this – what the hell do you people think you’re doing down there? Huh? What the hell is going on?”

He became more unintelligible as the call went on.

The very next day I show up at Young People’s Day Camps and they pile us into a big bus and take us all down to a public pool and they say: “Go swimming–go swimming all day long.” I realized they only did it because my dad pitched a fit. Even thought I hated being seen without a shirt it was so fucking hot that I jumped in the pool and didn’t come out until they made us. When I came home my Dad asked “What did you do today?”

“We went swimming!”

“Oh. Swimming, huh?  Okay?”

Stephanie had just started setting out the dinner plates and and spooning food on them. I stared at my piece of chicken, still feeling uncomfortable around her and my dad. I didn’t like either of them and I knew they didn’t really want me around. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just sat there, wishing I could run away. Suddenly Stephanie throws down the serving spoon and says “Mario, I don’t know, but someone has to say something to this kid.” My dad, stunned, says “What do you mean?”

“Your son is the most ungrateful person I’ve ever known in my life.”

I’m thinking Is she talking about me?!

Then she launched into this tirade about how they were spending all this money on this day camp and I couldn’t find anything good to say about it and how she had cooked me dinner every night since I had been there and I couldn’t even compliment her on the dinner and how I was a rotten person. My cheeks flushed hot and I wanted to get up to leave. Stephanie put her hands on her hips and stood there tapping her foot, saying “Well, MAH-REE-O? Are you going to let your son treat me this way? Are you going to let him do this to me?”

I started feeling heat around my eyes and the next thing I knew I was crying. Stephanie was standing over me, saying “WELL? WELL? WELL? What do you have to say for yourself?”

My father stepped in front of her, turned to me and said “Go get your suitcase.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re not staying here tonight. We’ll go to a motel.”

It was the kindest thing he’d ever done for me.

But we never did go to a motel. Stephanie and my father went into the bedroom and talked for what seemed an hour, raising their voices. When the door opened again my father came out alone. I was working on my Harley-Davidson model and my Dad set himself down in front of the TV. We didn’t say anything to each other.

For the rest of my time in Scarsdale I stayed out of Stephanie’s way. My dad didn’t care if I spoke to her or not. I went to Young People’s Day Camps for another two weeks and then went back home to start another school year. I never saw Stephanie again.

Years later, after my father had married for the third time, I asked my sister what ever became of Stephanie.

“She had some kind of breakdown and was committed to a mental institution.”