Grandpa said, and Chuck felt that chill again. Not so pleasurable this time. Although Grandpa might be joking. He did joke from time to time these days. Jokes were to Grandpa what dancing was to Grandma. He tipped his beer. Belched. His eyes were red. “Christmas Yet to Come. Do you remember that one, Chucky?”
Chuck did, they watched A Christmas Carol every year on Christmas Eve even though they didn’t “do” Christmas otherwise, but that didn’t mean he knew what his grandpa was talking about.
“The Jefferies boy was only a short time later,” Grandpa said. He was looking at the TV, but Chuck didn’t think he was actually seeing it. “What happened to Henry Peterson… that took longer. It was four, maybe five years on. By then I’d almost forgotten what I saw up there.” He jerked a thumb at the ceiling. “I said I’d never go up there again after that, and I wish I hadn’t. Because of Sarah—your bubbie—and the bread. It’s the waiting, Chucky, that’s the hard part. You’ll find that out when you’re—”
The kitchen door opened. It was Grandma, back from Mrs. Stanley’s across the street. Grandma had taken her chicken soup because Mrs. Stanley was feeling poorly. So Grandma said anyway, but even at not quite eleven, Chuck had a good idea there was another reason. Mrs. Stanley knew all the neighborhood gossip (“She’s a yente, that one,” Grandpa said), and was always willing to share. Grandma poured all the news out to Grandpa, usually after inviting Chuck out of the room. But out of the room didn’t mean out of earshot.
“Who was Henry Peterson, Grandpa?” Chuck asked.
But Grandpa had heard his wife come in. He straightened up in his chair and put his can of Bud aside. “Look at that!” he cried in a passable imitation of sobriety (not that Grandma would be fooled). “The Sox have got the bases loaded!”
3
In the top of the eighth, Grandma sent Grandpa down to the Zoney’s Go-Mart at the bottom of the block to get milk for Chuck’s Apple Jacks in the morning. “And don’t even think of driving. The walk will sober you up.”
Grandpa didn’t argue. With Grandma he rarely did, and when he gave it a try, the results weren’t good. When he was gone, Grandma—Bubbie—sat down next to Chuck on the couch and put an arm around him. Chuck put his head on her comfortably padded shoulder. “Was he blabbing to you about his ghosts? The ones that live in the cupola?”
“Um, yeah.” There was no point in telling a lie; Grandma saw right through those. “Are there? Have you seen them?”
Grandma snorted. “What do you think, hantel?” Later it would occur to Chuck that this wasn’t an answer. “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to Zaydee. He’s a good man, but sometimes he drinks a little too much. Then he rides his hobby horses. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.”
Chuck did. Nixon should have gone to jail; the faygelehs were taking over American culture and turning it pink; the Miss America pageant (which Grandma loved) was your basic meat-show. But he had never said anything about ghosts in the cupola before that night. At least to Chuck.
“Bubbie, who was the Jefferies boy?”
She sighed. “That was a very sad thing, boychuck.” (This was her little joke.) “He lived on the next block over and got hit by a drunk driver when he chased a ball into the street. It happened a long time ago. If your grandpa told you he saw it before it happened, he was mistaken. Or making it up for one of his jokes.”
Grandma knew when Chuck was lying; on that night Chuck discovered that was a talent that could go both ways. It was all in the way she stopped looking at him and shifted her eyes to the television, as if what was going on there was interesting, when Chuck knew Grandma didn’t give a hang for baseball, not even the World Series.
“He just drinks too much,” Grandma said, and that was the end of it.
Maybe true. Probably true. But after that, Chuck was frightened of the cupola, with its locked door at the top of a short (six steps) flight of narrow stairs lit by a single bare bulb hanging on a black cord. But fascination is fear’s twin brother, and sometimes after that night, if both of his grandparents were out, he dared himself to climb them. He would touch the Yale padlock, wincing if