Page 10 of The Life of Chuck

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 it rattled (a sound that might disturb the ghosts pent up inside), then hurry back down the stairs, looking over his shoulder as he went.

It was easy to imagine the lock popping open and dropping to the floor.

The door creaking open on its unused hinges.

If that happened, he guessed he might die of fright.