The Haunted House on Haven Way

Chapter One At Least The Neighbors Are Quiet

“Aaay! The phones work out in the sticks. How’s my boy?”

I put my greasy bandana in my back pocket and hold the shiny black phone under my chin while I scrub my hands in the kitchen sink. “Heeeeeyyyy,” I gotta give my old man grief. “The phones work in Brooklyn.”

“It’s a day for miracles. My son, the putz, the nogoodnik—a homeowner. An upstanding member of society. A God damn sergeant.”

“Grandpa Lou would be proud,” I say, craning my neck to look at the Chevy Bel-Air in my driveway. My own little drive, in my own little rancher with a God damn picket fence. “And what’s this ‘nogoodnik’ noise I hear you spouting?”

My dad laughs, which is a new sound, one that didn’t happen too much before I left home.

“You and those boys. The Lions...”

“It was the Hellcats, Pop.”

“Even worse. What kind of good Catholic boy would be in with such people?”

“A good Catholic boy raised by Lou Miller’s crazy son and his hot-tempered Sicilian wife.”

“Now, now. Don’t you blame your mother for nothing.”

“I’m not blaming her.”

“Sounds like you were blaming her.”

I groan. This is how three-hour screaming matches always started between my old man and me.

The first ones were over the Hellcats. Then, quitting my job at the butcher’s, and then the bike, even though I got my old Indian for a song and polished her up to look like new.

Finally, we argued over my giving Mama a stroke— it was a tiny one—the left side of her mouth droops a little, and she drags her left foot just a touch.

I said no way that could be just on me, not with her worrying about my older brother in the Navy and two younger brothers at home raising their own kind of hell.

But no. Johnny did it. Johnny’s the bad boy in the Miller family, the one breaking Mama’s heart.

That’s when I got “voluntold” to join the army, even though I hadn’t gotten my draft papers—courtesy of some snafu marking me down as a necessary member of the agricultural workforce during my eight months at Piccatello’s Meats and Imported Cheeses.

“You gonna go to college on that G.I. Bill?”

“I don’t know. I got the house with no down payment and a mortgage rate that’s better than yours.”

“We rent, you ass.”

“I know, Pop, it was a joke.”

“Your older brother went straight to college when he got out of the Navy.”

“Good for Joe. He’s the smart one.”

“You could be smart, too. Don’t they have some little college out that way?”

“Not in Pine Ridge. Not yet. Maybe one day. Right now it’s a lot of woods, a couple other empty houses,” I turn my head and look past the driveway, beyond the dip in the road, “and a real nice cemetery. Seems a little crowded for such a tiny place.” Don’t know why it feels that way.

So many little white and gray stones, all in neat rows.

“At least you got quiet neighbors. Not like us. The Zampitellas had twins. Twins, yet, after that little four-year-old terror and his tin horn. All of them in that two-bedroom firetrap.”

“Next to the two-bedroom firetrap where you raised four boys, right, Pop?”

“Yeah, well, you knew how to behave—until you turned seventeen.”

If I don’t end this call now, it’ll cost Pop a fortune in money and gray hairs and ruin the nicest conversation we’ve had in five years.

“You know, Pop, there’s a real nice guy in town, Manny. Got a nice shop—auto shop. Everything I learned in the motor pool, I’m putin’ to real good use and earning more money than I ever could have at the butcher’s or even as a lieutenant. There’s money in these new cars.”

“I hope so, with what they cost. So, you like the job, even after two months? It’s steady. Good pay?”

“Great pay.” I don’t tell him that ninety percent of last month’s wages went down on the beautiful machine in the driveway.

“You and Mama would be proud. Got myself a new set of wheels. Not that old Edsel. New Chevy Bel-Air. Red and white. A beaut. You take the bus in from Brooklyn, and I’ll take you for a ride.

You can stay the night! Got a second bedroom. Got a third.”

Pop is quiet for a minute. “Well. We’ll do that, Johnny. We’ll do that real soon. Your Mama wants to say hello. She just came in from cleaning Mrs. Foster’s apartment.”

“Mama shouldn’t be doing that.”

“I like to do that, now that all my babies are gone. It keeps me busy. What are you up to, rattling around in those woods up there in Oak Park?”

“Pine Ridge, Mama. Nothing.”

“Got a girl?”

“Not yet, Mama.”

“That sweet girl, Mary Beth Sarcoste, said a rosary for you every Sunday when you were in Japan.”

“Korea, Ma. And she’s a real sweet girl, but she’s cross-eyed as sin.”

“Her figure ain’t nothing to be cross at though,” Pop points out.

“Why would you say such a thing? A married man with a wife of almost thirty years, and you looking at a nineteen-year-old girl, Paulie Sarcoste’s niece no less, a man you’ve played cards with every second Tuesday for the last nineteen years!”

“Honey, I was telling the boy! She’s not my type, not at all, a meek little mouse like that? With those damn pink sweaters and white-on-white saddle shoes?”

“She’s a sweet angel, and she’d be good for Johnny.”

“Johnny will go out and get his own girl, in his own wheels, thank you,” I call into the verbal fray that is spinning out of control. “Pop, this call probably cost you three bucks by now. I’ll send you a dollar in a letter, okay?”

“Send him four, and we can talk longer,” Mama suggests.

I laugh. “I gotta go. It’s Saturday night, and I’m meeting a friend.”

Harry Rogers is a real one, an army medic who works at the hospital in town. But just because he’s all saintly doesn’t mean shit on a Saturday night. Harry is out on the floor at Jack’s Roadhouse Cafe, swinging a mean shoe like he ate an entire family of jitterbugs.

Me?

I don’t dance.

But neither does the little waitress with hair the color of whiskey mixed with honey.

She’s shy and quiet, and her eyes don’t cross.

And as my pops would say, her figure ain’t nothing to be cross about, either.

Soft in all the right places, and after her shift is over, that little figure is nice and snug under my arm as we sip two beers.

Nancy. She’s Nancy Benson, and she wants to look at the summer moon up out past Blue Moon Lake. She wants to see it through the windshield of a shiny new Bel-Air.

I can’t believe that when the Bel-Air’s top goes down—so does Nancy’s.

Her waitress uniform unbuttons, and my quiet little stargazer pivots over and straddles my lap, kissing me like I’m prime rib and she’s starving.

“I don’t... We don’t have to,” I say, even though I sure as hell want to.

Nancy grins. “I know. That’s why I want to. I like you, Johnny. A lot. Awful fast.”

My hands mold right to the curve of her hips, the world slips away in a haze of Nat King Cole and Doris Day on the radio, and sweet, soft little breasts press into my face.

Nice girls don’t do this sort of thing.

Maybe Nancy’s not nice. And she sure as hell ain’t some little girl. She’s a woman that doesn’t need a lot of talk, and her quietness isn’t meek.

My mother would probably like her. I could probably get to like her, too. More than I already do.

When I was running with the Hellcats, I wouldn’t have missed a chance to score. When I was in Korea, near any decent base with some female traffic, I wouldn’t have hesitated.

Because I was young and stupid and always pulled back at the last second so I didn’t end up with little Johnnys in the Pacific or shaming my mother in Brooklyn.

And now...

I gotta house. Gotta job at Manny’s, and he’s a real decent kind of guy, the guy who oughta be married with three kids, and who volunteers at the church pancake breakfast.

When I’m kissing Nancy, I suddenly don’t think about just one quick night. I think about how I’d like to have something more than that—someday. Maybe someday soon.

I keep it in my pants, and I save up memories of soft breasts and soft lips for my hand to remind me of later that night. “See you again tomorrow?” I ask between kisses that make me dizzy.

“Mm, yes. But we don’t have to go already, do we?”

I look at the quiet sex kitten above me. “No. We can stay as long as you want.”

September 16th, 1954

“You’re not really gonna do it, are you, Miller?”

“What’s it to you, Rogers?” I pull out the baked ziti that I’m gonna serve to Nancy tonight. I’m gonna propose. We’re gonna go “all the way.” We’ve been rounding the bases for weeks, but I never head for home.

I don’t know why, since I’ve already decided she’s a keeper. Nance is perfect. She’s quiet, but she’s smart as a whip, pretty, and she’s not Mary Beth in poodle skirts with a rosary around her neck.

“I don’t think you’re in love with her. I think you like her, sure, because who wouldn’t? She’s funny, and sweet, and cute as a button. Pretty. That hair... Men would bite off doorknobs to wake up with that hair on the pillow beside them.”

I give Rogers a look and rip open a pack of Bisma Fizz and drop the powder into the glass of water next to my plate. I’ve been feeling more and more antsy in my guts this past month, and I finally talked to my older brother about it—the smart one. He diagnosed me in seconds.

Guilt. You’ve got guilt because you’re sinning with a nice girl that you oughta marry and do right by. You’re feeling like shit because you oughta make it legal, and you’re out here, keeping your options open.

His prescription? Get a good gold ring, bake a good Italian dish with Mama’s recipe, and get down on one knee—then make sure the wedding is in the next couple of months so your pecker doesn’t pop off and your blue balls don’t turn into bowling balls.

“The way you talk,” I stop, swirl the powder into a cloudy mess at the bottom, then drink it all down as the stabbing pain gets sharper, “you oughta marry her.”

“Well, someone other than you should. I don’t think you love her. I just think... I think...”

“I think things fell through with you and that pretty brunette nurse last month, and ever since then, you’ve been eating every meal over at Jack’s, making puppy eyes at my gal.”