"Waiting for Mr. Haskell" by Joe Tully
This story from our archives is featured in Epiphany’s My Last White Boyfriend anthology, available now for sale from Ristretto Books, which collects the last 20 years of Epiphany’s greatest prose hits.
The summer of 1949 had been unusually hot and oppressive on Long Island. The still air and humidity seemed to hang like a moist towel over the whale-shaped sliver of land. There were no breezes off the Atlantic or the Sound; we could have been in Kansas.
Billy, Mike, and I found some relief from the stifling heat in the cool basement where I showed off my model trains. Being friends with Billy and Mike didn’t come easily to me. I was about to turn nine and most days I isolated myself because I wasn’t like other boys. I wasn’t good at the sports they all seemed to enjoy; I didn’t understand their jokes, and I didn’t get their growing curiosity about girls.
My model trains were what I used to gain and retain their friendship. But having the best model train collection in the neighborhood wasn’t enough to hold Billy and Mike’s interest very long that day, and they quickly tired of watching my silver diesel engine pull its string of cars around the artificial landscape. We climbed back up the steps and reentered the hot, still air where I hoped we would find another diversion to hold their interest and occupy the time.
Scrappy, my six-month-old puppy, had been sprawled spread-eagle on the cool tile at the top of the stairs, but as we stomped up the steps, he jumped up, begging for attention. His tail wagged in a blur, and he nervously began to pee, missing the newspapers that had been placed on the floor to paper-train him. He was a cute little black dog, half spaniel and half setter, that we had adopted while on vacation in Pennsylvania earlier that summer.
My mother was in the kitchen preparing dinner, and despite the heat and the small fan that failed to offer any relief, she looked perfectly groomed, crisp and cool in a black-and-white print dress and starched apron. As she poured each of us a glass of cold lemonade from a pitcher made of cobalt-blue glass etched with white sailboats, I could smell the faint scent of lavender powder she had used after her bath.
‘’Now, don’t spill any on my clean floor, boys,” Mom said while handing me a paper towel to wipe up the puddle Scrappy had left. Billy and Mike eyed my mother cautiously as they grasped the sweating glasses. She was fastidious about the house, almost as fastidious as my brother was fanatical about baseball. It was nothing short of a miracle that she had let me have a dog. I quickly wiped up the small puddle.
We gulped down our cold drinks and, hoping for a breath of cool air, the three of us made our way outside, Scrappy running behind. The screen door slammed shut as Billy and Mike took the lead, choosing a spot to sit under the thin shade of a young maple tree on the freshly mown grass of the front lawn. The three of us looked like characters from Huckleberry Finn in our shorts and shaggy hair that had resisted cutting all summer. We pulled at plantains, small weeds with buds at their tips that had somehow escaped my father’s mower. We bent the stems around to make miniature rockets and aimed them at each other as Scrappy rolled around on his back, happy to be outside. He quickly picked up a scent, probably from a squirrel, and followed it to the backyard, where my father sat, reading the afternoon paper, a bottle of cold Rheingold in his hand. Choruses of cicadas echoed through the neighborhood, sounding like miniature lawn mowers.
I hoped as we sat there, shooting the miniature rockets at each other, that our neighbor Mr. Haskell would come home drunk again in his red Chevrolet truck. Over the past few weeks, I had watched him swerve from one side of the street to the other, ignoring the new stop sign that had been installed at our corner after many cars had collided there. One of those collisions resulted in a car landing in my mother’s favorite pink azaleas while we ate breakfast one morning, totally unaware that a car was resting inches from the living room window.
When I told Billy and Mike about Mr. Haskell, their eyes grew wide with interest. Mine did too, only because if the afternoon played out the way I hoped it would, my house would be front row center to all the action.
“Do you think he might do that today?” Mike asked excitedly, bending another plantain stem while Billy shielded his face from Mike’s oncoming attack.
“Maybe,” I said, hunching my thin shoulders.
Len and Roberta Haskell lived diagonally across the street, between the Loudons and the Hoopers, two families with whom they battled constantly over one petty thing or another.
They were a strange couple that always seemed to be yelling at each other. He usually barked at her with a trace of a Polish accent, and she usually snapped back with a voice that was a cross between a screech owl and a crow.
On any given day, their disagreement with the neighbors could be about the Loudons’ hedges, a few branches of which might have protruded onto the Haskells’ property, or their maple tree, which was casting too much shade. Or, it might be the Hoopers’ unkempt lawn and their crabgrass that made Mrs. Haskell furious, their weeds invading and flawing her otherwise perfect lawn.
Most days, like this afternoon, she could be seen on all fours, picking away at her lawn, searching for stray blades of crabgrass, an old apple basket by her side. Dressed in trousers and an old plaid shirt, her mousy brown hair under a large straw hat shading a prominent chin and hooked nose that did nothing to compliment her scowling face, she took great pleasure in yelling at a careless child who might stray off the walk and onto her lawn. I can’t say that I ever remember walking or riding my bike in front of her house. She was the Wicked Witch of the West, and she scared the hell out of me.
The only time Mrs. Haskell seemed to take a break from her war on wanton crabgrass was on Sunday mornings, when she would drive to church to attend Mass. Backing her old blue Dodge sedan out of the garage, she would let the car ‘’warm up’’—whether it was ten degrees or ninety. The car would sit there, coughing and sputtering in the driveway, a cloud of exhaust filling the morning air, while she closed the garage door behind her and picked at a blade or two of crabgrass on the way. The blue finish of the old car had oxidized, and patches of the surface had turned purple, making the Dodge look as if it had a nasty sunburn. Eventually, she would roll the car slowly into the street and head to the intersection at no more than fifteen miles per hour. Frustrating drivers unfortunate enough to come up behind her while she hesitated at the stop sign for a car that might be blocks away, she often yelled a few choice words in reply if they so much as gave her a disgusted look or blew their horns. Even when she was going to church, she managed to be as unpleasant as possible.
My father often said that Mrs. Haskell was obsessed with her lawn because Mr. Haskell was always drunk, and it was probably the only interest she had. In truth, I think Mr. Haskell drank because his wife cared more about her lawn than she did about him. However the scale was tipped, they were downright peculiar. They didn’t have any friends, their grown son and daughter rarely visited, and none of the neighbors bothered with them. We often heard their frequent squabbles through the open windows on summer nights, accompanied by the crashing of a plate or two, a car door slamming, and the gunning of an engine as Mr. Haskell raced off down the street in his truck.
She would scream after him as he escaped to McCann’s Tavern, where he would toss back a few too many and probably tell his cronies how miserable his life was. Dad said it was hard to believe that he could hold down his job as a plasterer, much less plaster a wall properly. But in the years following World War II, there was a shortage of tradesmen in the construction industry. Houses seemed to pop up almost overnight, as more and more people fled the city, wanting a patch of land and a small house “in the country.” Builders had to use all the resources they could find.
“Joseph, it’s almost suppertime,” my mother announced from the front door, hands on hips: her standard pose when she was trying to be serious.
“Okaaaay,” I said in the irritated tone that I had perfected.
“You should come in and wash up for dinner soon.”
She usually called me Joey, but when my mother was being serious and assertive, Joey became Joseph. It came out sounding more like Jozev, and I hated the formality of the way it sounded, especially in front of Billy and Mike as I tried to be one of the boys. And I knew she was really trying to divert my attention from what I hoped might be afternoon entertainment. As much as she thought the Haskells were peculiar, she didn’t like it that I found pleasure in watching Mr. Haskell make a fool of himself.
‘’We had a letter from your brother today,” Mom continued, trying to entice me. ‘’You can read it when you come in.”
I watched her open the screen door, pinch off a dead bloom from the geraniums on the front step, and toss the faded blossom behind the yew bush. Stepping back inside, she disappeared, returning to the kitchen. I was happy that we had heard from my brother Roger, who had joined the Navy earlier that year, but the letter was going to have to wait. I thought of the hot air inside the house being pushed around by the small fan. It was better on the lawn as we waited for Mr. Haskell.
Refreshed after his cold beer, my father returned to the front of the house and began sweeping grass cuttings from the driveway. Mrs. Haskell saw him as she was picking up her basket of crabgrass. She waved. Dad waved back, wiping the beads of sweat from under his straw hat with his handkerchief, his white T-shirt clinging to his sweating back. He was the only person who was even moderately friendly with her, which I always thought was a bit out of character for a cool, stoic Irishman like him. But Dad always seemed to get a kick out of unusual people, and Mrs. Haskell seemed to fit that category perfectly.
Accepting my father’s offer of friendliness, Mrs. Haskell darted across the street, probably to vent her frustrations with not having a lawn worthy of a page in Better Homes and Gardens. She looked left and right, and with her back hunched and a sneaky kind of walk (undoubtedly fearing her husband’s red truck coming down the street), she joined Dad in the driveway.
“I don’t know why you bother with her, she’s nuts,” my mother would say after she had observed one of Dad’s frequent exchanges with Mrs. Haskell from the living room window, watching from behind the curtains like a nervous mother robin.
Mom was a jealous woman who guarded and protected her home and family. Maybe it was because her first husband had walked out on her when my brother was only five. Why she was abandoned we never knew, but Mom always perceived any woman who showed an interest in my father as a potential threat. When Mom thought Mrs. Haskell’s conversation with him had gone on long enough, she would do my father a favor and rescue him.
“Hon, you have a telephone call,” she would say, her voice rising and falling musically from behind the front door, careful not to make any eye contact with Mrs. Haskell. Probably enjoying the conversation, Dad would whirl around, acting surprised by my mother’s voice, as though he had never expected it. But he would excuse himself, and Mrs. Haskell would wander back across the street to her waiting lawn.
“What does she want now?” Mom would say, irritated, as Dad hurried in the back door.
“The usual. You know. Her lawn. The neighbors. Did someone call?” thinking perhaps there just might have been a phone call this time.
“No one. You know I don’t like you talking to her. There’s something about her I don’t like. I don’t trust her.”
‘’Aw, for chrissake, she’s harmless,” he would say, brushing my mother off with a wave of his hand and returning to his chores. She would stand there, shaking her head in annoyance, but with a sense of satisfaction, knowing that she had successfully sent Mrs. Haskell back across the street and away from my father.
Billy, Mike, and I heard a screech of wheels and the sound of metal hitting metal. We jumped to our feet as we saw a red truck coming down the street, weaving from one side to the other as a garbage can that had been hit tumbled across the pavement.
“Is that Mr. Haskell?” Billy asked in a breathless soprano as he rushed toward the curb for a better view, with Mike and me right behind him. It was Mr. Haskell, and the truck seemed to be going faster than ever as it jumped onto the sidewalk and flew through the intersection, knocking down the stop sign at the corner where Mrs. Hooper was about to cross the street. Mrs. Hooper had been the talk of the neighborhood since one of her pendulous breasts got tangled in the wringer of her Bendix washing machine earlier that summer. All the neighbors heard about it, courtesy of New York Telephone’s party line, when she phoned Mr. Hooper to tell him what had happened. And the unfortunate incident had become the butt of Mr. Haskell’s mocking humor whenever he saw her.
Mrs. Hooper dropped her grocery bags as the red truck streaked by, only yards away. She stood there, her mouth open, nervously fussing with her hair. Billy, Mike, and I shrieked like three little girls, first with excitement and then with a bit of fear, as we watched the red truck jump the curb across the street and fly up onto Ethel Loudon’s lawn, snapping in half the little plum tree that she had planted that spring. The truck ploughed ahead erratically and mowed down her hedges as Mr. Haskell took aim at his wife’s carefully tended lawn. Patches of sod, grass, and dirt flew everywhere as the red truck came to a stop in front of his house, resting in his wife’s rhododendron bushes, the remains of the little plum tree twisted pitifully under the wheels.
“There’ll be hell to pay tonight,” my father muttered as he walked over to join Billy, Mike, and me.
Mrs. Haskell tore out of the front door, shrieking at her husband as he stumbled out of his truck, looking very confused after hitting his head on the windshield and falling on his wife’s now gouged and disgraced lawn.
‘’I’m calling the police! You’re a goddamn bastard. Look at my lawn.”
He rolled around on the grass in his white overalls and painter’s hat, spattered with blood, looking like a squirrel that had been hit by a car. Continuing to scream and ignoring her husband’s injuries, Mrs. Haskell disappeared back into the house. She really did sound like Margaret Hamilton, I thought, riding off with Toto in her bicycle basket, screeching like a madwoman.
Within minutes, two police cars and an ambulance raced down the street from the local precinct, a few blocks away. With sirens wailing and red lights flashing, a tall, red-faced cop with a crew cut jumped out of his car, as did a shorter, chubby one who looked as if his diet contained too many doughnuts. I thought it looked a bit like a scene from Dick Tracy, but there was no handsome detective or Tess Trueheart anywhere. My mother came to the front door wiping her hands on her apron, urging my father not to get involved as she joined the neighbors who were quickly gathering, whispering, astonished at the scene. Ethel Loudon crossed the street to talk with Mom, shaking her head as she looked at the big gap in her hedgerow and her plum tree that was no more, lying under Mr. Haskell’s truck.
“I want him arrested. He destroyed my lawn!” Mrs. Haskell shrieked to the two cops as she reappeared at her door. Mrs. Loudon joined in, wanting to press charges against Mr. Haskell for destroying her property as well. Billy, Mike, and I retreated to the safety of the front steps as the crowd grew, and passing cars stopped to see the show that was quickly unfolding.
Mr. Haskell was arrested for drunk driving, driving without a license, and reckless endangerment. A small bandage was taped to his head by a medic, and the police ushered him into one of their squad cars.
“Good riddance!” we heard Mrs. Haskell shout as they drove away. She retreated to the house once again, slammed her door shut, and tightly closed her blinds. One by one, everyone trickled back to their houses and their waiting dinners, the red truck sitting on the Haskells’ lawn, looking like a child’s toy that had been cast aside in a fit of anger. The street returned to a sense of normalcy, and the cicadas could be heard once again. Billy and Mike went home, saying it was the best excitement of the summer and, feeling satisfied, I finally went in and washed up for dinner. We ate on the back porch that night, hoping for a cool breeze; my father agreeing with my mother that the Haskells were probably just a trifle nuts.
***
Mr. Haskell did not come home until the middle of September, having landed in the county jail for thirty days. While her husband was behind bars, Mrs. Haskell would still wander over to chat with my father, her routine proceeding as if nothing had happened, and my mother still watched them from behind the curtains. As I eavesdropped on their conversation one afternoon while I sat on the front step with Scrappy, I heard Mrs. Haskell say that she had no intention of visiting Mr. Haskell. She was glad he was in jail, out of her hair, and away from the lawn that had taken her weeks of careful tending to restore to its former, pristine condition.
September brought cooler weather. Billy, Mike, and I had finally got our haircuts and returned to school. Windows were closed to ward off the early chill, so we couldn’t hear any arguments from across the street. In fact, things seemed relatively quiet. Mrs. Haskell continued to pick at her crabgrass, as she would until snow fell. She still yelled at anyone who might stray onto her lawn or, heaven forbid, toss a cigarette butt on the walk in front of her house. Now she was telling people that they couldn’t park their cars in front of her house if they were visiting nearby.
***
Two days before Halloween, as Mom was setting the table for dinner, sirens shattered the calm of the early evening. “There are police cars in front of the Haskells again,” she said excitedly, parting the cafe curtains over the kitchen sink, taking care not to disturb her African violets. Flashing red lights lit up the kitchen. Scrappy’s nails clicked on the tile floor as he scrambled to get out of our way while we hurried to the front door for a better view. My father reached for his wool shirt and cap and strolled across the street to see what was going on. As he did, an ambulance pulled up behind the two police cars.
“Oh my God, what happened now?” Mom said. My father walked over to the familiar red-faced police officer with the crew cut, who had started to fill out a report in the harsh light of the squad car as two medics pulled out a stretcher from the back of the ambulance. Mom returned to the kitchen, turned down the heat under the stew, put on her sweater, and handed me a jacket from the cedar closet in the front hall. Scrappy thought he was going for a walk and danced around. I put on his leash and shut the front door, the Indian corn Mom had tacked up that morning rustling behind us. We followed my mother as she joined the gaggle of neighbors gathering once again to see what had happened. The air was chilly, and it smelled sweet with the scent of newly fallen leaves as we made our way down the walk. Colder weather wasn’t far off. A large orange moon was rising in the sky and from across the street the flicker of Ethel Loudon’s jack-o’-lantern and the flashing red lights from the police cars and ambulance cast an eerie glow into the night. I wished that Billy and Mike could see all the excitement, but they lived on another street and couldn’t hear the sirens or see the lights from the police cars.
The medics and police, their flashlights casting long beams of light in the darkness, gathered in front of the Haskells’ house. My father spoke to the police officer, who told him it looked as if Mrs. Haskell’s car had rolled over Mr. Haskell as he lay drunk in the driveway. The neighbors gasped.
“I bet she tried to kill him,” Ethel Loudon said, turning to my mother, while some of the other neighbors nodded their heads in agreement.
It didn’t look good. The police were going to arrest Mrs. Haskell for aggravated assault and take her into custody. It looked as if she had intentionally tried to run her husband over with her ugly old Dodge. Mr. Haskell was placed on a stretcher and rolled into the mouth of the waiting ambulance. The doors slammed shut, and it quickly disappeared down the street, red lights flashing, sirens screaming in the crisp October air.
Mrs. Haskell was struggling with the police as they tried to usher her into the back seat of a waiting police car.
“To hell with him. To hell with you all,” we heard her muttering behind the windows of the squad car as it rolled by the astonished faces of the neighbors. It moved slowly down the street, and paused briefly at the newly replaced stop sign. But I felt sorry for Mrs. Haskell as I saw her slumped there in the darkness, a bit like a rag doll that had been tossed in the back seat, while gory visions began to whirl in my young head of what the old blue Dodge had done to Mr. Haskell. Had it been moving fast enough to really hurt him? Did the car bounce as it hit? Was he dead?
A grand jury would later charge Mrs. Haskell with attempted murder. Mr. Haskell never recovered from the crushing weight that his wife’s blue Dodge had inflicted on him. His condition deteriorated, and he died a few months later. The charges against Mrs. Haskell were changed to second-degree manslaughter, and she was sent to the county jail without bail to await trial. Following the almost daily reports in the local paper, we learned that she had been found mentally unstable and unable to withstand a trial. She was sent for treatment to a psychiatric hospital in the piney woods of eastern Long Island. We never saw her again.
***
Spring came. Mrs. Haskell’s beloved lawn had grown tall and was overrun with crabgrass and other weeds. Her son and daughter returned and listed the house with a real estate broker. It quickly sold to a young couple with two young children. From a house where we had heard only fighting and screaming, laughter now resonated, as children played on the grass that had been Mrs. Haskell’s obsession.
The next summer, Billy spent two months with his grandparents in Pennsylvania, Mike went to camp in Maine, and I started taking piano lessons. When Billy and Mike returned, and we were together for a couple of days in the few weeks before school started, it was clear that we had grown apart. The previous summer I had used my model trains and a performance by Mr. Haskell to sustain our friendship. But after weeks of fishing in lakes and camping in woods, Billy and Mike weren’t interested in what I had learned on the piano or that my first recital was coming up.
And, except for brief encounters in school, we didn’t see much of each other anymore. It seemed as if our friendship had evaporated into the humid summer air.
Joe Tully is a native New Yorker who has served as a partner at btldesign, a branding and interactive agency in New York City. He continues to work for select clients through Joe Tully Design. He is also working on a memoir, Second House From the Corner, about growing up on Long Island in the ‘40s and ‘50s, his Irish and Italian heritage, secretive parents, HIV/ AIDS, and coming to terms with being gay.
