The House on Xenia

by Rita Moreau

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  Copyright © 2018 Rita Moreau

  Printed in the United States of America

  Titles by Rita Moreau

  Novels

  Bribing Saint Anthony

  Nuns! Psychics! & Gypsies! OH NO!!

  Feisty Nuns

  Novella

  The Russian & Aunt Sophia

  This book is dedicated to George, the author’s husband and my biggest fan. You have kept it interesting.

  The word Xenia refers to the Greek tradition of generous hospitality toward strangers.

  The House on Xenia

  I am the house on Xenia. I was born at the turn of the twentieth century, board by board, brick by brick, bone by bone. I have stood tall and proud on Xenia for a long time. When I was young, I watched hardworking immigrants arrive with dreams and build houses on foundations of hope. Then a decade gave way to the war to end all wars. I watched young men say good-bye, and I waited with their families for their return. Not all came back. In the 1920s, I saw wealth come, and I saw wealth go. I was there on the day that lives in infamy and on the day Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb. Laughter and families filled my rooms during the prosperous 1950s. The 1960s went by in a psychedelic flash, and war returned in the 1970s. It brought home men and women broken by its ravages. The years slipped by, I grew old. I am alive today, barely. Humans no longer fill my rooms. Ghosts and old memories remain. It’s been that way for a while. The chilly winter winds howl at me through the cracks in my windows. I am so cold. I am alone and abandoned—like the surrounding neighborhood. It wasn’t always that way. I was once your home.

  Chapter 1

  Dayton, Ohio

  “Gram did you add salt to this oatmeal?” Annie asked her grandmother Josie. In their large, boisterous Greek family her grandmother was known for her wit and sarcasm, not so much for her cooking. She had a bite to her, but once past the bite, you found a big heart.

  “Why, is it lumpy? It’s oatmeal, not your wedding cake, eat—eat, or you’ll be late for work.”

  “It’s good,” Alexi said with a smile on her face.

  “See, Alexi likes it,” Josie said as they both watched her sister Alexi stab the oatmeal like it was a pork chop.

  The three women were seated at a mahogany dining table that took up nearly the entire room. It was in mint condition and was to be kept that way according to the wishes of Annie’s great-great-grandmother, YaYa. She left detailed instructions. YaYa was like that. The table was to pass to her oldest daughter, and then to the next generation’s oldest daughter and so on and so forth. YaYa left no instructions in the event there were no daughters. “Figure it out,” was all Annie heard from the strong and opinionated women that populated her quirky, Greek family.

  The table first passed to GiGi, Annie’s great-grandmother. Annie felt a strong connection to GiGi since they shared a dream of becoming movie stars. Annie often thought she should have been born in the 1940s instead of the 1990s. She knew all about GiGi, having heard the stories from Aunt Toolou—the matriarch and historian of the family.

  GiGi had been a single mom during the 1950s. She was divorced, by choice, unheard of back then. It didn’t matter to GiGi, who never felt the need to wear an apron or conform to the stereotype gender role of housewife and mother, a shadow of a husband.

  “Why should she?” Aunt Toolou would tell the family at gatherings. “GiGi was smarter than any man she ever met in her lifetime.”

  Annie knew the story by heart. Aunt Toolou made sure of that. “Someday when I am dust, it will be you who will pass the story of our family on to the next generation. It will keep the family tight. Do not let that thread unravel. It is what holds this world together. Don’t forget that!”

  “GiGi should have been born later,” Annie often said. “She would have fit right in today.”

  Instead, each day of her life, GiGi was confronted with the Father Knows Best mentality of her time. It never got her down; she kept her eye on the prize—to make it big in show business. That’s what kept her going throughout her life. As far as GiGi was concerned, she was already a star—just needed to be discovered. She knew she was different, and she liked it that way.

  She got her share of judgmental looks from women who smiled to her face and looked down their noses at her because she was divorced. She was always polite as she walked past them with a smile. “Couldn’t keep a man,” they whispered behind her back, implying she wasn’t good in the sack. “She is heavyset,” implying she was fat.

  GiGi loved food and waged a losing battle with her weight. Food was the nucleus of her Greek family. To enter the home of a Greek and not be offered food was bad manners. She found solace in food, but it was not her friend. She kept her head high, her shoulders back, belly tucked in, and her chin parallel to the ground as she marched through life. None of this stopped her from raising two daughters and caring for YaYa, her cantankerous Greek mother. A woman once got in her business, right in her face and said, “Why haven’t you remarried? You should lose weight. You won’t catch a man looking the way you do.”

  GiGi got right up in her face, used her extra mass to give that woman a gentle shove, and responded, “I don’t want a man telling me how to raise my children, that’s why.” Yes, just like the song, she did it her way and never looked back.

  The grand table had by then passed to GiGi’s oldest daughter, Alexi, who had also inherited YaYa’s spunky personality and GiGi’s talent and tenaciousness. Alexi didn’t have much use for the table, but she kept the tradition alive. Family was important. Plus, like the headstrong women in this family, she was superstitious. So, the table went with her to Hollywood where she pursued her dream of making it big in La La Land.

  Annie’s mother Cora had not lived long enough to inherit the table. She has been a fragile soul and died young. Her heart just stopped beating one day. Annie never knew her, but her family made sure she knew how much her mother loved her. The women in her family never sugar coated anything. When she asked about her father, she was told, “He was a bum and took off when your mother became pregnant.” Cora is buried in the Greek section of the historic Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, between GiGi and YaYa.

  Annie’s grandmother, Josie, raised her. She was a widow who lost her husband in Vietnam. “Your grandfather Nick was a good man that never came home from the war,” Aunt Toolou told her when she was old enough to ask these questions. When she asked why her grandmother wept in the middle of the night, Aunt Toolou told her, “Your grandmother lost her husband and her only child, your mother, Cora. A part of her soul stayed with them on the day they died.” Josie would later tell her, “A parent should not outlive their child. Raising you, my granddaughter, has been a special blessing.”

  Josie was a practical woman who thought the table was too fancy for the small house she now shared with her older sister Alexi, who had suffered a stroke that robbed her of her life and her big personality. The best way the doctors could describe her mind after the stroke was to say it resembled dementia. As far as the family was concerned, it was a curse. Any serious bad luck was a curse in Annie’s superstitious family. Annie knew someday the table would pass to her along with echoes of many conversations long past. “I can still hear those conversations,” Aunt Toolou told her. “One only needs to suspend disbelief and listen.”

  While they were
finishing up breakfast, they could hear the news playing in the background from the kitchen. Josie stopped cold in the middle of drinking her strong Greek coffee when she heard the news mention the word: Xenia.

  Firemen found the remains of a body underneath a house on Xenia that recently caught fire. The house was in a neighborhood of unoccupied houses condemned as uninhabitable by the city.

  Josie shot straight up and sprang into the kitchen just as the news flashed a scene of firemen, police and the burnt-out house.

  “Oh my God, it’s our house. The house we grew up in,” Josie said in a high shrill.

  Annie got up and walked into the kitchen. She stood next to her grandmother who was frozen in front of the small flat screen sitting on the kitchen counter.

  “Is that the old house on Xenia?” Annie asked as she joined her grandmother watching the news report. “The one we drive by after we place flowers at the Greek cemetery?”

  Her grandmother was the keeper of the family graves. Annie went with her to Woodland Cemetery to help place flowers on the graves. “This will be your job someday,” Josie told her each time they made the trek. “Make sure you know where all the graves are.” There were quite a few.

  “Aunt Toolou told me that house could talk to you.”

  Her grandmother gave Annie the YaYa look without turning her head.

  The body may have been there for a long time, possibly 50 years or more, according to the police who plan to investigate.

  “Fifty years or more,” Josie said now turning her head to her granddaughter who was a foot taller. “That would be when Alexi and I lived there as kids.”

  “Wasn’t that also when Great-Gram worked at Wright-Patt, where they kept the aliens?” Annie said looking at her grandmother who rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the news. “Annie you need to stop watching those sci-fi shows with your Aunt Toolou.”

  “Aunt Toolou told me where Great-Gram worked was top secret. Aunt Alexi told me the same. She said she worked deep below the ground.”

  “Everyone who lives in Dayton knows Wright-Patt is one big top secret. Plus, your Aunt Alexi is not the same since her stroke,” Josie whispered to her granddaughter.

  “She has her moments,” Annie said. “We talk all the time when I take her out for a ride. Uncle Ollie, your godfather, told me Wright-Patt never shut down their UFO programs. They're still looking for aliens. He worked at Wright-Patt close to the same time as Great-Gram.”

  “Uncle Ollie is pushing a hundred,” Josie said and pointed a finger at her. Annie stared back at her with a look only young women her age could pull off.

  Wright-Patt and UFO’s was always a frequent topic of discussion at family gatherings, especially if Aunt Toolou and Uncle Ollie were present. Annie was a big fan of sci-fi and knew all about the crash at Roswell and the conspiracy theory that a space ship and aliens were brought back to Wright-Patt. “GiGi never discussed what went on at her job at Wright-Patt,” Aunt Toolou would tell the family. “It was for our protection,” she would say with a nod and a tilt of her forehead.

  “You will be late for work. Go finish your breakfast,” Josie said as the news went on to the next story.

  “There was a body. I remember it,” Alexi said from the dining room.

  Josie froze—turned and shot back into the room where Alexi was still picking away at her oatmeal. Alexi’s memory came and went giving Josie glimpses of her once vibrant and beautiful sister. It was as if she had died, but her body remained. Annie followed Josie and watched as she sat down next to her sister. Annie could see her aunt’s green eyes were still focusing on the bowl of oatmeal as she continued to play with it.

  “Alexi, do you remember something?” Josie said in a gentle tone. They had to be careful. Alexi became agitated when she could not remember. Conversations were kept as simple as if they were talking to a child.

  “Talk to the house,” Alexi said.

  Josie watched her sister close her eyes and fall asleep at the table, part of the side effects of the stroke.

  Josie got up and gave Annie the signal with her hands to follow her back into the kitchen.

  “Did you hear that?” Josie said raising her heels, so she was on her tippy toes, so she could come face to face with her granddaughter who stood close to six feet tall. Annie placed her hands on her grandmother’s shoulders and gently pushed, so she was flat on her feet. She was always afraid one day her grandmother would lose her balance and tumble backward.

  “I did. She might be confused. Aunt Alexi does watch a lot of old detective movies.”

  “I don’t know, Annie. A body buried under our old house for over fifty years? You know Alexi and I still own that house on Xenia. It was left to us by your great-grandmother. She never wanted us to sell it or part with it. She was attached to it. She left instructions in her will that the house could not be sold after her death. I respected her wishes even after the house and the neighborhood went downhill. What choice did I have? Knowing your great-grandmother, she would come back and haunt me if I sold that house. I was just talking to the insurance people this week about the fire that burnt down the older house that sat on the same lot. It was a farmhouse, and it sat right behind Xenia. That’s what we called our house. The insurance people said something strange. At first, they thought it was arson. All the houses in that neighborhood were vacant, and kids were setting them on fire, but they said this fire was different. It looked like the house caught fire with no outside help.”

  “You mean it set itself on fire?” Annie asked. “Well, that’s weird.”

  “It sure is and now this,” her grandmother said raising her hands up in exasperation and pointing at the TV on the kitchen counter like it was the culprit.

  “Maybe you should do what Aunt Alexi said—talk to the house. Talk to Xenia.”

  “Xenia never talked to me,” Josie said, thinking that the house had carried on conversations with everyone in the family but her. It was as if the house was another member of their family, another YaYa. They thought nothing of it—like it wasn’t strange that a house could carry on a conversation with you. They kept that between family members along with the fact that some of them were psychic. They were the family card readers. Not tarot cards but a plain deck of cards, Josie not so much. She resisted all that hocus pocus. “Life is black and white and gray. Stay out of the gray. You will get lost,” she would tell Annie as a child who questioned everything. Josie knew the questions were out of fear. She needed those answers to feel safe.

  “Well then, ask Aunt Toolou to get the cards out and do a reading.”

  “You know I never bought into the card reading like the other women in this family,” Josie said as she closed her eyes and let out a sigh of exasperation.

  “That darn old house. Why it never talked to me, I never understood. It didn’t like me for some reason,” Josie said.

  “I wouldn’t talk to you either. Aunt Toolou said you almost burnt that poor house down.”

  “It was the fourth of July, and a firecracker got loose and landed on its roof. Nothing happened to that house,” Josie said raising both arms up in the air, having heard this story one too many times.

  “Okay Annie, time to go to work. You’ll be late. I’ll go online and see if there is any more about this body they found. Get moving now, quick like a bunny,” Josie said to her granddaughter doing her best to change the subject from the house on Xenia.

  “I believe Xenia can talk to you. If you listen,” Annie said in a different tone of voice. Josie knew her granddaughter was an old soul. It was wise, and when she heard the voice of that old soul, Josie listened. After all, she was superstitious. That she had in common with the other women in her family.

  Josie looked at her granddaughter, and then they both looked at Alexi still sound asleep in front of a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal.

  “Alexi may know something,” Annie said. Josie nodded, acknowledging that her sister was gone, but the person who remained could remember the p
ast, and sometimes she could see the future.

  Chapter 2

  Dayton, Ohio

  “I need to talk to you about that body they found, but not over the phone,” her friend Gabby said. Josie waited until Annie got home from work to stay with Alexi, then she drove to Cincinnati in record time.

  When she arrived at Gabby’s retirement community the heat in the apartment was on broil, and the TV was on cable news with the volume way up. Gabby was not hard of hearing. She just didn’t want to miss anything. Josie always turned down the volume so they could talk and not compete with CNN.

  After a minute of polite conversation, catching up on children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, Gabby being Gabby got right to the point. After all the pizza slab, as she called the grim reaper, was banging on her door. “Some days the banging is pretty darn loud,” Gabby liked to tell Josie over a glass of her favorite cream sherry.

  “I’ve been watching the news about the body they found at the house on Xenia. Have they contacted you? About the body?”

  “Who?” Josie said. “The police? No, not yet, but I’m sure they will.”

  “Not the police, the government—Wright-Patt?”

  “No,” Josie closed her eyes and felt a shiver tickle her spine. “Why would the government contact me?”

  Josie looked at Gabby. She was a very thin woman, all angles and no fat. She had always been thin. Recently she stopped driving. She was getting older, but her mind was still sharp. No signs of dementia. Still, she was wondering where this conversation was going.

  “The morning news identified the body.”

  “Yes, I caught that this morning.”

  “It was your mother’s boss.”

  “Her boss?”

  “His name was Harvey Long, a real slimeball.”

  “Okay, I’m listening,” Josie said. Conversations with Gabby were pickled with anecdotes. She was in her nineties, and she had plenty to share. So, you had to be patient.

  “He wasn’t military. He was a contractor, a scientist, who’d married a hoity-toity girl from Oakwood whose family had a lot of money. Even after he was married, he still hit on all the women in the office. Your mother was top-notch at her job. She was not afraid to stand up to him and reject his advances. She was a woman ahead of her time. She took no bull from anyone and wasted no time with him the first time he cornered her in his office. She went straight to the base commander who was Greek. That commander looked out for your mother. Plus, his secretary was close to retiring, and he wanted your mother to be his secretary.”