An Orphan's Tale (14 page)

I told him I could wait a little longer. The saying I gave him about an ulterior purpose is a good start.

He's waking up now. He always seems happiest to me when he's just coming out of his sleep.

In the car, leaning halfway across the back of the front seat while Murray drove, Charlie tried to reassure Danny—that he was, despite what Mr. Mittleman had said, Jewish—and even as he was trying to comfort the boy, he wondered: how much of me shows?

Danny was pale, his head resting against the line that separated the back seat from the door, and Charlie, trying still to find a way to snap the boy to, told a joke Mr. Mittleman had once told him. A Jewish boy, going to a whorehouse for the first time, meets his father in the waiting room. The boy is speechless. The father shrugs and says, in Yiddish, “For fifty cents, why should I bother Momma?”

When neither Danny nor Murray laughed, Charlie turned and looked out the front window. If either of them had been clients, he knew, he could have made them laugh. Where was the difference? He wasn't, like Max, a joke teller, and yet, in his work, he made people laugh and Max never did.

He trusted his instincts and they told him that it was his desire to have money which brought the money. But where, he wondered, was that desire now, when he seemed to be, except for his sneakers and sweatshirt, the same man he had been the day before when he'd been selling houses. The difference fascinated him, and it reassured him; in fifteen months, when he reached forty, he would surprise everybody and turn his joke into reality. He would never work again.

At the George Washington Bridge, handing the girl in the booth the toll money, Murray stopped talking about Anita's moods and spoke instead of King David and the Angel of Death. “Last night,” he said, “just before I went to sleep, I was reading that on the day when King David was destined to die, the Angel of Death stood before him, but could not prevail….”

Charlie tried to see himself as a boy, in a sweatshirt and sneakers, playing football in the Home's courtyard. Looking back, he wondered, could people see that the boy he was then would have become the man he was now? Except with Murray, he remembered himself as having been an exceptionally quiet boy. The reason seemed clear enough: with the adulation of the others he'd never had need for words. His athletic abilities and good looks had done all his work for him. But when there had been no words issuing from him, what, he wanted to know, had been going on inside?

“The rabbis ask why the Angel of Death could not prevail, and they answer that it was because learning did not cease from David's mouth.” Murray licked his lips. “Finally, the Angel went outside and climbed the trees in the garden that surrounded the royal palace and began to beat the boughs all about. When David heard the noise it disturbed him from his studies so that he went out into the garden to discover the cause. As he was climbing a ladder to find out what was happening in the topmost branches, the ladder collapsed and it was in this way that he died—do you see?”

Charlie's nose itched, and when he rubbed it he remembered how he and Lillian had touched the first time in the candy store. He'd thought of stopping to see her after the game—he wanted Danny to meet her and Sandy—but he was fearful: he didn't want Murray explaining his motives to him all the way back to New Jersey.

When Charlie wanted to think of Lillian he always thought of the way she'd held his hand that first time. He saw her face, looking down at the table, as if ashamed. Her cheeks were flushed. He had to exhale, remembering. Oh how soft she was then! He had seen her hand on the seat next to him in the booth, and he'd let her think his own hand had fallen next to hers accidentally. He saw the hands only now, as if a camera had moved in on them silently, and he saw his small finger rest slightly against hers….

He rolled his window down, to get air. “The moral,” Murray was saying, “is not that the ladder was to blame, but that the brief break in his studies was. That's what we Jews believe man is made for, that's why our Sabbath is a day of rest and of study, so that—”

“Enough already,” Charlie said. “Christ! What do we need stories about death for? Can't you see how upset the kid is?”

Danny was sitting forward on the seat, stiffly, his eyes fixed on the back of Murray's head, and Charlie reached back and touched his forehead. “You're Jewish, Danny,” he said. “Believe me, okay? How could you be so smart if you weren't?”

“There are stupid Jews,” Danny said.

Murray laughed. “But not so many,” he said. “Ask Sol when he gets here.”

“The Home is full of them now,” Danny said, flatly. “And I've seen others sent away to mental hospitals and prisons and homes for retards who were all Jews.”

“What made us smarter, historically speaking,” Murray said, “were several things. First, the fact that every Jewish boy, in order to become Bar Mitzvah, had to know how to read so he could be called to the Torah. That's why—”

“I said to leave us be,” Charlie said, but his voice was not insistent. “Okay?”

“I'm sorry,” Murray said. “I just thought you'd be interested in the way things work out sometimes—how I read that story before sleep and then woke up in the middle of the night with a nightmare. That's the part I thought you'd be interested in—since you were the one who predicted it.” The car held a curve that took it down a ramp and onto the West Side Highway, heading south. “In the dream I was mowing my lawn and trying to wave to somebody when I realized I was going over the edge of the swimming pool,” Murray continued. “Then—you know the way it happens sometimes that things are happening to you and you're watching them happen at the same time—? I was watching the mower go to the bottom and there was only a black
yamulka
floating on top.”

“I never dream that way,” Charlie said.

“What I woke up thinking about this morning, though,” Murray went on, “was about
Anita's
death. It was crazy—I told her while we were still in bed that what I worried about most if she died was not knowing the names of her flowers and what to do for them at what times of year.”

“You could hire a gardener,” Charlie said. “Money takes care of things.”

Danny laughed and Murray looked at him coldly. “You're right,” he said. “I suppose I could get Fred, from the school, if he had the time….”

Charlie saw Lillian's finger trace a line along the contour of his hand, from the tip of his thumb and down along the webbing that stretched to his first finger, and then up and over and down—it went so slowly and her pressure was so light that he could never be sure of how long it had all lasted. It had been Sunday night, and they had won a football game that afternoon against the Colored Orphan Asylum and he had scored four touchdowns.

What he believed, even then, was that she had somehow wanted to drink the silence out of him. He had noticed that, of all the girls who hung out in the store, she had been the quietest, and, because she had also been the prettiest, the one the guys had left for him. When she moved her hand across the back of his she touched only the hairs, raising them the way the wind could, so that it had been almost unbearable and he'd wanted to smash the table with his other hand.

What, really, had they ever spoken about before their marriage? Was the quality that made him decide to marry related to the quality that made him decide to buy and sell? And if there was a connection, would anyone who knew him then and now be able to sense what that connection was?

He wondered why Sol had encouraged the marriage, and he wondered if Murray suspected that he asked himself questions like these. But why then was he reluctant to show this part of himself to Murray? There was no one in the world he felt closer to.…

“Don't mind me today,” he said aloud. “I was looking forward to seeing you, and the guys—but then this morning Max started in on Danny and it turned me.”

“He gave me a test,” Danny said, “and I answered all his questions.”

“Sure you did,” Charlie said.

“A syndicate is better than a corporation because there is no double taxation,” Danny said. “You can avoid capital gains tax by trading land for a percentage of the proceeds of the structure built on the land. Distance is measured in minutes, not miles. Avoid lock-ins because without prepayment privileges you have no flexibility. Avoid net listings. Land values grow out of land use….”

Charlie grabbed Danny's arm, above the wrist, and yanked.
“Hey!”
he said.
“Hey!
Stop it. It's my day off.” But Charlie wasn't sure what was bothering him more—remembering what Max had done to Danny, or realizing that talking about it was taking his concentration away from what he had been seeing in his head. When he wiped his palms on his thighs he saw that he had an erection. He fluffed the hem of his sweatshirt, to disguise the swelling, and he longed to be lost again, in the memory of the ache he had once had. If he could lose himself in that feeling, and connect it to what he had
not
felt when he and Lillian had been touching, he thought he might still be able to discover what things he'd thought and felt when he was a boy. “Then when this test thing was over,” he said, “Max went and pulled one of his crazy stunts. He said that what he decided was that Danny wasn't the age he says he is.”

Danny spoke: “He said that maybe my name wasn't Danny Ginsberg, and that maybe I was born to Christians who knew a good thing when they saw one and wanted me brought up with Jews so I could be smart.”

“Max asked him how he could prove his age or if Danny had ever seen his birth certificate.”

“It's not in my folder,” Danny said. “I looked when I was there.”

“Maybe it got misplaced,” Charlie said. He saw signs for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. “Come on, Murray, tell him—don't you think he's Jewish?”

They entered the tunnel. “Even if you're not the age you think,” Murray said, “—let's say you're fourteen or fifteen—what's the difference? A boy as bright as you are…”

The car swerved and Charlie grabbed for the steering wheel. Murray whacked Charlie's hand with the back of his own. Charlie heard the tires squeal, the blasts of horns. “Don't ever do that again,” Murray said. “You could have killed us.”

“You were the one who swerved,” Charlie said. “Pay attention.”

“I
was
paying attention. There was a car passing that almost went into our side.” He glared at Charlie. “The worst thing you can ever do is to interfere with the driver when—”

“Blow it out your ass,” Charlie said.

“Apologize.”

“What?”

“Say you're sorry.”

Charlie laughed. “Listen, I'm not one of your kids—or one of your students either, so you—”

“Don't fight,” Danny said. “Please. You're friends.”

“A lot of good it does us,” Charlie said. In his head he saw Anita's face, smiling.

“Maybe,” Danny said. “Maybe it was the Angel of Death.”

“He's learning from Max,” Charlie said, but could say no more. He thought of Murray rocking him in his arms, and of Lillian's fingers brushing back and forth across his palm, under the table, tickling him so that he had to grit his teeth, and he thought that if he showed Murray this too—how many hours his mind had devoted to replaying that moment with Lillian—he would not get Murray any closer. The truth, he knew, was that if he decided to try at all, he would try with the boy, since there was, literally, more future there. And there was this too—that no matter what Charlie said or did, he felt Murray would reduce it all to patterns and theories, the way he did with Sol, while the boy would see other things.

But what other things? Charlie looked at their eyes-Murray's angry, Danny's glazed—and he had his example. On the day of his fortieth birthday, when he stopped working, he knew that Murray's first reaction would be concern for him. But the boy—the boy's eyes, he knew, would be rejoicing.

He wondered: if he farmed Danny out to live with Dr. Fogel, would that help him get the land?

They were out of the tunnel, almost there, and Charlie felt better. He wanted to feel the thunk of the ball when Morty would rip a pass into his gut. He wanted—morete feel himself blasting into the other guys. He wanted to stop thinking of Fogel and Sol and where they would live.

He looked left, across Murray, and saw the green fields of the Parade Grounds, where the others would be meeting them. They had played baseball and football here when they'd been boys at the Home, hitching rides on the backs of the McDonald Avenue trolleys. Murray had been afraid to ride the backs of trolleys. He had shown them all a comic book with the life story of Pete Gray, the one-armed Saint Louis Brown baseball player who had lost his arm from hitching on to the back of a truck and falling off.

Charlie remembered fighting bigger kids for fields. The fields had all been open then. Now there were fenced-in areas. “Something else happened yesterday,” Murray said, “and I want to tell you about it. When we went to make
Havdalah
in the evening, we couldn't find the
tsumin
box.”

Charlie saw that they were early. There were few players on the fields. He should remember to put it on his list—
Tell Sol not to go to the racetracks, in Florida or anywhere else
. “The what?” Charlie asked.

“The
tsumin
box—we always keep it in the china closet in the kitchen, but it was gone. We used it last Saturday.”

“I see Morty and Irving,” Charlie said. “Christ, is Morty getting fat!”

They parked and got out. Murray locked the car doors. Danny stayed next to Charlie, and Charlie waved to Morty and Irving, rubbed the tips of his fingers against his palms, and then, without warning, punched Murray in the midsection. Murray coughed, gagged. “Soft,” Charlie said. “You're soft even though you're thin.”