An Orphan's Tale

by Jay Neugeboren

  He remembered a story Dr. Fogel had told them, of how, when Noah’s sons found their father lying drunk and naked in his tent, they had entered the tent with a garment over their heads and walked backward, so as not to set eyes upon their father. They had covered him with the garment. The story showed, Dr. Fogel had taught, that Judaism assumed that as a man grew older he grew wiser, and so it demanded that the young give respect and honor to their elders at all times. But Charlie didn’t dare try to tell the story to Anita or his players.

  He wasn’t even certain that he remembered it correctly. Danny could have helped him on that, but he wasn’t ready to give in to the boy’s demands either, especially when he was, as now, feeling slightly unsure of himself. If he went after the boy because of the boy’s threat, how would the boy respect him? Yet he sensed that if he waited for the boy to come back to him, he might wait forever.

  He came to Anita’s front door smiling, realizing that he did not, for this very reason, need to go to Danny. A boy with a will like his—with such desire—would survive, with or without Charlie Sapistein, in the Home or out.

  Anita opened the door, drink in hand. “I’m sorry I bit at you before,” he said.

  She kissed him on the cheek. “I love to see you angry,” she said. “It’s what makes the boys admire you. You have a marvelous temper.”

  Charlie stepped inside and took his parka off. Eli and Rivka ran to him and he picked one child up in each arm and swung them around. Anita told them that she and Charlie wanted to be alone. The children were to play in their room. “I built a fire,” she said, and led Charlie to Murray’s study.

  In Murray’s study, she closed the door behind them and handed him a drink. “No thanks,” Charlie said. “I’m still trying to get back in shape from the week’s layoff.”

  “As you wish,” she said. She patted the couch next to her, and he sat. She touched his right ear with her fingertip. “Don’t worry so much, Charlie—we’ll support you, win or lose. We might even give you a raise for next year. The new headmistress is most impressed with your qualities.”

  “I’m a worthy cause,” Charlie said.

  “What?” Anita said, and before he could repeat himself, she was leaning on his shoulder, her mouth near his neck, laughing. “The way you put things—it breaks my mood, don’t you see? I had things arranged so that we could relax together in an intimate setting, and then you come up with one of your sayings—”

  “It’s not mine,” Charlie said. “It’s Danny’s. It’s what he wrote in his note to me.”

  She drew away. “Oh.”

  “I miss him.”

  “I could tell.” She rested her cheek against his shoulder. “But can’t you forget about him for a little while?”

  Charlie stared ahead, at the picture on Murray’s desk—a gold-framed wedding photo of Murray and Anita. Murray had been heavier then. “Don’t you think we’re rushing things,” he said. “I mean, it hasn’t even been a month. Think a little.”

  “Life goes on, Charlie,” Anita said. “Isn’t that what the rabbi said? Isn’t that what I heard you and Sol and Irving and the others tell me the whole week long?”

  “Sure,” Charlie said, but as her fingers stroked his cheek he realized that what bothered him about her touch was not anything that had to do with Murray, but the fact that he did not feel any real desire for her. “But listen—we need to talk. I mean, do you know what you’re getting in for, playing around with a guy like me? Remember, I was married and divorced.”

  “I loved Murray,” she said. “But he has no hold on me.”

  “I know that.”

  “We’ve known one another as long as I knew Murray. We’ve waited long enough, haven’t we?”

  “I keep seeing him on the ground, after I put the block on him.”

  “Was it a good block?”

  “It was a terrific block,” Charlie said, and he smiled at her, then laughed. “Murray would have admired it, I guess. It’s not such a bad way to go, when you think about it—given his life and our friendship.”

  “No.”

  “But you should give me some time.”

  “The children love you and quickness is everything now, don’t you see? It’s why I’m succeeding as much as I am. At the school, at home—” She licked her lips. “By startling everybody with my speed I’m getting what I want.”

  Charlie knew that he was hearing her words, yet in his body he felt as if he were not with her. He saw Sol sitting in the front row at St. Nick’s Arena, watching a boxing match and explaining the fine points to him. Sol had said he believed that Jews were superior because of their history—because only the fittest had survived suffering. Did this mean, then, Charlie wondered, that without suffering the quality of the race would decline? Charlie smiled. It was, he knew, the kind of question Danny would have asked. The boy had infected him.

  “You know about my plans to become a rabbi, don’t you?” he said.

  Anita sat back, her hand still on his shoulder, and laughed. “You’re wonderful, Charlie Sapistein, do you know that?”

  “But I need to learn to read first,” he said. “Danny was helping me. I’ll have to go to a doctor and get checked out. I read Hebrew pretty well because it goes from right to left.” He saw lights outside the window, and thought of Murray, on his mower. “There’s hope for me, I guess.”

  “I know all about Rabbi Akiba,” Anita said. “And I’ll bet I know something you don’t know—that whenever his disciples praised him, he told them he owed all to his wife. Did you know that? She was the one who made him return to his studies after he couldn’t learn to read. His wife was the one who believed in him and gave up everything so that he could become a great scholar….”

  “Sounds more like his mother,” Charlie said.

  Then she was across his lap, her arms around his neck. “Do I look like your mother?”

  “Not really,” Charlie said. “You’re both beautiful. My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. I think I said that before. You’re beautiful too. I’ve always thought that. But no—you don’t look the same.” His head felt light, from not having eaten. If he ate before a game he became nauseated. “As a matter of fact, you remind me of Murray.”

  “Stop it,” she said. “Stop teasing.”

  “Murray was beautiful when he was a boy, and do you know what?”

  “What?” Her head was against his chest, her hair against his mouth, and he told himself that he would have to ask Dr. Fogel the question: if God had singled out the Jews as His people, for suffering, and if the Jews did well and prospered, would this mean that God had abandoned His people?

  He spoke: “You and Murray look alike. Married people always do. It’s one reason Lillian and I divorced—we wanted to do it before we got to look too much like each other-while there was still time.…”

  “I always liked to listen to you—I must be like one of the children.”

  “What about Danny?” Charlie asked.

  “What about him?”

  “The Home isn’t the right place for him now—not the way it is.”

  “You’ll forget about him.” She was staring directly into his eyes. Her eyes seemed kind enough, he thought. There was no reason, really, not to go along with her. The truth, which he didn’t need to share with her, was that in general he found his need for women had diminished. He remembered stories from the Home about older women paying eighteen-year-olds. A woman isn’t really interesting until she’s past thirty, Sol had always told them, but he’d never said why, if this were true, God had created man so that his own desire for sex was declining by then. Charlie imagined that Murray and Irving and the others had talked about this when they’d been in their early twenties. But he’d been married then, and without sharing the discussions he didn’t know what to make of it, other than to see the joke.

  He looked into her face and he imagined Murray kissing her. He wondered how often they had made love—how many times a week, and if they had, in
recent years, ever made love more than once a day. Was it normal, he wondered, to have little desire to regain the desire he’d once had? There had been days, half his lifetime ago, when he’d thought of nothing from the time he awoke but the touch of Lillian’s body against his. Would he be obliged to tell Anita that he and Lillian still went to bed together several times a year, even though, away from her, his craving for her disappeared?

  “All right,” he said. “Life has mountains and life has valleys, right?”

  “Yes,” she said, and he kissed her. He tried not to think of anything else, in order to enjoy himself, but he wondered what thoughts had gone through Murray’s head the last time he and Anita had made love together.…

  He opened his eyes very slightly and peeked through the lashes, so that Anita would not be able to tell that he was looking at her if she opened her eyes at the same time. Her eyes were closed. She took his hand in hers, and, gently, placed it upon her belly and made him move it slowly, in circles. Her other hand held him behind the neck, tightly. He wondered how different she was—if she kissed differently—from the girl she had been before she’d had her first child. How long had she dreamt of this moment? Was it easier for her to forget Murray than for him? If Murray were looking at them now, would he be jealous, or amused?

  He pulled back and she smiled up at him. “Jealousy is the illusion of possession,” he said.

  “Did you make that up yourself?”

  “I think so.”

  They kissed again. Her lips were full and warm and he didn’t think she could tell that she was not arousing him. He’d never had trouble satisfying a woman before and he saw no reason to start having troubles now, so he touched her eyebrow with his finger, let his finger move down to the corner of her mouth, where their lips met. She licked his finger.

  In his head he began making a list of the women he’d had during the past few years. Then he thought of each of Anita’s children and he stood them in a row, at attention, in the courtyard of the Home. He imagined Danny looking down on them from the window of the dormitory, a movie camera in his hand, the viewing lens pressed against his left eye. Touching her stomach—the circular motion—relaxed Charlie, forced him to go more slowly. Her mouth opened for him and he felt mildly repelled by her warm breath. He thought of toothpaste. Eli had a toothbrush that trained him by making music when he moved it up and down. Charlie moved his tongue forward, past her teeth, felt her body press closer to him, and then, as she bit down, he winced and pulled back.

  “Hey-!” he cried. “What’s the matter with you-?”

  She was lying back in the corner of the couch, laughing, looking suddenly younger than he had ever remembered her looking. She might have been his daughter’s age. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and held it against his tongue, then looked at the points of blood on the white cloth. “Christ!” He stood. “That hurt.”

  “Oh Charlie,” she said, and her voice was soft. “I’m sorry. You forgive me, don’t you? It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do, don’t you see? For years.”

  “You must be in shock,” he said. “You should see a doctor, doing a stupid thing like that.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I knew just what I was doing. Don’t you like to be—well, playful sometimes? Or are you—?” She broke off and sat up straight. “Please laugh with me,” she said, and reached toward him with both her hands. “Don’t you see that it’s just something I always wanted to do and never could. Not with Murray.” She laughed to herself, then brushed her hair back. Charlie couldn’t move. He wanted to hit her, and he was shocked to find that he enjoyed the feeling. “I’ve done it before—years ago—when I first went away to college. It was something my mother taught me to keep away the wolves. ‘Do that the first time and they’ll know the kind of girl you are,’ was what she said to me.”

  Charlie dabbed at his tongue with the handkerchief. “I don’t care about the reasons,” he said. “You should be locked up.”

  She waved his words away and walked to the window. He heard steps on the ceiling, then scuffling. “It’s nothing to get so excited about.” She spoke with her back to him. “I said I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She faced him. “Will you forgive me?”

  “You’re crazy,” he said. But his tongue didn’t really hurt anymore.

  “Well,” she said, to herself. “I did it and now it’s done and I feel better, all right?” She looked up at him and smiled, as if to a child. “Let me ask you something, Charlie Sapistein: if you’re so rich, why aren’t you smart?”

  “Just lay off,” he said. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  She was standing behind Murray’s desk, leaning upon it with both hands. “Let me ask you something, Charlie Sapistein: how long do you think Murray’s school would have lasted, with his rules? Isn’t it clear to you what he was doing? The pattern he was repeating?”

  “Have another drink,” Charlie said. He put his handkerchief away. “I need to get home and sell some houses.”

  She shook her head sideways, as if pitying him. Her mouth seemed enormous to him as the words came from it-four or five times its normal size, like the mouth of a girl on a billboard. He couldn’t stop staring into it. “You believe I was against him, don’t you? Against the things he believed in—privacy, family life, inner discipline, ritual, respect for elders—do you want the whole list? You think I was against him.”

  “I didn’t say that.” He shook his head to clear it. She pulled at one of the drawers in the desk, and for a split second Charlie expected to see her hand rise with a revolver in it, pointed at him. Instead, she held up a stethoscope.

  She winked at him. “Wanna play doctor with me?”

  “You’re bats,” he said. “You really are—”

  She was sitting in Murray’s chair, laughing. “Oh Charlie,” she said. “Please forgive me. It’s not what you think.” She held the stethoscope up and pressed the black rubber tubing to her cheek. “It’s not what you think at all. I’m just trying to have a little fun, don’t you see? I’ve wanted you for so many years. I’ve wanted to be able to do things with you that…” A tear slid down her cheek even as she laughed, but he made no movement toward her. Women’s tears had never moved him. He preferred anger to weeping. In all the years I knew him, he thought, I never saw Murray cry. “This isn’t what you think. Murray and I used to listen to the baby’s heartbeat while the baby was inside me—for each of our children. I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you might like to listen to the baby, that was all. I’m sorry.” Her eyes seemed rounder to him, and he didn’t trust himself. “The heartbeat is twice what ours is now, while the baby’s inside—”

  “I have to go. You take care of yourself, okay? Call me if you need anything. Promise?”

  He opened the door. “Is poor Charlie’s little tongue hurt?” she cooed. “Does Charlie want Mama to make it all better?”

  “Promise,” he said, but she only laughed.

  On Monday morning, earlier than usual, Charlie left the house. “The early bird catches the worm,” Mr. Mittleman said to him, without looking up from his desk.

  “Like father, like son,” Charlie replied.

  Charlie drove into Brooklyn and saw the sun rise, from behind the city. He had made his decision. He would visit the Home, speak to Danny, and leave it at that.

  This is the truth [the boy had written]. I want you to adopt me. I looked it up and you can do it legally. Whether you marry Anita or not, as a man who was once married and being of the same religion you are allowed to do it. I can’t stay with you like this forever, not knowing where I stand. I’m returning to the Home to be with the others, where I belong. I’m an orphan just like you were and I asked you to do something special when I first met you. I asked you to save the Home. You said people should let dying things die and that you would let the Home die but that you would save me, so I’m saying OK to that and I’m telling you, to use your own words TO PUT UP OR SHUT UP.
I believe that I’m a worthy cause. You can adopt me or you can let me die with the others. My fate is in your hands. I also want to say that if I never see you again I want to thank you now with all my heart for letting me stay with you during these past few months. I’m sorry about Murray for I know what he meant to you. (“Give me friendship or give me death!”) Good-bye and good luck.

  The boy had signed the note, “Your loving friend of indeterminate age, Danny Ginsberg.”

  The question appealed to Charlie—why did he, in fact, in one part of him, agree with the boy, that they were both members of an endangered species that demanded saving? He remembered what the boy had told him about Jews in Poland marrying two orphans during an epidemic, in order to find favor with God. Did that mean, Charlie wondered, that if there were no Jewish orphans left and God visited a plague upon mankind, there would be no way of saving the Jews?

  In Brooklyn, as he came closer to the Home, he became conscious of how much he looked forward to seeing Danny. He wanted to tell him about Sol, not only because he felt it would make Danny stop worrying but because he knew Danny would enjoy hearing about what had happened. It was, Charlie told himself, something good the boy could put in his storybook.

  Charlie smiled, remembering how uncomfortable he’d felt in the hotel room in New York when he’d presented his plan to Sol. Sol had said he would have a surprise for Charlie when he was done. He’d listened without smiling and had acknowledged that Charlie was right about many things—the money he’d inherited had run out, he wasn’t visiting as many of his boys as he used to, he’d given up his apartment in Brooklyn….

  But guess what your Uncle Sol does now? he’d asked then, and when Charlie had shrugged, unable to say, Sol’s face had broken into a broad grin. He sells real estate too! That’s the surprise he’s been waiting to give you ever since he arrived!

  It was a surprise, Sol said, that he knew would please Charlie more than anyone else in the world, and Charlie wanted to share that news with Danny now. “Your Uncle Sol is a prudent man,” Sol had said, “and that’s what pulled him through.” Then Sol had explained that many years before, when he realized that he might outlive his inheritance, he’d bought a large three-bedroom apartment in a senior citizen city in California. He’d bought it outright and had first entered into the real estate business, he joked, by trading the apartment down several times until he’d wound up with his present place—a one-room efficiency unit. He’d lived on the profits of the trading until a year before and then had begun working for the senior citizen city itself, selling homes and apartments in a new condominium they were building.