An Orphan's Tale (22 page)

He looks just the same, Herman kept whispering. He looks just the same.

Ephraim came in and I introduced him to Dr. Fogel and Dr. Fogel kissed Ephraim on his forehead and said something quickly in Hebrew, with his hand on Ephraim's forehead.

Tell me about yourselves, Dr. Fogel said to his former students, and he called each of them by their Hebrew names to show he remembered. He smiled warmly at them and apologized for not having come sooner in the week. He said he was truly interested in what had become of their lives.

They talked very easily after that, with Irving starting, about themselves and their jobs and their homes. They brought their wives and children in to introduce to him, and the children sat on the rug with Anita's children and listened to Dr. Fogel ask questions. He wanted to know if they kept Kosher homes and Morty and Irving's families said they did but when Herman said he didn't Dr. Fogel didn't cluck inside his mouth. He praised the children for being able to give their Hebrew names and he gave each child a nickel, a penny, and a piece of sucking candy. They all stared at his arm and whenever he caught one of them doing it I saw him smile. This is a riddle he asked: If you want to get something precious from the other side of a Shul, do you go through the Shul to get it, or around? Ephraim knew the answer from Murray, and why. You go around, he said, because a Shul is not a means to an end.

Just before 10 o'clock Dr. Fogel went to Murray's study and found a prayer book he wanted. He prayed by himself from Tihilim. Then he went around from room to room and took sheets off mirrors. The SHIVA was over. He told Ephraim and the others they could put their shoes on. He went into the kitchen and ate some food and made Anita and Ephraim eat with him and then he asked Charlie to telephone for a taxi. Charlie will take you back, Anita said, and Dr. Fogel didn't wait for Charlie to answer. Good, he said.

Charlie didn't tell me to come along. Before he left he went into the bathroom and shaved off his beard with Murray's razor.

Also: I asked Dr. Fogel about the Home's motto and he smiled at me for knowing! He said he never told anybody to change it because it always reminded him of Jews like Sol's father who built the Home!

These are other things that happened today after Dr. Fogel left: I practiced my Haftorah. Mr. Alfred and a new man came and spoke with Anita in Murray's study. Dov fell out of an apple tree but he wasn't hurt. During lunch Eli fell asleep on the floor and wet his pants. Hannah handed me a note and I went into the bathroom and read it and this is what it said:

In the car going home I got Charlie angry by saying that someday he would meet all of Sol's other boys at Sol's funeral. He slapped me across the face and didn't say he was sorry.

What I think: Charlie got angry because he knows that I know that he thinks that Sol thinks the exact same thought in his head every time he goes around the country and wonders if it's his last trip. That's what I decided Sol's life is for!

Ephraim and I went for a walk together in the woods. He knows the names of birds and trees and wildflowers. He told me he once told Murray that Murray wouldn't have cared so much about being Jewish if he hadn't been the only Jew where he lived. I called him a would-be Jew, Ephraim said, and I never took it back.

When we said good-bye tonight Anita hugged me and kissed me and whispered into my ear, “I love you.” Ephraim said he's not going to shave or cut his hair or put on new clothes for 30 days. The 7 days of Mourning come from the 7 days Joseph mourned for his father Jacob and the 30 days come from the 30 days Israel mourned for Moses. Nobody knows where Moses is buried because he didn't want people to come to his grave and worship him.

What I decided: When I die, even though I believe that burying bodies in the ground is a waste and doesn't do anybody any good, I won't give my body to science or for anything else. I'll leave instructions to be buried like a Jew because I want to be buried the same way Jews have always been buried for thousands of years.

Rivka and Dov wanted to watch TV right away after SHIVA was over but Ephraim wouldn't let them. Anita said they'd discuss it later. Charlie didn't say what he and Dr. Fogel talked about when he drove Dr. Fogel into Brooklyn. He telephoned Sol and they have a meeting for tomorrow when Charlie will offer him his plan!

Here he comes now. This is the truth: If Murray hadn't died when he did I would have to do what I'm going to do anyway!

Charlie watched in disbelief as the runner stumbled across the goal line.
Danny's gone
, he thought.
Danny's gone
.

He sent in substitutes and called two players who'd missed tackles to him. Charlie thought one of them was smiling at him. He grabbed the boy by the face guard and yanked. “Does that hurt?” he asked. The boy tried to twist away. “Does it?”

“Cut it out,” the other boy said. “We don't get paid for football.”

“It doesn't matter,” Anita said, standing next to him, her head enclosed within a dark piece of fur. “You should relax.”

Charlie shooed the boys away, but he still could not find words quickly enough. Sol was gone also, to California. “You get lost too,” he said to Anita, and he stalked away, down the sideline.

For the third week in a row his team lost. In the locker room, while his players were changing, there was a knock on the door. “Is everybody decent?” Anita called. When there was no reply, she entered.

“This is the men's locker room,” Charlie said, but Anita did not acknowledge his words. The boys giggled. Her fur hat was off and Charlie could smell perfume in her hair. Anita spoke: “I just wanted to tell all of you that even though you lost, I know you did your best….”

“Bullshit,” Charlie said.

Anita smiled at him. “I'm glad nobody was hurt today,” she continued. “That's important.”

Charlie rolled his eyes, but said nothing. It was useless. Everything was upside down. He saw Sol laughing at him. “I want to speak with you afterwards,” she said to him. “Can you come by the house?” Charlie nodded. She drew him to the door. “They're only boys,” she whispered. “Why take it so hard? Honestly, Charlie—they're still wet behind the ears—”

“Sure,” he said. “And I'm the king of France.”

“I'll see you later,” she said, and touched his hand with her own.

He wished Danny could have seen the difference. Weekday afternoons during practice the girls from the school would now stand along the sidelines, flirting, and Anita forbade him from making them leave. Losing interest himself, he would look past them, to the hill where he had first seen Danny. He didn't argue with Anita. She had the support of the Board and of the teachers and of the students. There was no more marching silently from class to class, no more required uniforms, no more standing when adults entered classrooms, no more sitting quietly in rows. Students were encouraged to call teachers by their first names. “The Reign of Terror is over,” she told a meeting of faculty and staff on her first day as headmistress.

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?