An Orphan's Tale (10 page)

3. Every morning at 9:30 he calls his stockbroker. He says stocks are good because they're liquid. Other things he keeps his money in are land, bank accounts, Treasury notes, and options. He buys and sells options on land and stocks. He says he learned that from Mr. Mittleman. It's a way to spread your money.

4. We look at buildings and vacant lots and houses Charlie is thinking of buying, but when he asks me if I like a house I don't know what to say because I wonder if he's thinking of buying it for us now, the way he wanted to do for him and Sol.

5. He talks a lot about Sol with me and says that Sol never works at all and never did, as far as he knows. He told me that Sol's father was a very wealthy Jew from upstate New York who owned a company that made uniforms for athletic teams, and that Sol saved sample uniforms of old teams that are gone like the Brooklyn Robins and the Boston Pilgrims and St. Louis Browns and original Baltimore Orioles. Once a year in the spring Sol would bring his uniforms to the Home in a trunk, along with famous souvenirs of signed bats and gloves and balls.

The reason Charlie's worried about Sol's money is because Sol's father sold the uniform business when Sol was a young man and Charlie thinks that maybe most of the money Sol got then is used up now. He told me that Sol's father was a founder of the Home. He says people always enjoyed doing things for Sol. He says that's the most important thing: to make other people want to please you.

He talks to me like that all the time, making sure I learn things, and here are some of the things he taught me so far:

1. The 3 most important things to consider in buying any piece of property are 1. location, 2. location, and 3. location.

2. Always use other people's money! You can buy things with small percentages and when you sell you get the whole profit after you pay back the loan. He calls this LEVERAGE. In Murray's house Dov always wants him to crack walnuts in his fingers and when Charlie does Dov shouts “That's leverage!” and it makes Charlie laugh.

Will Charlie really speak with Dr. Fogel? What will Dr. Fogel feel when he sees him after all these years? If Dr. Fogel finds out how Charlie found out about the land will they get together and try to make me go back?

I'm only afraid of that when he's not with me but I'm not afraid of Murray anymore. Now that he thinks I'm so smart the way he was he tells everybody in the school I'm a special exchange student from the orphanage he grew up in. Also because he really loves Charlie! When Charlie was 1st put into the Home Murray was older and used to rock him to sleep in his arms every night.

I watched practice with Murray yesterday and he even put his arm around me. I told him how I thought he looked the same as he did when he was a boy in the photos except thinner and he told me about the heart attack he had 4 years ago and how he's lost 35 pounds. He told me about Charlie visiting him in the hospital every day and what Charlie said to him, through the oxygen tent: “Get well for yourself and nobody else.” Charlie told him that people forget very quickly and Murray said he was right. Charlie said that if Murray died, Anita would remarry, his kids would grow up and have lives of their own, and for everybody else he would only be a memory and “a conversation piece.”

This is how Murray runs his school: The students march from room to room, even the ones who are 18 years old. If you don't wear a school uniform you get sent home. Smoking, hand holding, and talking are not allowed in the halls. The students have to stand whenever an adult enters a room. All adults are called Mr. Mrs. Sir or Ma'am. Every student must practice a musical instrument 1 hour a day. Every student must study either Greek, Latin, or Hebrew. Every student must play on an athletic team. Murray is allowed to enter a classroom at any time and test students or check homework.

If a student doesn't like the way he's treated he can have a 15 minute interview with Murray, but Murray's decision is final, and there are things he won't discuss. If students or parents are displeased, they can leave the school.

What surprised me: How happy the students seem to be!

Also: The girls have to keep their arms covered at all times, and the men teachers have to wear jackets and ties.

Murray runs the school this way because he says democracy isn't everything. He believes that True Freedom comes from developing resources and skills in yourself that you can use for the rest of your life!

What Charlie says: Murray's happy because he's the boss.

When they were boys Murray was allowed out of the Home like me to go to a regular public school because he was so smart but Charlie wasn't. They had teachers come to the Home the way we do for regular subjects, but going to a public school gives you a better chance to get into college.

Every time I ask Charlie if he wants me to help him learn to read he ignores me. In the school library I read about what Charlie has. It's called DYSLEXIA and it comes because the hemispheres of the brain didn't establish the right “dominance” when you were young. I read about ways it can be cured with hormones and vitamins and training.

Some dyslexiacs read from right to left, but it doesn't make them Jews. I asked Charlie and he told me that things switch on him sometimes.

Words I thought of that would be fun if I had mirror vision like him: LIVE would be EVIL. LIVED is DEVIL. WAS is SAW. PAL is LAP.

A Palindrome is a sentence or word that's the same backward as forward, like MADAM I'M ADAM or DEIFIED.

I told Charlie I thought it would be exciting to be that way so that things could turn inside out at any moment of your life and you might discover something new, but he wouldn't talk about it.

LATER

It's pitch black out but he's still not home. I already had some supper with Mr. and Mrs. Mittleman but I didn't eat much. Mrs. Mittleman said that Charlie might be late because he was having a date with a woman. She said it was normal for a grown man to want to be alone with a woman and she looked at me when she said it but I didn't show anything. I wondered if Charlie would visit Dr. Fogel in his home to talk about buying his land.

In the afternoon before supper I turned on the shower so they wouldn't hear me and I practiced my Haftorah and Maftir. Then I got into bed and played with myself. I have as much hair as some of the players on the team at Charlie's school. I do exercises and run with them sometimes but I don't get into a uniform. I'm better coordinated than I used to think I was. I thought of how Charlie and Murray were laughing 3 nights ago because Murray recited what the Director used to lecture to them at their Assemblies. This is what he said: MASTURBATION SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED TO GET OUT OF HAND.

We eat at Murray's house at least one night every week, and Murray and Charlie like to argue with each other while Anita watches. Charlie says he's worried about Sol because nobody's heard from him, but Murray says he's really worried about himself. He says that's the reason Charlie took me in—because he wants somebody to take care of him when he gets old the way he wants to take care of Sol because Sol took care of him when he was a boy! Murray says that he went through a crisis also when he was getting close to 40 about growing old, but Charlie says it has nothing to do with Murray's theories.

After I played with myself I slept for a while and while I was sleeping I dreamt that I was Charlie. When I woke up I couldn't tell at first if I was Danny Ginsberg who had just dreamed that he was Charlie or if I was now Charlie dreaming that I was Danny Ginsberg.

WEDNESDAY

It's nighttime now and the room is hushed with quiet. Charlie's at his desk, hunched over and adding things up, and I'm sitting in his black chair with my shirt off so I can feel the soft leather against my back. I have my feet up and my socks off.

I was sleeping when he got home last night but he woke me up to tell me he stopped at the Home. He said the place looked so empty it scared him and that he only stayed a few minutes and didn't speak to the Director or try to see Dr. Fogel. He said that as soon as he saw the way the Home is now he decided not to save it, “Let's just work on saving you, OK?”

I acted as if I was drowsy from being woken up and I said, “Save the Home!”

“But there are no more orphans,” he said. “What do you want to do—import them?”

I told him that was a pretty good idea. There are poor Jews in other places in the world where they don't have so much birth control. There are Jews in India and China and Poland and Russia and even in Egypt and Syria. I told him that when men and women soldiers in Israel were killed by Arabs and their children made into orphans we could bring them here until they reached the age when they could go back. That way we could save the state of Israel the expense of raising them and training them.

He scratched his head and laughed at the way my brain works and said it would be cheaper to take in black and Puerto Rican kids from the city and teach them to be Jews but I said Jews weren't allowed to proselytize.

I was glad I didn't try to force him to promise me anything more because it might have made the shock of seeing the Home worse. He was relaxed today. We walked in my old neighborhood where I first saw him and I told him about my mother and he told me about his. He said he remembers his mother as being the most beautiful woman he ever saw. He remembers her when she was almost gone and weighed less than 70 pounds, but he said her face still glowed and that she had a look in her eyes which he said would last him forever.

I told him that my mother was very beautiful too, with sandy-blond hair like mine and hazel eyes and that after my father died people told me she wasn't the same as she was before and that a doctor told her it's better if we don't see each other very often. I said she had a lot of money and lived in an enormous old house with a lookout room on the roof like a crow's nest on a ship from where you can see for miles and miles.

Neither of us remembered our fathers.

He took me to the building where Sol lived with his brother. Sol's brother died a long time ago and was a bachelor too. It was only 2 stories high and I was surprised that it was so plain. It had fire escapes on the front side and big red brick stoops where you could sit on either side of the door. Charlie said Sol was gone so much he only needed it as a place to sleep in and store his things. I asked him where Sol lived now and Charlie said that was why he was worried. He doesn't know! He spoke to the super of the building and the super took us down to the basement and showed us a bin with Sol's trunks and dressers in it, but Sol's apartment was rented to somebody else.

Charlie told me the story of how when he was a young boy he snuck out of the Home 1 time after Sol brought them back from a game and followed Sol all the way to this house. He said he remembered seeing Sol on the street, teasing young children who were riding tricycles in a group by not letting them get by him. He could tell the children loved to have Sol tease them. He said the children went into Sol's apartment and he watched through the window while Sol gave them graham crackers and milk. He said he was surprised the place was so small and didn't have any decorations on the walls.

He laughed, remembering how angry Sol was when he spotted him peering in over the windowsill. He remembered feeling that Sol would have whipped him with a strap if he could have! Sol's brother took Charlie back to the Home in a taxi and they never mentioned the incident again.

Charlie said he would have another surprise trip for me in a few days!

Here are some other things Charlie does: He takes listings on new houses. He calls banks and insurance companies and mortgage brokers to get money for himself and other people. In the evenings he shows houses and telephones people. He doesn't have a realtor's license because he's afraid to take the test, so Mrs. Mittleman does all his paper work.

In the mornings sometimes we go over the birth and obituary columns in the local papers. People with more children need bigger homes. Widows and widowers want to move to smaller homes.

In the afternoon he coaches the team. They play 6 man football in a league with 7 other private schools and they've won the championship every year since Charlie was coach.

Every night Mr. Mittleman shows his movies and they talk business after.

I like to drive into the city with Charlie when the light is just beginning before most people wake up. The city looks beautiful from the bridge. What I think about is how they get enough food into it every day, day after day, to feed 8 million people plus commuters.

I said this to Charlie this morning and he told me he thinks about the exact same thing sometimes and that his conclusion is that it proves the city isn't dying the way people say it is. He said if he still had his own family he would bring his children up in the city.

Do you think about your daughter a lot? I asked.

No, he said.

But don't you think about how she keeps changing and you're not there to see the changes?

He said he still sees her sometimes if he's in her neighborhood and that he used to wonder about himself because he didn't miss her, but he says he stopped wondering a few years ago. He sends money to his ex-wife every month and he'll pay for college if Sandy goes there.

The only thing I think about sometimes, he said, is that after she gets away from home and gets married and has a family, that maybe then we'll be able to be pretty good friends. He asked me if I thought that sounded funny and I said it didn't. He said he sees the scene in his head sometimes, of him visiting her and her husband and her children and of them having nice evenings together.

Coming home he told me that Dr. Fogel used to make fun of him and ask him when he was going to learn to read. Who do you think you are—Rabbi Akiba? Dr. Fogel would say. He used to send him out of the classroom and tell him to return when he was 40 years old.

What I imagined Dr. Fogel saying to him at the Home yesterday if Charlie walked into his classroom: GO HOME. YOU'RE 17 MONTHS EARLY!