An Orphan's Tale (25 page)

“A man your age shouldn't be doing things like this. With your looks and your build you should have learned to stay away from young boys.”

“Hey-!” Charlie called, without thought.

The policeman's heel struck him hard, near the end of his spine. Charlie bit his tongue to keep from crying out. “I told you to be careful. I'm your size, Mr. Sapistein. The next time you consider doing something foolish, remember what I could have done to you and didn't. That's how easily it can all end, don't you see? You'll find your wallet outside the door. You don't know my name, do you?”

“No.”

“But you'll remember our conversation for a long time, even if we never see each other again, won't you.”

“I'll remember.”

“You're a very lucky man, in my opinion. You can start counting to sixty, slowly.”

Charlie did as he was told, then stood up. He reached under his shirt with his fingers to see if the policeman had, on his back, drawn blood. He had not. Charlie took his handkerchief out and wiped the sweat from his face. He saw blood on the handkerchief. He stepped outside, picked up his wallet, and counted his money. It was all there. He took off his wristwatch and, using the silvered back for a mirror, saw that the left side of his face was scratched, from where he had rubbed the skin against the floor. He remembered when he'd been assigned to flannel the floors of all the dormitories, meeting rooms, and game rooms.

He walked across the courtyard, then scaled the wall and jumped down, onto the street side. The sidewalk was hard and he stumbled forward, let himself roll slightly, football-style, on his shoulder. His back did not hurt, though he knew he was bruised there. He tried not to think of anything or anyone, and he tried not to allow himself to recognize the measure of his anger. He opened the door to his car, got in and drove away, his heart beating as rapidly as it did when he finished wind sprints, and he didn't stop the car until he had driven twenty-five blocks. Then he pulled to the curb, in front of a diner, looked all around, and reached across.

When he saw the crumpled newspaper inside the glove compartment, he exhaled with relief and told himself that he was even luckier than the policeman had imagined. Charlie unwrapped the newspaper. His fingers were trembling. He glanced up, into the rear-view mirror, but saw no cars approaching.

He held the silver
tsumin
box on his lap, just below the steering wheel. The bells tinkled gently. The metal felt icecold. Charlie looked into the side-view mirror, then lowered his head, opened the door, and inhaled. The fragrance of spices made him salivate. If what had just happened was crazy, he told himself, then having taken the
tsumin
box was even crazier. Could he even remember the reasons he'd given himself? How honest had he been with himself when he'd promised that he was only taking it for a few days, to show to a dealer in the city so he could get one like it for Danny? He'd had only a week—but why hadn't he taken care of it during that week?

He felt moisture along the insides of his thighs. It wouldn't be safe to drive, he knew. He needed food, warmth, time. He sniffed the spices again, crumpled the newspaper around the box and placed it back in the glove compartment. He told himself to lock the glove compartment. When he stepped out of the car he locked all the doors and went around the car a second time, double-checking.

Charlie entered the apartment building and walked to the second floor. Lillian opened the door. She was in a sheer pale blue nightgown, a coffee mug in her hand.

“Sandy's still here,” she said.

She gave him her cheek to kiss, but he put both arms around her and pressed his mouth against her neck. “Hey—” she said. “What gives?”

Sandy stood behind her mother, schoolbooks in her arms. “Oh,” she said. “It's just you.”

“Hi sweetie,” he said, and he went to her. She let him kiss her on the lips.

“I have to meet my friend Jennifer before school, to get the history assignment,” she said, and left the apartment.

Lillian sipped her coffee and smiled at him. “Okay,” she said. “Come on—” She walked down the hallway to her bedroom. “Once she goes she won't come back.”

“I didn't come for that,” Charlie said. “I was in the neighborhood, is all. I needed to be with somebody, to get warm.”

Lillian didn't seem to hear what he was saying. She laughed at his words. He followed her. “I don't have much time,” Lillian said. “I have to be at work by nine—don't let me fall asleep after, all right?”

When he entered the bedroom she was already under the covers. The Venetian blinds were drawn. “Something crazy happened just before,” he said. “Remember the boy who was at Murray's funeral—the one from the Home who was staying with me?”

She turned her back to him. He took his shoes off. “My name is Danny Ginsberg and I come from the Home,” she recited, and shuddered. “He gave me the willies, being there. He reminded me of your mother—”

Charlie got under the covers, but he was afraid to touch her. “You never met my mother.”

“You used to tell me how beautiful she was. You once showed me a picture of her when she was young—from before she was married.”

“Do you want to know what happened this morning?”

He saw her hand reach out and turn the alarm clock, on the night table, toward her. “If you make it quick, sweetie. I really—”

“We don't have to do this,” he said. “We could have coffee and just talk.”

“Make up your mind.” She turned to him, her eyes mildly angry. “You told me you needed to get warm, didn't you? What is it you're trying to do to me?”

She ran her forefinger down the middle of his face, between his eyes, down his nose, across his lips, to his chin. “You look tired,” she said. “You work too hard, don't you think? You should relax a little bit more. We'd be glad to go places with you if you'd give us notice. Now that you're a rich man…”

She laughed and slid toward him. She was still wearing her nightgown. She put one arm over his shoulder and he shivered. “Hey,” she said. “You're really in a state, aren't you?” She reached down. “You're not even—”

He turned over, on his side, away from her, and she pressed against him from behind, her arms around his chest, “I'm sorry,” he said. “I went back to the Home and found it was closed and I climbed over the wall—then this crazy cop found me there and threatened to kill me. I told him I was looking for Danny. I forgot to mention that—that the boy ran away and I was worried about him. So I came here. I had breakfast over on 18th Avenue and realized I wasn't in such hot shape.”

“Poor baby,” she said, her fingers playing with the curls on his chest. “You like it best this way, don't you—when I hold you from behind? Tell me the truth.”

He nodded.

“I know,” she said. “You like me to talk to you like this too, don't you?”

He nodded again.

“We never talked much before we were married, but now that I'm heading for middle age and grandchildren—now you like me to tell you everything that's happening, don't you?”

“Please…” he said.

“I wish I had the time,” she said. “I'll probably be the youngest grandmother in the neighborhood.” She pulled away. “It's getting toward eight already and I have to put makeup on and get dressed and get to work. Can you come back tonight? We could talk then.” She stroked him with her fingertip, just below the navel. “I like you down here. You're nice and flat.” She licked his shoulders. “It sounds like you were the crazy one, if you ask me—what's a cop supposed to think, finding a big guy like you in a closed-up building?”

“Okay,” Charlie said. “Just hold me then.”

“You always get big more quickly this way, don't you, but listen, hey—” she whispered in his ear. “I don't mind even a little bit. I like it too. I like you and I like being able to say what I want to you and I like that you need me and just come barging in, like this morning.”

She had both hands between his thighs, spreading them. He felt his muscles contract, involuntarily. She ran her tongue down his spine and he didn't know how to tell her that this wasn't really what he had come for. “I took something from Murray's house,” he said. “It's in the car, locked up.”

“Mmmm,” she said, then stopped, briefly. “I'm so sorry about that, Charlie. I really am. I know how you loved him.”

When she was dressed, he offered to drive her into the city, but she said she preferred the subway. It would give her time to rest, without talking.

Charlie drove through Brooklyn, down Flatbush Avenue and across the Manhattan Bridge. He'd wanted to tell Lillian about Sol, but there hadn't been time. Lillian had always liked Sol. He drove to the office of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and spoke to several people before he found somebody who had information about the Home.

Charlie sat in the man's small office and explained that he had grown up in the Home and had taken an interest in one of the boys now there. The man found a folder and told Charlie that all of the remaining nine boys had been transferred to other facilities, but that there was no listing for any boy named Daniel Ginsberg. He showed Charlie a small photo of each boy, in case Charlie had the wrong name, but Danny's face did not appear among them. Perhaps, Charlie suggested, Danny had been transferred somewhere else just before the Home had closed.

The man looked through more folders. “Here's a complete roster of all the boys who were there during its final eighteen months, with the disposition of each case. There's a small snapshot of each boy, and fingerprints.” He passed one sheet to Charlie. “There's a Greenburg here—Martin Green-burg—but I find no Ginsberg.”

Charlie looked at all the pictures. “I don't understand,” he said.

“When was the last time you saw him there, Mr. Sapistein?”

Charlie scratched his head and acknowledged that he might have been mistaken. It had been a while. Things got away from him sometimes. The man did not show that he was in any way suspicious of Charlie's inquiry, but Charlie warned himself to be careful, to keep from saying anything about Danny having stayed with him. “It's funny, though,” Charlie said, standing to leave. “I mean, that the place is closed—that there won't be any more Jewish orphans.”

“It must be,” the man said, and he stood also. “And there's one bad effect in all this too—I mean the black market in Jewish babies.”

Charlie felt nothing.

“It's soared out of sight. This is off the record, of course, but I've been told that Jewish parents without children are willing to pay up to fifty thousand dollars to obtain a certified Jewish baby these days. And even then they can never really be one hundred percent sure.” He walked around his desk and opened the door for Charlie. “I feel sorry for them.” Charlie saw the gold-framed photographs on the man's desk, of wife and three children—two sons, one daughter.

“I have a daughter,” Charlie said. “I was divorced, but I still see her. She's a big girl now.”

The man smiled. “If we can be of any further help, just call on us. I have your address and phone number should anything come across my desk.”

Charlie left the building and was a block away before he realized that he had forgotten to ask about what had been done with all the records and photographs and trophies and medals. He wished he could have seen his own file—to see information on what he'd been like, according to others, when he'd been a boy.

He walked toward Grand Central Station, along 42nd Street. He imagined that most other people had a similar curiosity about the past—not about themselves, perhaps, but about the childhoods of their parents and grandparents. You could never ask older people—Sol or Mittleman or Dr. Fogel—to talk about their own boyhoods, though. You had to wait on older people. They told you stories about themselves when they were ready to tell them.

Charlie wondered if Danny had been in touch with Dr. Fogel. He wondered how Dr. Fogel was filling his days, without the Home. He imagined himself in Dr. Fogel's living room, telling Dr. Fogel and Danny about Sol's new life. He saw himself saying that when he thought of Sol now he thought of a story Max had read to him, from the newspaper, about a man who went around the country, from town to town, placing an ad in each local paper. The ad gave a post office box number and said, simply,
Last Chance to Send in Your Dollar!
The man had averaged between three and four hundred dollars a town before he'd been stopped. Max had tacked the item to the corkboard beside his desk. Charlie wanted to remember to give the story to Sol, the next time Sol telephoned.

When he entered his car, Charlie checked the glove compartment. The
tsumin
box was there. In truth, he reasoned, the absence of any records concerning Danny helped to explain things. He figured that the boy had reached the Home a day or two after it had been closed. There was no mystery to it, really. Gitelman and the others had decided, simply, that the easiest way to close the Home's books at the end-to balance things—was to eliminate the boy's records. If they had admitted he was missing there would have been too many problems—with the police, the FBI, the Federation….

But how, he wondered, had Danny reacted when he'd arrived, with his sack and books, and had seen the gates closed? Had he realized that no records of his life existed? And if Gitelman and the others had actually destroyed information, how, in his future life, would Danny ever be able to prove he really existed?

Charlie smiled: it was a problem that would have delighted the boy! Endangered species was right, and Charlie imagined himself meeting Danny and surprising him with the information that he had, alas, become extinct.

Back in Brooklyn, Charlie collected rents. He mentioned Danny to each person he visited, asking if they'd seen him during the previous few weeks. Nobody had. If they did meet him, he asked them to tell the boy to telephone New Jersey collect, that there was an important message for him.