An Orphan's Tale (16 page)

But why wasn't he overwhelmed with grief?

And what was the difference between what he felt and what he showed? He had never been closer to anyone than he had been to Murray, and there wasn't anything Murray could say about him that would not be true, and yet, if you added up all of Murray's words, Charlie felt, you'd still wind up short.

Murray would know I thought this also, he thought.

The car slowed and there was suddenly less light coming in through the windows. They were at the hospital. “Remember to tell them about his attack four years ago,” Herman said. “Maybe his doctor can phone in the history to help them….”

Charlie knew nobody would blame him and he didn't blame himself. It had been a clean hard block. He gave Dr. Fogel credit for having taught him well, and he thought of saying that to Murray. Murray would have said…what? He couldn't find Murray's voice in his head.

He crawled out backward, on his hands and knees, and watched them put the oxygen mask on Murray's face, transfer him to a rolling stretcher, and run him up a ramp and through a door. Was that the last time he would see him? Irving dabbed at Charlie's forehead with a handkerchief and showed him the blood, from when he'd grazed his head against the car roof. Irving patted him on the back, tried to say something, but bit his lip instead. Charlie nodded, knowing that Irving was thanking him for a job well done.

He wished he could know what was happening in Danny's head. The boy had so much going on there at the same time, all the time, that he made Charlie wonder even more about the things that had been passing through him when he had been that age. He thought of what Danny had said one day two weeks before, when they were driving home from practice.

Do you know what I really want to be when I grow up?
Danny had asked.

What?
Charlie had replied.

Normal
.

There was a connection between that and what he had been feeling in the back of the station wagon. He liked the fact that his mind ran, sometimes, in ordinary grooves. It made him believe that the special part of his life was still to come.

They followed the policeman around and into a waiting room. Irving went to a desk and answered questions. Charlie sat. He heard a baby crying, saw that they were the only white people in the waiting room, and when he did he stood up, walked to Irving, and interrupted him.

“Make sure he gets a good Jewish doctor,” Charlie said.

Irving squinted. Charlie's face was splotchy; he was sweating. “You'd better sit down,” Irving said. “You don't look right.”

Charlie felt that his words should have come forth with strength and fury, yet he knew that they sounded soft and mellow. “I don't want him getting some half-assed intern or a foreign idiot, all right? Please tell them.”

“Sit down.”

Charlie turned. “Okay. Just remember that I told you what to do,” he said, and he walked back and sat next to Danny.

“Will he live?” Danny asked.

Charlie shrugged, and saw Morty and Herman lean their heads toward him for the answer. “Who knows?” he said.

Morty was puffing, his stomach heaving in and out. Charlie was surprised at how polite all the black people were. None of them spoke, nobody spoke to them. They sat and waited. Though his business brought him into their neighborhoods, and though everybody thought he had a wonderful ability to get along with them, he decided that he really didn't know much about them, or understand them. “I always believed that each of us has a number,” Morty was saying, “and that when your number is up, it's up. That's what I always believed.”

“Maybe they dialed the wrong number,” Herman said, and he chewed on his thumbnail. “Jesus, I don't know what I'll do if—”

“Shush,” Morty said.

The others arrived and Charlie rose and stood with them, in a circle, wondering. They muttered and looked at each other and stared at the floor and watched the door that led out of the waiting room. Charlie imagined that each of them was trying to select a picture of Murray from the past.

He tried to imagine what was going on in Danny's head, and he found a feeling of repose there not unlike his own. He saw mists floating inside the boy's skull, like the morning fog rising from the playing fields at the school, and he thought that if the boy could have, he would have represented the mists with a saying. Charlie chose one the boy had taught him:
Paradise is Shabbos which never ends…
.

Charlie was surprised that nobody tried to tell a joke. They agreed that they shouldn't telephone Anita until they knew something definite. Charlie made a note to ask the boy, later, if that had been what he had, in fact, been thinking at that moment. He smiled. The boy would have answered yes, but that the thoughts had been part of what he had been imagining going on in Charlie's head. Morty talked about his blood tests, and the diet he never stuck to, and how Murray did stick to one, so what did it all prove? In the end, doctors didn't know so much.

Charlie saw himself with his arms draped limply over the shoulders of the men next to him as they swayed together, slowly, from right to left, and seeing this enabled him to see what he really wanted to see—a strong shot of himself with Murray.

He saw them as boys going to an old
shul
together where men were standing in front of the congregation with their
talises
pulled over their heads, and only their arms sticking out and stretching upward. Their fingers were outstretched and quivering, the thumbs and forefingers enclosing a circle of space, the tips not quite touching. He saw the men swaying and he heard them wailing like demons. The
talises
were white with black stripes and heavy knotted fringes. Murray had told him that the presence of God was supposed to lie in the air between the men's fingertips. If you looked at them while they had their heads covered, the Orthodox Jews said, you would go blind. Charlie recalled the foul, suffocating odor. That night he'd had chills and had crawled into Murray's bed and slept there. Neither of them had been able to sleep, apart, for several weeks after that.

Charlie realized that he was brushing Danny's hair, back and forth, back and forth, and it seemed softer and more golden than ever. He was pleased with himself—at how easily he was able to wait for the news. It told him that he did have, at his center, what Murray might not have suspected—a calm point, and that this spoke well for the life he would live after forty.

If Murray goes now, he thought, then I can fear less about my own chances of making it past forty.

A man appeared at the swinging doors that led away from the waiting room. When Irving saw him he went forward, then behind the doors. Charlie sat down with the others, where they occupied parts of two rows, sitting silently like schoolboys.

When Irving emerged, five minutes later, he lifted his hands sideways, palms up, in a gesture of helplessness, and then Morty rose and the two men embraced, and cried.

“What happens now?” Herman asked.

“Come,” Irving said.

They walked single file from the room. Charlie saw the black faces swiveling slowly to watch their departure. “Was the doctor Jewish?” Charlie asked, but nobody answered him, or seemed to hear his words.

They stood outside, near their cars. Irving said he would telephone his own home and then go with Charlie to New Jersey, to break the news to Anita and the children.

“My God!” Herman whispered.

They talked softly, as if they were afraid to disturb somebody, and they made arrangements to get together between five and six o'clock at Anita's house. Those without small children would come with their wives. Others would try to get baby-sitters. Irving and Charlie would see to the necessary arrangements. They took assignments for telephoning.

Irving said that they had opened Murray's chest but that the damage was at two ends—he didn't know the technical terms—and that it had been hopeless from the start. The doctor had said that there were few initial signs of arteriosclerosis or fatty deposits; it had been something congenital. There were weak walls. Irving said he really hadn't been able to concentrate on the explanations—it all seemed so stupid.

They embraced one another and said their good-byes. Charlie followed Irving to Irving's car. Irving had the keys to Murray's car, and they would pick it up at the Parade Grounds and leave Irving's car parked in its place. He would get it the next day.

Charlie thought, from the light pressure of his fingers, that Danny was feeling faint, and he suggested that they stop and get some food.

“I'll be all right,” Danny said.

Danny sat in the back by himself and rested his head. Charlie tried to smile at him, to reassure him, but he saw something strange in the boy's eyes. “What is it?” he asked. “Come on. Talk to me—”

“It's nothing,” Danny said.

“Talk,” Irving said. “We should all talk a lot at a time like this. It doesn't matter what we say.”

“Come on,” Charlie said.

Danny nodded, and spoke: “I wanted to ask you if you were going to marry Anita now,” he said, and his voice was suddenly strong.

“If
what
—?”

“Take it easy,” Irving said, and put his hand on Charlie's arm. “The boy's upset.”

“It's called a levirate marriage,” Danny said, and his voice was flat again. “It's in the Torah. When a husband dies, his brother has to marry the widow.”

MONDAY

The beautiful thing about what happens when a Jew dies is how quickly you're buried. A Jew is supposed to be buried on the same day he dies, but usually it's the day after.

Why this is good: It makes the suffering less and the pain more.

They had a Rabbi at the funeral yesterday who never met Murray and he said the Mourner's Kaddish is not a prayer for the dead but for the living! It's a public way to show you still have faith in God and intend to continue to be part of the Jewish community. It does not contain the word DEATH.

What I thought: He must have explained this 1000 times before at 1000 funerals of 1000 different Jews he never knew alive.

How much money does a Rabbi get for giving a funeral speech?

I'm glad to be home again with Charlie. Last night we slept at Anita's house in Ephraim's room and it wasn't good for Charlie to sleep there with Murray gone. I kept my eyes open until I was sure he was asleep but he woke up later when Eli was crying and he went to Eli's room and held him. Eli said his father would be scared in the ground because it would be so dark and he wouldn't be able to see.

Rivka said Eli was stupid, that being dead was like sleeping and when she said that Hannah slapped her and told her she wasn't Eli's mother and then Anita was crying and Charlie was holding her. She looked terrible, with splotches on her cheeks and her hair raggedy looking. I saw Dov using his baseball glove for a pillow.

Charlie isn't so angry with me anymore. He told me if I wanted to write things down in my storybook the way he knows I do he would wait to go to sleep, but he fell asleep with the lights on anyway. I'll have to take his shoes off for him when I'm done. If I wasn't afraid to wake him up now I'd brush his hair back and forth the way he likes to brush mine.

MY SECRET: This afternoon I went for a walk with Hannah into the woods behind the shed where Murray keeps his mower and tools and we kissed again. She has soft lips which are bigger than mine and I don't think she knows that I never kissed a girl before. I think she thought I was a good kisser or she wouldn't have asked me to go with her again. She's less than 2 years older than me, which is a big difference now but won't be later, but I think she's too quiet. I don't know what she thinks about anything at all and she doesn't know what I think.

Today we kissed for over an hour and when we came back Charlie thanked me for spending time with her. I don't think anybody would guess because of her being older. I could feel her breasts against my arm muscles. While I kissed her I imagined her naked. When we stopped she didn't say anything so I asked her if she had a boyfriend and she said no. But I didn't ask her if I could be her boyfriend because if she said no I wouldn't have wanted to have her let me kiss with her again.

What I think: She wasn't even thinking about her father!

With things happening so fast it's hard to miss him yet, but even if she doesn't, I believe her life is changed now forever!

Today was the 2nd day of the week of SHIVA and their house was full of noise, and even laughing, espe daily when the guys from the Home were there with their wives and families. When only the people from near Mill River were there, then things were quieter and sad. All the non-Jews are too polite. They don't know what the Rabbi meant about life going on. They don't understand what the week of SHIVA means to a Jew!

For example: None of them talked about Murray the way Irving and Morty and their wives did. They probably thought it was forbidden to talk about the dead person, but when Murray was talked about was when his death was most real and at the same time when Anita was the least unhappy. She laughed when they told stories about him.

When he was a boy he once organized a hunger strike at the Home so that the boys would be allowed out by themselves, and he sent Herman out in secret to bring back candy bars. His strike worked.

Some religious Jews fast because they believe that being lighter brings one closer to God!

SHIVA comes from the word for Seven for the 7 Days of Mourning and from the word for Rest. Shabbos comes from the same word. During the week of SHIVA people come all the time to visit and talk and bring food. This is what the Rabbis teach: It Is Forbidden To Over-stress Mourning For The Departed.

During the funeral I thought this was what Charlie was thinking: If I become a Rabbi will I use the same stories again and again or will I make up a new speech for every occasion?