Free An Orphan's Tale by Jay Neugeboren Page A

films going way back—”
    â€œTo 1933, the year we were married,” Mr. Mittleman said.
    The film fluttered. Mr. Mittleman rested his hand lightly on the reel, the sprockets caught, and a man was wrapping the boy in a towel. Then the boy was being tossed up and down toward the ceiling.
    â€œDanny’s from the Home,” Charlie said. “Where I grew up.”
    â€œYes,” Mrs. Mittleman said. “I know.”
    Mr. Mittleman looked toward Danny for the first time. “You know something?” he said. “He looks like an orphan.” Then his eyes were on the screen again. “But Shirley will fatten him up.”
    Danny dug his fingers into the side of his sack and he could feel the ridges of the tephillin boxes. He tried to concentrate on a passage from the Pirkay Avos that he had memorized, about love. He was aware that Charlie was telling the Mittlemans about Murray’s news and that Mr. Mittleman was telling a story about a Jewish man who had tried every form of birth control and had ten hungry children. The doctor recommended orange juice. “‘Before or after?’ the husband asked. ‘Instead of,’ the doctor said.”
    Charlie was saying that he was happy for Murray and Anita. He said that Murray seemed cold about things, because of his theories, but that it wasn’t so. Mr. Mittleman, on the screen, twenty pounds heavier and twenty or thirty years younger, puffed smoke into the camera. “I was once a young man,” Mr. Mittleman said.
    â€œI like Murray and Anita,” Mrs. Mittleman said. “I think their family has a beautiful image.”
    â€œMy wife thought the Kennedy family had a beautiful image,” Mr. Mittleman said.
    Charlie asked Mrs. Mittleman if he’d ever told her that even before he’d come to live with them, he’d often seen movies in his head. Danny smiled.
    â€œIf his brother had lived to become President I don’t think his image would have been as good as John’s, do you?” Mrs. Mittleman asked. “He was too emotional.”
    Charlie looked at the film, in color now, of a boy jumping up and down in a wading pool. Mrs. Mittleman and her brother Oscar and Oscar’s wife sat in wicker chairs watching, and Charlie realized that he had, again, been seeing pictures of Sol. Sol was with Jerry the waiter, who worked in the Catskills in the summer and spent his winters in Florida, and Charlie saw them sitting in a box together at Hialeah racetrack. “They’re thinking of closing the Home,” Charlie said. “But we’ll see what we can do. Danny and I are going to work on it.”
    â€œIt’s the new abortion laws,” Danny stated. “They can’t find enough orphans anymore—especially Jewish orphans.”
    â€œThere must be an angle for us there, Max, don’t you think?” Charlie said. “I mean, in getting into the adoption business. If there’s a shortage of something there’s money to be made, right?”
    â€œWe knew people who were in the business,” Mrs. Mittleman said. “As a matter of fact, we were once offered a good black-market baby but—”
    â€œShush,” Mr. Mittleman said.
    â€œJewish parents want Jewish kids, right?” Charlie said. “So if we—”
    â€œIt’s not funny,” Mr. Mittleman said. “We shouldn’t make jokes with the boy sitting here.”
    Charlie looked at the screen more intently, trying to see himself as a boy. He remembered Adoption Day, when they’d all act as crazy as they could, so nobody would take them. He had always appeared with different color socks, his pants inside out, his fly open. Murray would stuff food in his mouth at breakfast and save it there until it was time—and then let it drool out. Charlie laughed, seeing Irving, slowly unbuckling his belt in front of some of the “buyers,” as they’d called them, to show he