An Orphan's Tale by Jay Neugeboren Page B

bris , and to imagine himself while the mohel was performing the circumcision as being at his own grandson’s bris with his son imagining the same thing he had imagined a generation before. He said he saw it all, except for his own face. “Sometimes I try to see how many groups of three I can keep straight in my head at once, and how many hundreds of years backward and forward I can go, in equal amounts-do you follow?”
    Danny seemed slightly puzzled. “I think you’d make a good rabbi,” he said. “People look up to you.”
    â€œSure,” Charlie said, smiling. “The rabbi gets the fees, right?—But it’s the mohel who gets the tips.”
    Charlie parked the car on Bedford Avenue, not far from Brooklyn College, in a section of expensive private homes. He pointed to a house that looked like a Mexican villa to Danny, with a tile roof, wooden trellises over the porch, and stucco walls. “This is the house I told you about,” Charlie said. “It’s the surprise—”
    Danny tried to keep himself from believing anything at all. He got out of the car and walked up the steps, behind Charlie. “Don’t be scared,” Charlie said, and, one hand on Danny’s arm, he rang the bell. When the door opened and Danny saw Dr. Fogel standing there, he gasped and pulled away from Charlie, angry that Charlie had caught him by surprise.
    Dr. Fogel was wearing a yamulka , and instead of his old brown suit, a bright orange and blue sportshirt. His skin, where he had just shaved, seemed to shine as if it had been pulled tight over his cheeks and jaws, and his eyes showed Danny how happy he was to see them. “I was expecting you,” he said. “Please. Come in.”
    Danny followed him through the doorway and Dr. Fogel asked them both to go back and kiss the mezuzah on the doorpost. He gave them yamulkas to wear, but he did not speak harshly.
    They sat in Dr. Fogel’s living room, around a glass table through which Danny looked at gleaming chrome legs. The living room was large, with wall-to-wall green carpeting and lustrous mahogany furniture. One wall was totally covered with books, and a ladder was leaning against the books, for getting to the high shelves. The opposite wall was, from one end to the other, a mirror, and Dr. Fogel sat in front of it, facing them.
    Danny waited for Dr. Fogel to say something about their both having been away from the Home, but he only smiled and took a cigarette from a silver box. He had never seen Dr. Fogel smoke before, and once Dr. Fogel let the smoke drift upward from his mouth, he seemed even more relaxed than he had been. “Well,” he said. “I was wondering what had become of you, Chaim. I’ve thought about you often through the years.”
    Charlie stiffened when Dr. Fogel called him by his Hebrew name. “I think about you too,” he said.
    â€œI’m glad to see you looking so well,” Dr. Fogel said.
    â€œI’m a coach,” Charlie said, as if he were answering questions. “I coach football. The headmaster of the school I coach for is Murray Mendelsohn—do you remember him?”
    Danny saw how dazed Charlie seemed and he wanted to take him by the hand and run from the house with him. He stared into Charlie’s face, hoping Charlie would look his way. “The last I heard was when he had a heart attack,” Dr. Fogel said. “Mr. Gitelman told me. He’s all right now, I take it.”
    Charlie nodded. “I’m not married anymore,” he said. “My daughter’s sixteen. I’m in the real estate business….”
    Dr. Fogel smiled at Charlie in a way that scared Danny. He seemed so relaxed, leaning back into a big plush, cream-colored couch, that Danny thought that perhaps he was a different Dr. Fogel. “You were the best player I ever had,” Dr. Fogel said. “But you knew that. I never had a boy with as much natural