Once Upon a Time There Was a Boy

The main character in this book is an elderly Jewish man named Leo Gursky. He immigrated to New York from Poland during the time when Hitler was in power. As the reader, you notice almost immediately that Mr. Gursky has an inherent disposition for being a pessimistic person. He acknowledges that in recent years he has tried to change after he noticed other members of the community crossing the street to avoid his grumpy demeanor while walking the sidewalk. He lives in a small cluttered apartment, where he constantly fears that there will be a huge time lapse after he dies before anyone finds his course.
Luckily for him, his best friend Bruno is in the same position and happens to live in an identical apartment on the floor above him. They have an unspoken agreement to check up on each other and to make sure the other never gets forgotten about to decompose alone. At this point, we have only seen Bruno briefly and usually in passing. However, as the reader, it is easy to conclude that their loneliness is what bonds them. Leo Gursky is a sad man, for good reason, and you are compelled to feel empathy for him in the life that he has lived. Here is his life story in a nutshell:
Once upon a time there was a boy. A boy who was very much in love with a girl. The boy and the girl promised to love each other forever. Both the boy and the girl were Jewish. In need of escaping the genocide to come, the girl's parents sent her oversees to America, where she tried to write to the boy in Poland. Meanwhile, the boy in Poland was laying, hiding silently in the woods listening to the screams of his family as they were shot. The boy was spared. Finally, the boy made it to New York. After many long years the boy tracked down the girl, both were now grown. The now woman told the man of how she tried to write to him, to tell him that she was pregnant with his son. The boy never replied, so she believed him to be dead. She had the boy, Isaac the famous writer, and then she married her boss's son, and had another child. The man begged her to runaway with him, but she declined. The man never stopped loving the woman, but he loved her enough to let her go. Now the man is alone, penniless, and keeps a card in his wallet that says "LEO GURSKY I HAVE NO FAMILY PLEASE CALL PINELAWN CEMETERY I HAVE A PLOT THERE IN THE JEWISH PART THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION."

Our second main character is named Alma, after her parents favorite Spanish novel, The History of Love. She has an educated English mother, and a "father who lost everything: weight, hair, and various internal organs." Alma's mother laid in bed for a year, struck with grief that was most noticeable through the pile up of used water glasses that circle the bed showing the passing of 365 days. Her mother once explained to her, at eight years old, that she would from here on out be treated like an adult. In other words, Alma needed to run the house and look out for her little brother, the Messiah, while her mother grieved the loss of her love, Alma's father. Alma believes her mother is her own species. She is the only human Alma knows that can subsist for days at a time on only water and air. Unlike her mother, who remembers Alma's father by forgetting everything but her love for him, Alma cherishes her father's memory by striving to be like him. This is how she came to keep a survival guide for the wilderness, as she learned everything about the outdoors that her father was once so passionate about. Her brother, Emanuel, but now referred to as Bird because he leaped out of a second story window, is one of Alma's only companions; and she, his. For Bird, there is no paternal memories, and the absence of parent's nurturing is clear through his sad actions. In their idle time, Alma and Bird's favorite game to play together is "What I Am Not". This is how it works: They go through the room, pointing at objects and yell "THIS IS NOT A CHAIR", THIS IS NOT A TABLE", "IT IS NOT RAINING OUTSIDE", etc. until they have erased not only rooms, but weather conditions, and whole years of life. One day, Bird finished the game by yelling "I! HAVE NOT! BEEN! UNHAPPY! MY WHOLE LIFE!" Alma replied, "But you're only seven."