"Say ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!'" Mr. Dennis instructed a student.

I could have taken the picture and nobody would have known the difference-nobody but parents ever saw these pictures. But suddenly the Christmas tree was wrong. I didn't understand why I was so angry so abruptly, but I refused to cooperate.

"What do you mean, no?" asked Mr. Dennis.

"I'm not taking a picture in front of something I don't celebrate. I'm Jewish." Mr. Dennis locked his jaw, but he wasn't surprised. Though my second-grade teacher had not yet sent me to his office, I had visited Mr. Dennis in kindergarten and first grade because of "behavioral problems." These amounted to eye rolling and talking back-behavior I had seen my grandmother model. What neither my teachers nor Mr. Dennis ever realized was that there were patterns to my behavior.

I caused trouble when I felt threatened. And that almost always happened on holidays. For instance, in first grade, on Mother's Day, the teacher had us sit in a circle and, one by one, recite a favorite thing about our mothers.Well, what was I supposed to say? My favorite thing about my mother is how she never calls or visits. No thank you. I was so scared someone would figure out I didn't have a mother at home and laugh at me that I ran across to the art-supplies table and knocked it over. Pasta and rice and finger paints spilled all over the carpet. My teacher was so furious she sent me directly to Mr. Dennis. But Mr. Dennis didn't ask me any questions, either. Instead he stared at the space just above my head and recited some jargon about the school's high expectations. Because he was afraid of upsetting parents-they were potential donors, after all-he never bothered calling home to investigate. Now it was Christmas, and I was causing a scene all over again, but he still didn't get it.

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Matt Rothschild, former Lit Klatsch blogger, has allowed Jewcy to post the first chapter of his book, Dumbfounded.  This is the first of three installments.

My grandfather was a grand storyteller, but you could not count on him for accuracy. As far as he was concerned, it was the point of the story that mattered-that is, when he remembered the point he was trying to make. And when my grandmother, who hated cigars and had limited patience for my grandfather's storytelling, was out of the house, he'd light up a good Cuban, settle into his favorite leather chair, and launch into a tale so contrived it would make the Brothers Grimm blush.

"When I was a little boy in Paris . . ." he would begin.

"I thought it was Vienna."

"Don't interrupt, Matthew. Now. When I was a little boy in Vienna . . ."

My grandfather came to the United States sometime before World War II. He arrived from either France or Austria, wherever he felt like telling me at a given time. This was a man who knew five languages, and if he didn't like what you had to say in English, he began speaking another language. Then he would shake his head, wide-eyed and innocent, pretending he couldn't understand you. Rarely seen without a smile, my grandfather was always quick to tell a story-it was just the truth that gave him trouble.

Personally, I didn't care that his stories weren't always true. When he told a story, it was him and me, alone. My grandmother wasn't invited. She would just make fun of us, anyway. Now that I was seven years old-almost eight, really-this was the only time it didn't feel awkward to climb into his lap and play with his arm hair. I liked to make mountains by pulling on the hairs as I listened to him reinvent his childhood. My grandfather was a retired diplomat, and he often said, "World leaders could forget their differences, I'm sure, if they'd just listen to a few good stories." Presumably, the underlying moral of his tales would make them see the error of their ways while showing them how much they had in common. I didn't know what a diplomat was, but if they got to tell stories and have their pictures taken with famous people, the way my grandfather did, this is what I wanted to do as well. They also got expensive gifts from people, and I loved presents.

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About six years ago I began writing my memoir. That I was relatively young - only twenty years old - and wasn't famous did not seem important. I didn't even know that I was writing a book until about two years later when I was looking at twenty candid essays chronicling a troubled past and my relationship with my high-society grandmother. I gave my project a title. I called it the Upper East Side Syndrome. I told friends about it, parading bound versions of drafts like a newborn at a bris. When people asked if I wanted to go to some party or club where people were having fun, I usually bowed out gracefully claiming that my book needed more work.

The first setback was that I couldn't stop writing. I'd be sitting at my laptop hacking away and then I'd remember another funny anecdote that just had to be made into a story. The number of essays grew and I mined my memory for more. I read everything I could about the craft of memoir. I set deadlines that I did not meet. The end grew farther and farther away.

Even when I wasn't writing, I was thinking about writing. A year before I found an agent I tried to quit writing. I was full of confidence in my writing in college, but when I tried submitting essays from my book, they were rejected. Some rejections had encouraging notes from editors; most did not. I doubted myself and decided to concentrate on other things, like my job or a relationship. I put the latest draft of the book in a drawer and left it there for nine months. Still I could not stop seeing my life in print. I would go to work and something funny would happen, and I'd think "that's a story."

But later that year I got a phone message from an editor asking for permission to print a story I had submitted. The message was full of static, and I could not make out the magazine title the first time I listened. I did hear his name was Dan Lynch from a magazine that had New York in the title, which meant only one thing to me: The New Yorker. Flushed with excitement, I dropped the phone and high-fived the air in elation before remembering I didn't submit anything to The New Yorker. I picked the phone back up and concentrated on Mr. Lynch's voice. As it happens it was not The New Yorker calling. It was a small magazine called New York Stories, which I had in fact submitted something to. Still, this was big news. I was finally going to be a published author! That single publication was all it took to renew my interest in writing.

I dug out my defunct manuscript and reread it with a red pen. It was not a pretty sight and I decided to rewrite the whole thing. Six more months went by writing and rewriting. People who knew I'd been writing wanted to know when the book was going to be published, and I did not have an answer for them. I couldn't even decide whether I was writing a memoir or a novel. Everything was true, but what would happen when my estranged family heard I was writing a book?

I took a step back from the laptop again and reevaluated my intentions. If I wanted to write a memoir, displaying my dysfunctional family for the entire world, then I needed to understand why. Sure I wanted to be published, but I didn't know that writing nonfiction was any more likely to get me published than writing fiction. Besides, there had to be some good reason why I had been writing true stories from my past all along. I just needed to figure out what it was. So I decided to fly back home to New York from where I'd been living in Florida for an investigative trip.

Because New York is home to me, I viewed it with a mixture of longing and apprehension. Longing because it's home, the site of my happiest childhood memories -and it was a very happy childhood - and apprehension because due to the unraveling of my family in my adult life I can't return home. That was what I was writing about. So this particular trip wasn't a fun-filled time of dinners and reunions. It was me trying to figure out how things went so wrong and how I would write about it. I ended up wandering the city where I once lived and replaying my childhood. Here's FAO Schwarz where I was almost arrested for shoplifting the Barbies I couldn't bring myself to ask for. Here's Central Park where I roamed endlessly and where I once learned that my entire life had been a carefully orchestrated lie.

Museum MileMost of my book takes place in one of the prestigious apartment building's on the Upper East Side's Museum Mile - that glorious stretch of Fifth Avenue from 82^nd Street to 105^th - but I hadn't been home since my mother threw me out of the house when I was eighteen. Our apartment building sits across from the Met and I sat down on the steps outside the museum. I could see the same doorman I knew when I lived there, and I wondered if he'd remember me. I am on a list of names not to admit inside.

I looked up at what I thought was my old room's window and saw a figure looking out at Central Park. Who would be in my room now? Did they see me? It was then, sitting on the outside and trying to look in, that I realized why I started writing my memoir to begin with, and why it had to stay a memoir. It wasn't because I was mad, or greedy enough to write one of those tell-all books. I wrote because I was confused, and I thought that through writing I could finally get some answers to my questions. I was trying to write my way to closure, trying to find my way back home.

I got up and crossed Fifth Avenue, half-expecting someone to come out of my old building and tell me to leave. When they did not, I took out my camera and snapped a picture of the building's awning. I took a picture of the American flag outside the building. I walked back across the street and got a picture of my old room's window. I was like the paparazzi of my own past. I must have been taking pictures for an hour before the camera's battery gave out, and I felt a gust of summer wind. It was time to move on, to go back home and finish the book.

Matt Rothschild, author of Dumbfounded, spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy. This is his parting post.

My friend Tyson believes in something he calls the Power of Three, which sounds like some New Age mumbo jumbo, but actually makes some sense when you listen. The premise is that when you get three distinct signs (that's the only word that comes to mind, sorry) leading you to the same conclusion, you need to take action. So, essentially, my friend believes in what the rest of us might call Common Sense.

I've heard all about his theory before, but Tyson has a notoriously bad memory, and recently as we were driving over to Tampa, he repeated his theory about the Power of Three (or POT as I call it), and attempted to apply it to whether or not he should move. I have to admit that I wasn't paying close attention during the conversation. It's not that I don't find him interesting--he is sometimes--but I was distracted, and when he brought up POT, I found myself linking what I thought were simple coincidences together. I present the coincidences here for your consideration. If you have time, would you take a look and then tell me what the universe wants me to do. 

Seemingly Random Instance Number One:

I had just finished reading aloud three sections from Dumbfounded for a bookstore audience. There were maybe forty people in the audience, and I remember thinking that seemed like a lot for a town where I had no connection. Maybe this is why I allowed myself to relax and have some fun. When I do these readings I generally read the same three sections, short excerpts from different chapters, so the audience gets a good flavor for the book. I've rehearsed and timed them; it takes about twenty minutes. Then there's time for questions. 

The last section I read from is a chapter called "Jude the Obscure", and it's the first really pivotal chapter in my book. It's the chapter where I learn, conclusively, that my life up until that point had been a lie. A well-orchestrated lie told for my protection, but a lie nonetheless. It's also the first non-funny chapter, and the first chapter where the reader gets formally introduced to my mother Jude. So I finish reading the chapter and it's time for questions.

I'm expecting some questions about my mother, especially since this last bit I read was about her. People always ask about her. I've come to rely on it. But something strange happens this time, which is why it's lodged itself in my mind. A man raises his hand and I call on him. 

"What about your father?" he asks. 

"My mother?" I say, thinking I must have misheard him. I said nothing about my father in the reading.

"No, your father. Where is he?"

How the hell do I know? That's what I want to say, but I don't. Instead I explain that my father checked out before I was born. I never had to ask about him, because somehow I got the impression that he had slipped into the world of unmentionables.

"So you've never tried to contact him?" the man asks.

"No," I say, "it must sound strange, but I never really thought of that as an option. I guess if I were young today it would have been easier, what with the Internet, but I never really thought about trying. Somehow that seems disrespectful to my grandparents. They were the ones who raised me when both my biological parents developed Peter Pan syndrome."

The man didn't seem completely satisfied with my answer, and I have to admit that I wouldn't have been either. What I didn't tell him was that if I'd kept on reading from "Jude the Obscure" I would have come to the part where my mother tells her friend that my biological father didn't know I existed. I have spent some time thinking about this twist in my story, but I know my mother is prone to exaggeration to garner sympathy and I'm not sure she wasn't lying. Certainly she never said this to me, but I also never asked her about my father.

So maybe it was the shock of the man's question that night--I swear in a dozen other readings before nobody had asked about my father- but for the first time I began thinking about my father.

Oddly Coincidental Instance Number Two:

I'm driving down the road a few days after that reading from Incident Number One and my friend Rebecca calls me. Her book club had read my book, and she wanted me to know that it was a hit. She says that the ladies (it's a girls only affair) were disappointed that I didn't attend because they had lots of questions. Instead they directed their questions at Rebecca, and she did her best to answer them. I asked what kind of questions

"Oh, things like What happened after the book ended to make you want to teach? Whether you and your mother patched things up. But then something came up that I didn't know how to answer...They wanted to know about your father."

Again with this? It's not like I claim to be the product of Immaculate Conception in Dumbfounded. It says very clearly "my father left, never to be heard from again." It's no mystery. But I asked her to explain the line of questioning.

"I guess it wasn't a question. It was more that some people wondered if things would have been different if your father had been around. And they couldn't understand how you could brush him off in a few sentences." 

At first I was insulted. Didn't he brush me off? And for as much as I know, he's never written a book, so I'm not even a footnote in his story! But I was also insulted for my grandparents. Like, really insulted. For someone to insinuate that a totally absent entity could do a better job than my grandparents, who willingly gave up their Golden Years to chase around the little shit that was me, is beyond comprehension. Then I realized that's probably not what the book club meant, and that it was a reasonable enough question. I also thought back to that twist in my story where my mother says my father never knew. I wondered if he did know, or if he was out there somewhere completely unaware.

The seed of doubt.

Okay, Seriously? Instance Number Three:

So I haven't told anybody about this yet.

Maybe three days after that conversation with Rebecca, I got an email from a woman who had read about my book in the Washington Post. Something about the name sounded familiar and she went out and got the book and read it, and then she put somepieces together. She went to my website, found my email address, and wrote, "I know you don't know me, but I think I might know you. I think we're related."

Can you guess how? Well, continues the email, she remembers her mother telling her that before her father left their family, he became involved with some wealthy young woman. She goes on to write that her mother has passed away, and she can't verify the name, but she believes the woman's name was the same as mine and various other components of my story made sense to her as well. Small things, like my red hair. My first hair color was red; my father is Irish. Hers is, too. She has attached some pictures of the man in question. 

The pictures don't really tell me much of anything. Everyone who has seen me recognizes that I look like my mother's family. As my friend Michael commented a few days ago, every year I look more and more like a portrait of my ancestors. That or a Jewish mountain man, but only when I wake up.

Of course beyond the photos she's been nice enough to include the name of her deadbeat father (for after he left her mother, he basically disappeared) and it is, in fact, the same as mine. I email her back and suddenly we're conversing about a whole family I never knew I had. There's a cousin who impersonates FDR for a living, uncles, aunts, and would I like to meet them? One uncle even thinks he knows where my father is...

So in the car last week with Tyson, his reference to the Power of Three got me thinking. I never tried to find my father before. What would have been the point? What good would it have done? But now I'm wondering, maybe it's time. What do you think?

Matt Rothschild, author of Dumbfounded, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he'll be here all week. Stay tuned.