While We’re Far Apart

by Lynn Austin

  Esther went to her father’s side and peered out, too. Thick black smoke churned from the rear of the building, and bright orange flames flashed behind the windows. She saw long fingers of fire reach from one of the windows and grab on to the roof, igniting it. She squeezed her hands into fists, wanting the firemen to hurry and put the fire out, wanting the eerie, unnatural sight to go away and the familiar, tan brick building across the street to look the way it always had. On the street three floors below, firemen in black coats and rubber boots were unfolding ladders and uncoiling long fire hoses that looked like flat, gray snakes. Why didn’t they work faster?

  She turned away, unable to watch the flames consume the building, and saw Peter standing in the middle of the room, still covering his ears. One of his favorite playthings used to be his toy fire truck, and he used to beg Mama to walk past the firehouse on the way to the park so he could see the big trucks. But that had changed the day Mama died.

  “Hey, we’d better shut the windows,” Daddy said, “or it’ll get too smoky in here. Give me a hand, Esther.”

  She didn’t move, watching as he quickly closed his bedroom windows and stacked the folding screens against the wall. “Is the whole synagogue going to burn down, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know, doll. I’m sure the firemen will do their best to save it. Run and close your bedroom windows, okay?” Daddy hurried downstairs to check the rest of the apartment.

  Esther went into the bedroom that she shared with Peter and wrestled out the screen so that the heavy window could fall closed. Then she followed her father and brother downstairs. Daddy was in the living room with his head and shoulders hanging through the open window, watching the spectacle below.

  “Daddy, don’t! You’ll fall out!”

  He pulled his head inside and closed the window. “What’s wrong, doll? You’re not scared, are you?” Esther nodded and Peter flung himself at their father again, crying as he clung to his waist. “You don’t have to worry. It won’t spread to our side of the street. Come on, we’ll go downstairs and watch.”

  Esther didn’t want to watch. Mama had told her that the synagogue was like a church, except that you had to be Jewish like Mr. and Mrs. Mendel in order to go there. Esther wouldn’t want to watch her own church burn down, but Daddy took Peter’s hand in his and led them both downstairs. A haze of smoke already fogged the front hallway. Daddy halted to knock on the landlord’s door.

  “Mr. Mendel? Mr. Mendel, are you home?” No one answered. They went outside and Esther saw dozens of their neighbors perched on their front stoops or crowded along the sidewalk to watch. She didn’t see Mr. Mendel standing among them. Mrs. Hoffman from the building next door called to Daddy in a tremulous voice.

  “Mr. Shaffer? . . . Oh, Mr. Shaffer? . . . Do you think there’s a chance the fire could spread to our side of the street? Should we evacuate our valuables?” Esther had been inside the Hoffmans’ apartment and couldn’t recall seeing anything valuable.

  “Our buildings should be okay,” Daddy told her. “There’s no wind. What a shame about the synagogue, though.”

  The Hoffman kids were all out on the sidewalk watching, too. Their son Jack was a year older than Esther and sometimes used swearwords. He got sent to the principal’s office a lot in school. Mama had called him and his younger brother, Gary, “ruffians.” Now the two brothers stood near the fire hydrant, splashing in the puddles from the leaking hoses and annoying the firemen. The look of glee on their faces made Esther shiver.

  Jack’s older sister, Lois, was fifteen and boy-crazy. She used to walk to school with Esther, but lately she acted as if she was much too grown up to hang around with her. Lois sat on the front steps of her building, chewing a wad of gum and blowing giant pink bubbles. The neighborhood was much quieter now that Mr. Hoffman had enlisted in the navy. Before that the Hoffmans used to argue all the time, shouting so loudly that Esther could hear them from inside her own building, especially in the summer when the windows were open.

  There was no sign of their landlord, Mr. Mendel, but a group of Jewish men with black hats and bushy beards had gathered in front of Esther’s apartment building. She saw such horror and loss in their expressions that she had to look away. One of them pushed forward to plead with the firemen. He was as short as Esther was, with a black hat and snowy white beard.

  “Please, you must save the Torah scrolls. They must not burn.”

  “We’ll do our best, Rabbi. Now, please step back.”

  Suddenly the front door of the synagogue flew open and their landlord, Mr. Mendel, staggered out, collapsing onto the sidewalk. He wasn’t wearing a coat, and Esther recognized him by the striped suspenders he’d had on when they had visited him earlier this evening. A firemen rushed toward him yelling, “I need an ambulance!”

  The white-bearded rabbi pushed forward, skirting around the firemen and fire trucks and stepping over the maze of hoses as he crossed the street. “Yaacov! Yaacov!” he called. “Are you all right?”

  Mr. Mendel had been carrying a dark bundle, and the fireman handed it to the rabbi, then motioned for him to go back across the street to wait. Esther could feel the heat of the flames and knew it must be even hotter in front of the synagogue. Daddy released her hand as he hurried over to the rabbi.

  “Is that Mr. Mendel?” he asked. “Is he okay?”

  The white-bearded man lifted his shoulders as he nodded sadly. “Yes, it is him. We must pray that he will recover. He did a very brave thing to save our Torah.”

  “I’m Mr. Mendel’s tenant,” Daddy told him. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” The man didn’t seem to hear Daddy as the others gathered around him to unwrap the bundle, talking in a language Esther couldn’t understand.

  “Any idea how the fire started?” she heard Daddy ask one of the men. The man shook his head. “No, but I wonder . . . with so much hatred in the world, it would not surprise me if it was deliberate.”

  At last the ambulance arrived, the siren howling so loudly that Peter covered his ears again. So did Esther. She watched the men carefully lift their landlord into the back of the vehicle, remembering how they had lifted Mama’s limp body the same way. The vehicle drove away again, sirens wailing.

  Meanwhile, some of the firemen began climbing their ladders so they could aim their hoses at the roof of the synagogue. More firemen were smashing the lower windows with axes and pouring water into the first floor. Police cars arrived from two different directions and pulled to a stop in the middle of the street, blocking traffic. The patrolmen jumped out, leaving their doors wide open. They began pushing back the crowds, shouting for everyone to stay clear. “Out of the way, folks. Let the firemen do their work.”

  Esther took Daddy’s hand again, and Peter gripped his other one as they moved onto the front porch of their apartment building to escape the smoke and heat. Only the headlights on the fire trucks lit the dark night, along with the eerie glow of the flames. Brooklyn’s streetlights had been turned off months ago, and the air-raid warden had ordered everyone to hang blackout curtains in their windows to disguise the city from enemy U-boats and airplanes. If there was a moon out tonight, the sky was too smoky for them to see it.

  They watched for a long, long time. The firemen worked until they were exhausted, but they couldn’t save the synagogue. Esther’s eyes burned and itched from the smoke. She could taste it in the back of her mouth and throat.

  “Yeah, my eyes burn, too,” Daddy said when he saw her rubbing hers. “Let’s go inside.” They walked up the stairs together. The excitement had helped Esther forget that Daddy was leaving tomorrow, but now her grief returned in full force.

  “Are you still going away, even though there was a fire and Mr. Mendel got hurt?”

  Daddy nodded sadly. “There’s nothing I can do about either one, doll. Get ready for bed, okay? You too, Peter.” Daddy came upstairs to tuck them in after they had washed their faces and brushed their teeth.

  Esther had trouble falling asleep
. A sheen of smoke hung in the beam of light beneath her door. Her eyes burned whenever she tried to close them, and she didn’t know if her tears were from the smoke or her sorrow. Maybe both. This was the last night that Daddy would be home for a long, long time, the last night that he would tuck her into bed and kiss her good-night. She could hear Peter sobbing into his pillow.

  She was still awake hours later when Daddy came to bed. He stood in the doorway gazing at them before finally coming inside and bending over Peter’s bed to stroke his hair. Esther pretended to be asleep when Daddy turned to her bed. He pulled the sheet over her and touched her hair, too. She longed to say something to him, but she was afraid he would be mad because it was very late and she was still awake. At last he turned away and closed the bedroom door.

  The synagogue across the street was one more loss in Esther’s life that could never be replaced. Mama was gone. Nice Mrs. Mendel who baked honey cake and cookies was gone, too. Now the synagogue had been destroyed and Mr. Mendel had been rushed away in an ambulance. Esther’s world was slowly coming apart, unraveling like the favorite pink sweater she’d once had. It had begun with a small hole after she’d snagged the sleeve on a nail, and as time passed, the broken strand of yarn kept growing longer and longer until the hole was so huge she could no longer wear the sweater. Tomorrow Daddy would leave her, too.

  And she couldn’t do anything about it.

  CHAPTER 5

  PENNY AWOKE BEFORE DAWN, too excited to sleep. Today she would move into Eddie Shaffer’s apartment! The anticipation was like that moment in the movie theater when the lights dimmed and the music began to play. Music should be playing right now as the sun rose on this wonderful day. A huge banner should stretch across the sky saying, This Is Chapter One of Penny Goodrich’s Brand-New Life.

  She got out of bed, eager to begin, and carefully smoothed the bedspread and fluffed the pillow, making her bed for the last time. The only thing that could dampen her excitement would be another argument with her parents – which was why she had decided to leave home early, before they woke up. Penny had tried as hard as she could to explain to them why she needed to help Eddie, and they had done everything they could to talk her out of it. The arguments had gotten louder and angrier every day for the past two weeks, but nobody’s mind had changed – not Penny’s, and certainly not her parents’. She had gone to bed early last night to avoid another fight. She wished her mother would hug her good-bye this morning and give Penny her blessing, but that was about as likely to happen as a blizzard in July.

  Penny tiptoed into the kitchen with her two bags of belongings and fixed a bowl of cereal instead of toast so the aroma wouldn’t awaken her parents. She was putting the milk bottle back into the refrigerator when she heard her mother’s voice behind her.

  “You’re making a big mistake, Penny. It’s not too late to change your mind, you know.”

  “Yes it is. I promised Eddie I would help him. He’s counting on me.”

  “His mother is the one who should be helping him with those children, not you. I told you I would go next door and talk to her for you.”

  “Please don’t. It’s all arranged. I promised to stay with them, like I explained.”

  “And I explained why you shouldn’t go. Your father and I are very angry with you for defying our wishes this way.”

  “I know. I know you’re angry.” Penny sank down at the table and bowed her head to say grace before gulping down her cereal. She wanted to run out the door right this minute rather than endure any more lectures, but she needed to eat something first.

  She glanced up at her mother and saw her standing in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded. She had such an angry expression on her face that it brought tears to Penny’s eyes. She knew she was supposed to honor her father and mother – they had quoted that Bible verse to her repeatedly in an effort to convince her to stay – but did that mean that Penny had to live here with them forever? Didn’t other daughters grow up and leave home and start lives of their own? Penny wanted so much to be like everyone else, but as her mother constantly reminded her, she wasn’t like other girls.

  She gulped the last spoonful of cereal and rose to put the bowl in the sink. “I’ll stop by in a day or two and let you know how everything is going.”

  “No, Penny. You will call me as soon as you get there. If you insist on leaving home against our wishes, then the least you can do is call and let us know you made it there safely. I don’t think I need to remind you of all the things that could happen to you on the way.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll call you.” She longed to add that she was only traveling across Brooklyn, not to the moon, but Penny had never spoken disrespectfully to her parents in her life. She had felt so courageous when she awoke this morning, but now the cereal she had just eaten churned in her stomach like the agitator on a washing machine. She needed to leave right now, before her mother made her feel any more frightened than she already was.

  She slipped her purse strap over her head and across her chest the way her mother had taught her, so that purse-snatchers couldn’t grab it, and picked up the two shopping bags that held her belongings. Neither Penny nor her parents owned a suitcase. None of them ever traveled.

  “I’m going now. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “Wait!”

  Penny obeyed, turning back to face her mother.

  “You’re such a scatterbrain, Penny. Stop and think for a minute before you go running off like a fool. Do you have everything you need? Enough money for the bus? The directions to get there? And you’d better put your sweater on; it looks chilly outside.”

  Tears squeezed Penny’s throat. “I’ll be fine, Mother. Goodbye.”

  She closed the door behind her and walked to the bus stop as fast as she could with the heavy shopping bags. Penny didn’t own very many clothes and figured she could bring them over a few at a time when she came home to visit on the weekends. Eddie didn’t own a car. He had drawn the bus route for her, explaining which one to take and where the stops were.

  The first bus that pulled up to the curb was hers. It seemed very crowded for a Saturday morning, and nearly all the passengers were servicemen. A young man in a U.S. Marines uniform sitting near the front jumped up when she boarded and gave her his seat. She thanked him and sat down by the window to watch for street signs and landmarks. Twenty minutes later she reached her stop. According to Eddie’s directions, she only had to walk one block to his apartment. She felt proud of herself for not getting lost or being accosted, the two things her mother had fearfully predicted would happen.

  The storefronts and signs in Eddie’s neighborhood had a lot of Jewish names and Hebrew lettering on them. She walked past several men with black hats and beards and felt a ripple of fear. Her father had warned her that a lot of Jews lived in this part of Brooklyn. At last she rounded the corner onto Eddie’s street, then halted in surprise when she saw the burned-out building in front of her. Part of the roof had caved in, and black soot smudged the tan-colored brick around its broken windows. The air smelled like a bonfire. Was that Eddie’s apartment? She hurried forward, searching for his house number, finally finding it on the building across the street from the fire.

  The sight of the ravaged building shook Penny. What if Eddie’s apartment caught on fire that way? What would she do? How would she and the kids escape from their bedrooms way up on the third floor? Maybe she had been wrong to take on so much responsibility. Maybe her mother had been right.

  But no, Eddie was counting on her. Penny hurried up the steps to the narrow front porch and rang the doorbell with E. Shaffer printed beside it. A moment later she heard footsteps tromping down the inside stairs. Eddie opened the door. He looked relieved to see her.

  “Hi. You found us.”

  “Yeah, I made it here just fine. Your directions were great.”

  “Let me take your bags.”

  He led her inside the small, smoky foyer, and she saw right away that the steps to E
ddie’s apartment on the second floor were much too steep for his mother to go up and down every day, especially with her rheumatism. Penny herself was puffing by the time she climbed to the top of them.

  “Our landlord lives downstairs,” Eddie explained as they climbed, “and we have the second and third floors. Make sure the kids don’t jump around the living room too much and bother him.” Eddie opened a second door at the top of the stairs, where Penny saw his suitcase, packed and ready to go, standing in the small hallway. “Come on in and I’ll show you around.”

  Penny peeked into the black- and white-tiled bathroom first. It could use a good scrubbing with cleanser, but she didn’t say so. The kitchen had a small wooden table with four chairs, a corner cupboard for dishes, and one of those nice kitchen hutches that Penny had admired in magazines. It had a porcelain countertop that slid out for rolling pie crusts and a built-in flour bin and spice rack behind the neat cupboard doors. From the window above the sink she glimpsed a second-floor back porch with a roof for shade.

  “This kitchen is very nice.”

  “It’s still a little smoky in here from last night’s fire.” Eddie led her through the dining room and into a living room that overlooked the street below. “You can open the windows later.”

  “You mean that building just burned down last night? Was it an apartment building?”

  “No, a synagogue. Want to see upstairs? Peter and Esther are still asleep.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I can look around later. Was anyone hurt in the fire?”

  “Yeah, our landlord, Mr. Mendel. They took him away in an ambulance. That reminds me, could you check on him when he gets home from the hospital? See if he needs anything?”