While We’re Far Apart

by Lynn Austin

  Penny didn’t know how to explain to Eddie that Jewish people frightened her, especially the kind with black hats and beards. Her father had ranted on and on about them for as long as she could remember. She was about to confess her fears when Eddie suddenly added, “Rachel was good friends with our landlord’s wife. She would take Mrs. Mendel shopping and things like that. In fact . . .” He paused to clear his throat, which had begun to sound very hoarse. “In fact, Mrs. Mendel and Rachel were both killed in the same accident.”

  “Oh! I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah. And one other person, too. The other two died instantly, and Rachel died in the hospital a few hours later. Esther and Peter saw it all. They were with her.” Eddie turned and led the way back to the kitchen. “Here are my keys to the apartment. This one is for the back door and these are for the two front doors.” A moment later, Penny heard footsteps overhead, then the sound of two children thumping down the stairs. Esther froze in the doorway when she saw Penny, her expression hardening in anger and mistrust. Peter pushed past his sister to grip their father around the waist. Penny couldn’t recall ever hugging her own father that way.

  “Good morning, sleepyheads,” Penny said, desperate to say something. “How are you this morning? Did you have a good sleep with sweet dreams?”

  “We’re not babies,” Esther said.

  “I know. I-I’m sorry.” Penny didn’t know how most mothers greeted their children in the morning, so she had said the words that she wished her mother would say.

  “Hey, you be nice to Penny, okay?” Eddie said. “She’s doing us a huge favor. And she’ll write and tell me if you don’t behave. Right, Penny?”

  “I’ll be glad to write to you, Eddie. Just let me know what your address is.”

  Esther was still pouting, so Eddie lifted her chin until she had to look up at him. “Promise me you’ll be polite, okay?” he asked again. She nodded faintly.

  “I can fix you some pancakes or scramble some eggs, if you want,” Penny said. “How about it, Esther? You hungry for something special this morning?”

  “No, thank you.” She crossed the kitchen to remove two bowls from the corner cupboard and poured cornflakes for herself and her brother. Peter clutched his father as if he never intended to let go.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Eddie said, gesturing to the dirty dishes piled in the sink.

  “That’s okay. I can wash them later.”

  “And I didn’t have a chance to change the bed sheets. You’ll find clean ones in the linen closet. Esther will show you where everything is, won’t you, doll?”

  “I suppose.” There was so much ice in her voice that Penny figured they could keep cool all summer long.

  “Washing machine is down in the basement. One of them belongs to the landlord. There’s a line to hang the clothes on out back.”

  “Maybe I’ll just do all the washing at my house,” Penny said. “I have to go home every Saturday anyway to help my folks. And the kids can see their grandmother at the same time. Would you like that?” Neither of them replied.

  “Listen, I don’t know how I will ever thank you,” Eddie said.

  Marry me, she longed to reply. Instead, she said, “I don’t mind. Really.”

  “Well . . . I guess I’d better get going.”

  “No!” Esther wailed. “Don’t go, Daddy!”

  “Please don’t make this any harder than it already is, doll,” he said softly. He gave Peter a long hug and kissed the top of his head, then pried his arms off so he could hug Esther. He even gave Penny a brief, stiff hug – a tantalizing glimpse of what it would be like when the war ended and they could be together forever. She would wake him up with a kiss every morning and give him another kiss before he left for work, just like the wives in the movies did.

  Both kids were crying hard, and Eddie silently signaled for Penny to hold them back. Her heart broke for all of them as she watched Eddie hurry away, grabbing his suitcase and closing the door behind him. The children didn’t try to follow him. Instead, they twisted out of Penny’s grasp and ran upstairs to their room.

  Penny couldn’t stop crying, either. She went into the kitchen and washed and dried the dishes as tears continued to roll down her cheeks. Nearly every dish in the house seemed to be dirty, so it took a long time. She tried to figure out where everything went in the cupboards and decided that it didn’t matter for now. The two bowls of uneaten cereal still sat on the table. Should she carry the kids’ breakfast upstairs to them?

  No, maybe they needed to be left alone.

  Penny wandered into the living room and saw pretty lace curtains on the windows and an upright piano that she hadn’t noticed before. She wondered who played it. The apartment was very quiet. She didn’t know what else to do, so she sat down in the rocking chair near the window and gazed down at the street below her. A crowd had gathered to gawk at the burned-out building.

  A long time later the phone rang. Should she answer it? It seemed wrong to answer someone else’s phone, but the kids were still upstairs in their room. Besides, it might be Eddie, checking to see if they were okay. She lifted the receiver.

  “Hello? . . . Um . . . Shaffer residence.”

  “Penny! You were supposed to call me! It’s been hours!” Mother sounded furious.

  “Oh! I’m sorry . . . I-I had things to do and . . . and Eddie was showing me all around and . . . and then I forgot.”

  “You forgot? You would forget your head if it wasn’t attached to your body. Your father and I have been worried sick. I almost called the police. You didn’t give me the phone number so I had to go next door and bother Mrs. Shaffer for it. She’s a wreck, by the way, with three sons fighting in the war now, thanks to you.”

  “Well, I arrived here just fine. I’m sorry I forgot to call. But you have the number now, in case you need anything. I have to go. Good-bye.”

  Penny slammed down the phone, grabbed her shopping bags from the front hallway, and carried them upstairs to Eddie’s bedroom. He had emptied a bureau drawer for her to use, and she carefully filled it with her own neatly folded things. The room was messy but she might not straighten it up just yet. These were Eddie’s clothes. He had slept in this rumpled bed. His scent was everywhere.

  Rachel was everywhere, too, in all of the feminine little touches. The crocheted doilies on the bureau and nightstands, the tatted lace and embroidery on the pillow covers. Penny sat down on the unmade bed. She had made a terrible mistake. What was she doing here? Eddie was gone and his kids hated her. She shouldn’t have come. Mother was right, as usual. Penny didn’t have the good sense that God gave a green bean.

  CHAPTER 6

  “I WOULD LIKE you to stay in the hospital for one more night, Mr. Mendel. Just to be sure.” The doctor scribbled something on the chart that hung from the end of Jacob’s bed as he made his evening rounds. Jacob, however, wasn’t in the bed. Why lie around for no good reason? His bruised knees still ached from his fall to the sidewalk, but his legs weren’t broken, were they? Only his arm.

  “To be sure of what?” Jacob turned away from the window and the uninspiring view. His sore throat made his voice sound hoarse, not at all like his own. His chest hurt every time he drew a wheezing breath.

  “Your blood pressure is elevated. And there is always the risk of infection with third-degree burns.”

  Jacob looked down at his bandaged hands and the cast on his right arm. Like the righteous Job in Scripture, Jacob had lost his family and now his health. But he wanted to go home and sleep in his own bed.

  “I am fine. I would like to go home. Kindly give me my clothes.”

  The sun had set, which meant that Shabbat had ended. He could travel now – not that it mattered. Why should he care about Hashem’s rules?

  Habit. That was all it was, a lifetime of habit.

  “I’ll discharge you, Mr. Mendel, but you will be going against my advice if you leave.”

  “I understand. Thank you.”

  Jacob
could smell the aroma of smoke on his clothes as soon as the nurse brought them into the room. He went into the little bathroom to get dressed, and the sleeve of his shirt barely fit over his cast. It took a very long time to close the buttons and zippers with his useless hands. He had to leave half of his shirt buttons undone. When he came out, he was surprised to see his friend Meir Wolfe and Rebbe Grunfeld standing beside his bed. Naturally, they had waited until after Shabbat to visit him.

  “Yaacov! There you are!” His friend wore a wide grin.

  “I hope you came by car, Meir, because I am ready to go home. You can drive me there.”

  “But the nurse said you would be here for one more night.”

  “The nurse is misinformed. Will you take me home, please?”

  Jacob sat in the front seat beside his friend while the rebbe sat in the back, surrounded by casserole dishes and fruit baskets and boxes of food. The aroma of potato kugel made Jacob’s mouth water. He had been unable to eat very much in the hospital. His sore throat made it painful to swallow.

  The rebbe leaned forward from the back seat. “Several of the women have prepared food for you, Yaacov, as you can see. And I am going to arrange for them to come every day to help you clean, do the dishes, take out the garbage – anything you need.”

  “Thank you, but that is not necessary.”

  “You have bandages on your hands, Yaacov, and your arm is broken. Everyone wants to help. It’s the least we can do to thank you for saving the scrolls. What a blessing that you were nearby and noticed the fire. Of course, it wasn’t so good that you were injured – ”

  “I will be fine. Did the firemen save the shul?”

  “Well, no. It looks very bad. A great deal of damage. Some of us will go through the building and see what we can salvage once the fire department says it’s safe, but – ”

  “Do they know how it started?”

  “A fire inspector must come and make that determination. We won’t know until he is finished. But it seems to have started in the beit midrash in the rear of the building. That’s where the worst damage was. We have been trying to think what might have been in that room that could have started the fire, something electrical maybe, but nothing comes to mind.”

  Meir Wolfe grunted angrily. “I cannot help thinking that it was deliberate. In the old country, such vandalism happened all the time, remember? And now the hatred has made its way here to America.”

  “Let’s not think that way, Meir,” the rebbe soothed. “We don’t know for certain how the fire started.”

  “But we do know that we are hated here in America, too. Everyone says what a pity it is that Hitler persecutes the Jews, but will anybody help us? No. Nobody wants the Jews to move to their country.”

  The rebbe shook his head. “I’m sure they’ll discover that the fire was an accident. You’ll see.”

  They arrived on Jacob’s street a few minutes later, and he saw the damage for himself. And even though he hadn’t attended shul in more than a year, the sight of the ravaged building still saddened him. So many milestones in his life had taken place there. He had presented his tiny son for pidyon ha’ben, redeeming his firstborn. Six years later, he had held his son’s hand as they’d walked across the street for Avraham’s first day of Hebrew school in the beit midrash. And he had watched in pride as Avraham put on tefillin to pray with the men for the first time when he turned twelve. Now Jacob turned his back on the destruction and a lifetime of memories and walked up the steps to his porch, his friends following him, balancing boxes and baskets of food.

  The daily newspaper lay on the porch outside his door. Later, he would go through it and read the latest news about the war, cutting out the photographs and articles he wanted to save. But how could he cut anything if he couldn’t use his hands?

  “You will have to help me unlock both doors,” he said when he reached the first one. He hated his helplessness. “The key is in my pocket, if you don’t mind.” When he stepped inside he realized he had left a window open and a haze of gauzy smoke lingered inside the apartment.

  “Can we talk, Yaacov?” the rebbe asked when he and Meir had finished carrying in the food.

  “No one is stopping you.”

  “I wish to ask you for a favor. We will need a place to meet now that the shul is damaged, and I wondered if we might say prayers here? Your apartment is spacious and very close to the shul.”

  “What makes you think I want to start praying again?”

  Rebbe Grunfeld smiled gently. “You risked your life for the scrolls, Yaacov. Surely that must mean something.”

  Jacob had no idea what it meant. He had lain awake in the hospital most of the night, his eyes burning, his lungs aching, wondering the same thing.

  “We need each other now more than ever before,” Meir said. “These are terrible times we are living in, and we must stick together. Our people haven’t seen this much persecution since Queen Esther’s time, when the wicked Haman ordered our destruction.”

  “We don’t know how long it will be until the shul can be rebuilt,” the rebbe added.

  “Ask me another day,” Jacob said. “I need time to think. . . . But even if I do allow you to meet here, I cannot promise that I will join you.”

  “Thank you. And one more thing, Yaacov. I know how concerned you’ve been for your loved ones in Hungary. Many of us have been awaiting news, and now a group of congregations with families in Europe is trying to get an appointment with the State Department. I thought you might like to join us.”

  “Yes, of course I would.” Jacob would spend every dollar he had to find Avraham and his family. He would empty his bank account, sell this apartment building, sell everything he owned. He would look for work in one of the new armament factories to earn even more money if they would hire him at his age. “Tell me where and when.”

  “Yes, I will let you know the details. Also, a group of some four hundred rabbis are planning a march in Washington in October.”

  “If only it would do some good,” Meir grumbled. “The government knows what is happening. They’ve known since last November that Hitler is persecuting Jews. Remember the National Day of Mourning we held? What good did it do? They still won’t do anything.”

  “It’s because no one wants to believe it is true,” the rebbe said.

  “How can they deny it?” Meir asked. “They know that people have hated us for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. How is that new? It’s why we moved here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, they know it is true,” Jacob said. His throat ached each time he spoke, making his eyes water. “But there are high officials in Washington who hate us, too.”

  Rebbe Grunfeld held up his hands. “Please, let’s not speak ill of our government. We need their help.”

  “If they wanted to help us,” Jacob said, “they could have changed the immigration quotas back when all this madness began so the Jews in Europe would have had a place to go. My son is an American, born here in America, yet he could not get papers for his wife and child who were born in Hungary. And he would not leave them.”

  “And remember that ship full of refugees that no country wanted?” Meir’s voice was growing louder, angrier. “Hitler said, ‘Go! Every Jew in Germany can leave! Good riddance to you!’ But would our government step forward and allow even one of them to come here? No. More than nine hundred Jewish passengers were left with no place to go except back to Germany. Don’t try to tell me our government is eager to help.”

  “I think we should leave now,” Rebbe Grunfeld said. “Yaacov needs peace and rest, Meir, not strife. But you will think about what I asked, Yaacov? About meeting here to pray?”

  Jacob nodded and walked with Meir and the rebbe as far as the door. His throat felt raw, so it was good that they left when they did. Afterward, he wandered out to the kitchen to eat a few spoonfuls of kugel, right out of the casserole dish. It tasted wonderful, just like Miriam used to make, but he could only eat a few bites. The potatoes scratched his
throat when he swallowed them. He pulled a banana from one of the fruit baskets, struggling to open it with his bandaged hands before finally biting the end off and peeling it with his teeth. At least the banana was easier to swallow.

  Later, he sat down at his desk and looked through his collection of old letters from his son. Jacob had put them all in order according to the dates that Avraham had written them, and he allowed himself to reread one each day. He lifted the top letter, gazing at the neat printing, remembering the rainy afternoon that he and Miriam Shoshanna had taken their son to the pier to board the ship for Hungary. He remembered the pride he had felt in his son and in his desire to study Torah – but also his overwhelming dread as he had watched him sail into the maelstrom of another European war. Jacob had come to America to escape pogroms and war and hatred. Why, then, had Hashem led Avraham back there?

  Jacob struggled to pull the letter from the envelope, but finally managed by blowing into the envelope and pulling out the letter with his teeth. It was one of Avraham’s very first letters. Jacob spread it out on his desktop.

  Dear Mama and Abba,

  I know it has only been six months, but you will be happy to know that I feel very much at home here already. My studies are still challenging, but I am learning so much – and loving what I am learning. Each layer of text that I peel away reveals even more of Hashem’s treasures, and I have come to see that I can never mine all the richness of these jewels, even after a lifetime of study.

  I also have news of another jewel that I have discovered. Samuel, my study partner, invited me to celebrate Shabbat with his family last weekend, and I met the most wonderful woman – his younger sister, Sarah Rivkah. I know this will sound unbelievable, but the moment I saw her, I understood how our ancestor Jacob felt when he saw his Rachel for the first time. Not only is Sarah beautiful, but she is sweet-tempered and righteous, as well. I would gladly serve her father for seven years to win her hand!