The Distance Between Us

by Masha Hamilton

  Caddie’s eyes are open now. Why? Why did you reveal this horror to me? I barely know you. You barely know me.

  He takes her hands. “I knew you’d understand.”

  She doesn’t reply. She can’t.

  After a moment he stands. She rises, too. This time she leads the way.

  At her apartment he trails her up the stairs. She unlocks the door and steps in, allowing him to follow but without invitation, without ceremony. She switches on a light in the living room.

  He does not look around her apartment. He watches her as though he knows her well and has been here many times. She knows she should find this irritating, the confident intimacy in his gaze. She finds it hypnotic.

  She considers offering him something to drink, rejects the idea. “Excuse me a moment,” she says.

  She has to be alone. Wash her hands, maybe scrub her face. Try to wipe herself clean somehow. Break the connection between them.

  She slips into her bedroom. Leaves the door to the living room open a crack, not wanting to switch on any more lights. Preferring shadows just now.

  In the bathroom she turns on the faucet and puts her hands beneath the water. As it spills over her knuckles, her palms, she closes her eyes, drops her head and urges her shoulders to unclench. She tries to thwart thought. A hot shiver arcs over her.

  Since they left the bench, Goronsky has not spoken at all; Caddie has said only four words. But even as she dries her hands, she knows how it will be. She knows before she steps back into her bedroom that he will be there.

  Their movements then are quick. It is not a celebration in the revelation of an unknown thigh, the surprise of a new touch. It is the pull of a cord that seals a draw-bag.

  He is above her, an airless night. She tastes the salt in the hollow beneath his collarbone.

  The shadows that fall into the room are distinct. They slice up his body, and hers, and theirs. She turns her head into her own shoulder. She still smells of tear gas and sweat.

  She looks into his face, half-darkened, and sees something in his expression that she’s seen before in one war zone or another, though never this close. Something stark and fearless and terrified and desperate. She wants to turn her head, but she can’t stop looking.

  Then he is lifting her legs to the ceiling, bending them back toward her head and she pushes upward, needing that desperate scared fearlessness inside her, because it already is inside. The sound of breath takes over. She loses track of where her body ends and his begins. She forgets her name.

  And as they merge again and again, she understands that her reporter’s gift of precise recall will fail her this time. All she’ll be left with is a blur. Because, for the first time that she can remember, she’s not holding herself in check at all. She has abandoned the one who until now has been her most trusted friend: Caddie the sidelined, cautious observer. This time, she is so much part that she cannot locate apart. This time, there is no distance from which to watch.

  When dawn shadows slip into the room, they separate. Her cheeks are wet, though she can’t remember crying, and she’s exhausted, as if her bones have been crushed beneath stones. She never let this happen with Marcus. She doesn’t know clearly how it happened now.

  But it doesn’t matter, none of it. Marcus is dead. She might have been killed with him. Chances are she will be killed. Later.

  At this moment, only one thing scares her: the sense that something unnamed has been settled between her and Goronsky, that this unlikely coupling has linked them—no, more, lashed them together, as if with a cord of hemp that already twists and tears at her skin.

  Five

  IT’S AN EARLY DARK. The Egged bus is heavy with the intimacy of a bedroom just before sleep. Men speak without urgency, a woman hums to her baby, even the children have abandoned their bickering in favor of melding into their mothers. They have shrugged off their day in Jerusalem like a heavy coat and are traveling light, in the comfort of dusk, toward their settlement homes. Lulled, all, by the maternal bounce of the bus and the hushed murmuring of voices like moths spreading their wings.

  Caddie is among them, among strangers. Moshe, her settler contact and the only person she knows here, sits two seats ahead with the men. Though she has covered her hair with a scarf in hopes of going unnoticed, and though the night has smudged the expressions of faces near her, she is aware of drawing sidelong glances. Everyone knows everyone on this route. These Israelis, in fact, share a bond deeper than mere neighbors, something akin to wagon-train dependency. They are part of a tapestry tightly woven with ideology and religion. She is the mismatched strand of wool—she and the Israeli Arab driver. He, at least, has an acknowledged role.

  She stares out the window at the charcoal outline of the Judean Hills. The bus wheels croon. Behind her, two women laugh discreetly.

  Here I am, Marcus. Hoping I still believe in this story.

  “Now, now,” soothes the woman next to her, wearing a stiff wig beneath her scarf. She holds out a hand, offering an open container of square Saltine-like crackers.

  Christ. Caddie’s been muttering aloud. And worse, she doesn’t want to stop. She wants to talk and keep talking until she gets an answer, direct from Marcus. She wants to tell him about Goronsky. Not about his eyes, or his shoulders or the place where his abdomen dips into his groin or the curve of his knees. Not about how often she’s been thinking of him—a constant undercurrent that surprises and frightens her. But about her own stupidity.

  How did I get so suckered? Haven’t I heard a million sad stories? And what about his dark edges—or is it just me, just that everything feels risky right now?

  The woman sitting next to Caddie taps her on the arm and pushes the package of crackers forward. “Take one,” she urges. “Something in the stomach will settle the nerves chik chak.”

  Caddie meets her neighbor’s gaze. “Widow Murphy,” she says.

  “What, dear?” the woman asks.

  “Someone I used to know,” Caddie says. “She did this, too—talk aloud to people none of us could see.”

  The woman pats Caddie’s arm. “Happens to us all, from time to time.” She sinks back in her seat and chews another cracker.

  Grandma Jos was kind to Widow Murphy, as this woman is being kind to Caddie. Grandma Jos invited the widow for coffee, ignored her private asides to the air and urged Caddie to do the same. “It’s Christian,” she said. But Caddie defied her, rushing off to work on pretend homework whenever the old woman walked in the door, staying as far away as possible. Fear drove her upstairs. If she had too much contact with wild-eyed people, she knew, she’d become infected and turn wild-eyed herself. “Be careful, girl, because you’re susceptible to instability,” Grandma Jos once told her. “Your own mother was always more than half crazy. And these things run in the blood.” She didn’t say—she didn’t have to—that this hereditary curse came from her disloyal, drifter husband’s side of the family.

  Now Caddie has proven Grandma Jos right. Though she thought it would happen later, and involve a loss of words instead of an overabundance of them: a graying grouchy woman, alone, unable to find the phrase she needed, beating down panic, calling out to bemused passersby in an incomprehensible mix of languages, gibberish misfiring from her no-longer-useful brain. Instead, this falling into—lust, or whatever it is—has made her dumb before her time.

  The story, the story must be her anchor, not a hunger for this barely known man. She has to do what she’s always done as a journalist: be here, now. Close all else off.

  With effort, she turns her attention to her fellow passengers. In the front, a round-shouldered man with side curls uses a book light to read. Behind her, a young girl sleeps against her mother. Caddie pulls the notepad out of her waist pouch and begins to scrawl in the semidark: “Radio on low. Mood light, peaceful.”

  A sudden, sharp scent reminiscent of sweat startles her. With her peripheral vision, she sees a circle of flame jump up on the blacktop to the side of the bus. A firebomb,
she knows instantly. Everything slips into slow motion. A stone the size of a fist zings through her window. It brushes by her cheek. Glass shards strike her chin, her nose. A Dead Sea sulfur odor pours through the shattered window. Scorched, chemical-laden air stings her throat.

  “Stop!” a woman shouts. Her voice jars Caddie.

  The Israeli Arab driver pulls to a halt and looks over his shoulder, eyes wide. She hears three sharp cracks. Then comes a long second that’s sucked dry of movement, of sound. And the harsh, cracking voice of a boy: “Arabs! Get them.”

  The woman next to Caddie, her crackers spilled onto the floor, begins to bob her head in mumbled prayer, eyes knotted. For her, it is another time, another country, another convoy of Jews.

  “No, don’t touch it,” implores a woman behind Caddie. Caddie turns to see the girl who had been sleeping moments before. Her face is covered in glass dust. Her mother tries to blow it off and simultaneously restrain the girl’s hands.

  Caddie touches her own chin involuntarily, and is surprised to see blood color her fingers.

  Their bus, Caddie realizes, sits like a giant bull’s-eye on the paved road. “Go, go, go,” she wants to shout, as Sven shouted to their driver that day.

  She doesn’t, though. Her words would be useless. Running for cover may be wiser, but these men are swollen and blinded by anger. Their guns are their favored wisdom. Three push out the front door, firing shots. Two others bolt through the rear emergency exit. One woman wraps another’s forearm in a flowered headscarf. Blood already seeps through the makeshift bandage. An older man shouts and waves his arms, ordering Caddie and the other women and the children to the floor. She ignores him and rises. The woman who had offered Caddie crackers grabs her arm, trying to pull her down. She jerks away and jumps from the rear of the bus.

  The blaze started by the firebomb is burning down, its apricot flames knee-high. Beyond it is the dark of night.

  If the attackers had other Molotov cocktails, they would have used them already. Right?

  Unless they are hunched down in the hills, selecting their targets. Because now there is more at which to aim: the bus, the men outside, and her.

  Can they spot her clearly from the hills, or does she dissolve into the blacktop? She touches her cheekbone, defining her own outline in the dark. If they can see her, they will think she’s a settler. An enemy. She has lost even the pretense of immunity.

  Another round of shooting echoes like a flurry of applause. But it’s not as loud as the commotion within her. She has to concentrate to hear. She makes out the sound of footsteps hurtling down the road. Jogging forward, she crouches. Stumbles over a rock, barely catches herself. Scans the hills and sees the silhouette of irregular shapes—ancient boulders or angry men? Too dark to tell.

  Her freebies have run out. Of that, she’s certain.

  Her stomach tightens. If it is the time, will she realize she’s been hit? Another surge of adrenalin, maybe sixty seconds’ worth, before shock turns to pain? Or a midstride of running and then nothing? She hopes not that—she’d rather know.

  She flashes on an image of a woman she once interviewed, the widow of the soldier who told his commander by walkietalkie—his last words—“I’ve been killed.”

  Her breath comes in short gasps.

  She puts a hand to her hair. Her scarf has fallen off, probably back on the bus. Her backpack is there also, under her seat. And her press card, damnit. She turns to look at the bus, its brake lights an eerie yellow. She’s out here alone with nothing more than a narrow notepad and two black pens in her waist pouch. But turning back seems as dangerous as going forward. And with less chance of nabbing the story.

  She ducks and thinks of an animal scurrying along the road. Her heart presses against her rib cage; her cheeks are clammy. The air is heavy, as though rain waits. Staring into the dark, she remembers: the face of that Beirut driver. His eyes, specifically. His veiled squint. The thought propels her forward.

  She’s upon them so fast she nearly runs into them. A huddle of men, hidden by the shadow of the hills. They swing on her sharply, guns pointed. One fires a shot to her right. She cringes involuntarily. Another jabs her in the side with his rifle and utters something guttural she can’t understand. She recognizes it as Hebrew, not Arabic.

  “Hold it,” she says quickly. “I’m the reporter. The one on the bus with you.”

  From a brew of muttering, Moshe’s impatient voice emerges. “I know her. She’s with me.” Moshe takes her arm roughly, pulls her back toward the bus. “Though why you would come out here . . .”

  “My job,” she says.

  “Not the place for a woman,” he says. “Not the time for an interview.”

  In a few more steps, they are back. “They got away,” Moshe announces to his fellow passengers as they climb on the bus. “They scattered like rabbits.” And then the bus is awash in disappointment and disgust—just as, twenty minutes ago, it was bathed in a murmured calm. A quick inventory confirms that although some stitches may be necessary, no one is badly hurt. That does not relieve the tension. Talk boils as booted men kick glass shards into a corner.

  “How many were there?”

  “Which village, do you think?”

  “No more! Time to put an end to this.”

  Caddie sits directly behind Moshe and jots in her notepad. She tries to be inconspicuous, though she probably doesn’t need to, so caught up are the passengers in their shared fury as they jostle back to their seats. They’ve forgotten her.

  After several minutes of talk unrelieved by the sound of an engine starting up, someone points out that their driver is no longer among them. Apparently more afraid of the enraged settlers than of losing his job, he has fled into the night. Men begin to guffaw; one strides to the front to drive the bus home. And now, although the mother has not resumed her humming, the vehicle is filling with a sense of satisfaction: their womenfolk and children have been attacked this evening, but they’ve managed to scare at least one Arab in return.

  When the bus begins to move, Moshe leans back and speaks with more candor than Caddie would expect. “Slimy bastards,” he says, slapping his knee. “Next time they’ll kill one of us. Again, they’ll kill one of us. We’ve got to get them first.” In her presence Moshe is usually smooth and calm, full of pious concern for the world. But now he’s forgotten she’s a reporter—or no longer cares.

  A man twists in his seat to answer Moshe. His forehead is as white and shiny as a boiled egg. “The devil’s insects stir things whenever they can,” he says, wiggling his thick fingers. “We’ll squash them.”

  Noticing Caddie watching, he scowls and, with deliberation, turns away.

  . . .

  AT HIS SETTLEMENT, Moshe gets off the bus first, waits for Caddie and hands her a damp handkerchief. “Wipe the blood off your chin,” he says.

  She takes it. “Thanks.”

  He waves dismissively. “Don’t want to needlessly frighten my children.”

  They pass together through the yellow barrier gate that controls entrance into the enclave. Before them spills a neighborhood of straight streets, orderly homes. An armed guard sitting on a watchtower waves down at them. “Shalom,” he calls to Moshe.

  “So?” Caddie asks as she jams the stained handkerchief into her pocket. “Tonight?”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to respond?”

  He widens his eyes for her benefit. “What do you mean?” “C’mon, Moshe. Teach them a lesson, send a message, however you want to phrase it. Because if you are, I’d like to come.”

  “We’re good men trying to protect our families.”

  His voice has changed since he got off the bus. This is the modulated Moshe that she must get beyond, the wallpaper she needs to peel off. “I was with you tonight,” she says. “I survived it, too.” She stops then, halted by a sudden clarity about what she needs to write. “Revenge is a physical craving, like for food or sleep,” she says. “Your mind may say you don�
��t need it, you don’t want it. But your body insists you do.”

  He stares with candid curiosity. It surprises her, too, frankly, this intensity that unfolds as she speaks.

  “Let’s discuss it later.” Moshe’s tone is removed now. “I don’t want to worry my family.” Then, with a cautious sideways look, he turns and strides away.

  She’s glad to follow a few steps behind, caught up as she is in this idea. A rush of excitement moves to her chest, her cheeks.

  She’s been a fine reporter, sure. She can smell a lie, nail the lead in a second, find a fresh take on yet another tragedy. She’s an attentive listener and can get anyone to spill his stuff during an interview. But those barriers that she’s put up, necessary barriers, may have sometimes, she sees now, gotten in the way of the story.

  Maybe this time she can write something that will compensate for the other half-stories. A piece that will show intimately how violence shreds sleep and appetite and memory, disfiguring those it leaves behind. A story that will get close enough to give vengeance a human face. Maybe that’s what she is supposed to do with all this anger and frustration and loss.

  The door to Moshe’s home is slightly ajar. The noise of children floods out. Moshe reaches out to touch and kiss the mezuzah. “Shalom,” he calls as they step inside. They enter a living room illuminated by a single hooded lamp. One worn couch, two overstuffed chairs. A child’s Torah in a corner, along with a rusted Tonka truck and a homemade doll with brown yarn hair. A small face peeks around the corner, stares at Caddie, then disappears. “Ah, I smell dinner,” Moshe says in such a sitcom voice that Caddie wants to groan aloud. After a moment, a woman comes in wearing a chocolate-colored skirt that reaches her ankles. A vibrant, multicolored silk scarf covers most of her auburn hair, making her seem a reluctant frontierswoman. Moshe looks past her as he says, “My wife.”

  Caddie remembers Moshe telling her that this wife was born in the States, Massachusetts, she thinks. “Hi. I’m Caddie. And you’re . . .?”