While We're Far Apart (6 page)

“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 Eddie’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?”

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.

C
HAPTER 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.”