The Distance Between Us. Masha Hamilton
invariably heads downstairs with his paintbrush whenever one of his neighbors travels, whether on annual reserve duty, business trip, or vacation. He claims the stripe is a barrier to danger, intended to keep a wanderer safe. The paint on Caddie’s mailbox feels rough and substantial beneath her fingertips. Does he consider his effort successful this time?
She unlocks her apartment door. Usually when she’s been gone, she heads directly for her bedroom, dumping bags and jacket along the hallway. Usually she wants to inhale the leftover scent of her that lingers on the sheets, the towels. She’s eager for the sight of the window across from her bed, its familiar view of the street below.
Now, though, she’s brought to a halt by—shit, by a bunch of inanimate objects. Her desk against the wall, computer atop. She can see Marcus standing there kneading her shoulders, lacing his fingers through her hair, urging her to stop working. (Why hadn’t she stopped working?) The coffee-table photography book of Paris he gave her last Christmas when they came back here after covering Bethlehem to sit side by side on the floor, opening presents, eating popcorn. The tall glass on the table next to the couch. He drank water from it—held in his right hand, touched to his lips—minutes before they left for the airport.
The air vibrates, becomes dense and watery.
Kill the bastards.
But how?
She looks at her own hands: these hands that twice wrung a chicken’s neck. When Caddie was sixteen, Grandma Jos grew sick, so the chore of killing the chickens fell briefly to Caddie—before she gave up and bought them already killed and cleaned. Both times, she’d turned her head away and let her hands act on their own. And except for the initial revulsion, it was much easier than she’d expected. A chicken’s neck is startlingly tenuous.
Now, though, her hands seem too small, too distant from her body to be of any real use.
Behind her, the front door opens. Ya’el has used her spare key. One arm is outstretched to embrace, the other wrapped around a can of Boker coffee. Ya’el’s uncontrolled frizzy hair clashes with her off-the-rack blazer in earth tones, creased from a day working at the bank. “Oh my God, Caddie.” Ya’el hugs her again and directs her toward the couch. “And Marcus. God.” She smells of lipstick and black olives. “Which arm?” she demands in her husky voice.
Caddie lifts her left arm slightly and pulls away. “I’m all right.”
Ya’el sits back. “I’m so glad you’re finally home. I thought somebody would try to talk you into staying away for good.”
“No way. Back to work. That’s what I need.”
Ya’el shakes her head. “Not back to work, not right away. But back here, yes. Where we understand, where we’ve been through it, too. This is your home. Now, tell me. Everything.”
Caddie draws a large couch pillow toward her, covering her stomach.
“I know, Caddie,” Ya’el says after a moment. “I thought I couldn’t talk about it either. But it was a relief to talk with you. A relief, trust me,”
Ya’el puts her hand on Caddie’s. Ya’el thinks she knows what Caddie feels. Her brother was kidnapped while on army duty along the Lebanese border, tortured and killed. Ya’el received a photograph of his bruised and mangled body in the mail from an unknown sender. For nearly two years she held futility like a knot in her gut. Then Caddie moved in, and the two women began talking. And maybe because Caddie was an outsider, attentive in a way that tended to draw people out, or maybe simply because the timing was right, Ya’el spilled it one evening. How furious she’d become. Afraid and sad. And, finally, how much better she felt after telling it all to Caddie.
Caddie never understood how releasing a flood of words could possibly be comfort enough. She couldn’t understand why Ya’el didn’t try harder to find out who sent that photograph, who murdered her brother. That submissiveness, a reminder of Grandma Jos, irritated her. But she never said so. She listened. A journalist’s job.
Now Caddie clears her throat. “Tell me about the girls. And how’s work?”
Ya’el stares a moment, then shakes her head. “I guess a sore must become a scab before it heals,” she says.
The doorbell saves Caddie from having to reply. Ya’el opens the door to Mr. Gruizin, the mailbox painter, followed by Mrs. Weizman, carrying her rose-patterned soup tureen.
“Now, bubeleh, don’t get up,” Mrs. Weizman says.
Goulash. Mrs. Weizman’s famous opinionated goulash—absolutely no to the green peppers but you can never add too much paprika—brought forth for each death, disaster, or even infection. So then. That means everyone in the building knows what happened. But Caddie should have figured that. Nothing is secret in this country for long; it’s always been that way. Probably every Israeli over the age of ten knew when their enemy King Hussein toured Tel Aviv in bearded disguise, though no journalist reported it for more than a decade. For months, they all knew that Ethiopian Jews were being spirited into the country, even knew the government had dubbed it Operation Magic Carpet, though the censor had forbidden a word of it in the local or international media. When a military operation goes awry, the street knows hours before it’s broadcast. So what’s the surprise that news of the ambush has traveled from Ya’el on the fifth floor to Mr. Gruizin at ground level, back up to Mrs. Weizman on third?
Ya’el heads into Caddie’s open kitchen with the soup. “I’ll make coffee.”
“How did you all know I was coming back today?” Caddie asks.
“We didn’t,” Mr. Gruizin says.
“I did,” Mrs. Weizman says. Mr. Gruizin’s eyebrows lunge into his forehead. “No, I did, Ya’akov. I felt it.” She strokes Caddie’s cheek with her papery fingers. “Feh, what a sorrow to see you so pale.”
“What do you mean? She looks wonderful,” argues Mr. Gruizin. “Am I right, Ya’el?” he calls.
Ya’el steps back into the living room. “She’s coping.” It comes out sounding like a lie, and Ya’el blushes and withdraws again.
Mrs. Weizman leans closer to Caddie. “How can you say so, with those washed-out cheeks?”
Caddie lowers her face but can’t escape their stares. She starts to rise. “Ya’el, you need help?”
Mrs. Weizman reaches out a hand to stop her. “Sit, bubeleh.”
“She looks better than should be expected, anyway,” Mr. Gruizin says after a moment. “She’s a strong girl. It’s my red, you know. Did the trick. Kept her safe.”
“Ya’akov!” Mrs. Weizman shakes her head. “I’ve never known such a superstitious man. Caddie isn’t so superstitious. Are you, dear?”
Caddie manages what she thinks is a smile, but it fails to translate somehow, because Mrs. Weizman quickly takes Caddie’s hands and squeezes them between her own, as though Caddie had broken down, instead of borne up.
“Oh, bubeleh,” she says, her voice thick with intent to comfort. “Sometimes it’s not the doctor but the rebbe who knows the cure. I remember once my palms started itching; they were itching for a week, all the time, night and day. I couldn’t sleep, it was that bad. This cream or that cream, the doctors said, but nothing worked. Of course I thought of the old superstition, my grand-uncle used to say it all the time when I was a little girl, he would say, ‘Nala, when your palms itch, you are going to come into some money.’ But for a few shekels, I should keep waiting? I went to see Rebbe Kroyanker. ‘Gevalt!’ I said. And he told me. He knew how to cure it.”
Mr. Gruizin sighs. “We’re ready already. What did the rabbi say?”
Ya’el, pouring them all coffee, gives Caddie a private grin. They’ve often laughed at how like an old married couple Mr. Gruizin and Mrs. Weizman are.
“Nu,