While We're Far Apart (12 page)

Esther tapped the pencil against the pad as she searched for the right word. To be honest, everything Penny did around the house was okay: cooking, cleaning, washing their clothes. She was never mean to them, never yelled at them, and she tried really hard to be cheerful and friendly – too hard, in fact. Esther didn’t want to be Penny’s friend. When it came right down to it, Esther couldn’t think of a single bad thing to say about Penny except that she wasn’t Mama and she never would be. No one could take Mama’s place. Ever. Esther closed her eyes, trying to picture her mother’s face. Panic squeezed her chest when she realized that she couldn’t do it.

She threw down the pad and jumped up, hurrying into Daddy’s bedroom to look at the photograph he kept on his dresser – except that the framed picture wasn’t there anymore. Esther had forgotten that her father had taken it with him. A jumble of Penny Goodrich’s things stood in its place on the dresser top: a jar of cold cream, a hairbrush and bobby pins, a handkerchief, and a pile of loose change for the bus. Esther gazed around the room in dismay. Nothing looked the same or even smelled the same now that Penny lived here. Daddy had rarely opened the shades to let in the sunlight after Mama died, but Penny rolled them wide open every morning.

Esther went to the window to look down on the street and saw the ugly, blackened shell of the synagogue. She hated the sight of it, all closed off with barricades to keep people away. In the distance, she saw Mr. Mendel coming slowly up the street toward the apartment, walking with his head down, his eyes focused on his feet as if he didn’t have the strength to lift his head and look up. Maybe he couldn’t bear to see the synagogue, either. Esther felt drawn to him for reasons she couldn’t explain, and without knowing why she hurried all the way down both flights of stairs from the third floor and went outside. She sank down on the top step of the porch, out of breath. A moment later, Mr. Mendel came up the sidewalk and turned toward the building.

“Hi, Mr. Mendel. Do you need any help today? Is there something you want me to do for you?”

He gazed at her with a look of confusion before managing a faint smile. “It is very nice of you to offer – but see?” He held up his hands, which were no longer bandaged, even though he still wore the plaster cast on his right arm. “My fingers are free at last. But thank you just the same.” He squeezed past her and climbed the porch steps, gripping the railing with his left hand.

“Do you know when they’re going to start fixing the synagogue?” she asked him.

“I imagine they must wait for the insurance company. Such things take time.”

Esther sprang to her feet and followed him to the door. “What did people do inside there? Before it burned down, I mean.”

He paused, jingling his keys in his hand. “It was a place to study Torah and to pray . . .”

Esther’s anger returned at the mention of prayer, remembering all of her unanswered ones. She needed to know what she was doing wrong. “Does God answer people’s prayers if they pray inside a synagogue?”

He shifted his gaze away from Esther, staring into the distance with a look of such deep sadness that she was sorry she had asked. “No,” he said softly. “No, not everyone’s prayers. Not always.”

“That’s what I don’t understand, Mr. Mendel. Why should people bother to pray if God doesn’t answer? What’s the use?”

He turned toward the door, slowly shaking his head as he stuck his key into the lock. “That is a question for men who are much wiser than I am.”

Esther stayed on the front porch after he went inside. The night air was cool for mid-October and she wasn’t wearing a jacket, but she didn’t want to go back upstairs to her lonely apartment yet. She wrapped her arms around herself and sat down on Mrs. Mendel’s porch glider. It squealed when she rocked on it, unused for more than a year. She rocked harder, letting the motion soothe her anger.

A few minutes later she saw Jacky Hoffman from next door pedaling his bicycle up the street, heading in her direction. She stopped rocking so the noise wouldn’t draw his attention and slouched down on the seat. But he spotted her anyway and halted on the sidewalk in front of the porch.

“Whatcha doing, beautiful?”

“Go away, Jacky.”

He planted a hand on his hip, gripping his bike with the other. “That’s a fine way to pay a fella back for a compliment.”

“You didn’t mean it.”

“Wanna bet?”

“No. I don’t want to bet.” She stared past him at the synagogue again. It looked sinister in the growing dusk. He turned around to see where she was looking.

“It’s a mess over there, isn’t it?” he asked. “A real eyesore. I wonder when the stupid black-hats are going to tear it down.” She remembered how gleefully Jacky had played in the water on the night of the fire, leaping over the hoses and splashing in the puddles. But he looked very different tonight, almost respectable with his shirttail tucked into his pants and his dark hair neatly combed. No one would ever guess he could be such a troublemaker in school.

“How come you’re all dressed up?” she asked him.

“I have a job after school delivering groceries. You should see all the money I make in tips.” He grinned, and Esther was surprised to realize how cute he was, like a younger version of the movie star Gary Cooper. She shook her head to erase the absurd idea.

“What are you going to do with all the money you make?”

“Well, I’m going to the matinee at Loew’s Theater on Saturday after work. Wanna come with me? My treat.”

Esther’s face suddenly felt warm, as if the synagogue across the street were burning again. Jacky had invited her to go to the movies with him. She had felt so lonely only a moment ago, with no one in the world to talk to. And now Jacky Hoffman, dressed up and looking respectable, was offering to be her friend, inviting her to the movies. He had called her beautiful.

“Thanks,” she said, “but my brother and I have to do chores on Saturday.”

“Hey, what’s wrong with your brother, anyway? I heard some of the kids making fun of him, calling him a moron and saying he doesn’t know how to talk.”

Anger made Esther sit up straight. She lied without a second thought. “For your information, there’s something wrong with his throat, and it keeps him from talking. People shouldn’t make fun of him, because he can’t help it!”

“Is that right.” Jacky flashed his handsome grin again. “Well, from now on, I’ll stick up for him when the other kids pick on him, okay? All those little kids are afraid of me.”

Her anger vanished as quickly as it had flared. “Thanks. That would be very nice of you to stick up for him.” She couldn’t imagine why Jacky was being so nice for once, offering to defend her brother. She recalled his reputation for schoolyard brawls and added, “Just don’t hurt anybody.”

He laughed. “Nah, I never pick on anyone littler than me. You and your brother can walk home from school with me anytime you want to from now on.”

Ever since Peter stopped talking, Esther had felt so isolated at school. She would time their arrival in the morning so they’d get there just as the bell rang, avoiding the other kids. Then she would rush out the door with him after school and hurry home without talking to anyone. It was the only way to protect her brother from the other kids’ questions and jeers. She smiled up at Jacky now, seeing him in a whole new light. The kids wouldn’t dare make fun of Peter with Jacky around. “Okay,” she said with a smile. “Thanks for the offer.”

“See you tomorrow, then.” He waved and continued walking his bicycle toward his apartment building next door. Halfway there he turned around again to shout, “And I meant what I said, Esther, even though you don’t believe me. You’re the prettiest girl in school.”

Esther didn’t know how to feel about the compliment, especially when it came from someone like Jack Hoffman. She jumped off the glider and unlocked the front door, shaking her head as she bounded up the steps to her apartment. Of all the many changes in Esther’s life these past few months, the change she had just seen in Jacky Hoffman was one of the strangest.

The next morning, Esther and Peter carried their dirty clothes down to the basement so Penny could wash them. For the first two weeks that Penny had lived here, she had dragged their laundry to her parents’ house every Saturday, but she had quickly decided that was too much work. Now she used Mama’s washing machine in the basement, letting Peter shave the soap into the tub and giving Esther the job of feeding the clothes through the wringer. When all the laundry was hung outside on the clothesline, Penny let Esther and Peter choose from a list of other chores that needed to be done – things like running the carpet sweeper, dusting the furniture, emptying the wastebaskets, and scrubbing the bathroom sink with cleanser.

“The work will go much faster if everybody pitches in,” she said in that cheery voice Esther hated. Esther still resented Penny, of course, but she really didn’t mind the work. Her mother used to give them chores to do, too. And Esther had hated the way Daddy let the apartment get so messy after Mama died.

Today, as Esther dusted the furniture, she recalled how Mama had sometimes chased her with the feather duster and tickled her beneath the chin with it as they worked together. She wondered if Peter remembered things like that. He was pushing the Bissell sweeper across the living room rug, putting all his nine-year-old muscle into the job. Penny was rubbing furniture polish onto the piano bench when it accidentally tipped and some of the sheet music spilled onto the floor.

“Hey, I didn’t know this lid opened up. Look at all this music.”

“Don’t touch it! Those are Mama’s!”

But Penny ignored her, paging through the music as she picked up each sheet from the floor. “So this was your mother’s piano.” Penny’s voice was soft, as if she were inside a church. “Did she play a lot?”

Esther gave a quick nod. It felt wrong to talk about her mother with Penny Goodrich.

“Do either of you know how to play?” Penny looked from one of them to the other until Peter – the traitor – pointed his finger at Esther. “You can play the piano, Esther?”

“Our mother was teaching both of us,” she said, shooting an angry glance at Peter, “but then she died.”

“I wish I could play,” Penny said. “I think it would be so much fun to be able to sit down at a get-together or a birthday party and play songs to cheer everyone up.” She studied the cover of one of the books. “This has your name on it, Peter. Come on, sit down and play something for me.” He shook his head. “Please?” He shook it again. Penny held the book up in front of him and smiled. “I’ll make you a deal. If you play one song for me, I’ll finish sweeping the carpet for you.” Another shake of his head. “And I’ll empty all the wastebaskets for you, too. What do you say?”

Once again, Peter turned traitor. He smiled mischievously as he swapped the carpet sweeper for the piano book and sat down at the keyboard. No one had played Mama’s piano since she’d died, and as Peter slowly picked his way through one of his beginner’s pieces Esther remembered how music had once filled the apartment like perfume. Everywhere Esther went, whether upstairs in her bedroom or on the back porch, she used to hear her mother practicing. It had always made her smile. That was one of the things that was wrong with their apartment now – the silence.

Penny applauded when Peter finished, even though he hadn’t played very well. “We haven’t practiced in a long time,” Esther said. “Nobody felt like it.” She needed to explain, defending her mother’s reputation as a teacher.

“Well, he plays a lot better than I ever could. I can’t even read music. Now let’s hear you play something, Esther.”

Again she felt a stubborn unwillingness to cooperate with Penny. She shook her head.

“I’ll scrub the bathroom sink for you, if you do,” Penny said, winking at Peter. Esther still refused.

Peter slid off the bench and pulled the feather duster out of Esther’s hand, tugging her toward the keyboard, his big eyes pleading with her to play. She wondered if it would help him start talking again – if his silence had anything to do with the piano that had stood mute for so long. She decided to try it and see, performing for her brother, not Penny.

Esther dug through the collection of lesson books until she found the one she had been using a year ago. She thought she could smell her mother’s cologne as she riffled through the pages. Her mother had written notes at the top of the pages, recording the date of each lesson and making a check mark when Esther had completed it to her satisfaction. Esther chose an easy piece near the beginning of the book and began to play – and for those few, brief moments it seemed as though Mama sat right there on the bench beside her. She remembered how her mother used to run her hand through her hair as she watched Esther play, hair that had been the same rich mahogany brown color as the piano.

Esther played the next piece, and the next, lost in the music and in the memories of her mother. When she glanced at Peter she saw him sitting cross-legged on the rug, listening with his eyes closed. Esther felt tears stinging her eyes as she finished the song. Would she ever stop missing her mother?

She lifted her hands from the keyboard and closed the lid.

C
HAPTER 11

I
T WAS
S
UNDAY MORNING
and Penny couldn’t get Esther out of bed for church. “Why do we have to go? It’s a waste of time,” she complained. “Why can’t we sleep in, instead?”

Penny did everything but yell and utter threats to make her get up. “You aren’t doing this for me, Esther. I promised your father that I would take you and Peter to church, every week. You don’t want to disappoint your father, do you?” Esther finally gave in, but she moved so slowly that they barely made it to the church on time.

Afterward, the three of them walked in silence to the duplex that Eddie’s mother shared with Penny’s parents. Penny had grown to dread spending Sunday afternoons with her parents, but today she had a different concern. She was desperate to get Peter talking again before Eddie came home on leave, and she needed Grandma Shaffer’s help and advice to do it. Mrs. Shaffer stood waiting on her back porch as Penny and the children arrived.