The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton Page B

baby, the old woman clutching the broom, the boy clinging to his father’s coat. All three stepped cautiously from the closet, and even before the men spoke, the boy could read the facts in their faces. His father and sister had been shot to death on the narrow beach by their home. And as his mother lowered his sister from her chest, he knew by the way the baby lay that she’d been suffocated. That his mother had killed her trying to prevent her cries.
    When dawn broke, his mother stretched out face down on the same beach where his father and sister had fallen. Shewaited to die too. When that didn’t happen—when they reminded Vera of her son and pulled her inside and gave her pills of calm—she packed her bags. She told her aging parents she was returning to her native land. When they protested, she said, “Yes, I know of pogroms, I know what can happen to a Jew in Russia, but in Russia there is no illusion of safety. No trickery. A mother does not unwittingly become murderer of her children, her husband.”
    Once Vera and her son got back to Moscow, she no longer mentioned what had happened. Not even when she found she was pregnant, she’d been with child all along on that thirsty, moonless night. Only during the birth of her fourth baby, the one all the neighbors thought was her second and probably illegitimate, did she break her silence to howl, an unintelligible, guttural sound like waves crashing, so uncontrolled that the nurses summoned the chief doctor to scold her harshly for her lack of courage. They scolded her even as she bled onto the grayish-white sheets, even after the baby was born dead.
    A ND I SUPPOSE that was the last loss she could face, that she used up all her emotions then,” Goronsky says. “Because after that, even if I kissed her a hundred times, still she could not feel that I was there. And even if I’d wanted to talk about what happened to us, she would have refused.”
    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 inthe 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