A Narrow Bridge

by J. J. Gesher

Rosie waited. He turned around. It was Hansom.

  “Janine told me that if you put bleach on a cloth and rubbed it on your face, it will clear you up.”

  “And did you do that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Rosie flipped on the light and hurried to him. She pulled him to the sink and turned on the faucet. “Wash it off! Wash it off now!”

  She helped him flood his face with water. His skin looked raw and painful. She was angry with him for being so gullible, but this was not the place for a lecture. She’d have to report the incident.

  Dammit, she thought. Sex in the closet would have been easier to deal with.

  Rosie was at her wit’s end. The Hansom incident was upsetting. After school, she’d gone to speak to Kala, but she’d already left for the day. On Rosie’s way home she drove past Edmond’s house. Good manners dictated that she call first, but her own anxiety necessitated feedback from someone who was familiar with the situation. Rosie had briefly been to his house once before to drop off choir material when he couldn’t make a rehearsal. He lived in a white clapboard bungalow with a well-kept yard. She noticed his car in the driveway. She’d use him as a sounding board.

  A tiny, well-dressed woman in her sixties answered the door. Maybe she had the wrong house. “Excuse me, is Edmond Scott here?”

  “Yes, let me get him. He’s unloading groceries.”

  Rosie extended her hand. “I’m Rosie Yarber. Edmond and I know each other from work.”

  The woman smiled broadly and held out her hand. “I’m Martha Scott. Edmond and I know each other from childbirth.”

  The two women laughed politely as they shook hands, and then Edmond’s mother folded her arms over her stomach, took a step back, and looked Rosie up and down. “Are you the one from church?”

  Rosie was caught off guard. Had Edmond told his mother about her, or was there someone else from church that he was interested in? The thought was disconcerting. Rosie stumbled over her response. “Well…there are a lot of women at church…I’m sure he talks about many people.”

  “Not unless there are a slew of women named Rosie.”

  Rosie felt like her arms and hands were flapping about. She was flustered by the woman’s frankness and, more than that, unnerved knowing that Edmond had talked about her to his mother. Best to change the subject. “How long are you visiting, Mrs. Scott?”

  “Till the end of the year, through the holidays. Why don’t you have a seat? He’ll be here in a minute.”

  She waited for Rosie to sit down on the couch and then sat down next to her. “Can I tell you something you’ll need to know?” she said leaning in familiarly.

  She didn’t wait for an answer. “He likes his food hot, steaming hot.”

  Rosie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with that knowledge. “Okay, I’ll make note of that.” Why had she answered that way? Now it sounded like she and Edmond were involved with one another.

  “And he needs a clean towel every day. It makes for a lot of laundry, but that’s the way he is. He won’t share a towel. He’s a clean man.”

  Rosie didn’t know how to react to this piece of intimate information. She’d gone on one date with Edmond, and it had nothing to do with towels.

  Rosie was relieved when Edmond came up behind his mother. “I thought that was your voice. Let me introduce the two of you.”

  Martha lifted up her hand to stop him from speaking. “No need. We already know each other.” She winked at Rosie but spoke to Edmond. “Offer your guest something to drink. You were raised better than that.”

  She whispered to Rosie. “I was just making some hot chocolate…hot chocolate,” she repeated pointedly. “You’ll join us.”

  Rosie silently berated herself for not calling in advance. She did not want to sit down with Edmond’s mother over anything, hot or cold, and she definitely did not want to learn any more secondhand information about his grooming habits.

  “Thank you for the invitation, but I have to get home to my son.”

  Edmond sensed that Rosie was uncomfortable. “We’ll do this another time, Mom.”

  Rosie had one foot out the door. “I wanted to talk to you about something that happened at school, but it can wait till tomorrow.” She waved a quick goodbye and headed for her car before Edmond’s mother could object.

  CHAPTER 20

  Hava entered Detective Rosenberg’s office and placed a Ziploc bag on his desk.

  “To tell you the truth, I’m tired of baking these cookies for you. You take them every week—and eat them—but you don’t give me any information in return. I thought they’d help you remember me and find my son, but you’re just a haser.”

  She tossed the Yiddish word for pig at him again for emphasis. “Haser!”

  Detective Rosenberg smoothed his tie. “Nice to see you too, Mrs. Fisher.” Next he smoothed his mustache. “This week I actually do have some information.”

  Hava wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. “What do you mean?”

  Rosenberg looked at her—no expression. She sat down uninvited.

  “Is it about Jacob?”

  “No.”

  She let her breath out.

  “But we may be closing in on the bomber’s identity.”

  Hava was confused. Had a group claimed responsibility? They’d been waiting for months for some radical group to step forward.

  Rosenberg cleared his throat, but there was nothing stuck in it. “The video from the candy store near the bus stop…”

  “But you’ve had that forever. What could be new?”

  “We’re putting the pieces together. It takes time. We have ten different location videos that we’re asking relatives of all the victims to view.” Detective Rosenberg spoke softly. “Mrs. Fisher, do you think you could watch this tape and tell me if you recognize someone? I know it’s a long shot, but maybe you’ll spot someone who knew Jacob and his family.”

  She sat frozen for several long seconds. She wanted to run away, pretend that he hadn’t suggested she view the nightmare. She licked lips that had gone dry and croaked out a question infused with dread, “What will I see?”

  “You’ll see Julia and the kids.” Pain darted across her face. “We need to know if you can identify any of the other passengers.”

  Hava looked away.

  Rosenberg waited for her to look back. “It’s all we’ve got.”

  Against all logic, she acquiesced.

  “We’ll do it in the captain’s office. I’ll be with you the whole time.”

  Hava adjusted her eyes to the darkened room and squinted at the laptop screen.

  A city bus was parked with the passenger door open. Several elderly people hefted themselves onto the bus, one with a cane, then a young woman with a messenger bag boarded.

  “Is that who did it…is it in her bag?”

  “I don’t think so. Keep watching.”

  Then she saw a young, good-looking African American man in a plaid shirt. But before he could get on the bus, Yossi and Miriam careened into him, knocking a paper bag from his hand. Hava had no breath in her body…none at all. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she felt their laughter, their banter, their very life. The man politely stepped back as Yossi and Miriam bounded on board. Then Julia, Jacob, and Sarah crowded the frame.

  Jacob bent down to hear something Sarah was saying, and then he raised his hand as if taking an oath. Sarah and Julia clambered up the steps. The man with the plaid shirt was the last to board. His child’s Batman backpack seemed incongruous. The door shut. The bus pulled away as Jacob stood waving. People walked around him, yet he continued to wave. Then, like in an action film, everyone was blown backward, and the camera swung wildly.

  Rosenberg put his hand on Hava’s shoulder to offer some small gesture of comfort. It was inappropriate, but she didn’t pull away.

  “Do you recognize anybody who got on the bus with them…anybody?”

  Hava shook her head no.

 
“We believe he was acting completely on his own.”

  “Why would he do such a thing?”

  Rosenberg shook his head and shrugged. “He may have been a religious fanatic. More likely mentally ill. Paranoid schizophrenic.”

  She looked at him incredulously. What did it matter? They were all dead, and now her son was probably dead, too. How could he live after witnessing that? The look on Rosenberg’s face told her that he understood her fears.

  “You have a difficult job, Detective,” Hava said.

  “Yes, Mrs. Fisher, but yours is harder.”

  Hava’s favorite part of Sabbath dinner at her daughter’s house was singing the blessing at the end of the meal. Even as a girl there had always been sheer joy as the gathering erupted in exuberant, table-banging songs to celebrate the day of rest. She was sixty-three years old, and these moments still lifted her spirits. Perhaps the singing felt rebellious, or liberating, or childlike. Whatever the reason, when her family began to sing, she willingly joined in. As her rhythmic pounding on the dinner table escalated, her grandchildren grinned at her with the enthusiasm of co-conspirators. She was part grandmother, part pied piper. All of them contributed to the cacophony of human sound and rattling dishes. They sang a joyous Sabbath song, banging the rhythm on the table.

  When the song ended, everyone stopped—except for Hava. She wasn’t sure how long she had been hammering the table without cover of song. She only knew that five frightened faces were staring at her. She summoned super-human strength to control herself and fled the table with a feeble, “Excuse me.”

  “What’s wrong with Grandma?” she heard the oldest grandchild whisper.

  “Nothing,” her daughter said evenly. “She’s got a headache from all the noise.”

  Hava lowered her body on the twin bed in the small room where she stayed when she came to her daughter’s for the Sabbath. Space was a luxury in Brooklyn. Naomi’s house was cramped and littered with the detritus of small children: a shoebox of crayon pieces, matchbox cars, a doll with wildly tangled hair and half-buttoned clothes. The children left souvenirs of their existence everywhere. Like Hansel and Gretel, they sprinkled crumbs to find their way back home.

  Jacob’s children would never come home. She felt the familiar tightening in her chest. She tried to put the thought out of her mind, but it was impossible not to replay the sound of Jacob’s voice on the afternoon of the explosion. “They’re gone, they’re gone.” He repeated the phrase over and over, and then he didn’t speak again.

  When Julia and the children died, Jacob was in such pain, incredible pain, like being burned alive. And Hava couldn’t do anything to help him. If she was struggling, how was Jacob coping?

  She couldn’t stop thinking about that program on the Animal Channel she had seen while trying to distract herself one night. The show had been about animal and insect myths. A viewer thought that if a scorpion was surrounded by a ring of fire and given no way out, it would instinctively sting itself to death before allowing the fire to consume it. The scientists presented the truth: the scorpion was so distraught that it flailed its body around violently, appearing to commit suicide as the fire closed in. Were humans no different than insects? Was Jacob flailing somewhere, waiting for death?

  What about all those people who jumped from the World Trade Center on 9/11? Body after body plummeted to earth, determined to control their own destiny rather than endure unbearable pain.

  Her daughter Naomi quietly entered the room and sat on the bed. She gently touched her mother’s arm. Hava looked directly at her and asked the forbidden question that had been sitting in her mouth for months. “Do you think your brother is alive?”

  “Mommy—don’t.”

  She couldn’t swallow her thoughts anymore. In a barely audible whisper she confessed, “If that happened to me, I’m not sure I would want to be.” Hava saw fear in her daughter’s face. Instantly, she regretted her honesty. She’d never intended to frighten Naomi. She simply needed to express her dread out loud.

  “It is forbidden,” Naomi stated emphatically. “God determines who will live and who will die. We cannot do God’s job.” Naomi found solace in the black-and-white laws of Orthodoxy, laws that governed her every move.

  Hava stayed silent, but she wanted to snap at her daughter. Naomi’s religious justifications were nonsense. Hava had questions. She’d always had questions. But pressure from her husband and community—and all the rules and traditions—had squelched her curiosity. For years she’d been a passive wife, maintaining house and home according to religious dictate. The enormity of loss had made her question God’s existence, damaging the order of her life.

  “Suicide is a sin,” Naomi added. “Jacob knows that.”

  The sound of a baby’s hungry complaint filtered in from the other room.

  “Go—your son needs you,” Hava said, eager to pretend that life could get back to normal.

  Naomi leaned in and kissed her on the forehead as if Hava were a feverish child. “Get some rest. I love you, Mommy,” Naomi said as she left the room.

  Hava’s response to the word “mommy” was immediate and visceral. Her chest hurt, as if she’d pulled a muscle deep inside. Instantly, she was catapulted back to the days when she’d ferociously loved her small children: the way they smelled after a bath, her daughter’s melodic laugh, Jacob’s mischievous grin.

  She watched the crack of light under the closed door. When she was sure that Naomi had moved away, she put the pillow over her face and wept. Through the pillow came the heart-rending sound of abandoned hope.

  CHAPTER 21

  Jacob was painting the door moldings around the church entryway. Lost in the meticulousness of the moment, he dipped and stroked the thick semi-gloss.

  Mo stood in the doorway observing him before he spoke. He surprised himself when he commanded, “Put that brush down.”

  Jacob suspended the brush mid-stroke. He looked up, curious about the order.

  “You got that pasty look, what happens to white folks when they stay inside too much,” Mo said. “I say we hunt us some rabbit to eat. It’s the season.”

  Jacob’s eyes widened in apprehension. Mo’s invitation made him uneasy. Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn weren’t hunters. And rabbit? According to the laws of keeping kosher, rabbit was forbidden, as it neither had spilt hooves nor chewed its cud. Cows, sheep, goats, and deer were kosher, while pigs, rabbits, and squirrels were not. Although he no longer cared about food prohibitions, explaining why rabbit was abhorrent would bring him too close to the past. Too many words. He went back to painting.

  “What, you don’t like rabbit?” Mo asked.

  “Not my taste,” Jacob offered, hoping that would end the discussion, but Mo only became more enthusiastic.

  “You probably never had it cooked right. Rabbit can get stringy.” Mo smacked his lips and winked, like this was some big secret between them. “I know how to do it tender with tomato sauce and potatoes. Fill you right up! Put that brush down and come with me.” Mo took the brush out of Jacob’s hand, swished it through the paint thinner bucket, and cleaned the bristles.

  Jacob did not resist as Mo led him down to the basement.

  “You familiar with a gun?” Mo asked as he reached to the top shelf of the closet in the caretaker’s room and pulled down an old hunting rifle that was hidden behind a cardboard box.

  Jacob shook his head. “Never used one.”

  Mo and Jacob stood in an old field halfway between town and the woods. It was cold enough to see their breath in the air. Mo lined up a few empty soda cans on a log for target practice like he would with a child, like he’d already done with Langston a few months ago. Jacob looked awkward and clumsy with the rifle in his hands—as if he expected it to pull its own trigger. Mo walked him through the process.

  “Now what I want you to do is line up the can in your sights—like we practiced—then breathe out slow. And while you’re doin’ that, squeeze the trigger.”

  Jacob foll
owed the directions. The sound was deafening, and it felt like someone had jammed a two by four into his shoulder. The rifle tip jumped skyward, and the kick pushed his body back. He stumbled as he fought to keep his balance. The can was untouched.

  Jacob didn’t make eye contact with Mo but offered a statement of fact. “Missed it.”

  Mo sucked on his thinkin’ tooth and agreed with a barely audible, “Uh-huh.” Then he took the rifle from Jacob and reloaded.

  “You know, I never do get when people call huntin’ a sport. More like a necessity. I was never interested in a pair of antlers on the wall, and I don’t care much for venison—too chewy and a hell of a lot of work to gut the damn thing. But rabbit or squirrel? Well, you’re only doin’ that to fill your belly. No different from fishin’.”

  He handed the rifle back to Jacob and corrected his hold on the gun.

  “My daddy gave me a twenty-two when I was younger than Langston. Never understood how the rest of the world looked at guns till I joined the Marines.”

  Mo fine-tuned Jacob’s grip. “All right—line ’er up. You want your target right over the sight. Now breathe out and give a gentle, steady pull on that trigger.”

  Jacob followed his instructions. He shot again. The can’s upright posture mocked him.

  “Give me that.” Mo took the gun from Jacob to reload. Jacob’s right ear was ringing and his shoulder ached.

  “I guess it’s safe to assume that you were never in the military. Combat changes you. You learn to think weapon, not firearm,” he mumbled. “Never pull a gun on a man unless you’re prepared to use it.”

  Jacob stood frozen. Nothing about this lesson felt comfortable.

  Mo handed the rifle back to Jacob. “You’re not much for talkin’ today, are you?”

  “Not much to talk about,” Jacob said as he lifted the rifle into position.

  Mo sucked his tooth again. “You got memories and stories. They’re in there…just gotta shake ’em out.” He tapped the rifle. “Line it up. Breathe out. Squeeze the trigger.”