The Distance Between Us (3 page)

She makes lists in her mind. Pastel rose and watery. Vivid as a police warning light. Eggplant-purple.

The blood that comes from Marcus’s head is the color of raspberries, and sticky.

“I
HAVE TO FILE
,” Caddie pleads. “It’s a story. Even if anybody’s . . . hurt. Especially then.”

No, no, dear
. The voice comes from a great distance as a lady with pewter hair and creamy uniform reaches for Caddie’s arm, mops it with a cotton ball.

Caddie feels a sting. “What’s in that syringe?” She puts her head back against the pillow, overcome by a desire to close her eyes. Then she tries to sit up, realizing at last that this is a nurse, and a nurse should know something. Caddie has to interview her. “Can you tell me the precise nature of the wounds—”

The nurse’s head wobbles.
You can’t get up yet. Please.

“How—” Caddie breaks off for a second. “How exactly are you listing their conditions?”

Lie still, dear. Try to relax. The doctor will be here soon.
The pewter-and-cream lady, still out of focus, removes the needle and swabs Caddie’s arm again.

“I don’t want to relax. I want to file.”

She feels her arm being patted.
It’s all over.

The nurse’s words echo. Overoveroverover.

. . .

T
HERE’S GRANDMA
Jos, sleeves rolled above the bulbs of her elbows, chopping onions for chicken soup, her eyes oozing and her face rigid with loss.

Grandma Jos, kneeling to pray in the dusky church—one slow knee, then the other—her expression now flaccid with a resignation Caddie hates.

Grandma Jos, counting and recounting the cookie-jar money for that yellow dress with the lacy collar that Caddie can wear to the school dance, because Grandma Jos says she must look presentable now that she’s “nearly of age.” And though Caddie is embarrassed by the old-fashioned concept, and even more by frilly dresses, she loves this one because it’s starchy in that new-clothes way that the church hand-me-downs never are, and without even the tiniest of stains.

Grandma Jos, coming down the street in time to see Caddie, already bandaged on one elbow, jumping her rusted bicycle over a makeshift wooden ramp. A growl—
Girl!
—softened quickly to her public voice.
Why does it always have to be dangerous to be fun?

No. Grandma Jos is not here. Caddie is not a child. She has to pull herself from this fog.

S
HE WAKES UP ALONE
in a room devoid of color. Why do they do that in hospitals, as if bland and passionless were comforting? Her left upper arm is sore and taped up; she’s tethered to
an IV. She remembers a flight from Lebanon, vaguely. She gets up, pulling the contraption along with her, her hand rigid on the cold metal. Someone has left a newspaper on a table. The
Cyprus Mail.
So she’s in Nicosia. She flips rapidly through the pages until she finds it: Award-winning British freelance photo-journalist, 41, killed in a . . . She skims to the bottom, where she sees her own name: Catherine Blair, 32 . . . In between her name and his, the words blur.

What makes her think, then, of that Walt Whitman poem she had to memorize and recite during a sixth grade assembly?
But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red
. What remote melodrama; no one would publish it today, and still school-children have to learn it. “Whitman,” Caddie says aloud. She grips the newspaper and snickers.

Somehow, through none of her own doing, the laughter shifts into something else, something loud and unruly that makes her chest vibrate unnaturally. The nurse with the needle returns.

H
OW DID SHE LET THIS HAPPEN
? She’s usually so careful, her caution more valuable than a flak jacket. So how could she let him down like this?

Kill those bastards.

“A
ND YOU’RE SURE
that Sven and Rob, that my colleagues . . . ?”

They’re fine. No injuries at all.

So where are they, then? Where the hell . . . because she needs to ask them why.

Isn’t there anyone you want us to contact?

It was all set up. Yaladi
wanted
to be interviewed, damnit. There was no crossfire to get caught in, no shelling. A simple interview with a famous criminal.

Some relative somewhere?
The nurse, insistent, squeezes Caddie’s hand.

Relative? Not anyone living. Grandma Jos, the last to die, would be useless anyway. She’d show up straight from the airport with the Lazarus Department Store shopping bag she always carried, and she’d pull out a Bible and suggest they pray together. That would be the extent of it.

Caddie smooths the thin, bone-colored blanket that covers her legs. She makes her voice absolute. “No one.”

The nurse disapproves. She stands motionless for a moment as though weighing her options. Eventually she sighs.
Maybe you’ll think of someone later. For now, sleep.
She reaches to the cart and closes in.

T
HE DEEP PULSE OF NIGHT
, its shadows a retreat, its tiny noises companions to breath. Night is a woman’s hand spread wide to shield her, to protect her from shame. At night, it’s all right if she finds herself musing without purpose, careening through memories, dallying longer among the dead than the living. It doesn’t matter that pieces of herself have been scattered, that everything she does takes place some long distance away, that
her emotions, once so tethered and well behaved, now threaten to cripple her.

The permissive night: she’s begun to crave it.

Still, she won’t give in to a dread of dawn; she won’t be sunk by this sunlit heaviness. A flying leap, perfect form with arms outstretched and toes pointed, is what she’ll try for.

They bury Marcus with a camera and one of those little boxes of raisins he always carried in his pocket. Does someone tell her that, or does she dream it? She isn’t sure. She imagines, against her will, his hands draped over his stomach. Square hands, almost clumsy looking, with squat nails pressed to the ends of his fingers. But when he used them in a rush to insert film or change a lens or focus a shot, they were precise enough to mesmerize her. They became, then, the hands of a creator. When they touched her, she sometimes imagined herself to be one of his cameras. Though she and Marcus always avoided talking of the future, she knew that if she let herself, she could get addicted to those moments.

As a photographer, he was a master of angle and light and, most of all, passion. His photos of faces revealed secrets and captured essence, raw and unrelieved. He was known for the single shot that exposed a person’s history. “Penetrating,” one award committee said. “Too powerful to ignore.”

She remembers being with him once in his converted darkroom. They were studying some photos he’d developed, full of expression and gesture, and suddenly he switched off the lights and slipped out, leaving her fumbling first for the wall, then the door.

Whatja do that for?

It’s a life skill, Caddie. Always know how to find your way out of a darkroom.
Or did he say dark room?

On the fourth morning, clear of drugs, she writes a letter to Marcus’s parents in London. “A fine photographer and cheerful companion. He loved the story that he died for. Was committed to his work.” A bit beside the point, but she can’t say what she really means. That he was irreverent, and lemon-tasting, and intense and lighthearted at once, so often exactly what she needed. That already she misses the nights. That
miss
is not a strong enough verb. And that maybe she should have told him that.

“C
ATHERINE
B
LAIR
?”

She raises her hand, palm out as though blocking light, and sees him through her fingers. A doctor this time. Milky white suit with shit-warmed-over grin. She shifts her body away. “Caddie,” she says. “I go by Caddie.”

“Well, Caddie. Good to see you sitting up and reading. You must be feeling well today.”

Christ. This phony cheerfulness is more painful to witness than a child’s tears.

“You were lucky with the arm. Everything checks out fine. Someone from your newspaper comes tomorrow, I’m told. We’ll probably release you the next day.”

“Right-o.” One of Marcus’s expressions.

“In the meantime—” He pulls up a chair as though someone
had invited him to sit. “I’m here. We can discuss anything.”

He emphasizes the last word. He thinks she’ll find comfort, does he, in asking her questions aloud? As though to pronounce them one by one would remove the weight?
Okay, doc, tell me. Why, right after a shower, did he smell like citrus and taste like salt? How did he learn to cook spaghetti with such a flourish? Where did he get those lips, far more beautiful than mine, heart-lips, lips that, in truth, belonged on a girl’s face? And that way he had of looking at me sideways and making it feel more intimate than anyone else’s straight-on stare and yet still full of freedom—how did he do that?

The milk suit pats her arm, murmuring gently, urging her to speak her thoughts. “Go ahead.” The painstakingly modulated voice shakes her free of reverie. “It’s important to pay attention to your feelings.”

Maybe, doc, but I don’t need to share. Real journalists write in third person for a reason. Don’t you know that, doc, don’t you know anything? They disguise their opinions and never spill their guts, ever. Except maybe sometimes, maybe during the dense hours while children sleep, to a half-stranger in some poorly lit airport terminal in a Third World country after witnessing acts of unspeakable violence in towns with unpronounceable names. But not to neighbors or even lovers and certainly not to doctors. You can check my passport to see the countries I’ve visited, doc, but you’ll never know where my head has been.

“Do you know how many people have been killed in this region in the last decade?” she says. “Have you heard of the
slimeball we were going to interview? I knew the risks—we all did.”

“Still—”

“We wanted to cover it. We were dying to.” She meets his gaze straight on, silencing him for a beat.

“Yes, and that’s—”

She holds up a hand to stop his words. She wishes she could ask him a question. She thinks while he waits, appalling eagerness in his eyes.
If your home were burning, which would you take first? Your pet, or your cash, or your photo albums?
She doesn’t ask it aloud, of course. His answer, she imagines, would be to finally turn away. Who, after all, likes being dissected?

“I’m fine,” she says, forcing out the word. “Fine.”

His shoulders sag slightly at her dismissal. “Well. Let us know if you want to talk later.”

T
HE FOREIGN EDITOR
, Mike, paces in the waiting room. He no longer looks like the Mike she used to know, the one who transferred out of the posting in Jerusalem that Caddie filled. “Live tight and write loose” was his parting advice when he headed for Ben Gurion and a job in management with a couple days’ worth of scratchiness on his cheeks and a rip in the right shoulder of his T-shirt. Now, straight off a flight from New York, his suit is starched enough to support his weight, and his hair seems polished. She crosses her legs, sits up straighter and pretends she’s wearing boots, jeans and dangly earrings instead of a dingy hospital shift. Two others are in the
room: a bent-nosed man and a coiffured woman with a run in her stocking. They’re in street clothes, too.

“Living in an airport terminal, that’s what this is,” Caddie says, gesturing to take in the room. “One damned delay after another. And now you want more.”

“It’s a promotion, for God’s sake.” Mike leans on the windowsill. “You like New York.”

New York. Where Marcus is supposed to be. Visiting photo galleries, eating late overpriced meals in closet-sized cafés. She cranes her neck to look out the window behind Mike. A leaf supported by an indiscernible breeze spins in circles. And they’re way up on the third floor. What are the odds of something like that?

“I’m fine,” she says at last to the window, sick of that word
fine
, but addicted to it, too. “I don’t want to be transferred to New York. Least, not now.”

“Caddie.” Mike moves to a cushioned chair across from her, gives her a get-real look. “First of all, you’re not okay. Who would be? But leave that for a second. This is about a career move. A job that’ll be perfect for you. Roving correspondent based in New York. You don’t have to get stuck behind a desk all the time like I have.”

She shakes her head. “I’ll have to wear smart clothes, get my hair styled. It’s not me.”

“It
is
you. Plenty of independence. And no one cares what you wear.”

She gives him a comical glance. “Shit, Mike, look at you. They gave you a title and you’re a whole different person.
Now maybe that’s for the best, in
your
case.” She grins, glad she can still tease.

Mike hesitates a beat. “Think it over for a couple weeks. And in the meantime, go to Vienna; cover a round of peace talks. They start next Wednesday.”

So this is his counteroffer. It doesn’t sway her. “Me writing
peace talks?
Get real, Mike. All analysis, no action? My copy will stink.” She leans forward in her seat. “I want to go home.”

“Jerusalem’s not home, Caddie. It’s an
assignment
.I used to cover it. Jon is covering it right now.”

“Okay, an assignment. But it’s where my stuff is. My books. My CDs. My underwear, for God’s sake. Look, maybe I’ll take your job, but not right now. I’m not going to run away just because I got shot at. You understand?”

He squeezes the arms of his chair with both hands. “I’m trying to work with you here, Caddie.” He massages his forehead like it’s bread dough. “If I talk them into letting you go back, there has to be no reporting.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says.

“Your instincts are off; they’ve got to be. Besides, we already promised Jon at least six weeks.”

“Six weeks?”

“Caddie.”

“Okay. Sure.” That can be negotiated later.