“Machloket l’shem shamayim,” said Rav Harriett after a pause. This was her response to Annamae’s telling her about the fight with Danny.
“Huh?” said Annamae. She made a special effort to say it humorously, because the mood in Rav Harriett’s little book-choked office high above the avenue had grown solemn. Telling about the fight, and her mother’s tears, and the burnt spices had made something clench in Annamae’s throat and she’d abruptly stopped talking and plucked a tissue from the box on the table, just in case.
“Argument for the sake of heaven.”
“Huh?”
“It’s something Rebbe Nachman said. Reb Nachman of Breslov. He said machloket, disputes between scholars, opens up a necessary space.” Rav Harriett expanded her palms around an invisible balloon being inflated.
“Why necessary?”
“I think what he meant is that if everyone agreed on everything, if there was total oneness”—now bringing her palms together and interlacing her fingers—“there’d be no room. We need the space opened up by difference, by division”—she let her palms drift apart again—“for creativity. Without such a space, creation could never occur.”
“Like the big bang,” said Annamae. Eerily, Mr. T. had done the exact same thing with his hands, showing them how the universe began. He had a big bang poster taped to the side of the supply cabinet. It was literally a picture of the big bang, he said. An actual photograph of leftover light.
Annamae looked down at the just-in-case tissue wadded in her hands. She unwadded it, then teased apart the corner and separated it into two thinner tissues. Thin as skin, thin as veils. She wondered if Nobomi was going to wear a wedding veil. A wedding brought people together, but it also drew them away from other people. It split things up. In her mind she saw Freddie Festano run his electric carving knife between her and Nobomi the way he’d run it down the center of the foam rubber mattress. She saw Renu being cleaved from the city, then drifting through space back to Pittsburgh. She saw Carla being whisked from her desk and carried backward, as if by a wind, to the class for kids who needed extra help. She saw the copper penny leap from her hand and go flipping over and over toward the hole in the sewer cover. She saw a girl opening a hinged dollhouse, splitting the sides apart. The girl looked up, met her eyes, and vanished.