A Town of Empty Rooms Read online

  “The committee has to vote,” she said.

  “The commit-tee. Hide behind the commit-tee.”

  He was smiling, a tight smile, but his tone copied Betty’s; she reddened.

  “Rabbi,” Betty said, pressing her clipboard to her chest, “we want to do things right.”

  He grimaced. “Oh, we,” he said. He stepped toward her, then paused and turned away quickly, shooting through the halls. He motioned for Serena to walk with him. He whispered to her, “The grande dames of the Temple. They don’t want to act. All they want are their names on plaques. All they think about is themselves.” He was bending toward her conspiratorially as they walked through the moldy building, which smelled so green and bitter that she felt a stinging in her throat. “Serena. Come on. I have to sell this to the board. The future. Let’s go. Are you with me?”

  She listened to the peculiar shift of his voice — his annoyance at the “grande dames” and then the husky romance of this voice in a room where the walls seemed to be the consistency of flannel. The floors were warped and soft as cardboard; the building, frankly, needed a wrecking ball. The rabbi stopped in the middle of the room and gazed at the sunlight falling onto the rotting wood floor. The sunlight seemed thicker here, a pale, transparent band falling through a hole in the roof, the dirt glinting in its path. The rabbi stepped forward and put his hand into the warm swath of sun. His face was bright and solemn with an extravagant hope. She understood that hope, had felt it when she began her work speechwriting, loved the sensation of wanting to release something significant onto other people — her father had been so certain, so sure of her.

  “I love the idea,” she said. There was a glint of this new, fresh entity, the future — how she wanted to be part of it. They made their way to the car. Betty was waiting there.

  “I think my father would like this,” Serena said, though she didn’t know if he would have, particularly.

  “A man of good taste,” the rabbi said. “You see? Do it for him, Serena. Let’s get it for him.” He stepped back and clasped his hands. “We need this building for everyone,” he said. “The dead are not gone. They are not here with us, but they are not gone. Serena,” he put his hand on her shoulder, “the Jewish community includes the living and the dead.”

  SUDDENLY, HE WAS IN A hurry to get back. He bolted to the car and sat there, gunning the engine, which gurgled and spat in an alarming way.

  “We have to start somewhere,” said Betty, brightly. “We made a good — ”

  “Start? We’re finished,” he said. “Don’t sit on this. Get up, everyone! Get up!” He was doing about forty-five in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone, hunched over the wheel.

  “Rabbi, slow,” said Betty, pressing her hand against the dashboard.

  “Slow! Enough slow. Full speed ahead.”

  When he stopped for gas, Betty, face damp with sweat, leaned over to whisper, “Listen. I want to tell you. I’m not one to gossip. I’m just saying — ” Betty fanned herself with her hand. “We’re losing people because of that man.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s going to fill that place with people? Ha! He’s going to bankrupt us with his schemes. Who in god’s name among us is going to pick up a saw to fix that place? Norman? Open your eyes, Serena, just wait and see.”

  Serena stared at Betty, her dark maroon lipstick gleaming like new paint. Betty had the same feathered gray haircut as Serena’s mother, who lived in Los Angeles along with Serena’s sister, Dawn, and had, for no reason she could fathom, been remiss in returning her phone calls. A part of her liked being around Betty, but Betty was different in that she seemed to be the sort of person who rose into the day, perfectly groomed, possessed of unwavering certainty.

  The rabbi slid into the driver’s seat and Betty stopped. “Speed limit only, Rabbi, or I’m reporting you,” she said, trying to make her voice sound light.

  “No time to lose,” he said, but he seemed to hear a warning in her voice. He slowed down.

  The rabbi was stopped at the gate of Betty’s community, which was surrounded on all sides by pointed evergreen bushes. It was called Windsor Plantation. The guard halted the rabbi’s car with a concerned expression until he saw Betty inside. “Miss Blumenthal,” he said, in a tone of respect and bewilderment. The rabbi drove to her house, an enormous brick mansion with a slanted Tudor roof; it looked like it could house a German restaurant.

  The rabbi drove out, waving to the guard, who lifted his hand warily at the old Buick. As the rabbi continued on, he smacked his head. “I forgot my sermon!” he said. “I have to finish it. It’s at my apartment. Do you mind if I stop on the way?”

  She did not mind. She wanted to see where he answered her calls in the middle of the night.

  The rabbi rented an apartment in the Sweet Briar luxury complex. Luxury was a word loosely used; the apartments looked as though they had risen through some hasty and questionable marriage between developer and city council. They were slapped together with paste and cheap lumber, and there was a vaguely toxic odor of resin in the air. The sounds of heavy metal thumped through the heat. No one appeared to have a job here, or at least not during daylight hours: People were hanging around on porches in an equal-opportunity display of paralysis or unemployment. No one appeared to have heard of the benefits of sunscreen. There was the vigorous and sour smell of beer.

  She felt protective of the rabbi in this enclave, striding through the grounds in his suit and pale blue yarmulke, but he seemed supremely unaware of the circus around him. The rabbi stomped toward his apartment past a pale blue swimming pool that was inhabited only by a leathery, heavily tattooed couple floating in the water. Actually, it took Serena a moment to discern that there were two people: They were kissing with exhuberance, and it was not quite clear whether they were having intercourse or not.

  He opened his door. She stood at the doorway for a moment. “I’ll just be a sec,” he said.

  She stepped inside. His apartment was dark; rust-colored curtains hanging on a sliding glass door let a faint tangerine tinge of daylight into the room. There was a brown couch, an oval coffee table, some bookshelves. The room looked as though it belonged to a college student, with the feeling of someone’s floating on the haphazard froth of his life.

  He walked out and closed the door. “It’s all right,” he said, “until, of course, the board votes me a raise. But the pool is heated. There are lots of screaming fights at all hours.” He laughed. “Makes me feel at home.”

  “Your home was like this?” she asked.

  “One of my homes. I had a few.” He coughed. “I was an orphan. Parents killed in a car accident. Drunk. Plowed into a truck. I was in the back. They pried me out. I was three.”

  She let out a breath. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “Look,” he said. He flipped open his wallet. “My parents. Jill and Saul Silverman. Or, ha ha, the chauffeurs who almost killed me.”

  The Silvermans stared out through the plastic. It was a wedding picture, a man who resembled a young Rabbi Golden clutching a dark-haired woman in a white gown.

  “I was put in foster care with the Eisenbergs in Tucson. Father managed a Denny’s. They thought they wanted kids. They didn’t. They wanted things. He had a used Mercedes with a license plate that said True Love. Someone had died in it; that’s why he got it cheap. When I was seven, they had had enough, and they sent me to the Schwartzes. They took me on and put me in Hebrew school when I was nine.”

  He told her all of this rapidly, in a somewhat practical, matter-of-fact tone, as though he had simply been purchased at a supermarket. His sorrow floated through the room, disembodied; he did not appear to feel it, but she was acutely aware of its weight. There was no way to comfort him in this, but she placed her hand on his smooth brown arm. The muscle in his forearm twitched; she quickly lifted her hand off.

  “What helped you get through all that?” she asked, wondering.

  He laughed. “Hebrew sch
ool,” he said. “The sounds of the words. They sounded like they were spoken in a different universe. I said them, and I felt like myself.” He paused. “Listen to these words. Sh’ma Y’srael Adonai Elonaynu Adonai Echad. The Lord is one. I said them without knowing what they meant, and then one day I knew. One. Everything is one. I was part of everything.”

  “I see,” she said. She closed her eyes.

  “The Schwartzes couldn’t pay for college, so I enlisted. ROTC. I was one of those guys you probably made fun of in high school. I was with the troops in Afghanistan. The first night of Passover, I got the Jews together — there were six of them in five hundred. I had an entire Passover seder shipped in from a Hadassah group in New Jersey. Charoset packed in ice. They were in shock. It actually got them off their PlayStations. You know? I still remember their names.”

  He was sweating slightly; he wiped his brow with his sleeve. The chemical smell of chlorine rose off the pool.

  “This was what they told me in Hebrew school. God is intangible. You can’t run into Him; you can’t feel Him. I loved that. He’s in all of us.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked, looking away. He knew she needed to hear this, somehow. She blinked; there were tears in her eyes.

  “It means He is whatever you imagine,” he said.

  Chapter Seven

  “WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD,” HE said.

  It was a warm, late-September day, the first cool breath of autumn in the air. She was in the backyard, and the man standing on the other side of the wire fence was talking to her. She had noticed him before; he headed to his backyard every afternoon, armed with one sharp building tool or another, to cut wood and hammer pieces onto the two-story shedlike building that he was constructing in his yard. A Confederate flag fluttered from the shed.

  “We haven’t met. Forrest Sanders here.”

  “Serena Hirsch,” she said.

  “Hi, Miss Serena. Been waiting to meet you since you moved in. I’ve met your husband. Mister Dan. He’s going to help out our pack.”

  “Aha,” she said. “That was you.”

  “I’ve been here for thirty-four years. It’s been a fine neighborhood. I have one guiding philosophy. I’ll be good to you if you’re good to me.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Hiya, son,” he said to Zeb. “Come on over.” Before she could stop him, Zeb hopped the fence and careened after Forrest. They all headed into the structure in his yard. Zeb was too fast to stop; Serena grabbed Rachel and followed them. The room held various dangerous pieces of machinery for cutting wood — large, vicious blades waiting to slice into plywood, fingers, hands — and on the walls were guns from the Civil War era; daggers; indeterminate rusty devices that looked like they could be used for torture; a poster with the Confederate flag that said, “If you find this offensive, you need a history lesson”; a red, white, and blue banner that proclaimed, “One Nation Under God.” There was the general disquieting potential for tetanus and violence. Forrest beamed, as though he had just invited them into a living room furnished with expensive and delicate antiques.

  Zeb gazed upon the sharp tools, the machinery, as though they spoke to some desire he had not realized was there. “Let me try!” her son shouted.

  “Hon, wait — ” she said, watching his face; she saw it was hungry. Forrest strode in between her and Zeb and stood beside him. “Not too close,” he said, and he put a piece of wood under the blade; he held his hand over Zeb’s and used a lever to cut the wood. Then the wood slid off. “Good job, son,” he said. It was such a studied demonstration of neighborliness, of almost professional good cheer, that she let out a breath; perhaps he was, in some way, trying to be nice.

  “I had six children,” said Forrest. “Raised ’em up in that house. How old do you think I am?”

  He seemed to have been waiting to ask this question. He stood, hands on his hips, beside his extensive collection of saws.

  “Sixty?” she said, trying to aim lower than she actually thought.

  “I am seventy-eight years old,” he chortled.

  “Good for you,” she said, a little tiredly.

  “My secret is that I’m resourceful,” he said. “You know, a good scout. I see what I need out there, and I don’t waste it. I built this,” he said, indicating the large shed. “All materials I found on the street. In the dump. This building cost me . . . I’d say twenty-three dollars in nails. Can you believe it?”

  She looked at Forrest Sanders, his joy in self-aggrandizement. Was this the only way any human really related to another? She was tired, suddenly, of everyone proclaiming the grandness of their ideas, their particular schemes.

  “Can I cut another?” Zeb cried. “Please!”

  “Sure, son,” said Forrest. “Can practice for your woodworking badge.” He guided Zeb to another machine. It seemed they were the same age, their fascination with the murderous tools a happy bond. Forrest chopped off another piece of wood for him. Now the boy had two; he gripped them lovingly.

  “Two,” she said. “That’s enough.”

  They walked out of the workshop.

  “So, where do you folks go to church?” he asked.

  “We don’t go to church,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “We go to Temple Shalom,” she said, cheerfully, watching him. “Have you seen it? Downtown — Seventh Street.”

  He blinked. “I haven’t seen it,” he said. “We attend First Baptist. I recommend it. You can walk in anytime. Say Forrest sent you.”

  And what was this, ultimately? Could it be perceived as nice? Was he saying, ‘I like you, and I want you to be in heaven with me’? Or was he saying, ‘You are damned, and I will get points for recruiting you’? Or was he saying he would like to say hello to you on Sunday mornings? Or was he saying he wanted to erase you? What?

  “On Camellia Street,” he said. She knew the building — it had a plaque that said, We win through tenderness and conquer through kindness.

  “Well!” she said, briskly, clapping her hands. “Time for homework!”

  “Don’t go,” said Forrest. “Wait.”

  He reached over on his side of the fence and brought out a seedling of a tiny maple tree.

  “What is this?” she said.

  “One of my seedlings,” he said. “My maple. You can plant it in your yard. It will grow. I’m a good neighbor,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said. She smiled and stepped back over the fence.

  FORREST SANDERS, HAVING MADE INITIAL contact, waved to her whenever she walked into her yard. He wanted her children. Forrest Sanders loved children in the showy way people do when they are trying to hide some moral or emotional deficiencies in themselves. It was as though by talking jovially to the children, he was constantly trying to trumpet his innocence; they were the mirror to his better self. He had mastered the art of tricking children with his booming cartoon-like voice, his activities with the saws that held the thrill of violence; Zeb loved crossing the fence into the land of someone else.

  “Who wants to see me cut a board in two!”

  “Me! Me!” called her son. “We’re going to Forrest’s shed!” Zeb announced, leaping over the fence, and she leapt over the fence with Rachel as well, and a couple afternoons a week, she found herself lurking in the workshop. “Five minutes,” she said to her son, while Forrest stood, brandishing a saw and free-associating his dreams for the neighborhood and his displeasure with people who interfered with the purity of his dream.

  “I’ll tell you what I want for the neighborhood,” said Forrest Sanders. “A group of people who help each other. Watching each other’s houses. Having potlucks. Luminaries on the sidewalk at Christmas. Easter egg hunts. Fireworks on the Fourth of July.”

  Forrest’s own house, a small bungalow streaked with mold, was silent. His six children all seemed to have fled; no one ever came by. His wife, Evelyn, who looked to be in her seventies herself, rose at dawn and drove off in the day’s first light to
Walmart, where she spent the next ten hours on her feet working as a store greeter. She came home, her face gray, and collapsed. Serena heard shouts sometimes through the windows when the wife returned home. “No. I can’t,” she heard; Forrest yelled back, his words indecipherable. There was a clattering of dishes, then silence again. Serena left her window open so she could hear them; she wanted to keep track of what was going on. She caught an edited history of their grievances: Forrest had run a lawn care business into the ground when his employees had sued him for nonpayment of wages; he had been fired as a manager at Jimbo’s when a customer had found rat droppings in his omelet, and Forrest, instead of replacing the food, poured the omelet over the customer’s head. “You’re no man,” Serena heard; “you’re a child.” On the weekends, Evelyn knelt in the dirt in the front yard, silent, potting pansy after pansy, their garden a voluptuous wave of color, while Forrest hid in his shed, cutting wood, the saws screaming.

  Forrest seemed eager to prove his credentials as a decent man bullied by the ignorance of the rest of the world. Serena pretended she wanted to chat while she tried to keep her son from losing his hand in a woodcutter and her daughter from putting her head in a steel vise. Forrest went on about how the other neighbors had let him down.

  “Let me tell you about our neighbors. The other neighbors here . . . they’re not . . . neighborly. Let me tell you. Number 2287 was renting out a room. You know, it’s not zoned for renting. Plus, the guy parked the wrong way every day on the street. I called the city on them and got him out! Number 2298 parked their car facing the wrong way. In the space in front of my house. I called the police! Got him ticketed! Number 2273, right over here, was mad because my creation here went over the line of their property. Two inches. I built it when this was just an abandoned lot. How was I to know? They had a survey done. There was no survey before!” He was not talking to her as much as to the air. His breath smelled like mouthwash, medicinal and sweet. He terrified her. It was time to go.