A Town of Empty Rooms Page 9

  “Why do you do any of that?” she asked, stepping back.

  He looked at her, unblinking. “Listen. One day, their kids were out playing in the front. They were sitting on the roof over the porch. You know how much I love children. I couldn’t let that slide. So I called Social Services. I didn’t care that Mister Ron was in a custody battle. I have no problem calling the authorities if someone’s out of line.”

  Forrest Sanders stood, a sprightly five-foot-two, and smiled. His two dogs, large, savage-looking Akitas, circled him. “We have to go,” she said.

  “I want to use the saw,” said Zeb.

  “You can play with it anytime,” said Forrest. “You hear that, son? You can come to see old Forrest anytime. I’m always here.”

  Her son brightened. Forrest’s voice had a monotone edge of pleading in it, which sounded, first, abrasive, but which, upon listening more closely, had a plaintive tone. It seemed that he was used to begging. He stood, armed with his rusty, broken weapons. Serena was aware that the distance between their homes measured about thirty feet.

  DAN LIFTED HIS HAND IN greeting to Forrest when he came home. He liked seeing the man standing in his front yard, trimming or pruning one plant or another. “Hello, Mister Dan!” called Forrest. It was a robust, hopeful hello, which seemed particularly intended to welcome him; Dan needed that greeting, he was embarrassed to say, needed a nice word from someone, for it made him feel that they were part of this enterprise, the neighborhood. He admired Forrest’s energy; the man seemed never to rest. He was standing by the low wire fence between the properties and was fingering the branches of a camellia bush.

  “Ready for the meeting tonight?” asked Forrest.

  “Absolutely,” said Dan.

  “Badge night! One of my favorites,” said Forrest. “Wait’ll you see their faces. The light in their little eyes. You’ll remember. One of the best moments of my life, it’s true, getting those badges, giving them . . . ”

  “Right,” said Dan. The fraudulence of his claim of boyhood involvement in Scouts made him feel somehow beholden to Forrest, wanting to prove something to him.

  “Yessir,” said Forrest. Dan noticed that he was gripping one of the leaves on the camellia bush. Forrest held up a leaf. “Nice camellia bush you got here.”

  “Oh, that,” said Dan. “We haven’t really looked at the yard since we got here — too much to take care of right now.”

  Forrest blanched slightly and said, “Y’all ever thought of pruning this?”

  Forrest was stroking the bush as though it were a lion’s mane. There were a few glossy green branches extending into Forrest’s yard.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Dan, alarmed.

  Forrest laughed. “Not wrong, just look. This is your side. This is mine. Do you see how — ”

  “Sorry. I’ll get to it, soon as I — ”

  “Here. Take these. See what you can do. Be at the meeting at seven.” Forrest handed him a large, rusty pair of garden shears and went into his house.

  Dan felt slightly admonished; he looked at the bush, clipped a couple branches away, and then, clutching the shears, walked up to the house. He opened the door into the yellow light.

  They had already started eating. There was the warm, bready smell of frozen chicken nuggets. It was all the children ever ate. The water heater, stuck in a corner behind a pink sheet, gurgled. Zeb was standing at the table, his palm covered in ketchup. Rachel walked around the room chewing a nugget, a doll pinned under her arm. Serena was rushing around, peeling carrots that the children would certainly ignore.

  “Daddy!” yelled Zeb, and he rushed toward him. Dan felt his son and then his daughter bang into his legs. The children came toward him, utterly ignorant of their beauty, seeing some value in him and their mother, both of them stooped and worn in comparison. Why did they love him? Why did they even like him? Their intensity made him grateful and suspicious. The children seemed to sense this and began hurtling around the kitchen.

  “Everyone, sit,” he said, in what he thought was a stern voice. Neither of them seemed to hear this. Zeb was jumping on the floor. Children did not understand that was their true power: that their parents actually did not know how to make them listen. “Sit!” he said, more sharply. Rachel crawled under the kitchen table and laughed.

  “What is going on?” he said, louder.

  “I’ve been trying,” said Serena. “It’s been a long day.” Her face was pale; she looked as though she had been emptied out.

  “Everyone, sit!” he shouted. His voice had the absurd tone of pleading. The children regarded him with an expression of bemused judgment.

  “Come here,” he whispered to them. He held out his hand. He had bought a bag of Hershey Kisses on the way home. That worked. Dan unwrapped a few Hershey Kisses, the children opened their mouths, and he put a chocolate Kiss in each one’s mouth. They laughed, delighted. They were like tiny seals.

  “What?” said Serena.

  “Nothing,” he said. “They’re enjoying their dinner.”

  Their tongues were coated with chocolate. Zeb fell onto the floor laughing. Perhaps this was the answer — force chocolate into them? Bribe them?

  “Okay, done,” he said, grabbing whatever nuggets were left and tossing them into the trash. “Let’s get in the uniform!” he called to Zeb.

  The children ran off into the other rooms. Serena came over, clutching peeled carrots.

  “They weren’t finished,” she said.

  “I thought they were,” he said.

  She could sense that he was lying; he liked to come in sometimes and side with the children, as though he wanted, briefly, to join their ranks. She stood and ate one of the carrots.

  “Hey, Forrest offered us his garden shears. He wanted our camellia bush to stay on our side.”

  This seemed an odd statement. “He’s always trying to give us things,” she said. “He likes to make trouble with the neighbors. I think he’s weird.”

  “It was growing onto his side,” he said. “We want to make sure it doesn’t.”

  “Well,” she said, wondering why he cared.

  “He gave us that tree,” he said. “He’s helping us be part of the Scouts. Who do we know that would just give us a tree? For nothing!”

  “I think he’s a menace,” she said.

  “We have to find a way to get along,” he said. His forehead was damp with sweat. “Tonight’s a big night. Zeb’s getting his first achievement badge. We all need to go to the Scout meeting.”

  The Cub Scout meetings were at the First Baptist Church. It was an enormous compound, the meeting held in a room with a Gothic, Disneyesque quality, with thick, bleary orange stained glass windows and arched stone doors. The boys sat in their crisp navy blue shirts while a few fathers, wearing the long tan shorts of the official leaders, instructed them on the evening’s work. There was a general feeling of bemusement about the boys, their antics, their own attempts to be seen. Serena was struck by this: The fathers could not become their children, and the children could not climb out of their small selves to adulthood. There was, at middle age, the concerted desire to stop thinking. The parents were all trying to stop thinking — of the ways in which they’d failed, realized they weren’t all that good at their chosen careers, found love lonely and bruising, buried the people who had given them life. There was a lot to try to stop thinking about.

  It was Knight Night, and the boys were trying to make armor out of the plastic loops that held together soda cans. The boys and their parents were huddled over long swaths of plastic. The parents had mostly taken over. The spectacle of the parents trying to urge their sons to chop up plastic trash to construct a noble outfit was somehow compelling, but Zeb wanted instead to join a rogue group swiping sugar packets from the church coffee machine and pouring the sugar into their mouths. Most of the parents made halfhearted pleas with the boys to return to the project, and Dan seemed relieved that Zeb was having a good time, so finally the parents finished th
e plastic armor themselves.

  Forrest circled the room like a jovial drill sergeant, offering tips about the best position of the stapler on the plastic rings, and then he saw a boy run out of the kitchen clutching a sugar packet.

  “What’s going on here?” Forrest said. “We can’t have our scouts raiding the church kitchen. Boys! What’s going on?”

  He looked around at the other parents, who were mostly chatting — his eyes settled on Dan.

  “Troop assistant, what are you doing?”

  “Sorry,” said Dan, reddening. He stood up. “Zeb! Come on — ”

  “What’s one of our words for the week?” Forrest said. “Reverence?”

  “Sorry,” said Dan. “I didn’t — they had just a sugar packet each, right? They were having fun — ”

  “They are supposed to become knights,” said Forrest, “not hoodlums.” He crossed his arms.

  “Okay, boys!” Dan stood up and clapped his hands. “Everyone! No more sugar! Time to become noble knights!”

  At the end of the night, Forrest bestowed the first badges on the scouts, for they had completed the requirements for mastering the details of flag etiquette. Forrest announced each name, and the families duly applauded. Dan watched as Zeb ran up, and Zeb was so excited that he grabbed the badge out of Forrest’s hands before Forrest could hand it to him. The crowd laughed.

  After, the crowd packed up. Dan was cleaning up the leftover plastic rings. Forrest was chatting with some of the parents. Serena noticed that Forrest was watching Dan; it was a brief, careful glance, as though he was trying to keep track of him.

  WHEN SERENA ATTENDED THE SECOND meeting of the Board of Directors, Norman led that night’s opening prayer. “Let us clear the path of Temple Shalom through the wilderness and to the sunlight of the future,” he said. “And let us remember the organ, to turn one hundred in February, and to find a way to give it the accolades it deserves.” He then distributed pens that he had had made. Their inscriptions read, Board of Directors, Temple Shalom, 2002.

  “How nice, Norman,” Betty said wryly, looking at it. “What is the occasion for your generosity?”

  “I would like to take this opportunity to announce that my biopsy was positive,” he said. “I have stage I cancer of the thyroid. I am going in for surgery in two weeks.”

  There were utterances of sympathy and then silence. Betty blushed, as though her general animosity toward Norman had taken physical form.

  Norman sat up, pale; Serena noticed a new weariness in his face. “I have all reason to believe that this will be resolved quickly,” he said. “I did have a sudden urge to make some personalized pens. Please enjoy them. Think of me as you write. Now. On to regular business.”

  Everyone tried to live up to the sobering nature of Norman’s announcement and his generous gift of the pens. They discussed the distribution of High Holy Day tickets and the poor water pressure in the kitchen sink. “Rabbi Golden would like to address the third item on tonight ’s agenda,” said Tom Silverman.

  Rabbi Golden stood up. He had worn a burgundy suit made of a thin, shiny material; he looked as though he was about to deal cards in a casino.

  “I would like to propose the site of a lifetime,” the rabbi said. “The old Williams School on Third Avenue. Behold, Temple Board, the glorious future of Waring’s Jewish community. A place to walk in, to be welcomed. A place to start some social action, to reach out to the poor. A place to celebrate who you are. A place where no one says, ‘You’re the first Jew I’ve ever met!’ It ’s a place — ” he stopped and paused, looking at them, and said, “where you can be proud to be yourself.”

  They all nodded — there was a feeling of purpose in the room. The rabbi was on to something: that the group could actually create this elusive thing, a community; that they could gather lonely people and give them a destination; that the Temple could even do something productive for the poor, heal the world somehow; that finally something useful could be done. Serena sat up, tapping her pencil on the table, ready. Then Rabbi Golden handed out photos he had taken of the moldy school. The photos were shot from across the street so that it was impossible to see the place where the roof was damaged; the photos of the interior were made at such clever angles and in such a pristine light that it occurred to Serena that they could have been doctored.

  “All we need is a down payment of one hundred thousand dollars, and the future is ours,” said Rabbi Golden.

  “Objection,” said Betty, “I have been to this quote, unquote, site of a lifetime. These photos do not show the fact that it is a heap of junk.”

  “Hey!” said Rabbi Golden, clutching the rest of the photos to his heart.

  “It’s a nice idea,” said Betty. “But this site has severe water damage. Mold. Rabbi, it will take months to fix. It will bankrupt us.”

  “Look at this! Opportunity!,” said Rabbi Golden. He peered at a photo he was holding. “We could have a big Temple cleanup day. Everyone bring a scrub brush — ”

  “But no one’s going to do that,” said Tiffany. “Barely anyone comes to services.”

  “I like the rabbi’s vision,” said Norman, tapping his pen on the table. “Big.”

  “Listen to Norman,” said the rabbi. “Hurry! How long are we going to be sitting here? Betty? How long do you want to keep sitting on your — ” He walked toward her and then changed direction suddenly, as though he had forgotten something in his bag. Serena noticed his hands balling into fists and then releasing, as though he were trying to hold something. She saw Betty and Tiffany exchange glances. He turned back, his face a little damp, and walked up to her. He said, “Serena. You were there. Tell them what they are going to miss.”

  She did not remember much about the building — mostly its unripe smell and the constant, aggravating sensation that she was about to cough. They had walked together through the rooms, and she, too, could see the Southeast North Carolina Jewish Community Center, could see the ways in which the rooms transformed into shining glass. The rooms could be anything, and she, Serena Hirsch, could help build them. “Now look at that picture,” he said, handing her a photo of a clean white room. It could not possibly be of the building they had seen. Was he kidding? Did he simply substitute another photo? Unsettled, she put the photo down.

  He wanted more; that was a longing that also billowed within her. He wanted the center to be enormous, and beautiful, and full of people who would gather — reasonable, even loving — all the time. They would open their doors to feed the hungry of Waring, they would tutor the uneducated, they would use themselves to do good. He was not satisfied with the ordinary world. It was what she had felt walking out of Saks a couple months before, those diamonds in the shopping bag, the cool, unrelenting desire for transformation.

  “I like it,” she decided. “I think it was in that left wing.” She was in with him, quickly, before she could stop herself.

  “Yes!” the rabbi said. “That’s where it was.”

  “Serena, there was no left wing!” said Betty.

  “There were areas we didn’t all see,” she said. The rabbi nodded at her briefly, stormed to the other side of the table, and placed his hand on Norman’s shoulder.

  “Who moves to vote?” he said. “Establish this building as the future site of the SENCJCC — ”

  “Not yet!” said Betty. “It’s a toxic dump!”

  “It’s not a dump!” he said, his voice rising. He was talking faster, stepping closer to Betty; he was sweating. “Why can’t you just trust me?” he said, his voice rising. “What’s the damn problem — why can’t — ” Then he stopped, turned, and ran out the door. It slammed so hard the building shook.

  They all sat around the foldout table in silence.

  “Should somebody go after him?” asked Tiffany.

  “Why?” asked Betty crisply, making a note.

  “Rabbi Golden is a man of strong opinions,” said Tom, carefully. “That is not a crime.”

  “I move that we table this
issue until next meeting,” said Norman. “And, Betty, I want my pen back.”

  “But, Norman, it is such a nice pen.”

  “I want it back.”

  Betty silently handed it over. Norman scribbled a line on a pad to see if it still worked and then pocketed it. “My surgery is scheduled for a week from Friday,” said Norman. “Four days after Rosh Hashanah. Not a sweet New Year. Think of me.”

  They walked, clutching their pens from Norman, into the night. The rabbi had slipped into the darkness. Betty was striding next to Serena.

  “There was no left wing,” said Betty. “I didn’t miss that. Those were not pictures of that building.”

  “Maybe there was,” Serena said. She was annoyed at Betty now, to question this quality . . . vision. She was seeing it now, the glass community center, a radiant structure rising out of the ruined building. Who cared how they found their way to it? “It’s a great idea. It would be a beautiful building. Why can’t we just go ahead and do it?”

  “We all have our own ideas,” said Betty. “My ex-husband was a master at telling me I was crazy when I was sad, or demanding when I was mad. It’s taken me years to figure out what is real.”

  Serena sensed that Betty wanted to say something more, but instead the older woman hugged her, briefly, and got into her car.

  ROSH HASHANAH FELL ON OCTOBER 3; Serena told herself it was her duty as a board member to attend services, but somehow she wanted to go. The general and complete ignorance of the entire county to the fact of the Jewish New Year made her determined to attend. She had taken her son out of school at noon to attend the children’s Tashlich service. “Doctor’s appointment?” the secretary asked.

  “It’s Rosh Hashanah,” Serena said. The secretary looked up.

  “What?”

  “The Jewish New Year.”

  The secretary paused and then stamped Excused on a slip. “Lashane tov,” the secretary said.

  “L’shanah tovah?” asked Serena, surprised and touched.