A Town of Empty Rooms (23 page)

Dawn cleared her throat. “We can go another time,” she said. “We don't always get what we want.” She paused. “Do I? Do you?” Her sister stood up and slowly, leaning on one foot, walked to the other end of the porch. “Don't look at me like that. I try. Guess what. I wanted her to come to Paris. I wanted to do something nice for her. But then.”

“Then what?”

Dawn sat down again. She put her hands over her face. “I need to tell you something,” said her sister. She flipped open her wallet and brought out a picture of a man. “Him,” she said.

Serena looked at the photo. He was a rather handsome young man, with a black dyed spiky haircut and square maroon-tinted sunglasses. He was posing in swim trunks by a hotel swimming pool. Serena noticed that Dawn was smiling in a proud, frightened way.

“What does this have to do with Paris?”

“He's going to be there. Mom can't come.”

Serena stared at Dawn. “What?” asked Serena. She felt that she had, as an older sister, failed in some basic manner of protection. “When did this start?”

“Six months ago.”

“How old is this guy?” she squinted at the photo.

“Thirty. His name is Mo.”

“Why? Dawn! What about Jake?”

“I don't know.” It was an “I don't know” with roots that extended back thirty, forty years. Serena could hear Dawn saying this when her father asked her if she had, in fact, committed an array of sibling misdemeanors; she had perfected the dry, flat answer — “I don't know” — which was always oddly accepted.
I don't know.
Serena admired it, really. It allowed Dawn to float above everything.

“Since when?”

“A while. He's embarrassed by me. In some way. I can sense it. I have a sixth sense for that. Like our father. Jake never looks me in the eye. He never offers to wash a dish. Not that I do generally, but he assumes someone will. He has never shopped for groceries. He has never thought once that we are low on milk. He just assumes it will all work. Like a child. I don't feel — valued. Everything just runs, and he assumes it will. So I thought, fuck it. I want something for me.”

Serena did not know Jake well; he was a tall, heavy man who developed hotel properties in San Diego, the sort of person who had been drawn in by Dawn's access to charitable feelings; at their wedding, he had sweetly made a toast to “the woman whose goodness shines a light into mine.”

“So that's it?” said Serena.

“Mo touches my leg,” said Dawn. “He kisses it. He holds it like it is a precious gem.” She paused. “Jake never did that.”

“Maybe he did it metaphorically.”

“He did not.”

“What do you want me to say? Congratulations?”

“Maybe.” Dawn paused. “It was — well, right before Dad passed away. And then I looked at myself in the mirror one day, and I thought I am a good-looking woman, and why don't I feel right — ”

“You are good-looking,” said Serena.

“Serena, please!
”
Dawn said, her voice rising. “This is hard to explain. I feel — alone. I need someone to cherish me. That fills me with peace. I'm sick of being
good.
Twenty years of helping the poor. I keep trying, and it doesn't end — it doesn't! Last week, a child at a homeless shelter in Inglewood took my hand and smiled at me. Guess what.
I didn't care. For the first time.
I wanted him to let go, actually. Find your own mother! I actually thought this! It scared me. I'm doing this to unleash my humanity. To find the
love
in myself again. For god's sake,” she said, “I'm trying to end genocide! I just need . . . something else.”

They sat on the porch. An enormous pale heron bounced heavily along the air. The sky had clouded over and now resembled a gray mattress. It occurred to her that Dawn might be having some sort of
breakdown. Who could she call? Jake? But Dawn did not, in all honesty, seem particularly distraught. She reached into her purse, brought out her boarding pass, and looked it over; she seemed eager to get on with her flight.

“Do you really want to disappoint her?” said Serena. “My god, she's a widow — ”

“I know that. She's living with us. I'll take her another time. I will! Say there was — a mistake. The airline. They only printed one ticket from here to Charlotte to Paris. Please. Serena.” She looked at her watch. “I have to go back to the airport to make a connection in an hour.”

“An hour!”

She was impressed by this, if a little horrified — Dawn's assumption that all would be well, that she could park their mother here and fly off to Europe. It assumed a variety of character traits in Serena that felt warped and unfortunate but that were, perhaps, correct.

“It will be fine,” said Dawn. “You will have a good time together! Bonding. I'll be back... Monday. Back to normal. Please. I want to tell you about him. I haven't told anyone, only you.”

She reached over and touched Serena's shoulder; Dawn's hand was trembling. Serena closed her eyes. She wanted, despite herself, to listen.

“Go ahead,” said Serena.

“He gets us fancy hotel rooms,” said Dawn. “There's always champagne. He undresses me very slowly. This happens at lunch.”

“Okay.”

“He writes me poems and hides them in my purse.”

“Come on! This sounds totally clichéd. It sounds like
Cosmo.
”

“Maybe I like
Cosmo,
” said Dawn. “I can't wait to see him. It's all I think about all day — ”

“Where is your husband in all this? Where are your children?”

“Doing their own activities. Happy, I think. Happy enough. They don't need to know.” She paused. “Those two hours with him — time freezes. I feel him kissing my legs, my arms, everything. I am there. When are you ever there, in a place, Serena? I mean, really somewhere? Not tapping your foot and watching the clock, but aware of every part
of yourself, of the other person? Dad didn't know that he was going to die that day. He didn't know he would die any day. I want to try to forget about dying. I don't want to be anywhere else.”

She stared at Dawn; she understood this part, the unstoppable quality of her yearning, the desire to stop time, more than she wanted to admit.

Dawn bit her lip. “Sometimes I think — I don't know.”

“What?”

“Maybe Dad suspected. Or I could be making this up — ”

Perhaps Dawn had accidentally killed him, thought Serena. This idea made her feel a little better for a moment: Perhaps it had not been  
her.

“Besides,” said Dawn, glancing at her, “it's not like I committed a crime.”

Serena blinked. How did she manage to turn the conversation in this direction? This was not at all the same. “It was — some money on the company's entertainment account . . . come on! Did they really need it?”

“It was someone else's dime,” said Dawn.

“It's not like betraying your husband by screwing someone in a hotel.”

“Well. I want to tell you. You can plug your ears. We met at an event for the homeless. The two-hundred-dollars-a-plate fancy dinner, cream sauces, so that you can feed the hungry. What a hopeless cause. I had rounded up some soap opera stars looking to dignify themselves. They were all flitting around trying not to eat. No one eats anything at these events. They're all on some diet. So the fancy spread goes to waste. He was heaping his plate full of food. He picked a big strawberry off the table. He looked at me and said, ‘You hate everyone here.'”

Dawn brushed the hair out of her eyes. “I looked at him, and I thought, how does he know? He knew my bad thoughts. And he didn't care. There was something lovely about that. He offered me a strawberry. The way he handed it to me was erotic. It just was. He slipped me his number. I called it. We met. I felt I was in another universe. I've always wanted to be. He paid that hotel room, I paid the next. He owes me a couple hotel rooms. A little more, too. But it's okay.”

She seemed to hesitate a bit, and Serena asked, “What do you mean, he owes you?”

“He's investing in real estate in Cuba. For when Castro dies. It's really smart! He wanted me to go in with him. I put up five thousand. That's nothing for me, really. I'm making three hundred thousand a year. He said he could buy beach property and it would skyrocket.”

“You gave him five
thousand
dollars?”

“Don't say it like that.”

Serena paused. She could not stop herself. “Is he a male prostitute?”

“Oh, my god!” Dawn turned to her. “Apologize.”

“Does he really have a job?”

“Yes! He's vice president at his company! He just has a —
joie de vivre,
shall we say. He's looking for other employment opportunities — ”

“Quite a
joie de vivre,
” said Serena.

“He's a human being!”

Serena thought of Dawn standing on the red carpet, speaking into her walkie-talkie, with thin, glossy movie stars floating around her, directed where she told them to go; she thought of her sister ascending the stage to receive the Most Likely to Succeed award in high school for her generosity, her perseverance, her silky dark hair; she remembered her parents' expressions at that moment, a wilted, numb relief that Dawn had cleared a path for herself, that she had succeeded.

What did Dawn want, now, of her?

“Please. Please. I know you think I'm an idiot,” said Dawn. “I'm not. I'm assertive. I wouldn't give him more money. Unless, of course, it seems like it would be a good deal.” She looked at Serena. “Do you think I'm an idiot?”

Dawn's large, golden eyes were on her. This was what her sister was accomplishing, on her slim island of time on earth — afternoons with an opportunist in a hotel, who had the unique ability to fawn upon her leg. There was the problematic supposition that Serena was supposed to protect her. Her parents had never gotten over the fact that they had not been able to get Dawn to the hospital in time, that they could not magically float above traffic, that the doctors had taken them in too late, that this rare and unexpected result — the paralysis of her leg — had occurred.

“Just tell me,” said Dawn.

“No,” said Serena, and then she was an accomplice. But it was the only answer her sister would hear.

 

 

 

SHE REALLY WANTED TO TELL Dawn not to go. But it was not what Dawn could hear at the moment. And what had she wanted herself, sitting in the rabbi's office, reluctant to leave because each moment was slowing down and expanding? What was her need to sit with him in that dark cluttered room, to have him listen to her? Was the escape that they yearned for merely about stopping time? She saw, in the flush of Dawn's face, the surprising force of her sister's loneliness.

“I really have to go,” said Dawn, standing up. “I connect Charlotte to Paris. I think I should just go now. While she's asleep. It'll be easier.”

“Well, maybe on
you,
” said Serena.

“Maybe on me,” said Dawn, and she smiled; her eyes were so lovely, so radiant, their father's eyes. “But why not me?”

It was a simple enough statement, proactive in one context and chilling in another. She stood, trying to think. Dawn was pressing buttons on her BlackBerry and calling a cab.

“I'll meet her back home on Monday. She has her tickets. Tell her we'll go there soon. A month. Tell me everything will be fine.” Her sister's thin brown eyebrows flickered.

“Fine,” Serena said, reluctantly. They looked at each other. She held her sister, the bones of Dawn's shoulders against her palms.

A cab arrived, swiftly, quietly, as though summoned not by a device but by her sister's unconscious. Then Dawn was gone.

 

 

 

THE PHONE RANG. SHE RAN inside to get it.

The voice was so contorted with cheerfulness, it took a moment to identify it; and then she realized it was Rabbi Golden. He sounded like he was shouting into a device that took your voice and made it sound like an infomercial spokesperson's.

“How are you this fine autumn day?”

“Fine,” she said, cautiously.

“No one is here,” he said, and his voice was husky again, as though he was about to cry. “And I need help.”

“What kind of help?” she asked.

“I can't find the coffee,” he said.

Was this serious? “Under the bottom shelf in the kitchen — ” she said, patiently.

“I can't find it.”

“Well,” she said sternly, “look.”

“I can't. Without Georgia, I can't find anything. Please. Can you help me?”

“Rabbi,” she said, “my mother is — um, visiting, I can't — ”

“Serena Hirsch. Please.”

There was something in his voice, a real panic that she recognized. She closed her eyes. “Hold on,” she said. “You have to wait.”

She figured that taking her mother to the Temple briefly to help the rabbi find the coffee would be a way to distract her once she learned that she was spending the weekend in the international capital known as Waring. She sat, waiting for her to awaken.

Her mother came out, blinking, pink-eyed, in about half an hour. She walked into the living room and sat down. Her face was both youthful and ancient after having slept midday; there were translucent pink shadows under her eyes.

“I was speaking French in my sleep,” said Sophie. “I remember most of it. It comes back, it really does.”