A Town of Empty Rooms (31 page)

She sat very still, watching him; the stage was butter, and he glided across it. The bravery! It made her breathless. It seemed the essence of his being had evolved around the desire to convince an antagonistic group of his worth; she felt a golden, sorrowful sympathy for him. Her fingers gripped the wooden arms of her chair.

“Happy Chanukah,” he said. “And if you ask nice, you can wear my special Chanukah hat.”

He lifted up his antler menorah hat and put it on. He looked like an odd sort of reindeer. Gripping the electric clicker, he turned the bulbs on the tips of the antlers on and off. He turned around and did a jig in the watery gray light. The audience laughed, a loud and raucous laughter, as though they were relieved to be laughing at something. It was a joke; it was terrible, she thought, that he was using himself as a joke. But it was working. He wanted to win, and he did not care how.

When he stopped, there was some puzzling scattered applause. What was it for? His desire to be ridiculous? Some bizarre tribute to
them? A sense that Jews were actually idiots? Or was the hat secretly a brilliant move, making him somehow, oddly, likable?

“Oakdale is for everyone!” he called as he hurried offstage. “Merry Christmas and happy Chanukah, y'all!”

The antler hat act was, truly, a difficult one to follow. Everyone was suddenly shy. Forrest came up the stairs and said, “Well. I guess Rudolph has some competition!” More laughter; Serena flinched. She heard the rabbi laugh beside her, a sharp, false laugh. “I invite all of you to refreshments in the back. Please sign the petition.”

The rabbi sat next to her; his forehead was damp. The audience members got up. Now that their anger had been expressed, they seemed awkward and puzzled. They began to file toward the back.

“What'd you think?” the rabbi asked. “Did they like it? Do you think it worked?”

“Great job,” she said, quickly.

“Now's the most important part.” He darted to the back to the foldout tables where the plastic platters of Chick-fil-A nuggets and brownies were spread out. “This is where you make friends,” he murmured to her. “By the free food.”

The rabbi broke away from her, holding up his arms as though he'd made a touchdown. The audience helped themselves to the dry brown nuggets and warm sweet tea and brownie squares.

It was as though the three of them were candidates for some inexplicable public office, the rabbi and Serena and Forrest, shaking hands with the people who had come. The rabbi had, of course, remembered the small details the speakers had sprinkled into their speeches; he sidled up to Dolores Jackson and told her how he had also hated tests in school; he told Clayton Pembroke that there were good deals right now on Christmas cookies at Walmart.

Serena looked around. The crowd pressed forward at the refreshment table. She hovered around the knots of people, who nodded at her but did not invite her into the discussion; they were all talking brightly about the Camellia Festival fundraiser or the bake sale at First Baptist or the renovation of the bathroom or the science project for Mrs. Landis's class, as though the previous discussion had not happened at all.
Serena walked around them. She was invisible, from their discomfort or her own or both; finally, she inserted herself into a discussion with Mary Jo and Felicia about the difficulty of packing lunches without peanut products, which were banned because of severe allergies among some of the children.

“I don't understand why the allergic kids can't sit in a corner,” said Mary Jo. “I can't make another ham sandwich. And Trevor will not eat tuna.”

“And peanut butter is
all
that Clara will eat,” said Felicia. “What do you feed your son?” she asked Serena.

“Oh, god,” she said. “The choices are minimal. Butter on bread? He'd rather have an entire lunch of Chex Mix.”

They laughed, carefully; it was straining, this proving one's humanity to one another.

The rabbi had parked himself beside the petition. The paper above it read:
We the undersigned call upon the school board to order all schools to authorize all forms of celebration of Christmas in the public schools, to stop this tyranny of secularism. The U.S. of A. is a Christian nation.
The petition was beside the nugget tray, and the rabbi was making fast progress through the nuggets, dipping them into the orange barbecue sauce. He stood by the petition and watched the audience members float around him, pause, pick up a nugget, not pick up a pen, walk out. Only a few people signed in his presence. Perhaps the people did not want to sign such a petition beside a religious figure, even one representing competing interests, or perhaps they did not want to present themselves as aggressive, or at least not in a public space. She counted how many people signed it: One. Two. Three. Six. Ten.

Ten.

The Chanukah antler hat sat on the floor beside the rabbi. A couple people asked to try it on.

Some people did sign the petition, their eyes averted from the rabbi, who took the opportunity to distract them with a brownie. “Excuse me,” said the rabbi, in a honeyed voice. “Can I pass you a brownie?” This dissuaded one couple, who chose a brownie over political action and then darted out.

The hallway emptied; it was just Serena, Forrest, and the rabbi in the hallway. Her head hurt. Forrest was transferring the leftover brownies onto one plate. He picked up the petition, counted the names. He had filled a quarter of one page.

“It's a start,” said Forrest, looking up. “You have to start somewhere.” He stared at Serena, a sudden, direct gaze.

“Maybe you go somewhere you don't expect,” Serena said.

He looked at her, unblinking. “So, Zeb was the big winner,” said Forrest.

The race. “Right,” she said. “It was a big night for him. He was happy.”

Rabbi Golden came up to him before he packed up the remaining nuggets. There were five left. They all eyed the nuggets as though daring the others to grab them, though they were not that good.

“How 's the shed?” asked Rabbi Golden.

Forrest looked surprised. “Been a while since I've worked on it,” he said. “Sir, I have one question for you,” said Forrest.

“Yes?” said the rabbi.

“Do you ever worry about the afterlife?” asked Forrest.

Rabbi Golden scratched his neck and said, “No, sir.”

“I know where I'm going,” said Forrest. “I know where I'm going to get my reward. How about you? Aren't you worried about — ”

“What?” said the rabbi.

“Judgment,” said Forrest.

Rabbi Golden rubbed his hand over his face and laughed carefully. “Well,” he said. Forrest stood, alone, amid the balled-up napkins and chicken nugget crumbs on the floor. Serena thought he looked exhausted.

“Well, sir,” said the rabbi. “Do you need, ah, any help cleaning up?”

Serena was startled; this was not exactly the question she had thought to ask Forrest, but it seemed the right thing to offer. The rabbi was an expert at distraction. There were paper plates and brownie crumbs strewn all over the room. Forrest flinched; he had not expected this.

“No,” said Forrest. “I can do that.”

“It'll take just a sec,” said the rabbi, and he began to pick up plates.
Serena also began to pick up crumpled napkins and empty cups, and toss them into the trash. It was like they were simply cleaning up after a school function. It had that feeling of normalcy. Forrest watched, and his face reddened.

“I don't need any
help,
” said Forrest.

Serena knew that tone; she put down a plate and started heading toward the door. The rabbi paused and put a hand on Forrest's shoulder. “Shalom,” he said to Forrest, and then he and Serena went outside.

The sky was dark now; the air had cooled, and the grass gave off a sharp, bitter smell. His suit showed its wrinkles as he walked in front of her. She could perceive his exhaustion in his walk — it appeared that he was hurtling forward, the way a child walked after having been awake for too long. At her car, he stopped.

“What do you think?” he said. “Did it help?”

She was shaken by the whole experience, the understanding of what resided in the minds of some of her neighbors. But after all the yelling, not many people had signed the petition. She was touched by his last question, considering the week he was going through. “I think it slowed it down,” she said. “For right now, anyway. He didn't get too many signatures.”

“Good,” he said. “All you can do is present yourself. First step is that they see you. Second is that they remember your name.” He looked tired in the dark blue light. “Mind if I sit down for a moment?” he said. She opened the car door. He lowered himself to the passenger seat. He sighed; it was the sound of air being released from a tire.

“I try to help people,” he said. “I have a big heart. Those strangers saw it. I believe it. They still want what they want, but they feel a little confused, so they slow down a little. Watch.” He stared at the street, rubbing his hands slowly together. “Say,” he said, his tone brighter, “have you heard anything about the meeting this week?”

“No,” she said, wishing she hadn't.

“I don't understand what anyone wants. Here I try. I am an excellent rabbi. Not just for Jews, but for everyone. I can't tell you how many soldiers I helped abroad. They, who really needed help. Here, they don't understand the chain of command. What is not to understand?
This is the way you do it. A dying soldier gets it. He gets it more than Mrs. Stella Goldsmith, who wants to have a Bat Mitzvah Saturday afternoon, so that Grandma can fly in from Pittsburgh. Or how about Esther Price, who calls me at 2:00 AM to ask me to pray for her dead daughter? Let me tell you. They are full of what they need now. The entitlement of civilians. They don't know.”

“What don't they know?” she asked. He could tell her; he could figure it out.

His eyes flashed. “They weren't there when I was in the hospital in Baghdad and they rushed in Private George Martinez. Legs blown off. He wanted a priest. The priest was busy. He got me. First time away from home. He grew up in East L.A., he grew up in church, blah, blah. He had tried to help out one of the shepherds who came up to him with a fake limp at a checkpoint, and
kaboom.
He was pumped up with morphine, and he was holding my hand, and he said, ‘Chaplain, I have to tell you something. I never screwed anyone.' He asked me, ‘Will I be able to live without sex?' He didn't ask about walking so much. Just about sex. He said he had dreamed about it for years and he was going to do it when he got out.” He paused. “He was in intensive care for a week. He asked for me. Even after the priest was around. I think he didn't want to tell the priest he still wanted to have sex. Maybe he was secretly a Jew. I sat by him, and he asked me to pray for him. He asked me to pray for erections. I didn't know exactly what prayer would do for that, but I knew one for healthy bodily functions, so I said that, in Hebrew. He didn't care. He just cared that it was me.
I comforted him.
” He closed his eyes. His face was slack for a moment. “Then he had a heart attack, and that was it.”

She closed her eyes. They sat in the darkness.

“I'm sorry,” she said, softly.

He lowered his head. “Sorry, sorry. Everyone's sorry. Those kids sent out there not knowing what they were getting into, going for a job, to see the world, all that bullshit. They know there aren't any weapons of mass destruction. They don't have the right suits for them to wear. Those are my children, dammit. I help them. They can sense it in me. They know.” He looked at her, his eyes burning. “
I care about them.
They
seem tough when they line up and when they stand with their weapons, but I see them crying. I saw one guy crush his toe with his gun to keep himself from crying.”

“You helped them,” she said.

“I help them. I say help, not helped, because I know the ones who are still there are thinking of me. I still get emails.
Pray for me. I'm taking the road to Tikrit. I have six buddies. Pray for us. Include our legs and arms.
They trust me because I know what they know. Fear. You know what I did whenever I was being shuffled to foster homes? I would lie awake in the new bed. I knew it wouldn't last long. I learned the Hebrew prayers, and I would say them to myself, not knowing what they meant. The families I stayed with didn't know what they meant. They weren't religious; they just shoved me off to Hebrew school. At night, I would wander into the parents' room and watch them. I wanted to see that they did not move. I would say whatever prayer I could — the Motzi, the Kiddush, the V'ahavta. Can you see me, sitting there, saying the prayer of the Torahs over these people? But the Torahs didn't leave. Do you hear me? They didn't move — ”

He glanced at her, as though waiting for a certain response. She sat next to him in the darkness. She let out a breath and put a hand on his arm, lightly.

He nodded at her. He sat back, focused on what he wanted to say. “And here I am. My first pulpit. Who do I get? Loretta Stone. Honestly? An old bag. Esther Price. Stella Goldsmith. What do they need? What have they ever needed? ‘Just make the Bat Mitzvah Saturday afternoon so my relatives can fly in.' Why not make it Sunday? Monday morning? Why be Jewish at all?”

She sat forward. “But,” she said. “They're — ”

“They can follow a few rules.” His voice started to rise. “I'm the rabbi. I'm the teacher. I don't need them. Witches. That's what they are!”

She closed her eyes. It felt as though the car was rippling. Loretta was a frail, elegant woman in her seventies, as was Esther. “But rabbi,” she said, “they're just asking — ”