A Town of Empty Rooms (40 page)

He eyed her, and the sleeve, and he sighed, sharply. “Okay,” he said.

Georgia kept a needle and some thread in her desk, and Serena took it out. The rabbi slipped off his jacket and handed it to her. She took his jacket in her arms and smoothed the sleeve straight out. Her hands were trembling slightly; she wanted to do this correctly. The fabric was thin and soft in her hands. He stood, watching, as she quickly sewed the gash shut.

“Serena, tell me,” he said, softly.

“What?”

“They will love me.”

He looked at her — he was over forty years old, but his eyes looked so young. It occurred to her that everyone was stuck at a certain age, whether it was two or four or five or thirteen or twenty. When was anyone able to crack out of an age, to evolve to a new place? She knotted the thread. She handed the jacket back to him. “Yes,” she said. “I believe they will.”

“Thank you,” he said, shrugging on his jacket, and he looked calmer. He fingered the sewn sleeve. “This too shall pass.” He nodded and placed a hand on her shoulder, briefly. “Shalom.”

They were simply two people in a hallway; the air was both flat and immensely full. Then he turned and walked out of the building. She stood by the window and watched him walk down the sidewalk to his car. He hurtled lightly down the sidewalk; he was trying to move too quickly for the world to grab him, to pull him to its sweat and grime.
She watched him each slow moment, absorbing him, feeling his presence fade from her. He slipped into his dented orange car, started the engine, and was gone.

 

 

 

SERENA TOLD THE CHILDREN ABOUT Forrest. They were shocked by his death and wanted to know all about it; their interest was fueled partly by the desire to research it, to see how they might find a way to avert it.

“How did he die that quick?” asked Zeb. He tried to snap his fingers. “Like that?”

“Sometimes people do.”

“Will I?” asked Zeb.

“I doubt it. He was old — ”

“He was mean when he came to our house.”

“That is true.”

“When will I die?” Zeb asked.

His beautiful, worried face gazed at her. She looked away; she did not want to answer this, at this age — five! Already he wanted to kill his innocence. She pressed the two of her children to her body. Never. She wanted to say never. You will live and live, you will outlast the earth. This moment will not vanish. But each moment melted the instant it happened; they would step out of her arms in a matter of months, they would stumble across the junior high school cafeteria into high school and college dorm rooms and then into middle age and their gradual descent. What would their end be? They stared at her, alarmed. She was going to break to them the news of their deaths. Here it was, at five, already — by giving them to the world, she had sentenced herself to this. She wanted to lie, but they would see through it. “Honey. I don't know. Don't worry. A long time.”

Zeb blinked. His face was perplexed and then irate. It was, of course, an absurd answer.

“What about you?” Rachel asked, touching her arm.

“I don't know,” she said. They stared at her. “No one knows. We're here now,” she said. “Let's go outside.”

They clutched her hands as they walked outdoors, and she felt the dampness of their palms against her own. The sky was soft and gray. “Let's clean up the leaves,” she said, and they drifted across the yard, picking up the dry brown leaves and setting them in a pile. The air was cold in the way that every leaf and rock was utterly precise; the yard was peaceful, and Forrest's dogs sniffed around his yard, quiet. Evelyn nodded at them as she raked some leaves.

Zeb and Rachel tossed the leaves into a large, round pile. They crumpled large, crinkled handfuls of leaves in their hands. It was all they wanted to do. The pile swelled. The children ran into the pile of leaves, picked them up, and threw them, the leaves floating into the air.

 

 

 

DAN SAT IN HIS OFFICE in front of his computer. He was supposed to edit some copy about the Azalea Maze, but the words kept jumping in front of his eyes; all he could think of was Forrest. Dan rubbed his hands over his face. What had happened? He wondered if he had brought this on when he walked into the headquarters of the Boy Scouts that morning, had brought it on when he shook hands with Forrest, when he laughed with him. What had he missed? Or was it not him at all — how could he have known what Forrest would become? He remembered also how he couldn't stop himself from picking up the stick, there was a terrible purpose in his arm, his body — he remembered just the sensation he had when he stepped into Forrest's yard, the hope that some awful pressure in himself would be released.

He stared at the words on the screen:
The Azalea Maze is a secret path to wonder.

Everything seemed like bullshit; it was a troubling idea.

He shut off his computer and got into his car. The steering wheel was already slick with sweat from his bare hand. The sky was growing dark, and the electric signs on the chain stores glowed against the deepening blue.

Dan ended up at the Azalea Maze. He walked inside, among the hedges, the damp shrubbery surrounding him, big, sharp walls of green. Dan walked quickly. He was forty years old, and he was unable to tell
who was real. He brushed the sharp green leaves with his fingertips, wanting to feel the hardness of the leaves on his skin. The air was cold and bitter and green. What had he even known about his brother, his father, his wife, his neighbor? His neighbor, whom he had trusted, had even liked, had done something cruel to his son, and in his bewilderment, Dan had found himself breaking a window on the man's shed. He had thought he understood how to interpret a smile, a handshake, an invitation — it all seemed so easy. Now it was as though his mind were a crumpled ball; this was not familiar. He did not even know himself.

What was familiar was this — the idea of his walking in, standing in front of a small, hopeless group, telling them how to promote their small virtues; what was familiar was the idea of his bringing Waring to greatness. He could see the entrance to the town, the steel gateway that would be erected,
Welcome to Waring
; he saw the lines of people waiting to be invited inside the town. How everyone loved this, the idea that any place could be simple, admirable, and could welcome them. How he wanted to walk into a place where everyone knew who he was, who waved at him, who murmured his name. Dan Shine.

The green leaves were highlighted by spotlights, carving white patches into the radiant blue. The gardens were scheduled to close in half an hour. The soles of his feet were cold, light. He did not feel like escaping because now he understood that there was nowhere to go. There was only the blunt certainty of himself, his possession of his own consciousness. He did not want to feel; he had never wanted, truly, to feel, the moment he saw his father in the garage, the moment he heard about the death of his brother, the moment Serena became a thief, the moment Forrest had walked into their house to kick them out of the Scouts. Was this what others held, this wildness inside themselves? How did anyone know what to do with it? He envied the bravery of others in managing their feelings, the chaos that came with being human. His feelings were a cold wave rising up in him; he did not know what else he contained that would come out, did not know how this wave could subsume him. He stopped, the tiny spotlights illuminating the sharp green leaves around him; he understood, for the first time, what had driven his wife when she walked into Saks.

WHEN HE CAME HOME, HE trotted through the regular motions of dinner, baths, tucking in the children. He felt that she was watching him, that she sensed his dislocation; he wanted to tell her something deeper, even, than love — that he believed he understood what she had felt the day when she walked, bereft, down the streets of Manhattan.

How simple it seemed. But what would she think of him if he said this? He believed she loved him for that ability he had to walk into a room and say hello to anyone, to remake a lonely town into something glorious — not for this Dan Shine, who stumbled, bewildered, through the Azalea Maze and couldn't, for god's sake, even come up with a good term to promote it. No, she would not want to know him, the person who wandered, lost, afraid, through the azalea bushes; he did not want to destroy her perception of the person whom she had chosen to love.

He read the children a story in their room, tucked them in, while she cleaned up the kitchen. Then he walked through the house toward her. She was wiping off the kitchen table. He leaned against the doorway, aware of the wide splay of his shoulders, the fragile pressure of his shoulder against the door.

“I want to tell you something,” he tried.

She stopped; she heard something urgent in his voice.

“What?” she asked.

When they had first met, he had been baffled by and how he had admired how she could perceive everything with such precision and clarity — how generous, he thought, she was to love him. She sat in the yellow light of the kitchen, her eyes set on him, alert, waiting. He wanted to tell her that he thought he understood her, and he did not know how to start.

 

 

 

AT SEVEN FORTY-FIVE, SHE DROVE through the darkness, past the churches and cheap motels, past the colorful radiance of the fast food signs, past the proclamations to the drivers:
God Answers Knee Mail; Pray for Our Troops; Welcome, Colgate Sales Conference; Brush up on Your Bible to Avoid Truth Decay; Congratulations, Jeanette Wilson, on her
new baby boy!; Stop Domestic Abuse! It Happens Once Every Ten Minutes.
She thought of the first time she had driven down these streets, how quickly she had gotten lost in them.
If You Don't Believe in Hell, You Better Be Right!; Welcome, Class of 1983 Waring High.
She remembered her hands clutching the steering wheel, the car moving forward into the blanched hot day, the sense that the street that held Bojangles' was identical to the one with Chick-fil-A and Walmart and McDonald's — it did not really matter where she turned, for she did not think she would belong.

But now she believed that she was not alone in this — for she understood that no one felt that they quite belonged to the world. She thought of the rabbi, bending toward the congregants at the oneg, listening to their sorrows and then shouting at them from the bima; she thought of Forrest losing the Pinewood Derby, distributing his flyers promoting the Christian nation after the ambulance took his wife from his house; she thought of Zeb screaming as she walked him into school and Rachel screaming in accompaniment; she thought of Dan, wearing his Boy Scouts uniform proudly, and the desolation in his face when Forrest told them to get out. She thought of Betty and Tiffany and Norman and Dawn and her mother and father, and all of their crooked yearnings, and she thought of the weight of that diamond bracelet in her hand.

Everyone lived in the empty rooms of their own longing, wrangling with their own versions of love and grief; sometimes, if they were lucky, they stepped out of their rooms to meet another person, to try, for a moment, to live in the precious room of another. In time, they all were gone. Serena drove, reading the signs that shone in the night:
Go, Oakdale High Cheerleaders, to the 14th Annual Golden Cup Championship in Jacksonville! Go, Go, Go!; Don't Wait! Lose Weight with Jenny Craig Now!!; Choose Your Future: Smoking or Non?
She felt the presence of the cars floating beside her, the strangers driving, and she felt a hint of lightness, the hope that they were all united, somehow, in the perilous beauty of this journey. Serena leaned into the steering wheel, watching the glowing lines that measured out each lane.

Serena opened the doors to the synagogue. She was the first one to arrive, and the other board members soon assembled at the front. They
each had a job: Betty would light the candles, Serena would lead the Sh'ma, Sophie and Marty would carry the Torahs.

“Do you think anyone will come?” asked Tiffany, hopefully.

“Look at how many came last week,” said Tom.

“Maybe we don't want
everyone
to come,” said Norman. They laughed uneasily.

They all sat facing the bima, but most of them turned at any sound, looking at the door with eagerness; it was ten to eight, and no one was there.

Then the door opened. They all turned to look.

It was Henriette and Herman Schwartz. The cries of welcome echoed through the room. Then there were others. There was Lillian, who had spoken of her granddaughter who had died before the Olympics. There was Seymour Carmel, loping in slowly, wearing one of his fanciest suits, one embellished with gold braid. Six members came for services.