A Town of Empty Rooms

by Karen E. Bender

  “Just with empire-building,” he said. “Brick by brick!” He paused. “How are your kids?”

  She took a breath. “Fine.”

  “Your son’s the only Jewish kid in his school. Am I right?”

  Her stomach tightened. “Yes.”

  “You want him to belong to something big?” he said. “The Southeast North Carolina Jewish Community Center. I need someone to coordinate it. You can be the president. It will be for everyone. Your son will never feel alone.”

  She misheard him, for a moment thought that he had said she was alone, and was startled that he had responded to her own sadness so fully; her face got hot, and she looked away, quickly, at his posters of Israel, at the cascade of photos of him.

  “Who’s she?” she asked, noticing a woman in a photo.

  “The first Mrs. Golden.”

  “First?”

  “Series of three,” he said. He looked around. “First one. Leah. Other two — where are they — right. Diane. Jeanette. There they are.”

  She looked at the photos of the three women. They looked ordinary, and there was no discernible pattern among them: a lithe blonde, a heavier redhead, a plain brunette. It was an intriguing display; she wondered who had left whom.

  “You still display their photos,” she said.

  “They were part of my life,” he said. “I include anyone who is part of my life. My wives. My soldiers. My congregants. They ’re all here. Soon I’ll have a photo of our congregation. You can be in the photo. We can have a picture of you and me. Serena, who will lead Temple Shalom to the future. You can see yourself up on the rabbi’s wall.”

  He looked right at her, his blue eyes deep, sapphire, and set on her. She was aware of the depth of colors of the room — the clear, lemon glass of the Chai sculpture in the corner, the dark brown of the wood paneling on the walls — which shimmered, almost cold against her skin. She shivered, looking away, as though his eyes could see what she felt.

  “You’ve lost someone,” he said softly. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “Yes,” she said. “My father. How did you know?”

  “I always do,” he said. “I am truly sorry. How long?”

  It took her a moment to speak; he had said the word sorry beautifully, in a deep, melting voice, in a way that was palpably different from the way others said it. It was not even a matter of being professional — it was as though the rabbi actually fooled himself into experiencing her father’s absence, as though anyone’s feelings were his own.

  “Three months,” she said. She clasped her hands; they were shaking. She, who had made some sort of living with her words, was reduced to this, this sensation of muteness. “Tell me something,” she said. “What do I do?”

  He nodded. He stood up, slowly, regally, and came around the desk. He sat next to her, hands clasped, and said nothing.

  She waited.

  “Why don’t you say anything?” she said.

  “At times like this, the Torah takes refuge in silence,” said the rabbi.

  His phone erupted, shrilly, into the room. He ignored it.

  It seemed to be taking him great effort to sit with this level of quiet; one of his feet tapped, insistently, on the floor. “Would you like me to say Kaddish?”

  “No,” she said.

  He nodded as though he understood; he still did not move from beside her but leaned forward on his knees, clasping his hands. He closed his eyes. She noticed a muscle twitch in his shoulder. It seemed the most intimate interaction she had had with another person in weeks; it acknowledged that there was nothing that one could do but sit beside another. There was nothing but the slow, living breath of another human. She listened.

  In another few minutes, she stood up. Then so did he. She wondered how long she could have sat there with him.

  “Thank you,” she said. There was a lightness in her chest.

  “We hope to see you soon,” he said. He waited until she had stepped into the hallway, and then he turned back to his desk.

  Georgia was holding her application. “Seven hundred dollars,” said Georgia.

  Her heart tumbled. “What?”

  “How do you think we keep this place up?” said Georgia. “The electric bill, the flyers, the machine?” She slapped the copier as though it were a horse. “You can also help out a little each week for reduced dues.”

  “How reduced?”

  “Four hundred dollars.”

  “My god.”

  The rabbi peered in. “You need an assistant, right, Georgia?”

  Georgia shrugged.

  “We could use you,” he said. “Every morning. Fifteen dollars an hour. Free membership. A deal.”

  Fifteen dollars an hour? She wanted to laugh but then stopped herself. She couldn’t laugh at this point. Her resumes were not being answered. But it was something; it was a way to be here.

  “Will be good to have some help,” said Georgia. Serena filled in the application.

  She walked out into the sunlight. She turned around, and she saw Rabbi Golden through the window, holding his cell phone to his ear and bursting into a torrent of speech. She saw him standing, looking out the window, extending his arm out with emphasis, gazing intently at the street outside, and she wondered what he was looking for.

  Chapter Three

  DAN SHINE DID NOT WANT to tell anyone this: He was afraid of his wife. He did not want Serena to know that he still watched her in the morning while she slept, that he sometimes put his fingertips on her hair, as though trying to relearn her by the familiar softness of its texture. It still surprised him that they could be married to one another, that they wrestled naked in the darkness and had kissed every rise and crevice of each other’s bodies, that he had seen the first child they had created, they had made together, the neatest trick in the universe, pushed out of her, two people (well, plus the doctor) in the room and then three, and yet his wife slept, her eyelids quivering, and he could not fathom what she would tell him when she woke up. It seemed that all the rather arbitrary rituals of matrimony — the rings, the shared names, et cetera — were meant to distract you from that fact. Her breath had the sourness of someone he had just met; he had not felt this until she had called him from her office in April. “They’re escorting me out,” she said, a strange, shocked calm in her voice, as though she had, in some way, been waiting for this, and all he could hear was the fact that she had done something so surprising that he had never, ever predicted it. He had married her partly for this — he had loved the fact that she was transparent.

  Now he drove through the streets of Waring, looking for a place he had been thinking about. The Boy Scouts of America was a large building with the high, alpine roof of a roadside Denny’s. Dan was on his way to work when he saw it, the sign: PHYSICALLY STRONG, MENTALLY AWAKE, MORALLY STRAIGHT: JOIN THE BSA TODAY! When he saw the sign, Dan thought of his brother Harold, whom his father had taken to Scouts. He saw the two of them heading out the door, Harold crisp and proud in his uniform. “Next,” his father had told Dan. “You’ll go next.” It was just three months before his father left them.

  It was twenty minutes before Dan had to be at work. He had time. He got out of the car, smoothed his hands on his suit, and walked inside.

  There were many accoutrements of boyhood — they were all inscribed with the universal Boy Scout insignia, like the mark of a great nation. The insignia was there on night lights and tie tacs and crystal boxes; there were desk sets with clocks and rubber wristbands with words like DUTY and DISCIPLINE, and on navy and beige caps, on leather belts, on coffee mugs, on flashlights, on cufflinks, and on socks.

  He walked around all of the items emblazoned with the Boy Scouts logo. The store had just opened; he was the only customer there. It seemed comically early for anyone to be purchasing Scout merchandise, but there he was. He glanced at himself in a mirror and was startled; he was old. How had this happened? His skin was riddled with the large pores of an older person, and there were dee
p lines radiating around his eyes. It was a joke. Annoyingly, it could not be stopped. He tried to peer at himself again, from another angle, but it was even worse. He stepped away from the mirror and turned, with renewed interest, to the Scout items: the neckerchiefs, the visors, the water bottles, the Swiss Army knives, the ponchos, the slingshots, the guidebooks, the pamphlets, the faceless mannequins with arms lifted, trim and crisp in their blue or beige uniforms. He felt like an idiot standing there, but he was captivated, surrounded by the armaments of a childhood that he had not had.

  Dan saw a man dressed in a Scout uniform standing near the register. He had never seen a grown man wearing a Scout uniform. The man also wore an expression of purpose. Dan would not have noticed him but for the dignity, the peculiar comfort, with which he wore the child’s uniform. The man looked as though he had slipped into the Boy Scout garb at age seven and worn it for the last seven decades. He wore a brown sash covered with a variety of medals. A woman came over to him and touched his arm.

  “Forrest,” said the woman, “Oakwood Elementary’s on the line. They want you to do a Cub Roundup next Friday at six.”

  “Thanks,” the man said, picking up the phone. His brow furrowed. His voice was suddenly practiced and hearty. “Hey there! Forrest Sanders here! Can you get those Cubs in next Wednesday? You got signs? We’re Pack 287. No, thank you, ma’am, we do appreciate it!” He hung up.

  “Next Wednesday?” asked the woman.

  “Yep. Can you bring the snacks?”

  She sighed briefly and made a note on a pad. Forrest touched her arm with a casual intimacy, and Dan knew that they were married. They appeared to be in agreement. They made it look simple, a commercial demonstrating an agreeable couple. Dan watched them; they seemed to exist in a secret zone from which he had recently been banished.

  The old scout’s eyes lit on him. Forrest blinked; he seemed to be making a sort of evaluation. Forrest’s face swung into a big smile. “Howdy, sir! Looking for something?”

  Dan stepped toward the counter.

  “Brings back the old days, doesn’t it?” asked Forrest. “The badges, the trips . . . where you from, buddy?” He regarded him. “Morocco?”

  Dan laughed; then he saw the question was serious. “No. New York. Dan Shine,” said Dan, as they shook hands. Forrest’s grip was both papery and intent.

  “Yankees,” he said, a little grimly.

  “Well,” said Dan.

  “I know where you live.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We’re neighbors. You live at 108 Maple Drive. I’m 104. Right next door!”

  Dan looked more closely at the man. He had seen someone resembling him puttering around the front yard.

  “I’m here working at the Chamber of Commerce,” said Dan. “We’re putting Waring on the map — ”

  Dan’s career was doing public relations for cities that no one visited, trumpeting the beauties of forgotten lakes, unused hiking trails, empty museums, lonely battlegrounds. Prudrock, Virginia; Shell Run, Georgia; Tall Palms, Florida. They were the towns on the way to the more notable ones — Orlando, Myrtle Beach, Richmond, Atlanta — that wanted a cut of the tourist business, and they hammered on Dan Shine’s door.

  Waring was like the other overlooked towns he had promoted, and he found them all a little awkward and touching. They all wanted to be visited. They all wanted to be part of people’s vacation maps. There was a part of him that loved the yearning in the towns, even the abject desire for attention; the Chamber of Commerce members, the mayors, would shake hands with him and plead for help, and, over and over, he could give it.

  “We are already on the map,” said Forrest. He gazed at Dan. “So, what brings you to our headquarters this morning?”

  “Well,” said Dan, wondering himself. “You know, couldn’t wait any longer — you know. I, uh, missed the old troop — ”

  “He old enough for Cubs? Scouts?”

  “Who?”

  “Your boy.”

  “Right,” said Dan, reddening. Zeb. “Five.”

  “Old enough,” said Forrest. His eyes gleamed; he was a recruiter.

  “Of course,” said Dan, trying to conceal the fact that he did not know what a Cub was. He wanted to wear the uniform; that was what he felt he shared with Forrest.

  Forrest’s wife was donning a blue vest that said Welcome to Walmart. May I Help You? “I’ll be back at seven,” she said, gloomily.

  “Have a great time!” said Forrest. He watched her leave. “Hard worker,” he said to Dan. “Best Walmart greeter there is.” He paused. “A lot to do to make this pack the best ever. We’re all volunteers here. Work for the good of our boys and our country — ”

  “I could help,” said Dan, eagerly.

  Forrest blinked. “Sure,” he said. “Provide guidance for our young boys. Lead groups in crafts. Just put in an application. Easy. Just pass the background check and you’re in.” He paused. “Gotta check out you New Yorkers!” He laughed and slapped Dan on the arm.

  “Right,” said Dan, glad it was not Serena applying. He took the form from Forrest.

  “Your son will never forgive you if you don’t,” said Forrest. “I’ll be watching you.”

  Dan walked through the aisles, then back into the heavy summer air. He felt he had fooled the man, this neighbor; suddenly he was material to be a troop leader. It made him feel giddy, that he had tricked him, because really Dan wanted to be this — a man who could turn into a boy, a man who could belong to the Boy Scouts of America. Any man could belong. It sounded simple and beautiful.

  Chapter Four

  ZEB DID NOT WANT TO go to school. One week after school started, his reasons were sudden and numerous. He had a headache, then he said he was too tired, then he said his stomach hurt. In the morning, they had to lift him out of bed, where he feigned limpness, and they had to carry him to the breakfast table. He kept his eyes shut as they dressed him, like a rajah or a baby. It was as though each morning over breakfast Zeb was rehearsing all the sadness he would feel in his life.

  They all sat, worried, frightened, around the table as he wept. Serena pulled him onto her lap, and they tried, in pained voices, to come up with possible reasons for his anguish. Perhaps it was a mean friend. Did a teacher berate him? Pull a colored stick with his name on it from his file? Did someone steal his lunch? Trip him in the hallway? The morning discussion became a litany of all the ways they themselves had been maligned as children, and Zeb listened with interest, collecting ideas. No. No. No.

  Dan sat at the kitchen table and held his son’s hand. He had taught himself to walk into a room and say, “Dan Shine. Pleasure to meet you.” He had learned how to look into the pupils of his clients’ eyes, how to grip their hands a beat longer than they held his, how to clap men on the shoulder, how to touch women lightly on the lower back, to convince them; he had learned how to nod, absently, when clients said something grandiose or laughable, nod just enough so they felt taken seriously. He had walked into the Chamber of Commerce in Waring and burst out, “Let’s get this town on the map!” and watched their faces light up.

  He had wanted Zeb and Rachel to have no hesitation. He wanted them to know — intuitively, easily — everything he had not known. He had spent too many years watching, envying, trying to catch up. This was something he believed the moment he held Zeb — his tiny, damp, rubbery body — in his palms; he wanted his children to have an easier time than he had.

  When Zeb was a baby, when he woke up screaming, Dan sometimes walked him around in the middle of the night, the baby’s small, hard head pressed against his throat. Dan was surprised by the monumental burning in his chest. Please feel this, he thought; he would love Zeb so thoroughly, so much more than he himself had been loved, that his son would have no fear.

  Now Dan could try to do what he did day in and day out; he would mount a campaign.

  “You’ll have a great day!” Dan announced. “Remember yesterday? Remember Grayson? He gave you his brownie at lunch?
”

  “No.”

  “You’ll play a great game of tag.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “You’ll find a great new book. You’ll learn to read!”

  “No.”

  Zeb clung with fortitude to his misery; Dan backed away. Serena carried Zeb into the car and strapped him in. Rachel would sometimes shriek with an unfortunate sympathy, and then Serena was rushing up the grass with two children screaming, trying to walk her son into the next stage of his life. The parents marched their children across the gray, trampled grass to deposit them into the flimsy classroom trailer. Zeb was the only one who screamed. The other children filed inside, and the other parents looked at Zeb, bemused and grateful for their own luck. The teacher grabbed Zeb’s hand and pulled him in, as though rescuing him from a kidnapper. “Bye!” Miss Donna said brightly. “Have a good day!”

  Serena stood outside the classroom, in the parking lot, listening to the screams. The police car was still there, protecting the school against vague and numerous insurgents: the parents’ inevitable disappointment in their children, the children’s balking at their loss of freedom, the teachers’ frustration at their meager pay. The screams subsided a few minutes after she left. She stood, waiting for them to begin again, but they did not. The policeman was watching her.

  At the end of school, she stood on the sidewalk, waiting for Zeb to emerge. He skipped out, now calm, inhabited by atstonishing new desires. “I want a new pack of YuGiOh cards,” he said, his small face intent. “I want Obelisk the Tormentor.”

  ONE NIGHT AS THE CHILDREN slept, Dan watched Serena fold laundry in the living room. Dan picked up a pair of socks and began to roll them. He looked at her, and the tension he felt in his jaw now, most of the time, subsided for a moment; he wanted to know what was wrong with Zeb.

  “What is happening with Zeb?” he said.

  He looked adrift, standing there, wondering about their son. The silence between Serena and Dan had been so weighted and wounding, the fact he was asking for an answer, to anything, made her look up.