She did not always know what to say. Her father was a tall, restless man with gray curly hair and clear golden eyes that were set on her, piercingly, for that long moment. She could sense that he was a little afraid of her, or of her future, and she wanted to tell him the thing that would calm him.
She had about a minute.
“I won my spelling test,” she might offer, ridiculously — it was not something anyone could win.
He blinked. “Excellent!” he said, too brightly. She released a breath.
“Dawn?” he said, and Dawn would present her offering to him. Their father sat, nodding too hard, as though he was not truly interested, or else he was so interested he was about to fall apart.
“Okay,” he said. “Great. Win. Keep going.”
Nothing kept him in his seat. He jumped out of his chair, added salt to his food, got up to pour the extra off, reheated it; his dinner was eaten mostly standing up. He was extremely deliberate about his food, could not get it to the right temperature. There was a kind of athleticism to the way he ate, as if he were engaged in a race that the others were not aware of. Their mother moved about him carefully; she had mastered a kind of wryness around him. Her job was to translate his actions to the rest of them.
“Aaron, sit down,” she said lightly. “The potatoes are better with butter. Don’t scrape it off. Aaron, you already have a fork. Aaron, thanks for getting up to look for the salt — can you bring it?”
He tried to listen to their mother, sitting down briefly when she told him to, but he found an excuse to pop up, to roam the kitchen, searching for the ingredient that would render them impervious to suffering. Sometimes he told them about his own day.
“Guess what I did today?” he said. “I held my hand against someone’s aorta. Stab wound. I felt his life there under my thumb. I held him alive while the useless doctor dropped the needle he was going to use to stitch him. I felt his pulse jump on my thumb. It was like a grasshopper. If I lifted my thumb, it would be a geyser.”
He smiled.
“You can all do that, too,” he said, and Serena wanted to believe that she could.
AFTER DINNER, HE WOULD SOMETIMES go into the garage to work on his train landscapes. Whoever had finished her homework, or presented a particularly memorable accomplishment that night, would be allowed to help.
Serena’s father would go over his plans for his landscape. He wanted to make a landscape that other people would want to see and discuss. He told her about some of the nation’s premier miniature landscapes: the Ave Maria Grotto in Alabama, located in an old quarry, a garden of miniature churches all over the world, landscaped, incredibly, into rock. There was Holy Land USA in Connecticut, built by a local attorney, showing a biblical Holy Land. There was a panorama of New York City made for the 1964 World’s Fair in which 320 miles of New York were reproduced at a scale of 1 inch to 100 feet.
They stood over his large plywood table, the fields made of TruGreen vinyl mat, the foam inclines, the trees, the houses and stores and fire stations and office buildings, the tiny people, and the endless winding tracks.
“Where should my trains run?” he asked. “Tell me.”
He had written a letter to Harvey Smith, who had been featured in Model Trains Monthly and who had won numerous awards for constructing terraced landscapes with Windsor blocks and “reject sand,” unusable from construction sites. “I’ve used forty tons of reject sand on my landscapes,” Mr. Smith announced in the article about him; that fact itself impressed her father. Her father tracked down bags of reject sand and blocks, and he set up terraces. He wrote to Mr. Smith: Why terraces? How did you decide that? Do you have many where you live? Do you have houses? What kind? How many trees? Is it a desert or a forest? Which is better?
Harvey wrote back, politely, Dear Mr. Hirsch, I have terraces that measure twenty-five inches to thirty-six-and-a-half inches. Trees cover approximately 75 percent of this landscape. I have seventeen houses, three train stations, and seven other buildings. My landscape mimics the terrain of northern Italy.
Her father had kept Harvey’s letter and taped it up in his garage. He had correspondence from other train aficionados: Barry Jones, who specialized in landscapes with tunnels; Quentin Avery, whose trains moved through “Nebraska in 1889.” They could relate the exact number of accessories, the degree of angle to their inclines, the numbers of people, cars, road signs, and the bridges that went up and down. They had clear, specific goals. I plan to create a multilayer train landscape through several Midwestern towns. I plan to re-create the Swiss Alps with silver glitter and snow made of glue. Serena was annoyed by the letters, the crisp authority of the other model makers, who seemed to have clear and definite goals and no ambivalence about them. The letters intrigued and shamed her father, who lied when he wrote back to them, I have added my fifty-seventh handmade tree to my landscape, he wrote to Barry Jones. I have re-created a Bavarian forest. He would not send photos.
The garage had the glamour of a castle, that same dank, cool interior, the musty odor of damp concrete. He bought heavy books with photographs illustrating a particular place, spent hours researching, ordering parts, figuring how to make a particular forest look North American, European, Scandinavian.
Only while her father created the train landscapes did they share the rare moments when he slowed down and asked her what she thought. She stood by the table, telling him her ideas for his landscape, and he nodded, tapping his fingers against the table. She was triumphant in that small room, the light hazy, golden from the bright, bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. She loved him. She was aware of the restlessness she often felt in her family, the understanding that all children gain — that the world has been created without thought of them, and that they are left out of the grand world their parents create — but here, in here, she was in the center of the world. She watched him, whittling a tiny tree, adjusting the TruGreen. She might hold down the turf while the glue was drying, paint a tiny apartment building, place tiny people waiting for a bus.
“Serena. Tell me. What should I make?”
She looked up at him, leaning over his table, hands clasped. What did she know at six, seven, eight? At this train table, instructing him on the placement of the world, she had the solid, immutable sense that he knew she was good. She was aware in some way of the tragedy of the link between parent and child, the fact of their separateness — that he would die before she did, that by creating her, he and her mother guaranteed her a self that would someday be alone. She set her eyes on the tracks, on the trees, trying to figure out what she could say that would make him happy she was there.
“Sacramento,” she suggested one day. “Where you grew up.” But that was really Berlin, which he refused to build. Los Angeles, where he had ended up. Their mother’s hometown, Fresno. Las Vegas. Paris. China.
“Good plan,” he said, sometimes. “What should I put there?”
He was listening then. She picked out trees and buildings; they painted them.
THE PROBLEM WAS THAT HE never was able to finish anything. As the landscape gained shape, streets, and neighborhoods, as it began to resemble a place, her father became anxious. He stood in the garage, looking at his creation, and then he began to pace.
“Serena,” he said once, when he was abandoning a project on a San Francisco gold rush town in the 1800s, which involved multilevel bridges, rows of shanties, fake gold, special tracks, “I don’t like it.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I can’t get the right dirt. It should be more orange. I don’t know how the streams fall. The rocks are not the right shape.”
The moment he became a perfectionist was when they stopped. She looked at the table, trying to see the flaws. He walked around the table and began to pluck pieces of the landscape, the trains, off it. She pressed her hands down on it, to protect it.
“But you’re almost done!”
“It’s wrong,” he said, got a garbage bag, and began to sweep his model landscap
e into it. He stalked around the table, taking apart the landscape. It was as though his anxiety so shamed him that he had an urge to display it so that, perhaps, he would be absolved. He yanked off the TruGreen, peeled off the tracks, the false mountains, the streams made with glue. She stood, trembling, watching him sweep everything into a plastic bag. “Help,” he said, and she was so startled by the husky childishness of his voice that she lifted up the train tracks and silently handed them to him.
Finally they stood, the plywood bare again, the TruGreen grass wrinkled, the tracks piled up in a corner, the trains jammed together in the middle of the table. The floor was covered in sand or dirt. She waited to see what he would do next. Her father stood, squinting at the ruined train landscape. He never tore apart anything that she had made. She collected it and put it in the corner to use for the next project. He only destroyed his own work, tossing it into the corner. Finally, he sat down and stared at the blank table.
“Look at that,” her father said. “It’s nowhere.”
THE NIGHT AFTER THE BOARD meeting, she saw an email on her computer with the subject CONFIDENTIAL FOR BOARD MEMBERS. She was in her bedroom; she closed the door.
She closed her eyes for a moment, preparing. Then she opened them.A) Rabbi does not impart, in general, a “warm and fuzzy” feeling
B) Rabbi did not hug a member of the sisterhood when she said hello
C) Rabbi shouted at a congregant when telling her that she could not rent out the synagogue for her own party on a Friday night
D) Rabbi frequently walks too quickly by some congregants, who try to catch up but are ignored
E) Rabbi said (in a sharp and insensitive tone) that the members needed to think less about social events and more about God
F) Rabbi was heard making a sarcastic joke about his salary and the high price of housing in the county
That was it.
THE MEMBERS OF TEMPLE SHALOM’S Board of Directors all moved through the quiet streets of Waring to the emergency meeting. It was November; the sky faded early now, and the bare oak branches were hard silver filaments in the glow of the streetlights. Betty drove her Lexus, her accordion file of evidence beside her in the front seat; she had belted in the folder to keep it steady. Tom carefully steered his Buick, Norman beside him describing his call to the rabbi the night before: “You know how long I talked to him last night? Forty-five minutes. Forty-five! I finally made an excuse to hang up because I didn’t want to be, you know, a bother.”
Serena was speeding. She wanted to get there. She drove past the sad, bright strip malls that composed the rest of Waring, that made it like thousands of other such cities in America; there was the sense that the town was floating on the erratic whims of global industry, the streets lined with McDonald’s and Wendy’s and Old Navy and Walmart, and the enormous signs glared, cheerful, insistent, into the dark air. Her car floated past the churches, the conversation they had with the street:Today she saw God has a word for every situation. She also saw If your Bible is falling apart, you aren’t, and Jesus says: Come and make your home with us. She gunned the car past the signs, their absurd hopefulness. Clutching the steering wheel, she moved through the cool, starry night.
She thought of the rabbi in front of the congregation, his nylon suit glimmering in the low light. She thought of the way he sat beside her in his office the first time, the breathless intimacy of that gesture, how he had stood with Forrest and prayed for that damned shed, how he had looked at her with his dark blue eyes and seen something worthy in her. The allegations had almost made her laugh in their smallness, and then she wanted to cry. Why were they attacking him? She thought of how she felt beside him, whole, how he sat beside her, how still he was when he seemed to listen.
She parked and went into the room where the board members were sitting quietly in the milky light. Somehow, official allegations against their spiritual leader put them all on their best behavior. Betty had brought a big box of Entenmann’s glazed donuts; everyone offered everyone else a donut first. No one grabbed a donut without a nod to his or her neighbor. Betty wore a crisp gray Armani suit and perfume that smelled of lavender. She gave Serena a big smile and squeezed her forearm.
“How are you, darling?” said Betty.
“Upset.” It was surprising that anyone could eat the donuts.
“We’re all upset,” said Betty, looking not at all upset.
“All right,” said Marty, “let’s get on with it.” He bowed his head. “Dear God. Let us serve as the stewards of your congregation, to lead in a way that is responsible and moral and carries out your wishes. Amen.”
“Amen,” they said.
The donut box was empty.
Tom called the meeting to order. “We have come to judge an individual in our Temple,” he said, his voice trembling. “In judging an individual,” he said, “you review good and bad points.” He paused. “Now, Rabbi Josh is a learned man,” he said. “He brings congregants to tears when they hear his sermons. He is a dedicated and hard worker. I am proud to call him my friend, and I find him to be an individual of visionary status. Last year he visited fifteen local elementary schools at Chanukah and performed three interfaith seders while his name was being smeared by certain members — ”
“I had dinner with him and Saul Schloman, and he talked to Saul the whole time and totally ignored me and my wife and the other dinner guests,” proclaimed Barry Weissman. “My wife was in tears.”
“We’ve lost twenty members I can count because of him,” said Betty.
“We’ve probably added thirty more,” said Norman.
“He yelled at Fran Schollman until she cried,” said Betty.
“She wanted to plant an organic garden along the right side of the Temple. He said no. Well, he didn’t say it — ”
“The sukkah generally goes there. He didn’t want to crowd the area,” said Tom.
“Point two,” said Betty, “he screamed at Jennifer Gordon when she entered his office without asking. He stood in front of his desk, leaned toward her, and screamed, “What do you think you’re doing, you moron?” Betty looked at them, her eyes bright. “Yes, he did use that word. He shouted, or, she said, screamed, ‘This is my territory! Did you ask before you came in here? Did you even think of using your hand to knock?’”
Serena swallowed. “He didn’t say it like that,” she said, hopefully. Most of the others looked up as though they all wished this.
“In fact, he did,” Betty said. “I have eighteen incidents recorded — ”
Could the rabbi have said these things to the congregants? Could there be some explanation? She could sense this yearning running through the others as well, the desire to explain him, to align themselves with one side of him or the other.
“Perhaps they’re a little hypersensitive,” said Tom.
“I agree wholeheartedly,” said Norman.
“Why are you calling old ladies hypersensitive?” asked Tiffany.
“Don’t blame the victim,” said Betty.
“Maybe he hates his mother,” said Norman. “We have a rabbi who hates his mother.”
They all laughed, with relief. Thanks to Norman, as always, they all laughed. Serena was grateful for him; it was as though it had just rained, and the air was clear — there was a sense of thrill in the air, at the freedom to speak about the rabbi’s flaws. The fact that this man — who paid his rent through his own alleged holiness — had committed various transgressions made their own mistakes seem petty. He had freed them from the indignities in themselves.
“I must interject,” said Betty, “one reason the rabbi was hired was because the other candidate was a fatso. This is in the words of the search committee. They liked Rabbi Golden because — his smile. His hair.”
“They wanted someone easy on the eyes on the bima,” said Tiffany.
“Ladies! Did you hear his sermon on the settlements on the West Bank? So smart, so subtle — ”
“Define screamed,” said Marty.
“Good point,” said Tom. “No one heard it — ”
The others looked nervous, unsure which group they could be sorted into — screamer or not-screamer. What had the rabbi done? What were any of them capable of? How far were any of them from any misbehavior? Wasn’t that one reason they had started coming here, to try to somehow lift themselves to a higher place?
“Has the rabbi yelled at you?” Serena asked Marty.
“No.”
“You?” she asked Tiffany.
“Well, no.”
“The word is attacked,” said Betty. “These are not small things. Here is a list. These are just the documented ones. “He screamed at Sandra Steinfeld, Gloria Price, Wanda Seymour, Maria Goldenman, Marsha Cohen, Lorrie Mankowitz. They are all women over sixty,” said Betty. “He bullied them to the point of weeping. Board members — ” Her voice became louder. “It ’s not just a little yell, it ’s — an attack. He makes little old ladies cry.”
There was a silence.
Serena felt like the discussion was going on in a distant place, and the voices were bent and distorted. Perhaps this was all made up, for some unknown reason; she did not want to believe the rabbi had acted this way. “What about,” Serena said, carefully, “asking if he needs help?”
“We did,” said Betty. “After several of these incidents, we suggested that he seek anger management therapy.”
“Is this covered by the Temple budget?” asked Marty, tapping his pencil.
“No, he’s paying,” said Betty. “But we don’t know if he’s going. We haven’t seen doctor’s notes.”
“Has he — hit anyone?” asked Marty.
“No,” said Betty, sitting up, “but why should we test that out?”
“We should dock his pay,” said Marty. “Money talks. A hundred bucks for each time he starts screaming at someone. Two hundred.”
A Town of Empty Rooms Page 13