A Town of Empty Rooms

by Karen E. Bender

  “How are you?” she asked.

  He stopped. “Been better,” he said. “And how are you doing?”

  He was the only person who seemed to ever ask her this. She took a deep breath and released it. “My son had some trouble at school.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “A boy threw pennies at him and told him to pick them up.”

  “Oh, no,” he said, with his beautiful, intent voice; he seemed to fully inhabit her outrage, as though it were a coat he could put on. She invited him outside to pick up the mail. They pushed the doors open and walked into the bright sunshine.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I want to go and push the bully who did that. Really. Just go in there and rough him up.”

  He laughed. “The Torah has interesting things to say about this,” he said. “‘Turn from evil and pursue good, seek peace and pursue it.’ Psalm 34:15,” he said. “But. The Torah also believes in self-defense. God’s quest is in ‘the interest of the hunted.’ Ecclesiastes,” he said. “What does this mean? If you don’t help the victim, then you are supporting the aggressor.”

  It sounded as though he had been reading up on this topic in particular. He walked beside her with brisk, deft steps, his rayon jacket falling liquid around his body.

  “I think of him sitting in his class and I worry.” She stopped. He was walking more quickly into the alley beside the Temple, his eyes on something; she struggled to catch up.

  “Is that car parked in my spot?” he asked.

  He was staring at the small space marked “Rabbi Golden,” bordered by two gold lines. There was, indeed, a car parked in his space.

  “I think so, yes,” she said.

  “Whose car is that?” he asked. He walked up to it and looked at the license. “Florida.” His voice was anguished. “Who is it? Who?”

  “There’s an open spot here,” she said. There was a space next to it.

  “I have no car today!” he said. “My brakes went out. I’m okay, thanks for asking. It’s in the shop. I took the bus here. Have you ridden the public bus? It smells like a keg party. It’s full of DUIs. But look at this. Who would think it was okay to park in the rabbi’s spot? Do they not have eyes?” He stepped forward and suddenly kicked the tires of the car. He kicked them once, twice, three times; the tip of his tan shoe paled with dust. He stepped back and rubbed his foot. “What in god’s name are these tires made of — ”

  “Rabbi!” she said, stepping forward, alarmed. “I’m sure they didn’t mean to . . . ”

  His forehead was bright with sweat. He stopped, took a deep breath, and turned away from the parking spot.

  “I’m sure they’d move,” she said, “if you asked — ”

  “Ask? Why should I — Why should — I’m not asking anyone.” He stepped back, rubbed his face with his hand, and looked at her. His eyes resembled Zeb’s for a moment, the same softness around the eyelids.

  “I heard that you had quite a meeting,” he said.

  The meeting.

  “This is what I think,” said the rabbi, talking more quickly. He lifted his sunglasses out of his pocket and set them on his face so his eyes were invisible. “I think that some people perceive me to be angry. I can understand that.” He enunciated this last sentence slowly, as though he had been coached on it. “But I am not . . . a bully.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “I hear people. I tell them what I think.”

  He was biting his lip. She wanted this to be true, for it to be this simple. But she had to ask. “But is it sometimes true that some congregants have — ”

  “It depends on your perception,” he said. “Maybe they don’t like my sermons. Maybe I use too many big words,” he said, crossing his arms across his chest.

  “Maybe they’re a little intimidated,” she said. “You’re the rabbi — they look up to you.”

  He shrugged. “I think the people behind this are afraid of something else,” he said. “They’re afraid of victory! They’re Southerners. Suspicious.” He leaned toward her. “Can you believe some of them? You understand.”

  His voice became sweet, almost hushed. His face was so clean-shaven it looked raw.

  “What do I understand?” she asked. She wanted to understand.

  “I have done a lot,” he said. “Membership. Through the roof. Friday nights. People want to come! I did this. My first pulpit, mind you. The troops loved me. You should have seen them. We prayed together. I fortified them. They were battling evil. Those SCUDs in Israel. They knew the stakes. Push the army out of Kuwait. I made them strong. I told them they were Maccabees. They put down Halo to listen to me. None of the other chaplains had that effect.”

  “But — ” she said, softly, “what about Carmella? Or Mrs. Schwartz? They count, too.”

  He stepped back, lightly, and took off his sunglasses. His eyes looked bare, vulnerable as a baby’s in the sun. She felt a swooping pity for him.

  “Maybe — maybe you need to count to ten,” she said, and flinched; had she really said this to him? The rabbi?

  His eyelids flickered, then he assumed a pert, childish expression. “Well,” she said, “at least I don’t stamp my feet.”

  THAT NIGHT, AROUND MIDNIGHT, THERE was the turning wail of a siren. It was distant, and then it was approaching, and then there was a click and whoosh and it was parked at Forrest Sanders’s door. The street was glowing red. The EMTs hauled in a stretcher.

  She waited for ten, fifteen minutes until she saw Evelyn brought out on the stretcher. Forrest was not the emergency; it was as though Serena’s murderous thoughts had missed Forrest and hit his wife. Forrest walked beside the stretcher, his hand gripping one side as though trying to hold it up. He climbed into the ambulance, and it flew into the night.

  DAN HEARD THE NEWS FROM a neighbor across the street: Evelyn had had a heart attack; she spent two nights in the hospital, and then she was home.

  He wanted to bring them something. A pie. That ’s what people did here, brought over pies after disastrous events. He headed to Food Lion, intent on this most blameless of actions: purchasing a pie for the infirm. He stood in front of the prebaked pies — apple, cherry, blueberry — and then chose the most expensive: pecan. That evening, he stood in the cool, blue air at Forrest’s front door, his fingers gripping the silver tin. He knocked. Forrest opened the door, slowly.

  “Forrest, brought you something,” said Dan. “All of us hope Evelyn is feeling better.”

  Dan was startled by Forrest’s eyes, which looked as though they had faded the last few days, as if he had gazed intently at something too hot and bright. Forrest regarded the pie.

  “She can’t eat that,” Forrest said.

  “Oh,” said Dan, feeling foolish.

  “But I can,” said Forrest, taking it from him. “Thank you.”

  Dan heard a cough from inside the house.

  “You want to come in?” Forrest asked.

  He had never been inside of Forrest’s house. It held a shadowy, plastic odor; the rooms were small and dim, the wallpaper brown and covered in pink roses. There was the brisk and artificially sweet odor of strawberry room freshener. The room appeared smaller from the extensive collections of knickknacks: There were porcelain figurines of Jesus as a baby, child, adult, Mary looking beatific; these were set against dozens of metal Civil War soldiers in various postures of combat. The different worldviews in the objects lent the room the sense of an unfinished argument. Forrest switched on a light that cast a yellow glow. Dan saw Evelyn sitting in the corner, perfectly still; for a moment, he almost thought she was a lamp. Her white hair was uncombed and had the stiff consistency of seaweed, and, abruptly, she looked at them, her face blank. Dan walked over to her.

  “Evelyn. How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Evelyn.

  “She was healthy as a horse, and now this,” said Forrest. “I came home and found her on the floor — I thought she was just tired as
usual — ”

  “I worked a double,” said Evelyn.

  “But she was sweating and then she fainted and I called 9-1-1 — ”

  “You’re looking good, ah, young lady,” said Dan to Evelyn. Evelyn did not respond to this. Forrest stood, holding the pie. He did not appear to want to offer any to Dan. Dan felt an urge to keep talking.

  “Let me know how I can help,” said Dan. “You know, I can take over the Pinewood Derby . . . if you want — ”

  Forrest reddened. He put down the pie and stared at Dan. “You’re not taking over the derby,” he said.

  “I mean I can help out,” said Dan.

  “You think I need help?” asked Forrest.

  “No,” said Dan, alarmed. “Certainly not.”

  Forrest crossed his arms. “I’ve run those derbies for almost seventy years. I’m the only one in that room who knows how to run it.”

  Dan nodded, a little violently. “You sure are,” he said. Evelyn coughed. Dan nodded toward Evelyn and Forrest. “Let us know if you need anything.” His face ached from smiling. He pushed open the vinyl screen door and walked outside.

  THE NEXT DAY, WHEN SERENA saw Forrest, he stood, holding the garden hose, watering his impatiens. “Forrest,” she called — to ask about Evelyn, perhaps, though she still resented him. He glanced at her and then away. What he was doing was examining the side of her house. She followed his gaze to see if she could figure out what he was seeing — a crack, or mold — but there was only a house. His face looked blanched. There was a draining of light beneath his pink skin. She thought she saw something flicker in his expression: a calculation.

  BETTY CALLED SERENA AND ASKED her to meet her at the Waring Country Club for lunch. “We need to discuss the whole — situation, face-to-face,” said Betty. “I’ll treat you. The food’s good.” The club had been established in 1882, and, like other edifices of the era, it was constructed with white marble, columns, and an elaborate system of fountains in front. The entrance featured the requisite stone sculpture romanticizing the Civil War — the Confederate War soldier crouching beside a bush with a gun, a child bugle player nobly saluting the air, the inscription To all the brave who gave their lives. It was as though the war had not been fought over one human’s right to enslave another but over the right to engage in leisure activities, whether golf or tennis or swimming. Once you walked in, maroon-shirted employees, all pert and attentive, were on hand to guide you to whatever sports experience you wanted to take part in, with a pro shop to the left and a café to the right. There was a sense of quiet there, the windows overlooking the artificially peaceful green landscape of the golf course. Members floated in and out, sunburned pink men in golf caps chuckling, young mothers herding children in bathing suits to the swimming pool. No one shouted. Piano music was piped in. She waited for Betty to arrive.

  Betty walked in, her face blooming in a large smile. “Hi, sweetie,” said Betty, hugging her. Her silver hairdo had the frothy consistency of meringue. “So very glad to see you.”

  They were seated at a round table with a perfect view of the sixteenth hole. Betty was apparently a regular.

  “How long have you belonged here?” asked Serena.

  “Not long,” said Betty. “A couple years. They didn’t admit Jews till the 1970s,” she said. “Then they had a Jewish mayor, Fred Goldstein, cousin of Sharon, you know her? First one. Jews weren’t allowed to hold public office until 1868, did you know that? They couldn’t exclude the mayor. She was the first. Until then, you had to have family roots here to become a member. Unless one was, of course, asked.” She had brown arms splotched with pink stars, which advertised her affinity for outdoor leisure activities; it was the mark of money. “ The ceilings were cracked. I helped smash them open. As a Jew and as a woman asked to join on her own.”

  Her expression sharpened.

  “I’ve always been a trailblazer,” said Betty. “I was the only Jewish girl in my high school. If girls were after a boy who liked me, they’d say, ‘Do you know what she is? She’s a Jew.’ I was thin then. Pretty. It happened often. Some boys I lost, some I didn’t. I was the valedictorian, sweetheart. The head cheerleader. I won it all. I was the first girl at Temple Shalom to get a Bat Mitzvah. I was the first Jewish girl allowed entrance into Tri Delt at UNC, 1972. That doesn’t include what I’ve dealt with as a woman. I was in the workforce before any of the feminist stuff. Do you know that when I got out of college, the newspaper had two separate columns for jobs, one for men and one for women?” She took a long sip of water, closing her eyes.

  Serena’s mother had told her the same thing. That fact had fed into her mother’s fears and had the effect of making her withdraw from the workforce. She could not stand up to the idea that others might not take her seriously, but she fiercely wanted her daughters to succeed.

  “No one tells me what to do,” Betty said. She sat up very straight. “Woman to woman — that has helped me create my business. One point two million in sales last year. I did that! Can you believe it, Serena?”

  “That’s great.” She admired this; how had Betty known how to do this? How did some people shuck off the slights the world threw them and rise to success? Was it something they knew innately, or was it just luck? How had her father had the foresight, as a small child, to know that the storm gathering in 1930s Germany would not disappear? How had he convinced his parents to leave when they did? And how had her mother been, as a child, overwhelmed by the playground in Fresno? Her own parents had admired people like Betty and not known how to emulate them.

  She looked at the careful way Betty spread her roll with butter; Betty set her knife on her butter plate gently, the way Serena’s mother did. How long had it been since she had spoken to Sophie, her mother? It had been months, since the funeral, since she had had a real conversation with Sophie or Dawn, and she missed them. Sometimes, when she picked up the phone, she heard only a breath on the line — then the other party hung up. Who was there? Was it her mother? Her sister? The rabbi? In some alternate world, her father?

  “Tell me something,” said Betty. “Do you think you are worth the best, Serena?”

  “Sure,” she said, playing along.

  “I sound like the L’Oreal commercial. But it is true. We women especially need to remember this. Have you ever felt that you are putting up with something bad just because you feel you don’t have an alternative?”

  Serena glanced out at the golf course, the unreal, velvet surface of the greens. “Sure.”

  “We have to expect more. Of the world. Of others. And of ourselves.”

  They had each ordered salads, and the lettuce was pale and lacy, with edible purple flowers ringing the plates. Betty took a deep breath and set down her fork.

  “I wanted to meet with you today,” she said, “because we can expect more of our spiritual leader. I have had countless discussions with that man about his behavior. I have tried, I tell you. He’s supposed to be helping us!”

  She had ordered a complex and decorative salad and began to eat it methodically — all the olives encircling the plate, then the slices of cucumber.

  “I like him,” said Serena, before she could stop herself.

  Betty looked up. “Why?”

  She tried to make her voice even, reasonable. “He’s helped me a lot.” “How has he helped you?” asked Betty.

  “With a neighbor we’re having trouble with. He somehow solved it! He’s . . . never said anything hurtful to me.”

  “And why not to you?”

  Serena looked at the table. “I don’t know.”

  Betty slid back her chair as though she wanted to move far away from this statement. “Because it hasn’t happened to you,” said Betty, “doesn’t mean it can’t happen to someone else.” She paused. “I didn’t think my husband would cheat on me. On me?” She laughed, a short, cheerless sound.

  “I am sorry,” Serena said.

  “Don’t be. I survived it,” said Betty. She sat very straight and flapp
ed her napkin out on her lap with the rustle of a little sail.

  “Look,” said Serena. “Some people think he has also — done a lot of good. What are we going to do without a rabbi? Who’s going to lead services? Aren’t we going to lose members?”

  “Don’t you know, hon,” said Betty, clasping her hands, eyes bright, “our Temple is chock full of wonderful people who will come together.”

  “Who?”

  “Look at the talent in our Temple,” said Betty. “Arnold Rosenbaum can tutor in Hebrew. Genevieve Shapman is a published poet. She can write sermons. The Ritual Practices Committee is ready to go. We are important, Serena. We count. Maybe we won’t even need a rabbi! We can save money! Do you know how much we contribute to his pension alone? A man who has bullied numerous old ladies when they have sought spiritual counsel from him?” Betty leaned forward. “In this situation, I believe we have to protect the weak. What did Rabbi Hillel say? If not me, who? If not now, when?”

  Serena leaned forward. “Where is he going to go? Have you thought of that? What will he do without us?”

  Betty put down her fork. “Who cares?” she said. “What is going to happen to us if we keep him? Next time he makes someone cry, it’s blood on our hands.”

  The waiters glided across the room so graceful and precise they seemed like actors. There was the soft clink of silverware. Betty pulled out a list. “I want you to look at this,” she said. “People who have filed complaints. Call them.”

  She handed the list to Serena. They sat in the silence, the members lumbering across the golf course, the false grass shimmering in the sun.

  SERENA OPENED HER FRONT DOOR to Forrest Sanders two days later. There was a militaristic air to his stance, as though he were leading a large, invisible army behind him, in service of some great cause she did not know. When he saw her, she could tell that she had loomed large in his imagination as well, that the fact of her own human presence was troubling; his face turned pink.

  “Hello!” he said, a little too brightly. “I’m dropping off a flyer.”