“Tyler, you dog, you.”
The electric saw screeched, murderous, in the background.
“I just got Harper into the Optimist softball league. I love it,” Dan heard one father say. “He hit a home run last week. You’ve got to sign them up early. By seven. You have to get them entrenched. Before they realize they can get out of it. Because by eight they have their own ideas, and you look at the parents who have their kids in this stuff by four, and by eight it’s all over.”
Dan felt the skin of his arms harden, like armor.
“Hey, Scout, what do you think?” Dan said, holding out the penciled block for Zeb to approve.
His son looked at it. “I don’t know,” he said, and he darted off.
Dan surveyed the cars already lined up for display. They were a triumph of parental manual dexterity and painting skill. He looked around to see if he saw a single boy making his own car. The boys had mostly dispersed, and it was the fathers leaning, sweaty, intent, over the tiny cars. No one wanted his child to lose. Dan felt camaraderie with these men he barely knew — they were all part of this, the basic engine of the American family. It began with this car, and that would echo in the future on the soccer field, the baseball diamond, the awards assembly, the job interview. It was strange, but it was something to be part of; it was the brute force driving the room.
Forrest came up to him. “Looking good,” he said. He held up a car that was so flat it looked like a giant had stomped on it. “This is the car I made for my grandson this year. Dawson. He’s coming in from Benson County for the great event. It’s a beaut.”
Forrest handed the car to Dan. It was light, almost like a wafer. He wondered what kinetic theory Forrest wanted the car to embody.
“Nice,” he said.
“Isn’t it?” said Forrest.
“Very,” he said. He paused. “How ’s Evelyn?”
Forrest blinked. “Day by day,” he said. “She can walk around a little now. She can fix herself an egg. But she was supposed to help me out, and now Jeb Wilson said he can’t do timing — ”
Dan heard a thin plea in Forrest’s voice.
“I can help with timing,” Dan said.
Chapter Sixteen
THE NEXT DAY WAS A bright, hot December day. The hard sunlight in the kitchen, the summerlike climate, made the day seem as though it were occurring in an alternate hemisphere. It was both cheering and eerie. Dan woke up, put on his work suit, walked outside to get the paper, and came back inside sweating. The sudden change in weather made him irritable. The children put on their shorts and T-shirts again, baffled. It was not like a new beginning, just confusion at all the ways of the world.
Serena had half an hour before she was due to work at the Temple office. She went into her bedroom and made the bed. Dan had left a navy sweatshirt crumpled on the floor; she picked it up and suddenly breathed the tangy, cotton smell. It was an old shirt, one he had owned for years, and to hold the soft shirt felt like containing those years in her hands. She remembered an evening ten years ago, when they were first dating, walking along the West Side Highway, gazing at the enormous boxes of light that made up the buildings in the Financial District. The huge, blazing buildings seemed a perfect backdrop for their new feelings for each other, and it seemed somehow that their love, in its strangeness and newness, gave them a right to be here. They were full of opinions that all sounded correct, and they were talking about the idiocy of Pepsi’s most recent marketing campaign or what Hillary Clinton’s role in the White House should be or what was the best recipe for spaghetti sauce, and when Serena shivered, Dan set this sweatshirt around her shoulders. They were clasping hands, and he lifted her hand to his lips and very gently kissed it. Holding the shirt now, she imagined this gesture so fully she could almost feel it on the back of her hand.
She sat down on the bed, exhausted.
She turned on her laptop.
The email from Tom read:Subject: ATTENTION URGENT TEMPLE BUSINESS DISCUSS AND DECIDE
We will have a general meeting of all members of Temple
Shalom at 6:00 PM next Thursday evening to DISCUSS
AND DECIDE the allegations against our beloved leader. All
allegations will be discussed in an honorable fashion. Those
who have their gripes will have five minutes each to discuss
them. Then we will have a one-time, binding vote. We will
remain a strong and unified congregation!
Shalom,
Tom Silverman, President
Blessed to Serve
IT WAS DECEMBER 5 , THE evening of the Pinewood Derby. Dan came home early that day; he slipped quickly from his work clothes into his crisp beige uniform and stood with Zeb in front of the mirror. The two of them combed their hair.
“Ready?” Dan asked his son, who was gazing at his reflection as though just memorizing the particularities of his small face.
“For what?” asked Zeb.
The wooden derby car seemed oddly small and light to contain the weight of this particular dream. They all piled into their car for the big event. Dan moved briskly, strapping the timing equipment into the backseat. The children bubbled with excitement. Zeb held his car carefully in his lap. He touched the wheel with his finger, rolling it back and forth. Serena had never seen her son this hopeful; she wondered if Dan’s idea was, in some way, right. They traveled through the thin mauve dusk to the room where the tiny cars would roll down wooden tracks to cries of disappointment or triumph.
They arrived early so that Dan could set up the tracks and computers. He did not know what he would get if Zeb won, but just that he wanted his son to win. Or, more accurately, Dan wanted to win. The incident with the pennies had troubled him in a way that he didn’t want to reveal to Serena; the joke about the quarters had just come to him, he had said it, and everyone, thankfully, had laughed, but Serena didn’t know how he had seen her fear, felt it start to invade him, like a dark wave, and before he joined in on this madness, he made the joke. He was so grateful for the derby! It had presented itself, miraculously, that night, as a distraction, an opportunity. He wanted Zeb to have a memory to replace the other; he could remember this and forget about the pennies. Dan could not bear the idea of his son walking away from this event with nothing in his hands.
Dan had set up the sensors at the top of the track, linked them to the computer, flicked the on switch, and watched the cars zip down the track. Each track had to be set up the same way, to trigger the sensor to start the computer. Serena watched him crouching at the bottom of the tracks, scrutinizing the cars rushing down, trying to identify what made one faster than another. The room was heavy with the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg, and it had transformed into a paean to both spiritualism and materialism. A soundtrack floating out from the walls alternated between the sound of car engines revving up and a chorus singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and “Little Drummer Boy.” The racetracks finished at the bottom of a three-foot-tall papier-mâché statue of the holy infant in a manger, surrounded by smiling farm animals that had been slapped with brown paint by some scouts’ siblings who, said one mother, wanted “to contribute to the great event.” A halo made of tinfoil hovered above the baby, a plastic doll. Dan had not expected this display; he worried about a car flipping off the track and damaging the various participants in the scene.
“A car will not hit the holy infant,” said Forrest, adjusting the animals a bit.
“Are these figures going to affect the aerodynamics of the cars?” Dan asked.
Forrest regarded him with an exasperated expression. “Perhaps they’ll help the most virtuous scouts,” he said, and he darted off.
Forrest was escorting his grandson Dawson around the room. A man whom Serena assumed to be Dawson’s father — he had the same forehead and chin as Forrest — stood at the back. He had a long blond ponytail and was the sort of muscular man who was intently aware of his muscularity; he walked a little lightly, girlishly, holding out his ar
ms, which were covered with tattoos. The tattoos had a theme of breasts and weaponry, and some of the tattoos featured breasts wielding weapons. The other parents carefully left space around him. When a phone rang on Dawson’s father’s belt, he bolted from the room and did not return.
Dawson was a heavy boy whose flushed cheeks gave him the appearance of someone who was perpetually embarrassed. He had more badges on his uniform than Serena had ever seen on any scout. It seemed impossible to have earned all those badges at his young age. She wondered if Forrest had simply sewn them on in an act of tribute or as talismans against a troubled future. “This is Dawson Sanders from Burgaw,” Forrest said. “Most badges for a Cub in the county. Count his badges. Go ahead.” The boy did not seem to appreciate the grand introduction and slunk by Forrest, rubbing the car against his bottom lip as though he wanted to eat it.
Was this the answer? What did they all think they would get when they won? Serena wondered. She could see in Forrest’s face the same hope that was in Dan’s, and in her own, the desire to be lifted from the general sordid nature of their longing. What would they feel when they stood on the winner’s podium, clutching their trophies? She thought of her father standing over his train track scenes, right before he destroyed them, and the yearning in his face to create a landscape better than anyone he’d read about in Model Trains Monthly, anyone who’d written him a letter. “It’s not how I saw it,” he would say, his voice rising, as he began to crush the tiny trees. “It’s not what it was in my mind.” She thought of the way she sat before Earl Morton, waiting to hear what he thought about a speech she had written for him, watching him read it, as though to have her words chosen over the other speechwriters’ in the company would somehow finally make her visible. It was the way the scouts were now gathering around the table that displayed all the cars — to merely be born was to distrust the fact of your reality, but to win something was to finally understand who you were in the world.
The cars were set out on a display table for judging in the artistic categories: Most Colorful, Most Original, Best Paint Job. There were cars shaped like a hotdog, an iPod, a spaceship, a gun, a foot. There were various cars with a Christmas theme, Santas, reindeer, a bright gold cross; there was one that had been outfitted with blinking electric lights. Serena was alarmed by the elaborate level of design. Zeb grabbed Serena’s hand. He seemed to sense that some ante had just been upped.
“What do I do?” he asked.
“You race,” said Rachel.
“How?” He bit his lip.
“It goes by itself,” said Serena. She squeezed his hand and felt his slim bones. “It’ll be fine,” she said.
“But what do I do?” asked Zeb, pulling at his lip.
“Before we get our cars on the track,” said Forrest, “before we get into the spirit of friendly competition, let’s remind ourselves of the values of this holiday season. I invite you to come up and share some of the ways we celebrate Christmas!” Forrest swung, smiling, around the room. “I’ll start. My family comes together, four sisters, eighteen cousins, down here. We spend Christmas Eve in front of a big bonfire in our yard. Then we go to sleep and leave a snack out for Santa, and in the morning, it’s always gone. It took me years to believe my mother ate it.” Laughter.
There followed several jolly anecdotes in a similar vein. Dan was tapping his fingers, annoyed.
“Can we just get on with it,” he whispered to Serena.
“Now, Dan is going to tell us how the Jews celebrate Christmas!” said Forrest.
Dan looked up; he had not expected this.
Dan sat, frozen, for a moment, and then he jumped up and ran to the front of the room. He rubbed his hands together. The room was not particularly diverse, period. There were two black families, one Hispanic father and son, one scout who had been adopted from China, but everyone here had this in common: They were Christian. It was a situation that Serena’s father would have, in his odd way, loved. When he felt uncomfortable in any situation, he always took note of fire exits and the quickest ways to reach them. One of his favorite things to point out in a movie theater, an enclosed place that unnerved him, was how many steps it took to get to one particular exit and why it was superior to another. It had aggravated her as a child, though it was also strangely exciting, the idea that at any moment one should be prepared to hurl oneself through a fire exit.
“Go ahead,” said Forrest.
Dan clapped his hands together. “Our Christmas is called Chanukah,” Dan said, drawing out the ch, like a gargle, to comic effect. There was mild laughter; Zeb stood up on his knees and looked around to see why they were laughing, and then he did, too. “We have eight days. That’s eight days of presents, boys, not just one!” He shook a fist in the air, as though triumphant. “We play with a dreidel. We eat chocolate coins. We, uh, shake graggers. We light candles.” He smiled broadly. “Eight days of presents!”
“Well,” said Forrest, clapping his hands. There was applause. Dan bowed and walked to Serena. His forehead was damp.
“We don’t shake graggers,” Serena whispered to him.
He looked at her.
“That’s Purim,” she said.
“Gentlemen, let’s start our engines!” called Forrest, and there was wild cheering. The scouts and their families went to the race preparation table and began smearing tires with graphite. Dan went to stand beside the tracks. His job was to press the button to start the cars moving and the timer running.
“Let’s go, scouts!” called Forrest. “Can Will Tyler, Harper Pierce, and Amos Smith report to the tracks?”
There was applause. The boys trotted up and placed their cars on the tracks.
“Ready!” said Forrest. The boys stepped back from the tracks. Forrest shot off a muted starting gun, Dan pushed the button, and the cars were off.
The race took a matter of seconds. The wooden cars zoomed down the tracks, hit the bottom, bounced, and stopped. Numbers flashed on the screen: Track 1: 4.589, Track 2: 4.689, Track 3: 4.903.
“The winner of this race is Will Tyler!” Will Tyler jumped up and down and screamed.
The race continued like this, the little wooden cars speeding down the track, hitting the bottom, the winners and losers separated by milliseconds and for no apparent reason of engineering or skill. The scouts were each allowed three races, and their scores would be tallied, and the overall winners would be announced. The children and parents seemed to be caught up in a great wave, this simplification of their desire. It was its own form of holiness.
Then it was Zeb’s turn.
He felt his mother’s hand on his shoulder. He clutched the car in his hand and began to push through the crowd. There were so many people, and he just came up to their waistlines as he moved through the forest of brown pants and belts and butts and hairy arms. His father was calling his name. He tried to move in the direction of it, though he was not sure where he was going, and he was distracted by the sour smell of grownups and sweat, but somehow he was moving, and then he was stepping onto a stool and he was at Track 3, standing at the top of the sloping track, which looked endless. His father’s hand was on his shoulder, and he did not know what he was supposed to do, or how to do it, but he placed his black car on the track. People laughed at his car; he liked the color black and thought his car looked especially powerful painted that color. He glanced at the others, the elaborate designs on them. He was set up against a car that resembled a Christmas tree and one that, amazingly, resembled a donkey with a halo. He shivered; he felt a huge wave rise inside of him, a desire to conquer these cars, to conquer this audience, to see his name on the screen. He was a little dizzy. He looked for his mother, who was staring at him with a confusing expression on her face, and he saw her holding his sister. Zeb wanted to win. He sensed his father holding his hand over the levers, about to start, and an icicle of fear shot up in his chest. Zeb placed his hand on the car.
His father pushed the button, and the cars were off. Wrightson, Sanders, and
Shine. Track 1: 4.32 1, Track 2: 4.789, Track 3: 4.217.
The screen said, “Winner: Shine.”
A roar went up, and Dan grabbed his son and hugged him, a violent hug; Zeb felt as though he were being crushed. He had done something right, and joy blew through him.
Zeb ran back to Serena. She gripped him and felt the exuberance, the quivering in his torso. Rachel, too, was jumping up and down and gripping the car; they were both crazed by it, this triumph, and Serena was, too, this thrill, the prickle down her arms, the shouting inside herself that he won, that Rachel would be next, that next year she would win in the sibling division, that their lives would be all right, and that they would march forward, buoyed up by some skill or luck into a perfect, clear blue sky.
Then Zeb won again. And again.
Dan could not believe it each time he saw his child’s name on the board, glowing in green: Shine. It was beautiful, his name, the word, Shine, and there it was. Once, twice, three times. Had they inadvertently made a car that was a winner? Or was it all just luck? There was no way to know. He put his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder.
At the end, the scouts and their parents stood as Forrest announced the names of the overall winners: individual fastest, and then highest speed over three races. Fifth place. Fourth. Third. Second.
“The overall winner, by oh point eleven seconds ahead of second place, is!” said Forrest.
His forehead gleamed. He wiped it with the end of his neckerchief. He called Zeb’s name.
“You won!” yelled Dan, who scooped Zeb up and ran him to the front of the room where the boy, bewildered, was presented with a plastic golden trophy. There was applause, though some scouts in the audience were weeping.
“Next pack meeting in two weeks,” said Forrest. The crowd swarmed the refreshment table. Dan looked around at the other parents. They were, depending on their scores, either comforting their children or fondling the trophies they had received. A few parents stepped up to Dan and shook hands in a show of good sportsmanship. “You all are the Andretti family!” exclaimed one. He pretended to be modest. He (oh, right, Zeb) had won.
A Town of Empty Rooms Page 21