The white flaps of his suit fell loosely from his arms; the inside lining was silver satin and gleamed like mirrors in the light. He leaned into the microphone.
“Some — ” he slowed down and pointed at the group sitting before him. “Some of you are more difficult than others. Some of you want to take over.” He clapped a hand on the podium; the sound of the slap rang through the room. “You have a list of your grievances?” He said the word slowly, in a sneer. “So do I. Carmella, oh, Carmella. Come on. How dare you think you know how to run a service — ”
He began pacing back and forth on the flat carpet of the bima, ranting about the congregants. “Rosalie Goldenhauer. You’re an idiot. It’s true. Oh, you may claim I slammed a door. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.” The rabbi was suddenly like a lion in a cage, walking back and forth, his voice becoming more rapid; it was clear that he could not stop. He had kept a list in his head of how he had been wronged, how they had disappointed him, his congregants: Lillian. Loretta. “No one,” he shouted, “should step foot into my office unless I invite them. No one can barge in, no one! Those who do are fools!”
The congregation sat, frightened, rapt. No one moved. It was strangely mesmerizing, this vision of him storming back and forth, demeaning the congregants. It was, truthfully, sad but compelling hearing him call the congregants idiots. More than one. Other names. Witches. Morons. Idiots. He hated some of them. It seemed an impossible fact, that he could hate them! But it was true. Serena watched the rabbi, in his suit, his yarmulke, dressed to lead them, at his lectern, his face drawn into a snarl. “Enough! Fools!” he yelled. He stepped back, pushed the lectern so hard it fell over and broke. It cracked in two, not a small feat. One side of it toppled, and the microphone squealed, and the wooden side fell onto the floor of the bima with a loud, terrible thunk. There were a couple cries from the audience; he stood, now himself, before them, looking at it.
Seymour leaned over and picked up the side of the lectern and propped it against a wall.
He had broken Temple property. What would he do next? They all sat, frightened. Serena’s arms felt heavy, as though a final hope that he might reveal a sorrowful part of himself, that he could see them at all, was fading. Finally, he stopped. His face grew pink, and he picked up the microphone. “Shalom and good night,” he said. The rabbi sank down on a chair on the bima. He closed his eyes.
Seymour Carmel carefully lifted the half of the lectern that was in the center of the bima. The brashness with which he had started the meeting had been replaced with a pale, solemn visage; he looked like a husk. Gripping the damaged lectern with one hand, he brought the gavel down on it.
“The proceedings are closed,” he said.
LONELINESS, STIFLING AS THE HEAT, settled on the room. It was unbearable. The doors of the sanctuary were opened, and the congregants filed out into the cool night. They squinted into the bright lights, bewildered — they were bound now in a way they had not been, in a shared shame that they had let the rabbi display himself like this, that they had not known what to do.
Everyone spilled onto the street. No one could stop talking. The streetlights outside the synagogue cast a strange orange glow over everyone’s faces. People gathered in excited knots. The synagogue divided into varied streams — those who indentified with the women who had been insulted by Rabbi Golden, who felt they had never stood up to those who had put them down, and those who felt they had, like Rabbi Golden, been unfairly accused. There was the plain fact that they had all probably acted like Rabbi Golden, or worse, at one moment or another, that this was now an opportunity to air those moments, brashly, almost to brag about them, or to murmur them quietly, with shame. “What’s the big deal that he slammed a door?” said Melvin Kingfeld. “Just last night I got so mad at my wife I threw a wineglass on the floor. Not at her. Not really. It did land on her foot. Thank god it was plastic. It bounced.” Laughter, some uneasy. He said, “Those who live in glass houses . . . ”
And Mildred Weinstein admitted, “We stop talking to each other. Hal and I. When we get mad. Nothing. Silence. Once it lasted twenty-six days — I slapped my son when he talked back to me. I couldn’t help it, I did.” They all had ways in which they had been harmed — by their husbands, wives, children, siblings, and on and on — they all had ways in which they had fought back or shut up. How could they solve it? What was the right way to be? They stood in the dingy orange streetlight, and they were, Serena thought, all aware of the timbre of their voices, for there was the sense that others were listening.
The rabbi was standing apart from the crowd. His face was damp and gray, and his head tipped back as he downed a Coke. He looked all at once youthful, revved up, and older; he was surrounded by eight or nine fierce supporters. “They don’t know you,” said one, wiping a tear from a cheek, “that podium was about to break, anyway.”
“They knew how to listen in the barracks,” the rabbi said. “They all did. None of this. Let me tell you.”
They leaned in. They still wanted to be close, the inner circle, no matter what he did, drawn to the invisible glow they wanted to see around him.
The rabbi saw her. Serena watched his eyes absorb her, flicker, and then look away.
Serena walked along the sidewalk to her car. The sky was dark, the heavy silver clouds pressing down on the city. She was alone. The air touched her arms. She heard her breath rise in her throat and fall again. There was, in her head, now only silence.
Chapter Twenty
WHEN SERENA GOT HOME, IT was ten o’clock; everyone was asleep. She sat down to check her email. Already, there were responses to the meeting.
There were numerous exclamations of approval. Get rid of them all, wrote George Rushman; Why are a new member and a Christian, who were sitting together, trying to destroy our Temple? wrote Joshua Pierce. There were members announcing their resignation: Mrs. Donna Wetzman, member in good standing for fourteen years, will not pay a single penny more in dues to this so-called religious institution. Shame on all of you for desecrating the bima! There were also cries of shock at the rabbi’s behavior. To degrade congregants on the bima is not rabbinical, said Darlene Goldhammer; it is unacceptable to call any member an idiot. Or a witch. We must all be treated with respect. The emails flew in even as she read them. There were wistful calls for order: Is anyone organizing the Chanukah party? Will there be one?
THE PHONE RANG. SHE PICKED it up.
“Tell me I’m not bad,” whispered Dawn.
“Why?”
“Wait.” There was the sound of footsteps. “I have to tell you something,” Dawn whispered. “I can’t tell anyone else. I broke it off. With, you know. Mo.”
“Okay. Well. Congratulations.” Serena did not feel like cheering.
“You were right.”
The phone was cold against her cheek. “How?”
“It wasn’t the money.”
“So, what happened?”
“He came in one day, and I was waiting for him. He sat down on the bed. He said, ‘Dawn, I need to tell you something.’ His hands were shaking. He said he was busted. I sat up and said, ‘Honey, for what?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Don’t laugh.’ I said I wouldn’t. What could it be? He said he went to a club the night before and the club discovered he had a fake ID.”
“My god,” said Serena, now alert, “what is he? A terrorist?”
“It was to buy beer,” said Dawn. She paused. “He’s twenty.”
Serena almost dropped the phone. “What?”
“He’s twenty. He’s a kid. He said he loved me, but he had been working behind the counter at Bloomingdale’s. Scarves. He had dropped out of Cal State Northridge — ”
“Twenty?” said Serena. “Dawn . . . couldn’t you tell?”
“He was very mature. Not like your average twenty-year-old. He didn’t kiss like your average twenty-year-old, believe me, and, well, he dressed like he was thirty and he wore sunglasses a lot — ”
“How old did he think you were?”<
br />
“I don’t know, thirty, maybe, twenty-nine.” Dawn laughed. “Anyway, he started crying. He was a kid. He was afraid he was going to lose his job selling scarves if they found out about the ID . . . and then would it be on his permanent record . . . ”
“He was using you,” said Serena, softly.
“I lost all interest when he said the words permanent record. He probably was using me,” said Dawn. “But I sat there looking at his hands shaking, and I thought, You know what? I was using him.”
Serena blinked; her sister rarely sounded this clearheaded to her.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I thought I loved him. But really I loved the way he loved me.”
Serena was quiet, absorbing this.
“And he was twenty. All I wanted to do was find him a job. Or a scholarship or something.” She paused. “I felt like an idiot.”
“I don’t think you’re an idiot,” said Serena, suddenly wanting to know something. “How did you, uh, do this? How did you decide?”
“I have no idea. Now I was thinking more about if he had enough money to buy books for next semester. Those kinds of thoughts. I wondered if Jake would be able to see it, I don’t know what, this craziness — but he hadn’t guessed anything about anything.”
Serena’s breath slowed; she waited.
“So, Jake came home, and we had a nice night, all of us, one of those nights when we all actually ate the same dish at dinner, a macaroni thing, and then they were asleep and Jake and I were in bed, reading, and he turned to me and said, ‘I know.’ I said, ‘You know what?’ and he said, ‘I know where to go for summer vacation.’ I said, ‘Where?’ He said, ‘Cuba.’”
“What did that mean?” Serena asked.
“Right. I asked him, ‘Why Cuba?’ And he said, ‘I saw a map you had left in the bathroom. Maybe we should go visit there. Take the kids.’ He was serious. He was just interested in Cuba.”
“Well, that could be nice,” Serena said.
“But actually — it was the most wonderful thing he’d ever said. The strangest, really. I had no idea what was going on in that head of his. And he didn’t know what was going on in mine. Thank god. But maybe there was something similar in the way we thought. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think so,” said Serena.
“I started crying, and he didn’t know why I was crying, and I wasn’t even crying for Mo or what I did but just thought that we are all just disappearing, that we would all, to be honest, pretty soon be dead.” She stopped. “I just wanted to fall into something, Serena . . . do you ever feel that?”
There was no way to protect anyone, thought Serena. She thought of her sister sitting a continent away in her house in California, holding onto the phone in the dark.
“I think so,” Serena said, cautiously. “Dawn, tell me — how is Mom?”
“She’s good,” said Dawn, her tone brightening. “Guess what she did? She started taking classes at the community college. She did! She said, ‘I don’t care if I fail a test. I will just take it.’ She’s taking beginning psychology. She talks about her professors, using their first names.”
Serena absorbed this picture, her mother unafraid. Her mother sitting in the professor’s office hours was a splendid turn of the imagination, but it was real, not a trick — Sophie had found in herself something new.
“What happened?” she asked, softly.
“Those widows. They love her. They think she knows what to do. I think she likes them thinking that. She loves telling me what she tells them.”
Serena pictured her mother sitting, hands clasped, with her peer client. She loved this vision of her mother, the unexpected quality of it. “I’m glad,” said Serena.
“Serena. I want to ask you something else.” Her sister’s voice was soft now, almost pleading; Serena bent closer to the phone. “I was thinking about something . . . ”
“Go ahead.”
“My leg. Why was Dad always so embarrassed about it?”
Serena gripped the phone; something pressed against her throat.
“He wasn’t embarrassed,” said Serena. “I think he was ashamed.”
“Why?”
“He tried,” said Serena, softly. “He wanted to do everything to help you and he couldn’t.”
Her sister began to weep. “Dawn, please,” she said, frightened. She had rarely heard her sister weeping. It was an awful sound; it was as though her family had been organized to prevent that sound from happening, and Dawn, in some silent barter, had agreed not to cry if they would indulge her in anyway she asked. Serena tried to remember that morning when her father had tried to drive through the thick traffic, how he had paced, trembling, in the waiting room, how he could not bear being this . . . human.
“He tried,” said Serena. “But he couldn’t do everything.”
Dawn’s voice sounded exhausted but clear, somehow. It was a strange sound, that clarity, and it felt like an offering.
“I wish he hadn’t been embarrassed of me,” said Dawn.
Serena stood, holding the phone, listening to her sister. The colors in the kitchen seemed to brighten, as though the room had filled with sun.
“Dawn,” said Serena, “he wasn’t. He was proud of you. It was him. It wasn’t you.” She wanted to reach out and touch her sister’s hand. Her breath shuddered in her throat. “I love you.”
“You don’t have to say that,” said Dawn.
“I want to,” said Serena.
“Well, I love you, too,” her sister said, and they both held onto the phone for a minute, two, before they said goodbye.
THE FOLLOWING EVENING, THE BOARD held an emergency meeting to vote whether to dismiss the rabbi. The board arranged themselves around the long foldout tables, the fluorescent lights flickering. Their faces looked like hard candy in the light. They had — most of them — been condemned by the congregation, and that made them feel both grateful to see each other and somewhat uneasy. No one had brought snacks, and everyone looked hungry. Tom sat, determinedly stirring a Styrofoam cup of tea.
Her ankle wrapped, maneuvering with crutches, Betty took her seat at the table.
“Dear God,” said Betty. She closed her eyes and could not speak for a moment. “We find ourselves at a crossroads. Our community is divided. Our leader is in crisis. Give us, one and all, the fortitude and wisdom to make the best decision to lead our congregation into the twenty-first century. Amen.”
There was something in Betty ’s voice that held them.
“Good job,” said Marty. “Thank you.”
“We all know what business we have to discuss,” said Tom, wearily, “so let’s get to it.”
“How, may I ask, are we going to function without a rabbi?” asked Norman. “Are we all going to drift apart?”
“For me, it depends on whether he could change or not,” said Marty. “He said he likes to push back.”
“I don’t see that changing,” said Tiffany. “He didn’t say he would.”
“Has anyone heard him say anything ever about changing?” asked Tom. “One thing? Anyone?”
There was a disquieting silence.
Norman sighed deeply. “It’s not Jewish to fire him,” he said. “It’s not . . . forgiving.”
“I would like to read a quote,” said Betty, holding out a sheet of paper. “If we are going to go on about what is Jewish. From Maimonides.” She cleared her throat. “What is complete teshuvah, repentance? A person who confronts the same situation in which he has sinned when he has the potential to commit the sin, yet he abstains and does not commit it.” She put down the paper. “He has to abstain because of his teshuvah alone and not because of fear or lack of strength.”
There was quiet.
“He needs to understand what he is doing,” said Betty. “After bullying our congregants, he maligned them on the bima. And he broke the lectern. Enough said.”
Everyone refilled their cups of tea. The table was littered with empty sugar an
d Splenda packets. Serena wondered what the rabbi would think if he could see them, engaged in vigorous debate about him, all of them, in some way, in love with him; perhaps that had been the main point, ultimately, that they were spending all their time not on each other, not exactly on the congregation, but fully, devotedly, on him.
“I will personally allow him to live in my house,” said Norman. “He can have a congregation. Starting with me.”
Serena was grateful to Norman for this offer.
“Will he even want that?” asked Tom, sounding like he wished he had thought of that.
“I don’t care if he wants it. I do,” said Norman.
“So, who is going to make the motion?” said Tom.
The room was still. No one looked at one another.
“Is someone going to make the motion?” said Tom, raising his eyebrows.
There was the promise of action, and there was the actuality of it; there was the cold certainty of grief.
But then, slowly, across the room, a hand lifted.
Tiffany’s.
Her hand was trembling. Tiffany decided to do it. She could see that the others couldn’t. They could not remove the rabbi, despite the fact that she saw him as a volatile man and not the leader they needed. She had not grown up Jewish; she could see that this made her freer in this than the others. This gesture would be her gift to them.
A Town of Empty Rooms Page 27