A Town of Empty Rooms

by Karen E. Bender

  A vein rose slightly in his forehead. His hands gripped the gun firmly but also with a kind of tenderness, as though he was yearning for it to tell him what he needed to know. She backed up, one step, two. His blue eyes searched the yard. He opened his mouth and closed it — he did not seem aware that Serena was even there — the gun was pointed toward the sky, pressed against his shoulder, as though this was what he craved finally, this particular posture of authority; he pressed the gun to his body as though it were a baby.

  “I did not,” he said. She watched him holding the gun, watched for any movement. He backed up. He wanted something, she could see that in his face, wanted to say the one thing that would clarify all of this, that would help him comprehend the disorder in the world. His gaze was both hazy and focused. He backed up more, and then he turned and tripped, his gait tilted as though he were running down a hill. He veered toward his house. “Stop,” he said to the air, a chant, husky, almost a sob. He headed toward his house, one leg limp; he grabbed the railing of the two steps that led into the back of his house, dragged himself one, two steps, into his house, and she understood then that Forrest, in all his rage and bewilderment, could not bear to be viewed as anything but good.

  THERE WAS A SLAMMED DOOR, the brisk flapping of a hundred wings, Evelyn’s hoarse scream, the long, sorrowful drone of ambulance sirens, the dogs trotting, their barks piercing the air, the metallic rattle of the stretcher, the flat, bored descriptions of the paramedics into their walkie-talkies, the wind-rush of traffic two blocks away, the faint buzz of a plane against the sky, the low rustle of the wind, the voice of Celine Dion erupting from a passing car radio, a stray cat crying across the street, the wheeze of Dan’s car scraping up against the curb, the shuffle of the mailman putting mail in their box, the bump of kids’ bikes on the sidewalk, the doors opening and closing as the neighbors gathered, the screech of an owl gliding over the yard, the branches bending from the weight of the birds, the dogs barking, still barking, padding around the yard after the ambulance left, the innocence of the birds chirping after, their sounds filling the air.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THERE WAS NO SOUND FROM Forrest’s house for a couple days. The newspapers were strewn, uncollected, on the front lawn. The wooden sign in front toppled over. It lay like a thin raft on top of the rows of pink and white impatiens. Serena and Dan sat on their front porch, waiting. Other neighbors wandered the street, also wondering what had happened. There was June Trayvor, in her sixties, another determined gardener; there was Pete Johnson, who took his pickup truck out to work before the sun rose and didn’t return until it had set.

  They were all quiet, wondering in the way people do when there has been a sad event, a rupture in the neighborhood. But they did not know what to say about Forrest.

  “I remember,” said Pete, “when he called the police on me for renting out a room when I wasn’t zoned for it and I needed the money. ”

  “He trapped my cat in a cage in his yard and took him to the animal shelter without telling me,” said June, her eyes damp. “I barely got to him before they were going to put him to sleep.”

  They wanted to hear again about what happened — what Forrest had said to Serena about his gun. They wanted to piece something unknowable together. They were still compelled to describe the myriad ways in which Forrest had hurt them — they were not forgetting that — but their voices were, in his absence, full of wondering.

  THEN THERE WAS A STREAM of people gazing out at the world with Forrest’s perpetually suspicious or jovial expression stamped onto their faces. She had not seen most of them before; they drove up in pickup trucks the size of fishing boats perched on three-foot-tall wheels. They alighted from these massive vehicles, a couple women in their forties, a gaggle of children, the twenty-year-olds clutching their babies, a couple ragged-bearded men. There were Confederate flags on all of their license plate frames.

  His family.

  Forrest had died.

  She saw the obituary for Forrest Sanders in the Waring News: Forrest Sanders, father, beloved husband, leader Boy Scout Troop 287, has returned to Jesus’ arms. Born in Sanderson, North Carolina, he leaves behind his wife, Evelyn, of Waring, daughters Evie-May Bryce of New Makon and Wanda Lee of Autumn Creek, sons Jimmy and Bobby of South Stanford, South Carolina, son Micah of Wallace, North Carolina, son Johnny of Miami, twenty-two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, six sisters, one brother, sixty-two cousins, and the many people he touched with a twinkle in his eye and a smile for all his years. May he rest in peace.

  THE NEXT DAY, FORREST’S LARGE family streamed in and out of the house. Evelyn did not come outside. The relatives clutched casseroles and bouquets of flowers and walked inside, travelling through their own dominion of grief. June and Pete stopped by Serena and Dan’s house and stood, somber, with them. The neighbors wanted to talk about Forrest, the way the living always want to talk about the dead, to find a way to circle and control that monstrousness.

  “What happened?” asked Dan. It was all he wanted to ask. Everything had gone by so quickly, without stopping — his mind felt thick, cottony, and he stood shivering a little in the clear, cold sun.

  The air felt sharp, cold on Serena’s arms, the way the whole world felt after a death — its weight on her skin both too potent and ephemeral.

  “The Lord wanted him,” said June Trayvor. She sounded a little skeptical. “It was his time.”

  Serena shifted; this didn’t explain what she wanted to know.

  “But why now?” asked Dan. “Why would the Lord want him now?”

  That came out a little wrong; he blushed, but the others did not correct him.

  “I just wonder,” said June. “Can someone tell me? Why did he do what he did?”

  They looked across the fence at Forrest’s family. Then Forrest’s grandson, Dawson, wearing his Scout uniform, shot out the door, his face red with tears. “I wanted his sword. He said I could have it!” he said to his large, tattooed father, who walked slowly, his shoulders wilted.

  Serena watched the boy, the way he clutched his father’s hand as though trying to anchor him to the earth; his father placed him in his pickup truck, and they drove away. Sadness rushed through her — she thought of the way Forrest had staggered away from the fence, the sense that he wanted to find something to say, something that expressed a big impossible feeling within himself. What was it? What had he really been thinking? Why couldn’t there be a way to see into the thoughts of other people — would that change anything in the way they thought about each other? Or were they all trapped in the peculiar costumes of themselves? The neighbors and mourners gathered on the sidewalk and nodded at each other, all of them standing in the lengthening gray shadows of the trees.

  A FEW DAYS AFTER FORREST ’S death, after his family had left and the dogs trotted, bewildered, up and down the empty yard, Serena saw Evelyn come out of the house. Evelyn walked slowly, clutching a cardboard box of pansies and a shovel. Serena had never looked closely at Evelyn; the woman had been a shadow, Forrest taking all the heat and sound out of the house so that everything faded behind him. For the first time, Serena studied her — the woman’s face held the drawn, stunned expression of someone who had just lost another. Serena stood for a few minutes and then went to the fence.

  “Evelyn,” said Serena, and the woman looked up. Serena did not know what to say to her. Evelyn was just a worn, elderly woman, just anyone, looking, with a measured expression, at her. “I just wanted to ask — ” She paused. “How are you doing?”

  Evelyn wiped her hands on her sides. “I’m all right as I can be,” she said.

  Did she know that Forrest had set the dogs upon Serena and the children? Did she know that Forrest had asked them to leave the Scouts? Did she know that he had picked up a gun during their final argument, to what end neither of them would ever know? Evelyn just stood there, arms loose, her palms gray with dirt.

  “I don’t know what he was doing in that shed,” said
Evelyn. “I told him. You’re too old for those saws. He didn’t listen. He never did.”

  Serena gripped the fence. “Oh,” she said.

  “He was running around so much after I was in the hospital. I kept telling him, Forrest, please. Put your legs up. Rest. I kept telling him. That heart attack. It was me.”

  Serena stared at her. “No,” she said, “it wasn’t you — ”

  Evelyn stared at her with pale blue eyes. “I don’t know,” she said.

  They stood on their separate, cold squares of lawn. Evelyn cupped a container of pansies in her hands. “I don’t know where the pansies should go.”

  Serena looked at the older woman, standing, her face dazed, and she understood, wholly, the bleak tenor of her voice. She asked, “Do you want any help?”

  Evelyn blinked, clearing her vision. “I suppose so,” she said. Serena walked around the fence. The leaves from the maples crunched under her feet. Her own bungalow appear a bit larger when she looked at it from here, and she tried to imagine what Forrest saw when he gazed over the fence.

  Evelyn turned a box of pansies over in her hands and handed it to her. Serena took the plastic box, the purple flowers a searing ruffle of color. “How about this corner?” she asked.

  She shivered in the brisk air and knelt, digging a hole for the pansies. Evelyn crouched beside her and set the flower in its spot. “There,” said Evelyn. They crouched over the cold dirt and lifted the flowers out of the box. “That’s good,” said Serena, and they began to dig more holes for the flowers. They did not speak, and they did not know each other, but she saw their breath curl, white in the air, and their fingers pressed into the dirt, carefully, as they set the flowers into a row, one by one.

  GEORGIA WAS TAKING OFF FOR a couple weeks, so Serena assumed her place in the Temple office. Now there were tasks. There were numerous emails from the remaining members wondering which activities were still going on. She checked with Betty to see what, in fact, was still happening. Nothing was clear, but they would have Shabbat services on Friday night. Serena sent this information out. The phone was silent.

  She listened for the rabbi’s footsteps, even if she pretended she didn’t. She had not seen him since the meeting, and she had picked up the phone a couple times, wondering how he was, but she believed he would not want to hear from her. And then she heard them — she knew their particular velocity, as though he were perennially late for an important event. There he was, Rabbi Golden, hurrying through the dimness. He was clutching a large cardboard box. When he saw her, he stumbled slightly, and then he stopped.

  “Hello,” she said; her voice trembled.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and then put down the box. Then he laughed.

  “Serena Hirsch,” he said. Her name had sounded light, like a balloon, when he spoke it before; now it was the name of someone he did not know. “Happy?” he said. “Now that you’re rid of me?”

  He shifted from foot to foot, as if to peer into her and see something: how she worked, the internal gears of another person.

  “No,” she said. He was not their rabbi anymore; they had yanked him down to this status, another civilian.

  “You sounded happy when you were reading that list,” he said. “You were having the time of your life. Saying every little slipup I’ve made.”

  “Rabbi,” she said, “no. No. No. It was not — ”

  “You were wrong. You all were wrong. Every last one of you. You couldn’t see one iota beyond yourselves.” He took a sharp breath. “Not that you’ve made any mistakes yourself. None.”

  She swallowed. “You’re right,” she said, softly.

  He put down the box. “I know who’s been calling me at twelve in the morning. I know everything.” He crossed his arms stiffly in front of his chest and stared down at her, coolly, like a bodyguard set against blocking . . . what? Her own longings? His? Everyone’s? He possessed an immense, lonely energy; it seemed he might topple into her.

  “I might ask you, Serena, what did you want from me then? Why did you want to wake me up?”

  Her face reddened. “That wasn’t me,” she whispered.

  “It was you. Why?”

  He was enjoying this. She could not look at him.

  “I know,” he said. “You think I did some bad things. But think about what I could have done. Think about what any of us could do.”

  He smiled, a cool, tight-lipped, rather beautiful smile; this was the reaction he was used to eliciting, or the one he wanted to elicit. He wanted only to be loved. They all did, that was their great desire and misfortune. But to react to the rabbi any other way was a form of weakness on the part of the other person.

  “We loved you,” she said. The fluorescent bulb buzzed, and the air seemed too bright, suddenly, the light almost unbearable. She flushed and then said, “Everyone. Norman. Tiffany. Tom. Everyone. Me.”

  His eyes widened. He folded his arms across his chest.

  “Then why did you do this?” he asked.

  His utter bewilderment made her glance at the floor. She was not sure how to answer. “You were good to me. And Norman. And other people. But not to everyone,” she said. “And you couldn’t see it.”

  “Well,” he said. He stepped back, squinting. He made a soft, chuckling sound and said, “You’re all lucky.”

  She looked at him; she was breathless at the weight of his sadness. He seemed to have heard what he had just said and added, “You were lucky. To have me.”

  She listened to that.

  He put down the box for a moment and smoothed his hands down the sides of his suit. He wore his white suit, the one that he had worn both to lead in holy worship and then to stand in front of them and be condemned. It had, it seemed, been recently cleaned; the sharp, gray odor of dry-cleaning chemicals rose off it.

  “You may wonder why I’m wearing this,” he said. “Norman asked me to begin another congregation here. He even picked a name. But I have had another offer. I am off to a guest pulpit. I am driving to Wilcox, South Carolina, in a few minutes. Another congregation is awaiting me. If all goes well, they will hire me. My second pulpit. They will know who I am.”

  He raised his arms quickly for a moment, stretching, and there was a sudden zipping sound — a rip. The material around his elbow had torn.

  “Oh, no!” he said, lifting his arm and looking at the rip. He looked almost as though he would cry.

  She stepped forward. “Let me take a look.”

  He held out his sleeve and she touched the material, examining the tear. “I can fix this,” she said.

  He eyed her, and the sleeve, and he sighed, sharply. “Okay,” he said.

  Georgia kept a needle and some thread in her desk, and Serena took it out. The rabbi slipped off his jacket and handed it to her. She took his jacket in her arms and smoothed the sleeve straight out. Her hands were trembling slightly; she wanted to do this correctly. The fabric was thin and soft in her hands. He stood, watching, as she quickly sewed the gash shut.

  “Serena, tell me,” he said, softly.

  “What?”

  “They will love me.”

  He looked at her — he was over forty years old, but his eyes looked so young. It occurred to her that everyone was stuck at a certain age, whether it was two or four or five or thirteen or twenty. When was anyone able to crack out of an age, to evolve to a new place? She knotted the thread. She handed the jacket back to him. “Yes,” she said. “I believe they will.”

  “Thank you,” he said, shrugging on his jacket, and he looked calmer. He fingered the sewn sleeve. “This too shall pass.” He nodded and placed a hand on her shoulder, briefly. “Shalom.”

  They were simply two people in a hallway; the air was both flat and immensely full. Then he turned and walked out of the building. She stood by the window and watched him walk down the sidewalk to his car. He hurtled lightly down the sidewalk; he was trying to move too quickly for the world to grab him, to pull him to its sweat and grime. She watched him e
ach slow moment, absorbing him, feeling his presence fade from her. He slipped into his dented orange car, started the engine, and was gone.

  SERENA TOLD THE CHILDREN ABOUT Forrest. They were shocked by his death and wanted to know all about it; their interest was fueled partly by the desire to research it, to see how they might find a way to avert it.

  “How did he die that quick?” asked Zeb. He tried to snap his fingers. “Like that?”

  “Sometimes people do.”

  “Will I?” asked Zeb.

  “I doubt it. He was old — ”

  “He was mean when he came to our house.”

  “That is true.”

  “When will I die?” Zeb asked.

  His beautiful, worried face gazed at her. She looked away; she did not want to answer this, at this age — five! Already he wanted to kill his innocence. She pressed the two of her children to her body. Never. She wanted to say never. You will live and live, you will outlast the earth. This moment will not vanish. But each moment melted the instant it happened; they would step out of her arms in a matter of months, they would stumble across the junior high school cafeteria into high school and college dorm rooms and then into middle age and their gradual descent. What would their end be? They stared at her, alarmed. She was going to break to them the news of their deaths. Here it was, at five, already — by giving them to the world, she had sentenced herself to this. She wanted to lie, but they would see through it. “Honey. I don’t know. Don’t worry. A long time.”

  Zeb blinked. His face was perplexed and then irate. It was, of course, an absurd answer.

  “What about you?” Rachel asked, touching her arm.

  “I don’t know,” she said. They stared at her. “No one knows. We’re here now,” she said. “Let’s go outside.”

  They clutched her hands as they walked outdoors, and she felt the dampness of their palms against her own. The sky was soft and gray. “Let’s clean up the leaves,” she said, and they drifted across the yard, picking up the dry brown leaves and setting them in a pile. The air was cold in the way that every leaf and rock was utterly precise; the yard was peaceful, and Forrest’s dogs sniffed around his yard, quiet. Evelyn nodded at them as she raked some leaves.