A Town of Empty Rooms (10 page)

And here they were, where people proudly flew Confederate flags on their front porches, where Forrest's first question was about his
“affiliation,” where he walked into the office and suddenly everyone saw the dark curl of his hair, the olive tone of his skin, and thought he was from Morocco. Forget it. He had always felt separate enough from other people; now it made him shudder, this idea that they would look at him without his saying a word and decide what he was.

“Boy Scouts. It's easy. He fits in. They all do. See? He'll be a Cub, a Tiger, all will be fine.”

“I think he's crying because he's afraid,” she said.

“He's crying because he wants to be one of them,” he said, softly. “How can he be one of them?”

“He is one of them,” she said. “He can just be this other thing, too. I mean, there's his heritage,” she said. She could not believe she was saying this word,
heritage
, but she was.

“Screw the heritage,” he said. “Why do we need it?”

He flinched; he wished he had not said this. But he also wanted Zeb to walk into school proudly, not to be this other thing.

She sat down. She felt as though he were telling her to vanish. It was not that his goals were not noble — he wanted to believe in ease, in the beauty of shared motion, of a group of boys marching down a shiny street all wearing the same uniform. It was a lovely little dream, but it was one that did not sit well for obvious reasons.

“I keep thinking about how my father took Harold to Scouts,” said Dan, suddenly. “You should have seen him in his uniform. Age nine. Harold couldn't wait for Boy Scout night. He said maybe I could come when I was older. I watched them walk out the door. I wanted to go.”

She was still, listening; it was the first time he had talked about his brother since his death.

“Sometimes, after they left, I went upstairs and put on his old uniforms. They were too big, but I walked around, pant legs dragging, determined to wear them.” He paused. “Zeb's not going to have to do that.”

She put a hand on his shoulder; a sorrow of being married was that you could not dive through time and comfort the child your spouse had been or, perhaps less noble, fix his troubles before they reached you. Dan's muscle twitched under her hand. He looked at her as though he sensed this desire in her and stepped away.

“I just want to try,” he said.

 

 

THE NEXT NIGHT, DAN WALKED into the kitchen. He had purchased the beige uniform. It was crisp and fresh with an embroidered badge that said “Troop Leader” on the right side of the chest. The children were delighted with the costume; they applauded.

“I have been approved!” He picked up Zeb and swung him around, as though they had just met after a long separation. “I'm going to help lead your troop. We're going to be part of the Cub Scouts! You're a Tiger Cub!”

Dan put his hands on his hips. Zeb gazed at him with an expression as open as a cup; Serena saw in his face the absolute force of parental authority.

He looked at their son with a hope that went beyond mere parenting and went to the idea of the child as something else: a solution. It was the secret that lurked inside many of these homes. There were the mothers who slunk out of their marital beds to sleep with their toddlers, who dressed identically to their daughters, the fathers who stood in their Boy Scout uniforms, desperate to teach their sons the survival skills that they had never learned. There was a fragile line between giving to a child and appropriating one. That night, Serena saw her husband and son model their new uniforms.

They rehearsed the promise. “I promise to — ”

Her son looked at him, hesitant.

“Do my best.”

“And obey the laws of the pack.”

“Obey laws of the pack.”

“Remember the wolf call,” Dan said.

They howled.

 

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING, SERENA PICKED up the phone.

“Serena. It's the rabbi,” he said. “It's your lucky day.” His voice sounded strangely distant and tinny, as though he was shouting, from a great distance, from inside a cave. “We're looking for a new building. Betty and me. The place where all the generations can come together. Unprecedented in Southeast North Carolina. It is your — ” he paused,
“sacred duty to help us. Plus, don't leave me alone with Betty.” He let out a hollow laugh. “I can pick you up in half an hour. Say yes.”

Yes. She said yes. This was what she would do.

Serena had never willingly dropped by the Jewish community centers in the cities where she had previously lived — after her Bat Mitzvah, she had had enough — but now she liked the idea of this: creating a castle. It didn't even have to do with Jews, particularly, but with this most ineffable yearning: having a place to belong. The Southeast North Carolina Jewish Community Center would be a three-story building fashioned entirely out of glass. It would contain a baseball field, a swimming pool, a library, a basketball court, a conference room, a ballroom. She imagined the glass windows (bulletproof) stretching floor to ceiling, the building a pure, glowing cube of light. Now the Jews of Waring wouldn't have to drive by the elaborate compounds set up by the churches in town, wondering what went on inside.

The rabbi drove up in a large, dented orange Buick of indeterminate age. “Forgive this,” he said. “I'll upgrade when you all give me a raise.”

She sat in the back; Betty was in the front. The backseat of his car was not particularly clean. There was a variety of sandwich wrappers on the floor. He seemed to have a democratic and inclusive taste for fast food: McDonald's, Chick-fil-A , Bojangles', Hardee's. The backseat also functioned as a sort of travelling library, with magazines strewn all over it:
Time, Reform Judaism, Tikkun, Muscle and Fitness, Marines.

They were going to look at three properties. The rabbi drove with a flexible interpretation of stop signs, with a tendency to brake hard for speed bumps and then clatter painfully over them.

“In Atlanta, Jews ask you, ‘Where are your people from?' In Charlotte, they ask, ‘What bank do you work for?'” said the rabbi.

“Here, they ask, ‘Do you attend?'” said Betty.

“Twenty-five last night,” said the rabbi. “Up from sixteen the week before.”

“Could have been thirty,” said Betty. “If you had let me be in charge of the food.”

“That's not all that draws people.”

“A few dry carrots, stale Chips Ahoy! They don't feel taken care of, Rabbi.” She paused. “Bring in some decent rugelach, they will come.”

“You can feed them other ways,” Rabbi Golden said. “It's not all about food, Betty. Once I went to a service led by a rabbi on a base in Sarajevo, and he was so good, so uplifting, I didn't need to eat. Twelve hours later, I still felt full.”

This was an intriguing statement, but he did not elaborate on it.

There were only a few properties within the current budget. They stopped to investigate a plot of pine forest off the interstate, a crumbling mansion with eight bedrooms, an abandoned elementary school dark with mold. The three of them wandered through one building that the rabbi had chattered about excitedly; it was a private school that had recently been foreclosed. It had been damaged in a storm, and there were brown clouds of water damage on the walls. There were ten, fifteen large rooms, and they all smelled as though they were sinking into the earth.

Betty walked through each room, slowly, marking down each bit of damage. The rabbi flew through the rooms like a deer.

“Look at it,” he said. “Room to grow. It's perfect!”

“Rabbi,” Betty said, looking concerned, “it's a dump.”

“Great! We get it cheap!” he said. “Come on! We're this close to signing the Rosens. The father owns the biggest toy store in town. They have five cars!”

“Rabbi,” said Betty, softly.

“What's wrong?”

“There are too many rooms,” said Betty.

“We'll fill it up,” he said.

“With what?” asked Betty.

“With people fat on your rugelach,” he said. She stepped back. “Act now. Put down an offer. We can always withdraw.”

“The committee has to vote,” she said.

“The commit-tee. Hide behind the commit-tee.”

He was smiling, a tight smile, but his tone copied Betty's; she reddened.

“Rabbi,” Betty said, pressing her clipboard to her chest, “we want to do things right.”

He grimaced. “Oh,
we,”
he said. He stepped toward her, then paused and turned away quickly, shooting through the halls. He motioned for
Serena to walk with him. He whispered to her, “The grande dames of the Temple. They don't want to act. All they want are their names on plaques. All they think about is themselves.” He was bending toward her conspiratorially as they walked through the moldy building, which smelled so green and bitter that she felt a stinging in her throat. “Serena. Come on. I have to sell this to the board. The future. Let's go. Are you with me?”

She listened to the peculiar shift of his voice — his annoyance at the “grande dames” and then the husky romance of this voice in a room where the walls seemed to be the consistency of flannel. The floors were warped and soft as cardboard; the building, frankly, needed a wrecking ball. The rabbi stopped in the middle of the room and gazed at the sunlight falling onto the rotting wood floor. The sunlight seemed thicker here, a pale, transparent band falling through a hole in the roof, the dirt glinting in its path. The rabbi stepped forward and put his hand into the warm swath of sun. His face was bright and solemn with an extravagant hope. She understood that hope, had felt it when she began her work speechwriting, loved the sensation of wanting to release something significant onto other people — her father had been so certain, so sure of her.

“I love the idea,” she said. There was a glint of this new, fresh entity, the future — how she wanted to be part of it. They made their way to the car. Betty was waiting there.

“I think my father would like this,” Serena said, though she didn't know if he would have, particularly.

“A man of good taste,” the rabbi said. “You see? Do it for him, Serena. Let's get it for him.” He stepped back and clasped his hands. “We need this building for everyone,” he said. “The dead are not gone. They are not here with us, but they are not gone. Serena,” he put his hand on her shoulder, “the Jewish community includes the living and the dead.”

 

 

 

SUDDENLY, HE WAS IN A hurry to get back. He bolted to the car and sat there, gunning the engine, which gurgled and spat in an alarming way.

“We have to start somewhere,” said Betty, brightly. “We made a good — ”

“Start? We're finished,” he said. “Don't sit on this. Get up, everyone! Get up!” He was doing about forty-five in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone, hunched over the wheel.

“Rabbi, slow,” said Betty, pressing her hand against the dashboard.

“Slow! Enough slow. Full speed ahead.”

When he stopped for gas, Betty, face damp with sweat, leaned over to whisper, “Listen. I want to tell you. I'm not one to gossip. I'm just saying — ” Betty fanned herself with her hand. “We're losing people because of that man.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He's going to fill that place with people? Ha! He's going to bankrupt us with his schemes. Who in god's name among us is going to pick up a saw to fix that place? Norman? Open your eyes, Serena, just wait and see.”

Serena stared at Betty, her dark maroon lipstick gleaming like new paint. Betty had the same feathered gray haircut as Serena's mother, who lived in Los Angeles along with Serena's sister, Dawn, and had, for no reason she could fathom, been remiss in returning her phone calls. A part of her liked being around Betty, but Betty was different in that she seemed to be the sort of person who rose into the day, perfectly groomed, possessed of unwavering certainty.

The rabbi slid into the driver's seat and Betty stopped. “Speed limit only, Rabbi, or I'm reporting you,” she said, trying to make her voice sound light.

“No time to lose,” he said, but he seemed to hear a warning in her voice. He slowed down.

The rabbi was stopped at the gate of Betty's community, which was surrounded on all sides by pointed evergreen bushes. It was called Windsor Plantation
.
The guard halted the rabbi's car with a concerned expression until he saw Betty inside. “Miss Blumenthal,” he said, in a tone of respect and bewilderment. The rabbi drove to her house, an enormous brick mansion with a slanted Tudor roof; it looked like it could house a German restaurant.

The rabbi drove out, waving to the guard, who lifted his hand warily at the old Buick. As the rabbi continued on, he smacked his head. “I forgot my sermon!” he said. “I have to finish it. It's at my apartment. Do you mind if I stop on the way?”

She did not mind. She wanted to see where he answered her calls in the middle of the night.

The rabbi rented an apartment in the Sweet Briar luxury complex.
Luxury
was a word loosely used; the apartments looked as though they had risen through some hasty and questionable marriage between developer and city council. They were slapped together with paste and cheap lumber, and there was a vaguely toxic odor of resin in the air. The sounds of heavy metal thumped through the heat. No one appeared to have a job here, or at least not during daylight hours: People were hanging around on porches in an equal-opportunity display of paralysis or unemployment. No one appeared to have heard of the benefits of sunscreen. There was the vigorous and sour smell of beer.