A Town of Empty Rooms (32 page)

“Really?” She could barely see his face in the soft evening, but he seemed almost to be smiling. “Tell that to George Martinez.”

“Yes, but — ” she said.

“Is that what you're going to say to our men and women who sacrifice?” he said. “What are you saying? Who's more
important
?”

Her shoulders stiffened. “Does someone need to be more important?”

“Yes.”

Something caught in her throat; it was difficult to speak.

The dark sky stretched, cold, over them. She shivered. She was sitting next to him, but she felt like a monster, impossibly tall. “Rabbi,” she said, slowly, “you've been through so much. You wouldn't want . . . ” she tried, carefully, sensing this might not go over well, but feeling as though her options were slipping. “The board has been suggesting this, possibly, to talk to someone, get a little perspective, someone who could help with these issues — ”

He laughed. “The board is suggesting it! The board is suggesting
psychological help?
Who are they? No. It is not me
.
”

The bare trees wound up into the sky, their slim trunks black in the streetlight. She could feel the chill air through her clothes.

“It's not you,” she said.

“No,” he said.

His cell phone rang. He stood up and answered it. She could hear a torrent of speech on the other end; he closed his eyes. Then he opened them, held up a finger, and swerved into his car. He drove off, pressing more anguish against his ear.

She looked at the darkened elementary school, the sodden fields ribbed with muddy tire tracks. A gauzy swath of stars swept across the black sky. After all the emotion, the proclamations, that had echoed through the auditorium, it was terribly silent; there was no one here.

Chapter Eighteen

DAN WATCHED ZEB CARRY THE Pinewood trophy around with a deep and instant fondness, as though it were alive: a kitten, a beloved pet. The night of the derby, Dan picked up the trophy beside Zeb's bed; he pressed his cheek to it and breathed the cheap factory smell of victory.

They had won. But Dan stared into the dimness of their small, acrid bungalow, and he listened to his heart. He tried to imagine he was feeling joy or relief, but the sensation he had was actually different. The moment that Zeb had won, Dan had been flooded by an immense lightness, a relief; there was a moment when he felt he did not need to yearn. Zeb would be fine; he would succeed in different forums. The morning anguish had subsided. His children would move on to something sparkling and good, and he, their father, had somehow enabled this. They had arrived, an anxious group, and they had left, he felt, cohesive, more of a family. Even Serena seemed to walk more lightly as they headed to the car. But in the quiet of the house, when they had all fallen asleep, he padded around their home.

He felt the same way as he had before.

Worse, in fact. He wanted to run. The victory had changed nothing: They had somehow ended up in Waring, his wife still left the room quickly when he was in it, his brother was dead. He thought of Harold at the intersection in Omaha, going there to meet a girl, killed by a careless driver while he was crossing a street, whereas he had safely negotiated the back roads of Thailand, Columbia, Zambia. Harold, as an adult, became an evasive figure; he never married, got jobs teaching in China, the Ukraine, Peru — floated the world. His correspondence with Dan was brief and kind and enigmatic, and while it left Dan with a desire to know more about Harold's life, he never asked.

Dan suddenly thought about the moment when his mother found out about his father's affairs, when Georgette Ohrbach had seen his father and someone — not his mother — kissing at a deli on Sixty-fifth Street; he remembered that day, remembered how he and Harold crouched, side by side in their room, his brother's heart a hummingbird against his shoulder, while vases crashed in the living room. Harold did not say anything but looked at Dan's shoelaces, which were untied. Harold had just learned to tie a series of knots at Scouts. He leaned down and he tied Dan's shoelaces for him, and they stayed tied. The boys did not know what was going to happen in the other room, but Dan touched the laces, and a relief swept through him. He could walk around without his shoes falling off, and this was somehow wondrous.

Dan thought of Harold standing in the garage beside him. How old had Dan been then? A child, barely older than Zeb. It seemed impossible that Harold had been that young at that moment, for he thought of his brother as immensely old, mature, just then, but he had been so small, eight, nine — Dan had never asked him what that moment had been like for his brother. That night, at 2:00 AM, he sat down and sent an email to Harold's former address, and there was no response, no returned mail, just an electronic note sent somewhere in the universe.

Hello,
he wrote. He tried to think of what he wanted to say to him, and it was this:

He looked at these words and felt like an idiot. What had they won? A trophy for a wooden car? Now he was the sort of person who sent an email to his dead brother.

Dan looked at his family at the dinner table the next night, felt guilty for writing to his dead brother that they had won, where he did not feel like a winner particularly, and he was disoriented. Zeb was glad to have won but seemed to have forgotten it, and it was as though Dan were peering at his family, this group that he had joined and created, through a box of glass; he was trapped inside this box, and he did not know how to get out.

The phone rang.

It was Forrest. He sounded cheerful. He wanted to come and chat about the derby for a moment and wondered if he could drop by now.

“Sure,” said Dan; there was an urgency to Forrest's voice that he had not heard before. He put down the phone and looked at his family sitting at the table.

“Forrest wants to come by and talk about . . . uh, the derby,” he said.

“He's coming
here
? Now?” Serena asked.

“Apparently,” he said.

“Are you kidding?” she said. She did not want Forrest anywhere near here after the school meeting. “Do you
know
what happened at the meeting last night?”

“He seemed fine,” Dan said, trying to sound confident. “He just wanted to drop by for a sec. Maybe we left something at the derby — ”

Serena stared at him. She did not want Forrest in the house. She thought about what he had said to her and the rabbi: judgment.

“They do live next door,” said Dan.

“Two minutes,” she said. “Really. I'm going to set my watch.”

She set the children up with bowls of ice cream in the kitchen. She closed the doors between the kitchen and living room and stood like a sentry at the doorway. She was glad the room was not very comfortable, so Forrest's visit would have to be quick. Dan pulled the kitchen chairs into the living room, brushed crumbs off the couch. Five minutes later, Forrest knocked on the door. He was dressed in full troop leader regalia, and he was accompanied by Mr. Hester Smith, another assistant leader.

“How are you all?” said Dan, holding open the door into the cool blue evening.

“Hello,” said Forrest, stiffly. “Don't want to take long — ”

“Come on in,” said Dan. “Can I get you folks anything? Soda?” He paused. “Beer?”

“No, thanks,” said Forrest. He stood inside the living room, looking around with a determined expression; he seemed to be searching for something specific. His eyebrows twitched. He glanced at Serena, then he sighed, a short, impatient breath, as though she were a particularly troublesome plant that needed to be trimmed.

“Two minutes,” said Serena, crisply. “That's all we have tonight.”

They all stood, waiting to be directed by some other authority. “You want to sit down?” asked Dan, after a moment.

“Sure,” said Forrest. They settled on the broken couch. Hester wore, Serena thought, an empty expression that could be interpreted as boredom or thuggishness.

“How's Evelyn?” asked Dan.

“Up one day, down the next,” said Forrest. He rubbed his hands over his face as if he were trying to mold it into a particular expression. Hester tried to smile, but it looked like he was baring his teeth.

“Now, you know,” said Forrest, his voice both strident and trembling, “I'm not a man that likes conflict. I like everything to be well between my friends and neighbors.”

Serena felt a warning along the back of her neck.

“Well, I'll get right to it. There have been some concerns raised after the derby. Some people, some others in the troop, thought we should have a talk.”

Dan blinked. Even the way Forrest sat — straight, prim, folded into place — made him look incongruous in the living room. Dan glanced at his uniform, his badges, the way his hands were folded, and was aware that he knew almost nothing about Forrest at all.

“What concerns?” asked Dan.

“You know, some people are more skilled than others when it comes to making the cars,” said Forrest. “Some people are afraid of irregularities.”

“Excuse me?” said Dan.

“Being in charge of timing, you see.”

Dan cleared his throat. “What are you saying?” he asked.

“I looked at the computers,” said Forrest, “and it all seems fine . . . but some people thought you should have stepped aside when your son's car came up . . . ”

Serena and Dan stared at Forrest; her face was abruptly hot.

“We won!” said Dan. “Fair and square! Look at his car!” He jumped up and grabbed the car, which was on top of a bookshelf. The absurd black Batmobile. He held it out to Forrest, who took it and rubbed the wheels against his palm.

Serena felt Dan's voice swell in her; she understood his outrage. For the first time in months, they both felt the same thing.

“Well,” said Forrest, wiping his brow, “some of the troop members — quite a few, in fact — have gathered to complain that there should have been different rules, that there was no objectivity — ”

“It's the timing issue,” said Hester.

“That's right,” said Forrest.

Serena stepped forward. “We're talking about wooden cars here. You can all be good sports and deal with it — ”

“They ask that you give back the trophy,” said Forrest.

There was a sudden silence. It was so harsh and uncomfortable it felt like someone had been slapped.

Serena felt her body moving, a kind of hulk, and all she could say was, “Forrest. Stop.”

“You know what I mean,” said Forrest, standing up. “Coming in. Taking over the derby — ”

“What are you saying, Forrest?” Serena said. He looked excited, as though accusation was his best, most natural state of being, that this is where he found some inner peace.

“We don't know you,” Forrest said. “We don't know what, uh, the rules are in that Jewish church — ”

Dan froze. That Jewish church? Was that how Forrest saw him? It seemed a joke; didn't Forrest know that he hated services, the mumbo jumbo? What the hell did he see? Forrest had made a mistake. But Dan heard the tone in his voice with absolute clarity.

“I can't have this doubt with my assistant leader,” said Forrest, now sounding almost merry. “You are hereby relieved of your duty — ”

“Forget it,” yelled Dan, standing up, his whole body tense. “We quit!”

Serena looked at them — Forrest small, crazy, grinning, Hester standing beside him like a bodyguard, which was, she realized, his intended role, Dan standing, face red, suddenly shocked at this turn of events, which she had tried to tell him about many weeks ago. She wanted them out — Forrest and Hester — before something else happened. “Go,” said Serena. “Now.” She opened the door.

“Take care, now,” said Forrest. His posture was slightly hunched, almost deferent; now that he had accomplished his goal, he was trying to be apologetic.

She shut the door and locked it.

The children were hanging on the kitchen door, watching.

“What happened?” they asked.

“The Boy Scouts just ended!” Dan shouted. “It blew up. Gone.” He ran into his room and brought out his uniform and stuffed it into a trash can. It looked like he was stuffing a dead body inside the plastic receptacle.

Zeb looked appalled. “What are you doing?”

“We've quit. We're out. They're — ” He stood, trying to think of the right word. “
Boring.
Give me your uniform.” Their son trotted upstairs and brought it down — the small cotton navy shirt, the gold neckerchief. It was a costume of decency, of the yearning for order, and they were stuffing it into the trash. The children thought this was an exciting activity and wanted to toss other random items into the trash, and some door of lawlessness had been opened; in went a Barbie, a nightgown, a couple trucks. They threw the items into the trash happily. Five minutes later, Zeb reached in and grasped the sleeve of his blue uniform.

“Can I put it back on?” he said.

Serena was watching Dan. They had won the Pinewood Derby, and now they were kicked out of the Scouts. Could this be happening? She saw Zeb lifting his uniform out of the trash, staring at it, trying to figure out how it might now fit. She touched Zeb's hair. “Don't worry,” she said. “You still won. The trophy's yours. The Scouts are going to get boring. We'll do something else that's fun.” She looked at Dan with concern; he was striding around the room, hands trembling.

“Screw them,” she whispered. “Assholes. I told you. I saw it — ”

“What the hell did they think?” he said. The children laughed, astonished. “I mean — ”