A Town of Empty Rooms (36 page)

“Who am I supposed to go to?” Lillian said. “I don't know Hebrew.
I can't come up with a prayer. Who is going to give me something to say when I wake up? Who is going to help me?”

With that word, she stopped. She began to make her way down the stairs. Serena jumped up, and Lillian gripped her arm as she walked down. Serena could feel her breathing quickly. Her last words hung over the congregants as she walked back to her seat. They remained there as Seymour took his place at the podium. He lifted his gavel, but the quality of the silence was pure and it seemed dangerous to disturb it. He stood, his gavel in the air.

“The plaintiffs have spoken,” he said. “Now we will hear a rebuttal from our rabbi.”

 

 

HE HAD HEARD ALL OF it. Serena cringed when she thought of him sitting in the other room, where he had been watching the proceedings through the closed circuit television. She wondered whose idea this had been. Tom's? Norman's? Betty's? Who had they been trying to protect by placing him in a different room? What had he thought of all of this?

The members of the congregation sat up as the rabbi walked in. A few members stood up, as if before a dignitary. There was a peculiar imbalance of power in the room; the congregants were still, as though yearning for Rabbi Golden to restore the proper order.

Rabbi Golden strode up to the bima, grabbing onto the podium with both hands. He looked out at them. His face was red, as though he had been running. “Well,” he said. “It's been a long day.” He laughed, a terrible, strangled sound. “A long night, a long year. I have a few things to say.”

She was relieved that he had not been destroyed by the allegations and that he was still up there on the bima in the blinding white suit. A ripple of obedience went through the congregation, almost gratitude; they had seen how easily this place could devolve into a courtroom, a circus, and they all wanted him to ask them to open their prayer books, to fall into that current of murmuring and action that was the service.

“No one ever wants to hear my side of the story. Sometimes when
people push me, I want to push back. I'm sorry, but I do. I made a mistake. Having, dare I say — ” his voice dropped to a whisper, “standards. Some of you are unfamiliar with that, with the idea that I am practicing a religion. This is Judaism. This is a grand tradition that reaches back thousands of years. I am here to show you how to practice it, how to recognize the holiness in yourselves.” He did not look at them, but his body swayed back and forth as he spoke, as it usually did when he was leading them in prayer, the delicate, fluid movements of a boxer. “I have been kind to most of you. You know that I have. I kept a tally. Fifteen people noted the wonderful things that I do. Most of you don't appreciate how I am slaving over your requests, day after day. Is there anyone among you whose phone call I have not answered? At dawn, noon, midnight, 2:00 AM?” He stared at them. “It's
my
house. I work hard at trying to bring you here. The Saturday Torah discussion group? My idea. The men's club? My idea. The Tot Shabbat? My idea. I am the creator — ” he stepped away from the podium for a moment and lifted his arms around him, “of this.”

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?”

“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?”