A Town of Empty Rooms (5 page)

“Make one up. You're number 127. That'll make him happy. We just lost one, Saul Huffenberg. He died last night. Not that he was such a prize. Always thinking I took his check. Meaning stole. I misfiled it. He blamed me. They all did. Kick Georgia! I hear things. I didn't cry when Harold Levitt passed away, or Joanna Schwartzman. I didn't want this job. It was Trey, my husband, who died after twenty-eight years of marriage. I thought I was getting a retirement community in Florida, and instead I get this Xerox machine.”

She heard footsteps on the hardwood floor before she saw him; the footsteps sounded like someone running.

“Serena Hirsch?” said Rabbi Golden. “We've been waiting for you.”

He had remembered her name. She stood up, as though before a dignitary. He lunged in, grasped her hand, and shook it. He laughed, as though she had said something funny. His grip was fierce, and it felt to Serena like he was not shaking her hand as much as clinging to a rope. “Finally, Georgia!” he said to the secretary, who had returned furiously to Xeroxing. “She's here! What did I say?”

He seemed more pleased with his prediction of her arrival than with her actual presence; he swerved around the office, gathering rubber bands, paper clips. He turned around and looked at Serena. “Come in,” he said.

His office was full of half-filled boxes; it looked like a photo gallery. There were photos of the rabbi in military gear and a yarmulke, standing by a tank in Bosnia; on the steps of a synagogue in Akron; shaking hands with Jimmy Carter at a Habitat for Humanity event. He was posed with groups of Jews, military and civilian, by national landmarks: the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum, the Wailing Wall.

She perched on the edge of the chair in front of his desk. He had the
complex innocence of someone who had been included in another's internal life — perhaps many — and seemed unaware of it; he immediately busied himself with shuffling a variety of papers, as though her function was simply to wait. She glanced at his hands; his fingers were slim, and his fingernails were very short and slightly uneven, as though they had been chewed. “Hadassah needs bodies,” he said. “Now.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Caring Committee needs someone to drive the elderly to services. Darlene Green needs someone to coordinate the Passover candy fundraiser. How about it?”

“I'm sure I can be of use to the Temple,” she said, trying to figure out how to avoid these particular activities. She did not want to actually do anything. Now that she was in his office, she just wanted to sit there; she felt safe there, included for no good reason, and she wanted to stay for a moment with him.

“What are your talents?” he asked.

She sat up. “I was, uh, a top speechwriter for Pepsi. In New York — ”

Why was she saying this? She stopped.

“Maybe you could write the Temple Bulletin,” he said, tapping his pen against his desk.

“Excuse me?”

“You know. Writing the birthdays, whose anniversary it is, what Hadassah did last month, what the religious school's up to.”

“Aha.”

“It would be good for a journalist! You have expertise.”

“Well,” she said. “I'm not exactly a journalist — ”

“All right, then,” he said, shuffling some paper.

He was sitting half out of his chair; his forehead glowed, as though lit by something hot within. He flashed that smile again, that brilliant light.

“You look busy,” she said.

“Just with empire-building,” he said. “Brick by brick!” He paused. “How are your kids?”

She took a breath. “Fine.”

“Your son's the only Jewish kid in his school. Am I right?”

Her stomach tightened. “Yes.”

“You want him to belong to something big?” he said. “The Southeast North Carolina Jewish Community Center. I need someone to coordinate it. You can be the president. It will be for everyone. Your son will never feel alone.”

She misheard him, for a moment thought that he had said she was alone, and was startled that he had responded to her own sadness so fully; her face got hot, and she looked away, quickly, at his posters of Israel, at the cascade of photos of him.

“Who's she?” she asked, noticing a woman in a photo.

“The first Mrs. Golden.”

“First?”

“Series of three,” he said. He looked around. “First one. Leah. Other two — where are they — right. Diane. Jeanette. There they are.”

She looked at the photos of the three women. They looked ordinary, and there was no discernible pattern among them: a lithe blonde, a heavier redhead, a plain brunette. It was an intriguing display; she wondered who had left whom.

“You still display their photos,” she said.

“They were part of my life,” he said. “I include anyone who is part of my life. My wives. My soldiers. My congregants. They 're all here. Soon I'll have a photo of our congregation. You can be in the photo. We can have a picture of you and me. Serena, who will lead Temple Shalom to the future. You can see yourself up on the rabbi's wall.”

He looked right at her, his blue eyes deep, sapphire, and set on her. She was aware of the depth of colors of the room — the clear, lemon glass of the Chai sculpture in the corner, the dark brown of the wood paneling on the walls — which shimmered, almost cold against her skin. She shivered, looking away, as though his eyes could see what she felt.

“You've lost someone,” he said softly. “Is that why you're here?”

“Yes,” she said. “My father. How did you know?”

“I always do,” he said. “I am truly sorry. How long?”

It took her a moment to speak; he had said the word
sorry
beautifully, in a deep, melting voice, in a way that was palpably different from the way others said it. It was not even a matter of being professional — it
was as though the rabbi actually fooled himself into experiencing her father's absence, as though anyone's feelings were his own.

“Three months,” she said. She clasped her hands; they were shaking. She, who had made some sort of living with her words, was reduced to this, this sensation of muteness. “Tell me something,” she said. “What do I do?”

He nodded. He stood up, slowly, regally, and came around the desk. He sat next to her, hands clasped, and said nothing.

She waited.

“Why don't you say anything?” she said.

“At times like this, the Torah takes refuge in silence,” said the rabbi.

His phone erupted, shrilly, into the room. He ignored it.

It seemed to be taking him great effort to sit with this level of quiet; one of his feet tapped, insistently, on the floor. “Would you like me to say Kaddish?”

“No,” she said.

He nodded as though he understood; he still did not move from beside her but leaned forward on his knees, clasping his hands. He closed his eyes. She noticed a muscle twitch in his shoulder. It seemed the most intimate interaction she had had with another person in weeks; it acknowledged that there was nothing that one could do but sit beside another. There was nothing but the slow, living breath of another human. She listened.

In another few minutes, she stood up. Then so did he. She wondered how long she could have sat there with him.

“Thank you,” she said. There was a lightness in her chest.

“We hope to see you soon,” he said. He waited until she had stepped into the hallway, and then he turned back to his desk.

Georgia was holding her application. “Seven hundred dollars,” said Georgia.

Her heart tumbled. “What?”

“How do you think we keep this place up?” said Georgia. “The electric bill, the flyers, the machine?” She slapped the copier as though it were a horse. “You can also help out a little each week for reduced dues.”

“How reduced?”

“Four hundred dollars.”

“My god.”

The rabbi peered in. “You need an assistant, right, Georgia?”

Georgia shrugged.

“We could use you,” he said. “Every morning. Fifteen dollars an hour. Free membership. A deal.”

Fifteen dollars an hour? She wanted to laugh but then stopped herself. She couldn't laugh at this point. Her resumes were not being answered. But it was something; it was a way to be here.

“Will be good to have some help,” said Georgia. Serena filled in the application.

She walked out into the sunlight. She turned around, and she saw Rabbi Golden through the window, holding his cell phone to his ear and bursting into a torrent of speech. She saw him standing, looking out the window, extending his arm out with emphasis, gazing intently at the street outside, and she wondered what he was looking for.

Chapter Three

DAN SHINE DID NOT WANT to tell anyone this: He was afraid of his wife. He did not want Serena to know that he still watched her in the morning while she slept, that he sometimes put his fingertips on her hair, as though trying to relearn her by the familiar softness of its texture. It still surprised him that they could be married to one another, that they wrestled naked in the darkness and had kissed every rise and crevice of each other's bodies, that he had seen the first child they had created,
they
had made together, the neatest trick in the universe, pushed out of her, two people (well, plus the doctor) in the room and then three, and yet his wife slept, her eyelids quivering, and he could not fathom what she would tell him when she woke up. It seemed that all the rather arbitrary rituals of matrimony — the rings, the shared names, et cetera — were meant to distract you from that fact. Her breath had the sourness of someone he had just met; he had not felt this until she had called him from her office in April. “They're escorting me out,” she said, a strange, shocked calm in her voice, as though she had, in some way, been waiting for this, and all he could hear was the fact that she had done something so surprising that he had never, ever predicted it. He had married her partly for this — he had loved the fact that she was transparent.

Now he drove through the streets of Waring, looking for a place he had been thinking about. The Boy Scouts of America was a large building with the high, alpine roof of a roadside Denny's. Dan was on his way to work when he saw it, the sign: PHYSICALLY STRONG, MENTALLY AWAKE, MORALLY STRAIGHT: JOIN THE BSA TODAY! When he saw the sign, Dan thought of his brother Harold, whom his father had taken to Scouts. He saw the two of them heading out the door, Harold
crisp and proud in his uniform. “Next,” his father had told Dan. “You'll go next.” It was just three months before his father left them.

It was twenty minutes before Dan had to be at work. He had time. He got out of the car, smoothed his hands on his suit, and walked inside.

There were many accoutrements of boyhood — they were all inscribed with the universal Boy Scout insignia, like the mark of a great nation. The insignia was there on night lights and tie tacs and crystal boxes; there were desk sets with clocks and rubber wristbands with words like DUTY and DISCIPLINE, and on navy and beige caps, on leather belts, on coffee mugs, on flashlights, on cufflinks, and on socks.

He walked around all of the items emblazoned with the Boy Scouts logo. The store had just opened; he was the only customer there. It seemed comically early for anyone to be purchasing Scout merchandise, but there he was. He glanced at himself in a mirror and was startled; he was old. How had this happened? His skin was riddled with the large pores of an older person, and there were deep lines radiating around his eyes. It was a joke. Annoyingly, it could not be stopped. He tried to peer at himself again, from another angle, but it was even worse. He stepped away from the mirror and turned, with renewed interest, to the Scout items: the neckerchiefs, the visors, the water bottles, the Swiss Army knives, the ponchos, the slingshots, the guidebooks, the pamphlets, the faceless mannequins with arms lifted, trim and crisp in their blue or beige uniforms. He felt like an idiot standing there, but he was captivated, surrounded by the armaments of a childhood that he had not had.

Dan saw a man dressed in a Scout uniform standing near the register. He had never seen a grown man wearing a Scout uniform. The man also wore an expression of purpose. Dan would not have noticed him but for the dignity, the peculiar comfort, with which he wore the child's uniform. The man looked as though he had slipped into the Boy Scout garb at age seven and worn it for the last seven decades. He wore a brown sash covered with a variety of medals. A woman came over to him and touched his arm.

“Forrest,” said the woman, “Oakwood Elementary's on the line. They want you to do a Cub Roundup next Friday at six.”

“Thanks,” the man said, picking up the phone. His brow furrowed. His voice was suddenly practiced and hearty. “Hey there! Forrest Sanders here! Can you get those Cubs in next Wednesday? You got signs? We're Pack 287. No, thank
you,
ma'am, we do appreciate it!” He hung up.

“Next Wednesday?” asked the woman.

“Yep. Can you bring the snacks?”

She sighed briefly and made a note on a pad. Forrest touched her arm with a casual intimacy, and Dan knew that they were married. They appeared to be in agreement. They made it look simple, a commercial demonstrating an agreeable couple. Dan watched them; they seemed to exist in a secret zone from which he had recently been banished.

The old scout's eyes lit on him. Forrest blinked; he seemed to be making a sort of evaluation. Forrest's face swung into a big smile. “Howdy, sir! Looking for something?”

Dan stepped toward the counter.

“Brings back the old days, doesn't it?” asked Forrest. “The badges, the trips . . . where you from, buddy?” He regarded him. “Morocco?”