A Town of Empty Rooms Read Online Free PDF Page A

tide. Serena opened the back door, and they ran into their yard, a square of dirt with grass like thinning hair and one impossibly tall green pine tree. They all
drifted toward the tree; it was the one beautiful part of the yard, and its branches reached up like human arms making a plea. Serena began to pick up the pinecones scattered below it, and Zeb and Rachel gathered sticks and began to decorate the tree with them. The neighborhood had once been a pine forest, and the tree was one of the few remnants of it. They stood near the tree and she scanned the other yards, wondering who the other people were around them.
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    THE THIRD WEEK OF AUGUST was Zeb’s first day of kindergarten. The school was a neat, stolid public school with the low-slung beige shabbiness of a community college. The dark hallways held the subdued patriotism and despair of any public institution, the corkboards displayed the cheerful propaganda of school: Dream and You Will Become! You Can’t Achieve Unless You Try! There was the astringent smell of fresh paint. The children, Tyler and Shakira and Juan and Mary Grace and the others, were escorted by their parents, often startlingly young, to their seats. There was the remarkable spectacle of the populace, with nothing in common except for their occupying the same precise developmental stage, a situation one finds a few times in life: nursing a newborn in a hospital, watching toddlers in a playground, moving into a college dorm. The parents tended to say hello and then shy away from each other as though supremely aware of how their lives had deposited them at different places in terms of economy, happiness, love; they did not know how they had ended up in these places, whom they should thank, or, more frequently, whom they should blame. The senior teacher, a slight, redheaded woman who Serena thought looked about sixteen, stood in front of the classroom, smiling wanly, as though already predicting this blame; her assistant, Miss LaChawn, shook each parent’s hand firmly as though welcoming them to a company. The children, not yet sorted or labeled, found seats sized for fairies.
    The senior teacher, Miss Donna, was dressed in a business suit, as though borrowing the adornments of the corporate world would defuse this morning of its high emotion. She had an air of embattlement about
her, as if she expected the children or parents to stage a coup. The room was filled with elaborate behavior charts, of colored sticks in pockets with the children’s names, boxes where children’s names would be written if they had not done their homework. Homework? “If you don’t turn in your homework, you get a silent lunch!” she exclaimed. The children fidgeted, picked their noses.
    â€œThis year we’ll learn about insects, weather, and the holidays,” she said. “We’ll learn about Christmas around the world.”
    Serena stepped forward to address this last point and then stopped. When the bell rang, she was the only parent left. She felt unable to leave the room. She stood in the corner, clutching Rachel’s hand. Miss Donna looked at her with trepidation. “Run along now,” she said, smiling. “We’ll see you at two thirty!”
    Zeb looked up at her with his dark eyes, then he looked down again. Miss LaChawn smiled at him, waiting; Serena squeezed her daughter’s hand and ducked out. She lurked around outside the school for a while, standing guard. There was a police car parked at the front of the school. The officer was watching her.
    â€œAny problem, ma’am?” he asked.
    â€œI have a child in there,” she said.
    He nodded. He was chewing gum and flipping through a copy of People.
    â€œWhy are you here?” she asked.
    â€œFirst day of school,” he said. “You never know. Always good to have an extra pair of eyes.”
    â€œYou never know what ?” she asked, trying to stand