Read Online A Town of Empty Rooms by Karen E. Bender - Free Book Online Page B

up, beautifully, pink rising from his cheeks to his hairline. It was as though he was trying to recognize himself.
    Ryan’s mother was a blankly cheerful woman whose main project seemed to be maintaining silence; Ryan was the oldest of four, and she was constantly bent over, stuffing a pacifier into someone’s mouth. When Serena offered to have Ryan over, she nodded, abruptly, “Sure. Sure. Take him. Please.”
    Ryan was a gigantic, garrulous six-year-old whose head was full of numbers and rankings. She listened to his conversation with Zeb in the backseat:
    â€œWhat’s your favorite hockey team?” Ryan asked.
    â€œWhat’s yours?” asked Zeb.
    â€œOilers. Who’s your favorite basketball player?”
    There was silence. “Who?” Zeb asked.
    â€œMichael Jordan.” He paused. “How fast can you run fifty yards?”
    â€œFive seconds,” blurted Zeb.
    â€œI can do three.”
    Ryan’s mind was wrapped around one consuming task: to rank the world and to come out on top. Zeb was smaller, lithe, but less brutally athletic, and his relationship with Ryan’s quest for superiority was to try to absorb it. If he could not be Ryan, he could borrow him. Ryan competed in terms of his reading level in school; his height, weight; the
statistics of the Oilers, his favorite hockey team; the Braves, his favorite baseball team; the exact size, to the inch, of his father’s plasma TV screen. He had a demeanor that switched by the minute, both slaphappy and aggrieved, as though trying to figure out which persona lent him the best advantage. Zeb owned a large and complex collection of YuGiOh cards — that was part of what, it seemed, Ryan liked about him, besides his devotion. “I have 328 YuGiOh cards,” Zeb said with a beautiful confidence. “And many power cards.”
    Ryan was quiet. “I want to see,” he said.
    How did you pave the world for your child? Perhaps the route was through other children. Serena watched them sit in his room, whispering over the shoebox of cards. Then she watched Ryan toss a football to Zeb outside. Ryan came over and lifted Zeb’s arm, and her son beamed. Ryan was now his escort into kindergarten, his guide to the world.
    She drove Ryan back to his house. The boys ran inside. Ryan’s mother stood, dazed, among the wreckage of the toddlers, one of whom lurched around slurping a can of Diet Coke. The house was modest, dusty, and sparsely furnished except for the living room, where the biggest flat-screen TV Serena had ever seen took over most of a wall. The rest of the room was arranged in homage to this screen. “Ryan’s dad is a big football fan,” she said. “After church, this is where we live on Sunday.” She paused. “And during the week.”
    Ryan and Zeb bounded into the living room. “Did you see our screen?” asked Ryan. “It’s the biggest in Waring.” He stood, on tiptoes, trying to touch the top.
    When they left, Serena asked her son, “Did you have a good time?”
    â€œYes.” He paused. “He has a big TV.”
    â€œHe does,” she said.
    â€œI know who created the world,” Zeb said.
    â€œWho?” she said.
    â€œJesus,” he said.
    â€œNo,” she said, quickly, “It was the Big Bang. This is proven. There were a lot of gases swirling around, and then they went bang, and there were all the planets, then Earth and everything.”
    â€œHow loud was it?”

    â€œI don’t know. Loud.” This appeared to be a selling point, so she added, “Really loud.”
    â€œWho made it happen?”
    Was this the purpose of any theology? To answer the unanswerable from five-year-olds?
    â€œI don’t know. It just happened.”
    He looked out the window. She glanced at the back of his head, the full head of brown curls.
    â€œMaybe Jesus made it happen.”
    â€œNo,” she said,