In the
NEIGHBORHOOD
of
True
Susan Kaplan Carlton
Algonquin 2019
For Annie and Jane
It is an old, old story. It is one repeated over and over again in history. When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe.
—Ralph McGill, editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution
(from front-page column, October 13, 1958)
Contents
1. The Whole Truth
2. Dishing Up Elvis
3. Southern Discomfort
4. The War of Northern Aggression
5. Shut the Oven Door
6. Score Squeeze
7. Shalom, Y’all
8. Sh-Boom, Sh-Boom
9. The Southern Mount Rushmore
10. Lemonade with Communist Overtones
11. The Rabbi and the Rebel
12. VistaVision
13. One Hundred and Forty-Two Bricks
14. Frock Around the Clock
15. Country Club with a Lowercase C
16. Driving Lessons
17. In Love with a Sunbeam
18. Spinning Around with Saxophone Colossus
19. Ten Bells
20. The Genus of the Pineapple
21. In Search of Hickories
22. Perfect Smoke Rings
23. North Stars
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
1
The Whole Truth
1959
The navy dress was just where I’d left it, hanging hollow as a compliment behind the gown I’d worn to the Magnolia Ball the night everything went to hell in a handbasket.
I thought of Davis and his single dimple and how his hand had hovered at the small of my back, making me feel its phantom weight even when he wasn’t touching me. I thought of a different day and a different dress, this one with sunburst pleats—how he’d unzipped it and fanned it out on the grass that night at the club, how the air was sweet as taffy, and how when we rejoined his family I’d wondered if every pleat was back in place.
“Ruth!” Mother’s voice burst into the closet. “Not the morning to dillydally.”
“Coming,” I said, but I did the opposite of not-dallying. I put the navy dress on over my slip and sat, right there on the closet floor, not giving a fig about wrinkles. It was as if my nerves had pitched the world ten degrees to the left and I had to plunk down to find my balance.
It was cool at the back of the closet—in what I’d come to think of as my New York section, the land of navies and blacks and grays—where the floor was concrete, smooth and solid beneath me.
When we’d first arrived here at the end of an airless summer, Mother, who’d changed from Mom to Mother when we crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, told her parents, whom we’d always called Fontaine and Mr. Hank, that Nattie and I needed wall-to-wall carpet to cushion our landing. Maybe we needed cushioning after the shock of our father’s death, or maybe we needed cushioning after moving from our apartment in New York to our grandparents’ guesthouse behind the dogwoods. Either way, the next afternoon, two men turned up with a roll of white carpet and stapled it over every square inch of the place, save for the closets.
Just like that, we were blanketed in an ironic, improbable snowstorm.
“Now, Ruthie,” Mother said, on the other side of the door.
I stood up and pulled in, feeling the dread in my chest prickle from the inside out.
The dress reminded me of Leslie Caron in An American in Paris, except I was an American in Atlanta, and in the six months I’d been here, my taste and I had gone from simple to posh to simple again. If the girls in the pastel posse were in the courtroom today, I bet they’d be in shades of sherbet, rays of sunshine against the February sky.
Today, I didn’t want to be sunny.
Today, I wanted to be Plain Ruth, teller of truth.
On the drive downtown, Mother said, “You be yourself up there, Ruthie. It doesn’t have to get ugly.” Her short bangs curled down her forehead like a question mark.
Here, nothing was supposed to get ugly.
As we passed the putting greens on Northside, I watched the trees sway, thinking that winter was different—prettier—in a place where the trees cared enough about their leaves to hold on to them year-round. And also thinking that prettiness had to be planned, that the sprinklers had to work hard to keep the perfect green lawn from turning back to plain red clay.
I cranked down the window, needing to feel the air.
We were twelve minutes late. Mother was often late, a leftover New York affectation, but today my dallying about dresses had held us up. For a half second, I paused in front of the large door with Fulton County Superior Court etched in gold, then inhaled and turned the knob gently, hoping to avoid a clang.
Clang.
A hundred or more heads swiveled in my direction.
Mother dropped her smile, but then she touched her pearls and reassembled herself. I followed her lead, hand to my throat, where my own string of pearls—along with my stomach and other major organs—had taken up residence.
The courtroom was impressive, with a soaring ceiling and sunlight flooding in from impossibly tall windows. It looked not unlike the temple at the center of the trouble.
The pastel posse was here after all. I tried to catch Gracie’s eye, but she was busy tugging her apricot twinset into place. Mother and I walked past Rabbi Selwick and his wife, both turned out in tweed, and I thought of him at our house with his daughter and her gift of peach preserves. Behind them were women in fur and men in pinstripes. The couples—probably from the Club—looked like they were waiting for a tray of martinis to glide by.
Mother stepped into the third row, and I slid next to her. Davis was five feet away, at the defendant’s table. The collar of his white oxford shirt, crisp and starched, poked out above his blazer. I couldn’t tell a single thing Davis was thinking, from looking at the back of his very handsome head.
The attorney nodded to me and twisted his mouth. “You’re late.” To the judge he said, “We apologize for the delay, Your Honor. We call Ruth Robb to the stand.”
My pumps click-clicked on the marble floor. A woman with coral lipstick motioned for me to sit in the witness chair, like on Perry Mason. Goose bumps inched up my arms. I wished I’d thought to bring a cardigan.
She turned to me and said, “Raise your right hand and repeat after me.”
I raised my hand and noticed a sunburst carved into the paneling over the door I’d just walked through, a little moment of brightness.
“Other right,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” I raised my other hand. “I’m terrible with left and right. I always—”
“Miss—” the judge said, looking down at a note card. “Miss Robb. No need to talk now.” He had gray hair and half-glasses, and he gave a half smile.
And I thought: But that’s why I’m here. Because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
The woman picked up a Bible, and I placed my free hand over its worn leather cover. I knew there were two Bibles—one for whites and one for Negroes. I knew because Rabbi Selwick was on a mission to have Negro witnesses use the same Bible as the rest of Atlanta. I thought about asking for the Negro Bible, even though every single person in the courtroom was white, but as the judge himself had said: “No need to talk now.”
“Do you swear on this Bible the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, an
d nothing but the truth, so help you God?” the woman asked.
In the distance, I heard a sprinkler turn on. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
I glanced at the Bible, the King James version, and it occurred to me I was swearing on the sacred text of another religion, that there wasn’t a Tanakh for Jews to pledge their truthfulness upon.
I wanted Davis to look up. I wanted to see if his tie was straight. I wanted to see if he’d nicked himself shaving. I wanted to see the constellation of freckles across his eyelids. I wanted to see how he looked when he looked at me.
And then he did—his true-blue eyes locked right on mine. I felt the heat slide up my cheeks. Davis, who taught me about the Uncivil War, and blowing perfecto smoke rings, and real honest-to-God French-kissing. Davis, who said he wanted us to get married the second we turned twenty-one.
I swallowed. “I do.”
2
Dishing Up Elvis
Six Months Earlier
Lipstick melted fast down here. Last night, I’d left my Fire & Ice on the windowsill, and by morning it was fondue-y. I dabbed a bit on my lips anyway. I put on pedal pushers and a sleeveless blouse, and then, with a wad of TP, tried to squish the lipstick back into an approximation of a bullet.
Nattie was foraging for cereal when I got to the kitchen. The guesthouse was tiny. According to my little sister, who was precise about such things, it was eighty-seven steps from the bedroom, which we shared, through the living room, where Mother slept on the daybed, to the foyer, where the telephone sat on the table, to the kitchen.
“Don’t even ask,” I said, standing the lipstick up in an ice-cube tray and hoping for the best. The freezer was full of Pyrex dishes, the neighbors’ pity casseroles piled like a lopsided wedding cake—turkey tetrazzini, tuna noodle, chicken divan, and something labeled “Momma’s Surprise.”
“About what?” Nattie shoveled cornflakes into her mouth. She didn’t care if she faced the day without a lick of makeup on, which was the advantage of being eleven. It wasn’t like I troweled on the stuff or anything, but there was power in the perfect red lipstick. According to Mademoiselle magazine, red draws attention to both your mouth and your words.
I made coffee, because I lived for coffee—for coffee and two stirs of cream and an avalanche of sugar.
Before I finished my second cup, the doorbell rang the first few lines of “Dixie,” an old southern song Fontaine said was the anthem of the Confederacy, even though it was written by a New Yorker. Since we’d moved in, “Dixie” had been announcing the arrival of southern hospitality in the form of casseroles and such.
On the other side of the door stood a woman in white gloves, no casserole in view. “Well, hello, hello,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Eleet.”
Frooshka, our enormous poodle, jingled over for a look-see.
“Elite?” I said. It was a name begging for wordplay. I was what my father had called a words girl. He’d always been on the lookout for a good line. “We’re crossing into Georgia,” he’d said when we’d made the annual drive to visit Mother’s family. “Set your watch back thirty years.” But then he died 127 days ago on Forty-Ninth and Park—a heart attack after a business lunch—and the rest of us set our watches back permanently and moved down here, poodle and all.
“We’re all ‘e’s. E-l-double-e-t,” the woman said. Her dress was a shade of piercing pink not found in nature.
“I’m Ruth.” I held my hand out for a shake.
“I’m Natalie.” My sister slid in on her skinny legs wearing a no-nonsense navy-blue bathing suit. That was one good thing about Fontaine and Mr. Hank’s place: They had a beauty of a pool. The main house was a beauty, too. Fontaine had grown up inside its brick walls.
With the tips of her gloved fingers, Mrs. Eleet touched my hand. To Nattie, she smiled and said, “Pleased to see you.”
“Say hey, I’m Gracie.” A girl around my age—sixteen or maybe seventeen—leaned against the doorframe.
“Hay is for horses,” Mrs. Eleet said.
“Neigh,” the girl said back. Her blond hair flipped up at the ends like the hook of an umbrella. A baking dish gift-wrapped in foil was balanced in her hands. There was Pyrex after all.
Frooshka trotted over to her, aligning herself with the more glamorous of us.
“I’m so sorry to hear about your daddy,” Mrs. Eleet said. “Is your momma here? I’d love to offer our sincerest condolence.” She took a step forward, her pointy pump an arrow on the white carpet. “We’re acquainted from way back.”
I dug my bare feet into the pile. “My mother is . . . out.”
“She’s at work,” Nattie piped up. “Her first day at the newspaper.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Eleet said after a slight hesitation. “Poor dear. Of course.”
“Here’s chicken à la king,” the blond girl said with the kind of sky-wide smile you don’t see much of in Manhattan. “I’m sure there’s nothing in this world you’ve been craving more than chicken à la king.”
I laughed as I accepted the casserole. “Who is this king, though? The king à la chicken?”
“Elvis, maybe,” she said. Her flowered skirt had the perfect pouf.
“Good,” I said. “Elvis is someone we don’t have in the freezer.”
“And I—we—also want to give this to you.” Mrs. Eleet placed a whisper-pink booklet on top of the foil: Belles of the Ball: A Pre-Debutante Guide. “Ruth, do join us for Tea and Etiquette tomorrow,” she said. “Or T and E, as we like to call it.”
“Ruthie,” Nattie beckoned in a low voice.
“Shh,” I replied.
“Bless her.” Mrs. Eleet waved in Nattie’s direction. To me she said, “You know, Gracie is a third-year over at Covenant. She loves it! Don’t you love it, Gracie?”
“Oh, yes. I do love it,” Gracie answered in a voice I recognized, a voice that said, I’m embarrassed by my mother.
“I’ll be a third-year at Covenant, too—a junior, right?” I fluffed Frooshka’s poufed-up poodle head. “And Natalie will be in sixth grade.”
“We know!” Mrs. Eleet clapped her gloved hands together. They made no noise. “Girls from your year will be over for T and E. We’re on Arden. Fontaine knows the place. We’ve got the little front porch!”
Gracie tapped her front tooth with a manicured nail.
“Ruthie,” Nattie whisper-shouted.
“Excuse me,” I said to Mrs. Eleet, and I took a half step to Nattie. “What?”
“You’ve got lipstick on your teeth,” Nattie said, which explained Gracie’s tapping.
“Drat.” I worried my tongue over my teeth.
“You smeared it,” Nattie said.
“So, tomorrow—at three!” Mrs. Eleet said over my shoulder.
Gracie poked her head into our lipstick tête-à-tête. “It’ll actually be fun,” she said, and I noticed a cluster of tiny pimples along the bridge of her nose. I can’t tell you how happy it made me, seeing those pimples.
“All right!” I said. And because perhaps that wasn’t clear, I added, “Great.” And then, “Thank you.” Whatever it was that happened at a T&E, it would surely beat sitting here wishing every single thing about life—and death—were different.
“It’s not fancy. Just wear a tea dress,” Gracie said.
“A tea dress?” I asked.
“A tea dress or the like,” she clarified, except not really, before turning on her heel and following her mother out the door.
While I stuck Elvis in the freezer, below the lipstick and the tuna noodles, Nattie disappeared from view. Frooshka and I found her poolside, nose in the pink booklet. She shaded her eyes and said, “I quoteth page nine: ‘Never show one’s bosom before evening.’ ”
I unbuttoned my shirt an extra button. “Oops! Bosom in the morning.”
“I quoteth again. Page twenty-seven: ‘A lady never walks
while holding a cigarette. Indeed, a lady should avoid smoking in public, as the habit borders on the unattractive.’ ”
“Knock-knock,” said a voice, followed by no actual knock, since we were all outside. Fontaine tipped her straw hat toward us. Her butterscotch hair, colored by Frederic every third Thursday, was pulled back in a low bun. She wore a triple loop of pearls—faux for everyday—and a gardening apron, even though she had two gardeners. “Birdie thought y’all could use something green,” she said, presenting a platter of deviled eggs.
“Eggs are yellow,” Nattie said.
“These’ve got pickles,” Fontaine said. “Was that Mrs. Eleet I saw? She and your mother go back to the days of the Magnolia Ball. Your mother was queen, of course.”
“Were you a Magnolia Princess?” I said. Clearly the answer would be yes.
“Oh, no,” Fontaine said. “Queen. I was queen two years in a row—unprecedented.”
“She dropped off this.” Nattie stuck the pink booklet between her teeth like a bone.
“Don’t be a child,” Fontaine said, taking the booklet from Nattie and smoothing out the bite marks. “I know you’re modern in the North and unimpressed by our ways, Ruthie. But, believe me, you will praise the day you got this.” She flipped the brim of her hat back. “It’s a gift, knowing what to do.”
I popped an egg into my mouth. The pickle added something, I had to admit. A snap.
“Take the egg in two bites next time,” Fontaine said. “North end, then southern end.”
“What does that mean—north end?” I pictured the egg with a compass.
She waved the question away. “If you want to know the truth, I asked Millie to drop by. She’s handling membership and recruitment. I told her about your daddy—not everything about him, not more than she needs to know.” Fontaine paused. “What I told her was your daddy passed on and now here you are, Alice’s daughters, back where you belong.”
In the Neighborhood of True Page 1