Mother scribbled discreetly.
The rabbi’s voice gathered in volume and righteousness. “Isaiah chapter six, verse eight tells us: ‘I heard the voice of my Lord, saying, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? I said, Here I am. Send me.’ ”
He sat down in one of the thronelike chairs on the side of the bima, and I knew what was coming—the sound of the shofar, the twisted ram’s horn blown on the High Holidays. A regular man, in a regular suit, picked up the horn.
I held Nattie’s hand, and she squeezed back. Some years, blowing the shofar had been Dad’s job, which was an odd thing for a man with little musical talent. It didn’t take regular talent to blow the shofar, Dad had said—it just took someone showing you how. And his father, who’d been dead long before we came along, had shown him how.
The man who definitely wasn’t Dad blew three short piercing cries, like an alarm, like a battle cry, followed by a long, anguished wail.
My heartbeat turned up in my stomach.
Sara reached into Mother’s pocketbook for a hankie. I thought she’d dab at her upper lip, where she had a frown of sweat, but she wiped her eyes.
I stood up, scooting past Mr. Silvermintz, past where Dad should have been sitting—completely ignoring the pink booklet’s advice about putting my posterior in the face of others—and left.
I opened the lipstick door to the shock of daylight and nearly tripped over a bucket and rags on the lawn.
Max rounded the corner, balancing a ladder on his shoulder. He was dressed up, for a change, in a tie and jacket, a yarmulke askew in his overgrown hair.
“Hey, what are you doing out here?” He checked his watch. “Services aren’t over for an hour.”
“What are you doing out here?”
He clanked the ladder against the brick and started to climb. “I’m cleaning this up.”
Right then, in my tea-worthy dress, I climbed behind him, like climbing to the rotunda but without the panic. I needed to touch the paint, the ugliness, for myself. I ran my fingers over the letter L, following the heavy brushstrokes, and landed on a black bubble, still wet. I pressed in, dimpling the paint.
“You’ll ruin that dress,” Max said.
I’d worn it to the last T&E, where it got a big “Terrif!” from T-Ann. “I don’t care,” I said.
“Then grab a rag and help me get it off.”
I took a rag from the bucket on the grass and soaked it with turpentine, which smelled of pine trees and licorice, but with even more vim.
I climbed back up, leaning left while Max leaned right. We worked until services ended, until we’d rubbed off the “Jews Are” (me) and the “Negro” and the swastika (Max). Only “Lovers” was left, and when Max said he’d take care of it, I believed in him.
14
Frock Around the Clock
That Saturday, Sara and I joined Fontaine, in her short gloves and lampshade hat—as chic as a pillbox but more flared at the bottom—as she bombed down Peachtree, passing every car on our way to Lumet’s department store. She must’ve been going sixty.
“Fontaine!” I yelled.
She turned to me in the back (Sara had claimed the front) and nearly careened onto the lawn of one of those majestic houses on Habersham. “Never got a ticket!” she said.
We were approaching the dip in the road before the temple. “Can you slow down here?” I said. “I can’t tell if they’ve finished cleaning up the words.”
“The mischief,” as Fontaine had called it. She’d heard the news from Mr. Hank, who knew it from the Teletype, before Mother, Sara, Nattie, and I even got home from services.
Fontaine slammed on the brakes. I jackknifed forward.
I rolled down the window and stuck half my body out to get a better look. Leaning over the gearshift, Sara gazed up at the building. The bricks looked good, if a bit splotchy—the V of “Lovers” faintly visible if you knew where to look.
Fontaine stepped on the gas, and I rocketed back into place. “Whatever happened there has nothing to do with now,” she said. “Don’t dress today for yesterday’s weather.”
I saw the corner of Sara’s jaw tighten. “Fontaine, I’m happy for everything you’re doing for our family, but please don’t tell me to keep being Jewish quiet. That may work on Ruth, but . . .”
The rest went unsaid. I knew what Sara meant. She meant she was in the approval/disapproval business, like Mother, after all.
A few fast minutes later, we pulled in front of the green-and-white-striped awning of Lumet’s. A valet in an emerald jacket greeted us with a smile. “How are you doing, Mrs. Landry? Will you be long?”
She gave the valet her key case. “A few hours, Walter. Park me in the shade.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thanks, sir,” I said, but only Sara seemed to hear me.
Fontaine linked her arm through Sara’s—Fontaine’s pale-pink sleeve against Sara’s severe black, the embodiment of their differences right there in cotton poplin. “Miss Sara, I am liberally spirited,” Fontaine said. “Here we are at Lumet’s, owned by—founded by!—Jews. And I’m one of their biggest customers.”
Walter, who hadn’t yet pulled away, laughed. “Oh, that she is.”
“Is this the kind of department store with books?” Sara asked, taking her arm back. “At Macy’s, the entire basement has been turned into a book cellar.”
Fontaine’s tone cooled ever so slightly. “Some of the best writers of this generation are southerners.”
“On the fifth floor,” Walter said. “Opposite the elevator.”
“Thanks,” Sara said, and I noticed then that sometime in the last two months, without mentioning a word to me, Sara had pierced her ears. She wasn’t wearing earrings, but there were faint dots, like the faint V on the bricks, marking the place earrings could slide in if they were so inclined.
We walked through Lumet’s doors—Fontaine, then Sara, then me—and I felt my mood lift right up. The store was my kind of swell, with gilded ceilings and mirrored columns. And there, lined up on marble benches near the glove counter, were Gracie and Mrs. Eleet, Thurston-Ann and Mrs. Vickery, and Claudia and Mrs. Starling.
Fontaine was the only grandmother of the bunch. Mrs. Eleet had offered to take us dress shopping along with our mothers. But when Mother conveniently announced she’d be working, Fontaine had leaped—literally, did a grand jeté—to take Mother’s place.
“Y’all,” I said, “this is my sister Sara.” I made quick introductions. Three blond heads and six blue eyes stared at Sara and her bohemian mien.
Claudia took her kid gloves off one finger at a time.
“From New York,” I added unnecessarily.
“You’re as chic as Ruth, with your all-black,” T-Ann said, less enthusiastically than usual, and I remembered she wasn’t allowed to go to New York on account of all the commies and Jews.
“It’s the ultimate funeral choice. Isn’t that what you said, Fontaine?” Sara asked.
“Sara’s looking for books. Fifth floor, I hear,” I said.
Gracie, all business, stood up and said, “Let the shopping begin.”
With Sara and her insouciance—a favorite word of Mademoiselle Tremblay’s—out of the picture, it was surprisingly easy to shift my thoughts back to fashion and frippery.
We were at Lumet’s in search of two numbers—a less dressy frock for the Fall Ball and an honest-to-God gown for the pre-debutante Magnolia. In under an hour, we dispensed with the former, all four of us in tea-length variations of a fit-and-flare with tulle: coral for me, celadon for Gracie, teal for Thurston-Ann, tart lime for Claudia.
When it was time to go to the higher, fancier floor in search of higher, fancier dresses, the whole posse rode in an elevator with shiny brass walls, each panel embossed with a foxhunting scene. The brass did strange things to our faces, stretching our smiles to
o wide. It hit me that somewhere along the way, I’d stopped comparing every single thing to New York. I couldn’t even conjure up an image of the elevator at my beloved Saks.
The better dresses at Lumet’s spanned an entire floor. It was frock around the clock, as Dad might have said, with dresses displayed my favorite way: by color (not unlike Gracie’s bed, the equestrian edition). All the ivories on one rack. Then the golds. The silvers. The oranges. The pinks and reds. The purples and greens. And the blues—there were enough of those, baby to indigo, to take up two racks.
Gracie and Mrs. Eleet gravitated to the ivory selections, and Thurston-Ann and Mrs. Vickery beelined for the peach sequins.
“Why don’t you try something with lace, Ruth?” Fontaine held up a tea-toned gown with a narrow bow at its empire waist.
I peered at the price tag pinned to the satin hanger and kept flicking through the dresses. “I’m fine with something less lacy.”
“My treat, Ruthie. It’s your first Magnolia,” Fontaine said.
A Mademoiselle-ism popped into my head: Great minds wear simple design. I held up a plum shift with a round collar that cost twelve dollars. “This is Audrey Hepburn–esque,” I said.
“So it is,” Fontaine said. “And that is about the worst thing I can think of, sending my granddaughter, daughter of a queen, off looking like a waif.”
“Do you think the better Mr. Jefferson will like this?” Claudia asked the air. “Oren asked me to the Magnolia with a bouquet of lilies.”
“You’ll have Oren wrapped around your pinky before long,” T-Ann said.
“C’mon, Ruthie, try a few lovelies on.” Fontaine lifted a gold dress from the rack. In that second, the years whirled off Fontaine’s face, and she looked like a girl herself.
Claudia tilted her head as if she were posing for a picture. “Already called it.”
A saleswoman nodded. “Yes, I put the very dress in her room.”
The voice made me look up. I’d heard it before. I followed it to the face that belonged to Mrs. Silvermintz, of the peacock-plumed hat, in the back row of the temple.
“Ruth! Lovely to see you outside the usual walls. And, Fontaine, always wonderful to see you.”
Fontaine blinked—fast—as if she were sending a distress signal.
“You know Fontaine?” I asked.
“Of course,” Mrs. Silvermintz said. “We go back to Johnston Grammar School.”
“Rose,” Fontaine said without much energy. “We’re looking for a Magnolia dress for my granddaughter.”
Mrs. Silvermintz—first name Rose, I supposed—smiled. Everyone in the store seemed to know Fontaine, but the fact Fontaine was related to a Jewess, well, not a soul here knew that except three of us: Fontaine, Mrs. Silvermintz, and me. Four, if you counted book-loving Sara. Five, if you added in Nattie. Six, seven, if you included Mother and Mr. Hank. This little addition exercise made me grin, because Sara and Mother were wrong. It wasn’t that nobody knew I was Jewish. It was just that not everybody knew.
With the slightest shake of her head, Fontaine turned her attention back to Claudia. “Aren’t you a dear?” Not a minute later and a rack away Fontaine raised her voice. “Oh, Ruthie. This is exquisite!” She spun a delicate dress in the chicest pink. “This with your hair.”
She had flawless taste, Fontaine did. The dress, embroidered with tiny dots, was lovely. Not as stunning as Mother’s impossibly stunning Magnolia gown, but close.
We all trooped off to the dressing rooms with an armful of gowns. Even the try-on spaces were glorious—little rooms radiating out from a floral lounge, spokes in a glamorous botanical wheel.
“Share a room? More fun, right?” Gracie said to me.
“Let’s do,” I said. There was a step-up platform for posing purposes and an array of high heels waiting to partner with any number of dresses. I tried on some duds—too floofy, too va-voom-y—before slipping on the pink. It was long. Still, I twirled. I knew twirling was a cliché, but it was a dress built for clichés, for spins that would take you somewhere.
Gracie modeled a few cream-colored variations before ditching them all for a crimson-red dress she swished to an imaginary song.
Out we went to the dressing lobby, where the mothers, plus Fontaine, were arrayed.
“Ruthie, you knock me out,” Fontaine said from her perch on the rose-festooned sofa.
“Oh, Gracie—imagine it with Maw-Maw’s earrings, the rubies,” Mrs. Eleet said.
Thurston-Ann had chosen a multicolored sequin sheath that knew how to catch the light. It was very Hollywood. T-Ann’s mother nudged her stomach. “Pull in, dear.”
And Claudia, shining brightly in the gold charmeuse Fontaine had eyed for me, swung her golden hair for maximum attraction.
“Like it was made for you—like you are a gen-u-ine goddess,” T-Ann said.
Mrs. Starling came up next to Claudia in the mirror. “Well, this—this will not work.”
“I think it will, Momma,” Claudia said. “You love things made of gold.”
“Too low here,” Mrs. Starling said, pinching the fabric by Claudia’s impressive cleavage. “And too tight there.” She plucked the fabric by Claudia’s hips. “I believe this would favor you better.” She held up a prim silk number in dishwater yellow.
“Not for the Magnolia,” Claudia said.
“You’ll shine in anything you wear, Claud,” T-Ann said quietly.
“Go on—put on the buttercup,” Mrs. Starling said, swinging the dress to and fro, as if trying to hypnotize Claudia into thinking it was worthy.
Dress in hand, Claudia slunk back to her changing room.
“The prettier Claudia gets,” Gracie whispered in my ear, “the more ordinary Mrs. Starling likes her to look.”
Mrs. Eleet went off to summon the alterations gal, who then turned her attention to Gracie first, as people tended to do.
Claudia came out in the new dress; it looked like something a fifth grader would wear to a father/daughter dance.
“Muuuuuuch better,” Mrs. Starling said, fluffing up Claudia’s unflappable hair.
Claudia bristled and stood straight as a model.
Thurston-Ann focused on wedging her feet into very high heels. Even she couldn’t find something positive to say.
I was on the alterations block when Mrs. Silvermintz came by to start hanging up the not-today gowns. “Very lovely, Ruth.”
I thought of seeing her yesterday. I thought of all of us yesterday. I braided, unbraided, then rebraided a hank of hair.
“Please, miss, no wiggles,” the seamstress said, setting my hips straight.
By now the rest of the girls had gone up to the Tea Room with their mothers. Fontaine offered to stay with me and wait for Sara, but I told her to head on up; she’d been talking about the chicken almondine with frozen grapes for a solid week.
The seamstress packed up, and I stared at my pinned-up self in the mirror. I imagined wearing this perfectly altered dress—among my new friends, and the new boy who was a dreamboat—and then I imagined something else.
Maybe it was the light. The hopeful light of the dressing room was my New York light, the light of trying on someone else’s clothes, someone else’s possibilities. I sailed my hand through those waiting-to-be-returned gowns, and who should join me in my fashion reverie but Dad. I knew he wasn’t there, of course. But something of Arthur Robb was before me. It was his bigness even though he was a small guy. His big smile, big laugh, big intellect.
And then Sara—not Dad but not not-Dad—was in front of me, a shopping bag of books at her feet. “What are you doing?” she said.
“Try on a dress with me.”
“Not my scene.” Sara thumbed through the rack where Mrs. Silvermintz had hung the castoffs.
“It used to be—when we played dress-up with Bubbe’s clothes.” I knew I had her t
hen with those memories of us in Dad’s mother’s Shabbos-best dresses, always with some silly adornment—ruffles or pin tucks or feathers or all three.
From the rack, I plucked an orange dress with a feathered hem, a T-Ann reject.
“Maybe just this one,” Sara said. There was a hint of a smile.
We went into the dressing room and Sara stripped down. I caught sight of the two of us in the mirror. I had on full armor—a cross-your-heart brassiere, girdle, and garter belt. And Sara had on gunders that looked like a bikini, and no brassiere whatsoever.
“Can you zip me?” she asked.
I eased the zipper over Sara’s ribs. The feathers undulated across her knees. She ruffled them. I bumped her hip with mine just to see the feathers quiver. “Divine,” I said, drawing out the word like T-Ann might.
“Dee-viine.” Sara exaggerated the drawl even more. “May I have this dance, Miss Ruth?”
I gave her my hand, and instead of the fox-trot or what have you, she whipped me around. Thank God the dressing room was huge. Sara leaned back and I leaned back, and we spun, spun, spun, our fingers barely holding on to each other, like we were pulling all the air in the room into our sister orbit. We were floating. We were flying. We were so much like our childhood selves that I had to stop before I might have done something else, like cry.
Sara bent over to catch her breath. “Those girls—are they really your friends?”
“They are,” I said.
“Do they know you were at temple yesterday?”
A trickle of sweat slid down my nose. “Unlikely.”
“You don’t have to wear your Star of David every day or anything, but it’s who you are.”
“I lost it, the necklace.” I checked Sara’s face, trying to tell if she was mad at me—for being a chicken or a liar or both. “Okay, I have it—I just don’t want to wear it.” I was flooded with a sudden need for the truth, especially with the person I’d shared a room with nearly all my life.
In the Neighborhood of True Page 13