In the Neighborhood of True

by Susan Kaplan Carlton

  “You heard the rabbi—if you don’t stand up, you’re only brave in theory,” Sara said.

  “I’m not even brave in theory. I’m only brave in my dreams. I’m only brave in my dreams when I’m standing next to Dad. And when I wake up and Dad is gone, and Gracie and Davis are here, breathing and spinning on the dance floor and sipping Coca-Colas, then . . .” I tried to capture the seesaw feeling taking flight in my chest—pushing up, gliding down. “I don’t want everything to have happened to me,” I said, which wasn’t quite right but wasn’t not-right either.

  “You know who you’re like right now?” Sara said.

  “Who?” Dad—I hoped she’d say Dad.

  “Yourself.” She gave me something resembling a hug.

  Mrs. Silvermintz’s voice broke in. “Sorry to interrupt, girls.” Her beehive peeked into the room. On seeing Sara and her plumage, her smile froze a bit. “Isn’t that a look? Can I bring you a pair of tangerine pumps?”

  “Thanks, but we’re all set,” I said.

  “And you, Miss Starling,” Mrs. Silvermintz asked. “Can I get you a shoe?”

  “Oh, Claudia’s upstairs in the Tea Room,” I said.

  “I am right here,” Claudia la-di-dahed, her voice too loud.

  I stepped out of the dressing room, half zipped. And there she was, not three feet away, hip thrust out like a mannequin.

  Claudia looked at me from one direction. Sara looked from the other.

  “Miss Starling,” Mrs. Silvermintz said. “What of the gold dress? Do you have that in your pile?”

  “No, ma’am. Mother chose the buttercup for me,” Claudia said, not missing a beat.

  “All right then.” Mrs. Silvermintz went off, arms fluttering with cast-aside silks.

  “Were you here the whole time?” I asked Claudia—Claw-dia.

  “Ding, ding.” Claudia’s hair was tangled, her cheeks red. “I heard about your rabbis and your Stars of David.”

  “You’re full of shit—and you’re a thief.” Sara pointed to the bottom of Claudia’s neat, pleated skirt, from under which poked a very gold hem. Claudia hitched the glamorous gown, which she was clearly and unglamorously helping herself to, into better hiding. “Where we come from—” Sara said.

  I picked up the line. “Where we come from, the truth is . . .” And then I stopped, because what did I know about truth?

  “Let’s agree you didn’t see what you saw,” Claudia said, “and I didn’t hear what I heard.”

  Her voice made my jaw jerk shut. I so wanted to utter a Dad-worthy, Dad-word-y comeback and sling it her way. But I had no words—nothing clever, nothing sharp. Or maybe I had only something sharp—the stab of knowing Claudia knew exactly what I’d gone to great pains to hide. I ran my tongue over and over my teeth, which now felt like they were made of glass, ready to shatter without warning.

  Instead, I walked to the register, standing rabbi-tall, to pay for my dress with Fontaine’s metal Charga-Plate. I slipped it out of its leather pouch, tracing her signature engraved in the brass—fontaine alice landry—while Sara went upstairs to let Fontaine know we were ready to leave.

  The three of us, two Robbs and a Landry, two Jews and a Methodist, exited through the columned lobby with the gilded ceiling in time to see the actual golden sun sinking from the sky. The light slanted across the parking lot in fat stripes.

  While we waited for the valet to bring the car around, Fontaine, none the wiser, put an arm around me, and I inhaled her scent, which I now definitively knew was jasmine.

  Home we went, Sara and I together in the back this time.

  Fontaine took the turn at Peachtree Battle on two wheels, and I cheered her on.

  15

  Country Club with a Lowercase C

  I was under the bonnet dryer, my hair sizzling like a steak, before the pool-and-dinner date with Davis, when Sara knocked on my knee. I shut off the contraption and let the hose dangle down my side.

  It was the last Sunday in September, but no one had told the sky. The predicted high was eighty-nine. I popped my top away from my skin to keep the sweat from pooling in my bra.

  “Which bathing suit are you going to wear?” Sara asked.

  I laughed. “You don’t care.”

  She laughed, too. “I don’t, but you do.”

  “The one-piece with the daisy,” I said. “As in ‘fresh as a.’ ”

  “A cliché, don’t you think?”

  “Or the black-and-white two-piece with the ruffle.”

  “Always choose the ruffle.”

  Another Mademoiselle-ism floated to mind: If you want to fly, you have to ruffle some feathers.

  “I don’t want you to fly off—to bus off,” I said, my voice suddenly an eggshell, thinking of Sara and the seven states between us, going on about her life without us.

  “Is it Davis? Is that it?”

  “No, he’s a good one.”

  “Does he know your favorite book or your middle name?”

  “He could.”

  Sara exhaled, and I imagined she’d light up a Chesterfield the second she got on the Greyhound. “I’m going to tell you something. It won’t be Mother-approved. Do you want to fry the other half of your hair while we talk?”

  “Can you put it in braids instead?” I sat down on Dad’s chair and felt the plastic exhale. Sara stood behind me, parted my hair down the middle with a pencil, and started in.

  “When you’re ready—only when you’re ready—it might help to spend the night with him, with this Davis.” Her fingers flew through my hair, untangling knots and yanking the sections into some semblance of order. “Because this happiness won’t remember itself.”

  “I’ve only been crazy about him for two weeks. Three weeks.”

  She started on the other side. “Being with Jerome? I’m not saying it helps, but it helps. If you want to be with a boy because you want to be with a boy, it’s all right.”

  “With him with him?” I swiveled around, thinking about how kissing Davis pushed the melancholy out of my head. I wondered what Gracie would think.

  “Turn around—I have to fix this side.” She pulled to the right. “Yep, sleep with him. Back-seat bingo. Jump in the passion pit. I was eighteen, but I wasn’t grieving. And, you’ll be seventeen in a few months.”

  “I’m not saying I’m ready. But maybe it wouldn’t hurt to send a few, you know”—I lowered my voice—“rubbers.”

  “Good! Lead the parade, Ruthie,” Sara said, and we both laughed. That was a Dad-ism. He wanted us girls out in front, leading the charge. “And slinkies!” she said. “We call them slinkies. They’ll be on the way.”

  We waited in front of the main house for Davis to pick me up so Sara could put her eyes—and stamp of approval—on him before Mother drove her to the bus.

  Davis and the Rambler clunked up the motor court. At the sight of two Robb girls—three, if you counted the poodle—he jumped out.

  I made quick introductions. Davis’s dimple was on full display. “Sorry I’m a few minutes late,” he said. “I wound up deep in a tennis game.”

  “Fore,” Sara said.

  “That’s golf,” Davis said, “but I like your sense of humor.”

  “Right—tennis. Love,” Sara said.

  Davis grinned. “Agree with you there.”

  Frooshka licked Davis’s tennis legs, and he leaned down to give her a scratch.

  “Davis,” Sara said. “Are you trustworthy? Can I trust you with my sister?”

  “Jeez Louise!” I objected.

  Davis left Froo and walked so he was exactly facing Sara. “I know your family has been through it, and I promise you—more importantly, I promise Ruth—I will be a southern gentleman through and through. And through.” Then like some ridiculous politician, he shook Sara’s hand. And that was pretty clever, because he was t
reating her as an equal. She gave a vigorous shake in return.

  Before I got in the front seat, Sara said to me in a normal everyday voice so the whole world could hear, “I’ll see you at Thanksgiving, Ruthie. Meantime, I’ll send you that package. I approve.”

  Davis punched the accelerator, and we were off to the club, Sara getting smaller behind us. I knew she’d be long gone by the time I got back home, but I didn’t dwell on that. Instead, I turned my mind to the club situation. I’d learned there were many kinds of clubs here, thanks to Fontaine, who’d described the place near Piedmont Park where she and Mr. Hank belonged as the only Club worth a capital C. The club for strivers where we were headed was on the edge of the suburbs, the club for newcomers was near the hospital, the club for people who made their money yesterday was north of the city, the club for German Jews was in Brookhaven, the club for Eastern Europeans was near the Tech campus, and there was no club for Negroes unless you counted the Negro-only nine-hole course near Lincoln Cemetery or the newly desegregated North Fulton golf course, both of which Mr. Hank had mentioned (and Fontaine most certainly had not).

  We drove out past the new houses on Howell Mill, the radio blaring Carl Perkins and his “Blue Suede Shoes,” the windows rolled down, the breeze turning my braids cotton-candy-ish.

  Ten minutes later, we pulled up to a white building with columns out front, tennis courts on either side, and a lawn mowed in what I now saw was the country-club-preferred checkerboard pattern. The place didn’t look so lowercase-c to me.

  Gracie and T-Ann were out front to sign me in as their guest. They took me to the changing room to put away my dinner dress, then went out the deck door. We weren’t allowed to walk through the lobby in pool attire, according to T-Ann.

  Rows of chaises—white iron, white cushions, white towels rolled just so—lined the deck. The jumbo pool glistened a welcoming turquoise, but as inviting as it was, I remembered it wasn’t made to welcome people like me. I sighed a Mother sigh.

  Claudia and her glossy maillot and glossy legs and glossy ponytail had already set up camp in the blaze of the sun near the deep end.

  “Hey,” I said, putting my tote bag on an empty chaise.

  Claudia flicked her ponytail. “Ruth.”

  “Let me order you a Co-Cola,” Davis said.

  “Have y’all seen Jimmy?” Thurston-Ann asked.

  “He’s around.” Claudia made a roof over her eyes with her hand. “Somewhere.”

  “How was tennis?” Gracie asked, scooting her chair closer to Buck.

  “Davis and I beat the others silly,” Claudia reported.

  “You and Davis?” I said.

  “Parents set it up—been on the books awhile,” Davis answered.

  I wondered if this was true, or in the neighborhood of true.

  Davis whistled, low and cool, and a Negro waiter hustled over. All the service workers here were Negroes. I didn’t want to think of Max and Jim Crow and the temple and turpentine, but I couldn’t stop thinking—thinking if Davis and company knew my mother was fomenting a little nonviolent protest with the rabbi, knew I even knew a rabbi, I’d never be invited to the club or the Club again. At the same second, I had a different thought that made me feel both better and worse: All the porters at Grand Central Station were Negroes, too. I filed this away to discuss with Mr. Hank.

  The Cokes came, and Davis signed for the bill—like at Fontaine’s Club, no cash changed hands—and he circled his arm around me.

  We settled into the white-white chaises.

  Gracie took off her cover-up; she had on a gingham one-piece with ribbon straps.

  “Perfection,” Thurston-Ann said to Gracie, her hat and cover-up firmly in place.

  I popped off my dress and squirted Coppertone on my shoulders.

  “Oh, baby,” Davis said.

  The waiter was back with a shake of the head and a word for Davis. Next thing I knew, Claudia signed his check. “It’s no problem,” Claudia told Davis, but he looked like he’d swallowed a sardine.

  “Whoa-etta, your suit is gorgeous! Black-and-white heaven,” Thurston-Ann said to me, ignoring the kerfuffle. She adjusted her one-piece. “Hey, speaking of heaven, Ruth, when’re you going to turn up on a Sunday morning? At church?”

  Davis pulled off his shirt. It struck me as strange you could lollygag by the pool almost naked—with someone you wouldn’t mind seeing naked—and no one batted an eye.

  “Ruth?” T-Ann asked again.

  “Uh, my mother hasn’t seemed interested in church,” I said. A version of the truth.

  T-Ann inched her chaise a few inches closer to me. “You could come on your own or with your grandmother. Church’d be better with y’all.”

  Jimmy turned up in plaid shorts and saved me from responding.

  Thurston-Ann swatted at him with her hat. “Where have you been?”

  “Around.” Jimmy sat on the edge of T-Ann’s chaise, and it seesawed up a few inches.

  I slipped on my Hollywood sunglasses and pulled out last month’s Mademoiselle—this month’s issue hadn’t come in the mail yet, though it must’ve been on the newsstand in New York for five days. The old issue was a dud—a whole article devoted to how to wash your face: Don’t slide a washcloth around and call your face clean. Friction is half the battle. I wondered what Sara was reading on the bus ride home—whatever it was, it was probably existential.

  Davis closed his eyes and held my hand, stroking my palm sleepily with his thumb. He could do that for a thousand years as far as I was concerned.

  I wanted to whisper something encouraging about the payment situation, but I couldn’t imagine what to say.

  Buck yelled, “Davis, you in?”

  I propped up on my elbows to see Buck on the high dive.

  “Busy,” Davis said, not looking.

  “My middle name is Tarbell, by the way,” I said, lying back down. “For the journalist Ida Tarbell—my mother’s choice.”

  “Are you sleep-talking?” Davis said.

  “Just thought you should know.”

  Gracie fluttered her feet in the shallow end. “Mine’s Elizabeth, same as my mother and her mother.”

  With a big yell, Buck did an underrotated forward pike and splashed into the water.

  Davis let out a whoop, and Gracie kicked her feet fast, like applause. But here was the thing. Hearing Buck hit the water—even on a terrible dive—made me homesick for Maine, even though I only lived there in summer-camp season.

  I stood and readjusted my suit. Davis whistled, low, but I brushed him off.

  I went up the metal ladder, stopping three-quarters of the way up to look down. I didn’t have the hiccup of panic I’d had climbing to the temple rotunda. The steps were hot under my feet, and the sun bounced around, throwing prisms like buckshot.

  At the top, I curled my toes under and tested the spring. A squeak. I turned around, my back to the pool.

  “She’s chickening out,” somebody—Claudia, most likely—said.

  “You don’t have to go,” Davis yelled up. “It’s higher than it looks.”

  I raised my arms, pressed down into the board, and bounced.

  I could tell it was a good push-off. I saw a zipper of sky, of clouds. I turned one and a half times and entered the water with a ripple.

  When I surfaced, Davis was treading in the deep end. I did a quick bathing-suit check and tugged my top over my top and my bottom over my bottom. Davis wrapped his arms around me. I wrapped back, weightless, breathless. “Damn, Babe Ruth,” he said.

  We stayed in the water, foreheads together, limbs tangled, for a very long time.

  All us girls changed into our finery in the locker room, spritzing one another with perfume and winging it up with eyeliner. I corralled my hair into an approximation of a bun.

  On the perfectly crisscrossed grass, the ga
rden party hadn’t quite started. It flitted through my mind that it was now well after five; I’d overstayed my five-o’clock shadow welcome. Davis took my hand. “C’mon. I want to introduce you to my parents.”

  Mrs. and Mr. Jefferson stood across the lawn in a tight circle of adults, looking as though they were anticipating a round of cocktails. Davis tapped his mother on the elbow, and she spun around, putting a smile on her face a second late. “Ruth! How lovely you are. So happy to see you.”

  I knew this southernism—saying you were happy to see someone rather than happy to meet them, in case you’d already met them and had forgotten—although, of course, Mrs. Jefferson had never set eyes on me before.

  “Happy to see you too, Mrs. Jefferson,” I said.

  She was as skinny-minnie as her brother, Cranford.

  “You’re Hank Landry’s grandgirl,” Mr. Jefferson said. He stubbed out a cigarette with a scuffed cleat.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hear he’s a good man, though can’t say I’m a fan of his editorials. Have to read him after I eat breakfast, if you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t want to say yes. I didn’t want to agree that Mr. Hank was anything but perfect. “That’s a good one, sir,” I said. It seemed if not exactly polite, at least in the neighborhood of polite.

  A waiter glided by with a tray of martinis. Mr. Jefferson took two.

  “Have fun,” Mrs. Jefferson said in a not-fun voice, then turned back to her circle.

  “They liked you,” Davis said, and I wondered how he could possibly know. “They were high school sweethearts. Could be us.”

  Could it be? Could Davis turn into his two-drink father in scuffed cleats? Could he turn into someone who couldn’t stomach Mr. Hank’s editorials?

  Mrs. Jefferson was back at Davis’s elbow. “Keep an eye on your brother, dear. He’s a little wound up.”

  Davis kicked at the grass with his loafer. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Well, if you do.” When she walked away, I saw her pretty dress had a safety pin standing in for a missing abalone button at the back.