We hit a pothole. I suddenly loved that we were on a rutted road, that we would leave evidence we were here, as if we had the power to shift and rearrange layers of dirt.
Davis turned and kissed me, eyes closed, just a finger or two on the wheel. I swatted him. “Don’t get us killed!”
“No one is ever, ever on this stretch.” He slapped the dash. “Look at that! The Rambler hit forty thousand miles.”
I leaned into him, staring at zeroes on the odometer. They were so festive all lined up in a row. It seemed like an omen. Even the car knew this was a milestone night.
We pulled up to a small log cabin alone on a hill. Davis opened my door, and I took out my overnighter and followed him up the pine needle path.
He unlatched the front door, and a wall of mustiness floated right up my nose.
“Hunting doesn’t start for a few weeks,” he said, tapping out a slow rhythm on my arm with his fingertips. “My dad hasn’t opened the lodge for the season yet.”
The place wasn’t as big as the word “lodge” had led me to believe—just a small living room and bedroom with bunk beds. “Cabin” was a better fit. “Shack” was a better fit. My heart tanked at the sight of those beat-up bunks. I sure hoped they would not be the scene of the deed.
I kicked off my heels. Dust coated the floor, and motes wafted through the air. I coughed.
Davis smiled his smile, and I suddenly didn’t care a whit about motes, whatever motes actually were. “I have something for you,” he said. “Check the closet.”
There in the closet, front and center, was Davis’s letter jacket, his name embroidered in loopy script where his heart/my heart would be. A red ribbon hung loose around the hanger.
“It’s a present,” he said, filling the doorframe behind me.
A declaration was what it was. A declaration we were an item—the next gift would likely be a pin. Or a ring. My whole body thrummed. “How’d it get here?”
“I drove out earlier in the day. Brought a few things up.”
I traced the stitching of his name with my finger.
Davis put the jacket over my shoulders and kicked the door closed. He turned off the lights.
It took my eyes until the count of seven, eight, nine to adjust. I stopped counting pretty quickly, because we started kissing—first, standing; then on the nubbly plaid sofa, where a few leaves had drifted in who-knew-when; then on the floor, where the jacket was the first thing to go.
He unbuttoned the top button of my cashmere shrug, which, of course, was Fontaine’s cashmere shrug. He unbuttoned the back of my dress. I wanted him to keep unbuttoning me. I looked right at Davis, but it was too shadowy to see his eyes.
I had on very few clothes—my gunders, bra, slip, and stockings—when I stood up and fumbled my way over to the lamp. I switched it back on. The shade was made of cowhide or something, whipstitched together like puzzle pieces.
If I was going to take the plunge, I didn’t want to be in the dark, even the half dark. I snapped open my pocketbook and removed the slinky Sara had sent me. A peach wrapper with blue lettering: durex opaque—guaranteed to be absolutely perfect.
“Holy smokes! I’m impressed, Babe Ruth. Just so you know, I had that covered.” I didn’t want to think who else he’d covered this particular topic with, and so I willed myself not to ask. This night wasn’t about anybody but the two of us.
He put an album on the turntable—the B side of Saxophone Colossus by Sonny Rollins.
I rested my cheek on his heart, and we were sort of dancing.
“It’s not only that I like you,” he said.
We were now rib to rib.
“Yes, it is,” I said. I felt emboldened by the kisses and the letterman jacket and the light, and even the pieced-together lamp. I was worthy of his like.
“I like you so much I think it turned the corner into—”
I knew he was going to say it. My fluttery stomach knew he was going to say it.
“Love.”
“I’m ready.” I pressed up against him: my cheek, his chest. Davis put his arms around me—one, then the other. He felt solid in a way I wanted people to feel solid.
“Hold on,” he said, untangling himself for a minute. He pulled a basket out from under the coffee table: a hunk of cheese, a sleeve of crackers, a couple apples, a bottle of lukewarm champagne with two paper cups.
“How long has this been here? How long has this cheese been out of the fridge?”
He laughed. “You’re worried about the cheese? I brought the basket up with the jacket.”
“I guess it’s cool enough,” I said, but I didn’t eat the cheddar.
Davis took a bone-handled knife out of the pocket of his pants, which was the only piece of actual clothing either of us was wearing at the moment, and sliced the apple into perfect arcs.
He popped the champagne. A little bit sprayed my way, and I licked it off my hand. A towel of unknown origin was folded up under the sofa. He shook it open with a flourish and put it on the rug. We centered ourselves on it, an improvised bed. I didn’t want to be a city mouse at this moment, worrying about the cleanliness of the towel or the fustiness of the leaves, or the age of the cheddar. I wanted to be here, here, here, with this boy in this place.
And then I was, because Davis lowered himself onto me and gave me the kind of kiss I bet people wrote songs—symphonies, colossus or not—about.
The air shifted a few degrees, and the sharp smell of pine needles drifted inside.
My slip was off. His pants—off.
“You, Ruth Robb, are spectacular.”
His hand skated over the swoop of my hip. We were pieced together, like that lamp. And he was the one who was sort of spectacular.
“What do you wish for?” he asked me after. He got up and picked the needle off the album. It had been bump-bump-bumping at the end of the record.
“I wish for—” I’d had my wish. I had wished for this night with this boy. “I’ll be right back.” I dashed into the bathroom and wadded up some TP, prepared, as Sara had cautioned, for pain and blood. I had spots of both, but so what.
“Lucky we put in a bathroom this year,” he yelled from the other side of the door.
“Oh, come on!” I grinned so stupidly I looked like a completely different person in the smudgy mirror over the sink.
“You would’ve had to use an outhouse. But I’d have given you a flashlight.”
I was back out with my stupid grin and my wish. “I wish,” I said to a still-unshirted Davis. “I wish to see Cassiopeia.”
Davis put his arms around me like a pair of parentheses. “All right.”
I slid his varsity jacket over my gunders and we went outside.
The back porch was small, with a row of rockers facing the woods. I rocked, drawing my knees to my chest and swaddling myself in his jacket, thankful it covered my rear. I was so happy to see my breath was visible—slightly visible anyway. The night, my breath—it was all so decidedly alive.
“Cassiopeia is easy to find because it’s shaped like a W,” he said. An owl hooted from far off. Davis took my finger and pointed to the sky. “Find the Big Dipper and draw a line through the last star of the Little Dipper, and you’ll swipe through Cassiopeia.”
I stared. “I don’t see it.”
“It’s there.” He twirled his fingers around my insane hair. “The moon is awfully bright tonight, so it’s hard to see.”
“I hadn’t even heard of Cassiopeia until you told me I would love it.”
“It’s there, whether we see it or not.” He pulled me on his lap, facing him, our new optimal kissing position, honed during all those car washes we didn’t need. I snaked my legs around him.
A leaf-crunching sound stopped the revelry.
“Is that a chipmunk? Or, God, a deer.”
Davis stood u
p, and I sort of fell out of his lap. We went inside. He pulled on the rest of his clothes and grabbed a walking stick in one fluid motion. “Wait here for me.”
I put my tulle back on.
I probably should have been afraid of whatever was out in the woods, but part of me was stuck on the dumb idea that I was sitting here alone—alone after the night.
Two minutes went by. Five. Ten. Sixteen.
I poured myself a glass of warm, now-flat champagne. I looked out the not-exactly-clean window and saw nothing—just the faint outline of trees against a sky with constellations I couldn’t find.
I debated putting on my shoes and going out after Davis, but surely that was a terrible idea. I debated calling Mother or Mr. Hank (to say what, I wasn’t sure), but there was no telephone in sight. I considered various terrible scenarios. Davis had fallen down a ravine. He’d tangled with a bear. Or: He was on the run from me. Or: He was on the run because I was an inept towel partner. Or: He was on the run because, despite my devotion to the pink booklet, Davis somehow knew the real me and took off for the hills.
I knew from chasing away Dad-sadness that the best way to clear the mind (the best way aside from bump-bumping with a boy) was to let in the light. I opened the closet, the bathroom door, the refrigerator, hoping to add little slivers of brightness to the room. I opened cupboards, halfheartedly looking for ingredients to make Fontaine’s southern brownies, even though she’d really taught me how not to make southern brownies.
Finally, I opened the front door, and from well within the confines of the log walls, I looked outside. I heard a snap of a twig or quite possibly my heart.
Davis came in through the back while I was looking out the front.
“Surprise visitor,” he said.
Next to him stood Oren, in jeans and a smudged gray T-shirt. Even so, he was great-looking. In that second, I saw Davis and Oren as they must have looked through countless Kodachrome moments—the photogenic duo on the tennis court, the football field, the country-club green.
“Son of a bitch ran out of gas in Midtown and hotfooted it here.” Davis exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for a year.
“Here?” I closed the refrigerator.
Oren threw his two-dimpled smile my way. “Sorry, Ruth. Didn’t have any idea y’all were here. Davis’ll make it up to you.” He dropped a duffel at his feet.
“You ran here? With a duffel?” I asked. “Why do you smell like bananas?”
“Yeah,” Oren said, then went into the bunk room.
Davis whispered, “I’m sorry. I am sorry the night ended this way.”
We settled, hip to hip, fully clothed, on the nubbly sofa for what was left of the night.
“It’s all right,” I said, thinking I wouldn’t remember how the night ended. I would remember how it started and how it middled.
Early the next morning, I woke to find Davis erasing evidence of us, packing up the basket and slipping the album back in its sleeve. I changed into my next-day clothes and slung Davis’s letterman jacket—a kind of popularity cape—over my shoulders.
Oren’s door was closed.
“How will he get home?”
Davis kissed my neck. “His problem.”
The road down was twistier than I remembered, and in the light of day it seemed especially bats that Oren would run all the way to the cabin at three or four or five in the morning. I hoped he’d had a flashlight.
Davis pushed the turns, skirting up against the trees at the side of the road, kicking up dust.
“At least we have an excuse to get another car wash,” I said, turning on the radio. All static. It matched the noise in my mind—the oooo of last night mixed with oddness of Oren. O’s interruption didn’t make sense. The whole gas situation didn’t make sense. Even the odometer didn’t make sense. The numbers didn’t add up with those lined-up zeroes from last night, like the miles had rocketed forward knowing Davis and I had made the deed-leap.
Davis flicked the static off and veered to the shoulder.
I clutched the door handle. “What are you doing?”
He put the Rambler in park. “I love you, Ruth Tarbell Robb,” he said. “I wanted to look at you when I said it.”
“I love you—I love you, too.”
Somewhere a bird warbled. Davis likely knew the genus and species.
“Let’s meet up at the Steakery for lunch, all right?” he said. “After church.”
“Lunch? Not lunch—” For some reason it was hard to commit the words to the air. “At lunch—” At lunch, I’d be leaving the temple; I’d already promised to help Max run choir practice. “I’ll be singing,” I said, happy to have landed on something rooted in truth.
“Singing what?” he said, but then he moved on. He moved on to my thigh, climbing his fingers up under my skirt. “After lunch?”
“You want to come to the main house for one last jump into the pool before it gets covered up for the season?” I suggested.
He nodded, and off we zoomed, ticking past the pines, holding hands until we hit the dip in the road on Peachtree that floated us right out of our seats.
19
Ten Bells
Mother wasn’t even home when Davis dropped me off, which was odd but also okay, since it meant I wouldn’t need to lie out loud about last night. I hopped in the shower and rubbed Noxzema all over my face, letting needles of water rain down on me, letting thoughts of Davis—and his hands and his saxophone-y music—wash over me, too. I got dressed for Sunday school in a Peter Pan blouse and flared skirt. Everything I put on, I imagined him taking off.
Even though it was woefully early, I called the pay phone on Sara’s dorm floor to fill her in on last night’s developments. No answer.
It wasn’t until I went to make coffee that I saw a note taped to the percolator in Mother’s no-vowels shorthand: SKP TMPL. In capital letters for emphasis.
But just because Nattie was having a spend-the-night at Leah’s didn’t mean I needed to skip temple. I’d come to like it there—being adored by the small people and amused/annoyed by the tall person.
I drank my coffee avec sugar, then walked to the main house and looked in the garage. The Savoy was gone. If Mother or Mr. Hank or Fontaine weren’t back with the car in twenty minutes—and wherever could they be?—then I’d have to take the bus.
I took the bus.
There weren’t many people on the number 23 Peachtree on a Sunday morning. I walked toward the back. It had been a few years since Mrs. Rosa Parks sat in the middle of the bus in Alabama. People seemed to think she sat in the white section, but Dad made sure we knew she was arrested for not moving from middle rows that Negroes were definitely allowed to sit in—at least until those seats were needed by whites.
I slid into a seat across from a lady in a yellow housekeeper’s uniform. She wore her hair short, shiny, and curled under. In the reflection of the window, I assessed my own wild-as-air hair: Better down or up? Up, I decided. I wound it into a bun and clipped it in place with a tortoiseshell barrette. I couldn’t tell from the bus-blurry glass whether I looked different—older if not maybe wiser—now that I had spent a night with Davis, been skin-to-skin with a boy who had no idea the previously almost-naked girl under his letterman jacket was now on her way to synagogue.
“You missed a piece,” the woman across from me said. I turned around. She pointed. “By the ear.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Should I wear it down? Does it look messy this way?”
She smiled. “It’s very becoming.”
“Which way?”
“It suits you any which way,” she said.
I took my hair down again. Then put it up again.
A siren wailed. One police car passed, then another.
I wondered whether the woman was going to or from work. Then I wondered why she didn’t have Sundays off fo
r church, like Birdie and Norma. Then I wondered what difference it made. I was suddenly a wondering machine.
We passed the Steakery and my stomach lifted into my throat, and I knew the bus had hit the dip in the road. A third police car passed by, and a fourth.
The sirens weren’t somewhere out there. They weren’t the background sounds of New York avenues. They were here, in front of me—a lineup of revolving red lights slicing right across the entrance to the temple.
“Oh, Lord, now it’s the Hebrews,” the woman said.
“Here! My stop!” I called to the driver and rushed to the front of the bus. “Stop! Stop!”
The bus veered to the curb, and the doors sighed open.
“God bless,” the woman called after me.
From the bottom of the hill, the temple looked nearly normal, just a faint trail of smoke wending up its left side. Maybe there’d been a fire in the kitchen, or maybe someone had left a lit cigarette in the Social Hall.
Still, something made me sprint across the street and up the center of the lawn.
Squad cars were parked all pell-mell, noses poking into the grass, and a few fire trucks stood guard at the turnaround at the top. There was water everywhere. My suede flats slid in the mud. I didn’t care.
A sea of people surged up the driveway, men mainly, in jackets and ties. All these people, but nobody looked familiar.
I headed toward the smoke by the side entrance—but where there should have been a door, there was nothing. Nothing but a hole, as tall and wide as four of me—ugly, gaping, angry.
A woman came toward me, and it took me a long second, longer than you’d believe, to realize it was Mother. “Ruthie!”
My eyes went straight to her notebook: Bmb.
“Oh, Ruthie. It’s horrible. Shattered columns, broken windows, plaster ripped off the walls, an office wrecked, damage to the Social Hall, the sanctuary.”
In the Neighborhood of True Page 17