In the Neighborhood of True

by Susan Kaplan Carlton

  “’S okay,” he muttered, but something looked wrong with his smile.

  “You forgot the cummerbund,” Nattie pointed out. “Boys wear them with tuxedos.”

  Davis rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. I bet he was thinking, as I was thinking, it wouldn’t make a fig’s difference later, because the later-plan was to be alone in a borrowed cabana at Davis’s club.

  As we waltzed out the door, me and my mismatched corsage, he and his missing cummerbund, Fontaine said, “Davis, you make sure that jacket is buttoned up for the photo. The professional will have a setup in the lobby.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Fontaine’s capital-C Club was decked out with glitter-dusted garlands of the namesake magnolia. One hundred girls from around the city were gathering with their dates on a black-and-white marble dance floor. The band—the Reed Tucker Orchestra, according to the name stenciled on the drum—was already in the swing, playing my very favorite song, “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke. And Davis did send me. Honest, he did.

  Claudia, in her stolen charmeuse, was cheek-to-cheek with Oren, showing off a clavicle so sharp it could slice salami. Where had she changed out of her original prim dress? I’d have to ask Gracie. Nearby, T-Ann and her sequins held hands with a dapper-looking Jimmy.

  The music was loud, the air sweet, and Davis took my hand as we slow-danced. I closed my eyes and tipped into him, loving that the glitter from the swags drifted onto our shoulders and dusted our fingers, loving this boy, loving Mother, loving Fontaine, loving the temple, loving how the city came together to condemn the bombing, loving that in this one, one moment all the pieces were part of a great sparkly whole.

  All around us were beautiful couples—so many of whom I didn’t know—and it was a reminder Atlanta was a bigger place than the rolling lawns of Buckhead would suggest. I wondered if there were any fellow Jews hiding here. Probably not. Most self-respecting Jews wouldn’t be caught dead (or alive) at a club (or Club) that didn’t want them.

  Someone jostled my elbow, and I moved out of the path of a silver tray.

  I turned to see none other than Max in a tuxedo.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “Working.” But it wasn’t Max—it was just another skinny boy in Buddy Holly glasses offering a canapé. Jewish people probably couldn’t even work at the Club.

  A part of me was oddly proud—defiantly proud—to be in a club that wouldn’t allow me to join. Here I was standing amid the loveliness. My feet on the marble, my lips on the glasses. They didn’t want me, yet I was here. But the other half—the getting-louder-in-my-chest half—called bunk. If no one knew who I was, if no one knew I wasn’t welcome, then I wasn’t standing up for a single thing. I was back to being invisible, and what good came from that?

  I looked up to catch Davis’s eye. “There’s something you don’t know about me.” There was no air between us, only his tuxedo shirt, my magnolia leaves.

  He whispered into my hair. “I know every inch of you.”

  Before I could get the truth out of my mouth, out of my pores, Claudia and Oren spun into our orbit.

  Oren’s boozy breath hit me before his words. “Pretty, pretty dress.” Oren pinched Mother’s skirt with his football fingers.

  “Take it easy, O,” Davis said.

  Oren held Claudia’s hips. “I’ve been thinking of your dress, too, Claud. Tell me, what color would you call that?” He’d used that very line on Claudia at the swim party.

  “I call it Gilded Lily.” Claudia’s voice teetered along with her heels.

  “Or Lumet’s Gold,” I said.

  Claudia’s smile soured. “You want to talk about Lumet’s? Because then you—”

  “Or Choir Robe Gold.” I wasn’t thinking about Claudia or the dress. And I wasn’t thinking about the waiter who wasn’t Max. I was thinking about the real Max, who knew the real me. I was thinking about the real temple and the real suitcase with fifty sticks of real dynamite.

  Claudia laughed, loud. “Choir robes aren’t gold. At our church, they’re black.”

  Oren said, “They’re gold at the temp—”

  “Shut up, O,” Davis said. “Just shut up.”

  Oren was definitely sloshy. His oxford wing tip was untied, and he stumbled as he left Claudia on the dance floor. Claudia threw up her hands and traipsed after him.

  The band segued to Sinatra. I spun Davis around, switching our lead-and-follow. My mind was a needle that kept jumping the groove. Oren knew the color of the choir robes.

  Before the song finished, I led Davis by the hand off the dance floor.

  On the terrace, Davis leaned in for a kiss.

  “That’s not why we’re out here,” I said, backing away from him.

  “No?” Davis lit a cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring, the kind I seemed incapable of learning. “We better not stay long. They’re about to crown the court.” He slipped one hand into his trouser pocket.

  “Oren was there.” I hadn’t wanted to think it, but now I couldn’t unthink it. I rubbed my arms. Finally, there was a chill in the air. Finally, the air felt familiar.

  “What? Where?” Davis exhaled. Another perfecto smoke ring.

  “At the temple the night of the bombing. Otherwise, how’d he know about the robes—that they’re gold?”

  Davis paused the briefest moment, and my heart clamped shut. “Must’ve read it somewhere.”

  “Davis—”

  “Maybe that’s not exactly true, but it’s in the neighborhood of true,” he said, dimple deployed to full effect.

  A vein throbbed over my eye. What did that even mean, “in the neighborhood of true”? Did truth have a border, a boundary, a precise pinprick on a map? I said my words quietly, carefully. “Those robes were brand new. Special-ordered from a place in Boston.”

  “Huh, how would you know that?” He scratched his cheek. “From your mother?”

  Right away, I thought of Mr. Hank’s reporting tip and didn’t say anything so Davis would keep talking.

  Davis gave a funny, strangled laugh. “Okay, you got me, but it’s not what you think. Let me tell you what happened after O ran out of gas.”

  I stepped back and right into a sticky patch of leaves. I lifted Mother’s dress up and out of the muck and steadied myself on the railing.

  “Oren was completely boozed up—he was in no position to drive. So I took him back to the temple. To get the stupid Georgia Tech hat he’d left behind. Thousands of guys in Atlanta have that hat, but O didn’t know about fingerprints or what have you.”

  That explained the miles on the car.

  “I had no choice, Ruth.” Davis dropped what was left of the cigarette, a smoldering firefly, and went after it with his loafer, grinding it around and around until everything was reduced to ash. “I sped him back, and he got his hat. And those robes—a couple of them—they were out on the lawn. Pieces of them.”

  Inside my head, I yelled: Davis was there, there, there. But outside my head, I nodded and waited for him to go on.

  He swallowed.

  I swallowed.

  Davis rubbed his fingers along a nonexistent crease in his tuxedo pants. “Oren got mixed up in something with the Jews—one of Cranford’s buddies planned it. They stuffed dynamite in a suitcase, but everybody knows that by now. It was a prank that got out of hand, Ruth. That’s all.”

  “It wasn’t a prank, Davis. It was a bomb.”

  “Thank God no one was hurt.” On “hurt,” Davis’s voice quivered. He ironed himself into me—like that night—both of us up against the perfect painted brick of the perfect Club. But unlike all those other times when the feeling of Davis against my hip made my mind go blank, my thoughts stayed clear and certain.

  I ran my fingers over the embroidered leaves of Mother’s dress and borrowed her nerve. I was trembly
. My hands, but also my heart, my eyelids, a spot at the center of my throat. My body was ahead of my mind—it knew I was going to speak up before I knew what would actually tumble, tremble, out of my mouth. “He’s your brother, but it’s my temple. My father is Jewish. And me, too. I’ve been going there with my mother and sister for months. I’ve lied to you—I’ve lied to everyone.”

  “What?” Davis snapped, and it came out almost like a laugh. “You’re telling me you’re Jewish? And you never thought to tell me this before?”

  “I didn’t tell you, and then I didn’t know how to tell you I hadn’t told you.”

  “You spring it on me now? Here? Give me a second.” He blew out two short, sharp breaths and tapped his long-toed loafer very, very fast.

  I did spring it on him. I gave him a second, two, ten, twenty, while I thought of the mystery miles on the odometer and the phantom hood and the smell of bananas. Finally, I said, “I didn’t think you’d want me to be Jewish, or maybe I didn’t want me to be Jewish.” It was cold enough to see my breath—cold enough to feel like home. “But it’s what I am.”

  The truth of it hung there between us.

  A few notes of “That’ll Be the Day” drifted out the window.

  Davis fisted his hands into his pockets. “He’s my brother, Ruth.”

  Gracie busted through the door. “There you are, Roo. C’mon, the crowning is about to start.” She handed me her lipstick, but I didn’t give a fig.

  The night was inside out. I was inside out.

  I walked back into the ballroom, and Davis followed me.

  Gracie and I joined the other ninety-eight girls in a semicircle around the edge of the dance floor, our dates standing a respectful distance behind us.

  A very petite, very poised woman, who introduced herself as Mrs. Hanshaw, took the stage, standing off-center in front of a microphone stand. She tipped the mike down so it was the right height, and her voice was shockingly deep and syrupy. “As you are aware, the Magnolia Queen and her ladies-in-waiting are the epitome of Atlanta grace. For the last one hundred years, though we skipped a year or two during the unpleasantness of the War Between the States, girls have been presented to society amid magnolia blooms. So, without further ado, I announce this year’s Magnolia Court.”

  The spotlight whooshed around the room.

  “Our third runner-up is a girl of great grace,” Mrs. Hanshaw said, her mouth curling into a smile. “Miss Grace Eleet, please join me on the dais.”

  Gracie glided up with Buck on her arm. She smiled left, then right, her every powdered pore exuding charm, and positioned herself across the stage from Mrs. Hanshaw, leaving plenty of room for the remaining runners-up.

  Davis plucked a petal off my corsage and rubbed it between his fingers. “I hate that this happened, especially since you’re—”

  It was suddenly too warm in the ballroom. I felt dizzy and quasi-nauseated, from the spiked punch or the now-obvious truth that no one could live two lives at once.

  “Our next lady-in-waiting, second runner-up, is Carol Helen Pepper, whose Magnolia history dates back to the last century,” Mrs. Hanshaw announced. A girl I didn’t know took the stage, her auburn hair arranged in dreamy waves, a guy with a trim beard by her side.

  “I wish I hadn’t gone there,” Davis said—that simple.

  Mrs. Hanshaw continued on. “Our first runner-up, ceremonial of duty but ready to step in at a moment’s notice, is the darling Miss Starling. Claudia, please join us.”

  Claudia and her shiny-as-sable hair and her shoplifted dress made her way up the stairs. Oren locked his arm in hers, smiling wide as a football field.

  “Now,” Mrs. Hanshaw said, “it is my abiding pleasure to declare this year’s winner.”

  “Got to be you, Babe Ruth.” Davis threaded his hand through mine. I could feel a callus on his palm. Had it always been there and I never noticed?

  “Our 1958 Magnolia Queen is from royalty indeed. Her mother was queen. Her grandmother was queen. Her great-grand was queen. Ruth Landry—excuse me, Ruth Robb—please take your place in Atlanta history.”

  The girls closest to me started to clap, and soon the rest of the circle joined in until the room was filled with a round of polite applause. A few girls stepped back to give me a wide, gracious walkway to the stage. I gathered up Mother’s gown—darkened by the muck on the terrace—and heel-toed my way up the stairs, not wanting to wobble in Fontaine’s heels, not wanting to wobble for any reason whatsoever.

  I stood in the center of the stage, the other girls to my right and Mrs. Hanshaw to my left, and my mouth lifted into a pink-booklet smile. I was still holding Davis’s callused hand, feeling the strength of his fingers in mine.

  Gracie gave me a quick hug and whispered “Congrats” in my ear.

  The view was different here—from the stage, looking down, as opposed to from the dance floor, looking up. It was broader, more cinematic, not unlike the View-Master view from the temple’s rotunda. From here, I could see all the girls who weren’t Jewish and weren’t New Yorkers and weren’t, probably, fatherless. And weren’t queens either.

  From a small table, Mrs. Hanshaw lifted a crown made from magnolia leaves, glossy green on top and burnished brown beneath.

  I glanced to leaf lover Davis, and he beamed back.

  Mrs. Hanshaw settled the crown in my hair, securing it with a pair of bobby pins she slid from her sleeve. “Fontaine’s granddaughter,” she said with a smile. She wasn’t anywhere near the microphone; the smile and the sentiment seemed real, just for me. “How wonderful.”

  So, this was what it felt like to have a crown on my head.

  The leaves bit into my scalp. I reached up to touch them and was struck by how sad it was that these leaves had been alive until someone had come along and clipped them off.

  The band played “’S Wonderful,” and Claudia, Gracie, and Carol Helen Pepper waved s’marvelously, swiveling their wrists around as if they were a bunch of Queen Elizabeths.

  I fished the bobby pins out of my hair and turned them over and over in my fingers.

  “Are you all right?” Davis whispered.

  I lifted the crown off my head and held it with both hands, like one of Fontaine’s silver platters.

  Claudia was the first to drop her wave.

  Gracie sidestepped over to me. “I’ve pinned plenty of these—let me help you.” She tried to lift the crown out of my hand.

  “No—don’t.” I held the crown tight and closed my eyes. Everyone I loved floated into view. Knock-and-walk Fontaine. Write-fast-with-no-vowels Mother. Set-your-watch-back-thirty-years Dad. Mr. Hank. Nattie. Sara. And Davis. I saw myself, as my self, right there in Mother’s dress. “I don’t want it.”

  “They chose you,” Davis said, hand to my elbow. “It’s yours.”

  “Not anymore,” I said, and my voice sounded so strong.

  The band played on—’S awful nice, ’s paradise, ’s what I want to see—and everyone in the room kept spinning, oblivious.

  Mrs. Hanshaw headed our way with small, quick steps. “Ruth Landry, it stays on your head, dear.”

  “I’m the wrong girl,” I told her. “I’m a Robb, and my father was a Robb.”

  Mrs. Hanshaw pinched her brows together. “Yes, I know.”

  I sighed a Mother sigh, because this thing I had to say had needed to be said ever since we’d motored south. “I mean, my father was Jewish,” I said to Mrs. Hanshaw, and to Davis and Gracie and Claudia and whoever else was inclined to listen.

  Davis was at my ear: “You don’t have to say a word more.”

  Oren, who was on Claudia’s far side, snapped his head around.

  The band went on to “Tutti Frutti,” and the splendidly dressed couples whop-bam-booed.

  “But”—Gracie scrunched her nose—“your mother went to church with my mother.”


  “But”—T-Ann cocked her head to the side—“you said you belong to Wesley Methodist.”

  “My grandparents, they belong there,” I said. “Not me. Not my mother, not my sister, not me. We’re Jewish. We’re Jewish at the temple on Peachtree.” The words came out in short bursts like my lungs might never feel normal again. “I’m sorry.” I looked from T-Ann to Gracie—and, of course, to Davis. “I’m sorry about the lying.”

  Claudia tossed her still-perfect hair. “I knew it—I knew it, and I kept it secret.”

  I handed the beauty of a crown, in its burnished magnolia glory, to Mrs. Hanshaw, who hoofed it back to the microphone and signaled the bandleader to stop playing. “Well, this is a Magnolia for the memory books,” she said, so close to the mike her voice was distorted. Couples gave her their attention. “Miss Robb has decided to pass—to abdicate, let’s say, her crown. And so . . . And so the honor goes, quite naturally, to the first runner-up.”

  Claudia stepped into the spotlight. Of course Claudia looked positively radiant. Of course she looked like royalty.

  “Introducing our newest Magnolia Queen, the darling Miss Starling.” Mrs. Hanshaw anchored the crown on Claudia’s head to a smattering of applause.

  “You keep surprising me,” Davis said, the words sliding down my ear to the vicinity of my heart. “Forget the club, forget my parents. Forget it. We want to be together, we’ll be together.” He spun me around, Mother’s dress swanning behind me.

  And the band was back, the dancing was back, and Davis and I were back, whirling to a swoozy Nat King Cole song. Where my crown would have been, Davis ran his fingers, sharp with the smell of smoke, through my hair. I tangled my fingers with his.

  Our dreamy duet came to a grinding halt when someone flipped on the way-too-bright overhead lights. Two men in dark suits with big shoulders pushed in amid the tulle and tuxes.

  “Looking for Oren Jefferson,” one man said, a holstered gun visible under his jacket.

  “Who wants to know?” Oren said, dual dimples in evidence. A few dancers laughed.