In the Neighborhood of True

by Susan Kaplan Carlton

  “Oren Jefferson, you are under arrest for the bombing of Temple Shir Shalom.”

  Prickles of sweat bloomed all over my face and neck.

  Oren yelled to Davis, “Call Dad.”

  Claudia put her hand to her crown. In the light, her lipstick was too harsh and her drawn-on eyebrows had half rubbed off.

  Davis turned to me, his voice hushed. “Remember, I was with you that night. I was with you all night, our night.”

  The other man stood eye to eye with Davis. Smooth as butter, Davis said, “Sir, my father will straighten this out.” He extended his hand for a shake.

  The officer took Davis’s hand and didn’t let go. “Davis Jefferson, you are also under arrest for aiding and abetting the bombing of Temple Shir Shalom.”

  “He was with me,” I blurted out. “He was with me the whole time.”

  The men in the suits paid me no mind. They marched the Jefferson brothers out of the ballroom—two sets of handcuffs, one heartbreaking night.

  23

  North Stars

  Four months later

  After swearing to tell the whole truth, I sat very straight in the wooden witness chair. I willed Davis to look my way. And he did, just long enough to give me his single-dimpled grin.

  His parents, pale and worn out, sat directly behind him in the courtroom. Next to Davis was his attorney, Mr. Ewell, with silver hair so shiny it looked greased down with baby oil.

  The attorney walked over to me, standing so close I could see a gobbet of something between his very white teeth. “Good morning.”

  I spun my pearls in nervous circles against my collarbone. Fontaine had given me my own strand for “the holidays” (she wasn’t ready to acknowledge Hanukkah yet, she’d said). My eyes landed on Sara, who’d ridden the Greyhound all day yesterday. She was snugged in next to Nattie, both of them in Fontaine-gifted pearls, with Fontaine and Mr. Hank on either side. The foursome had gotten here before Mother and me, and I felt better seeing them lined up, my North Stars, even though I knew there was only one North Star.

  Beyond my family, I scanned the rows—rows that looked like pews. I started at the back and raced forward, past Rabbi and Mrs. Selwick, Mr. and Mrs. Silvermintz, Gracie and Thurston-Ann and the rest of the pastel posse, Buck and Jimmy, and Claudia, who’d positioned herself next to Mrs. Jefferson and behind Davis. Oren wasn’t in the courtroom. He and Cranford and the hunting friends were still awaiting trial. Mr. Hank said Davis’s lawyer must have worked real hard to unyoke Davis’s case from the others.

  I glanced up to the balcony, and sitting alone, front and center, was Max. I hadn’t seen him when I’d first walked in because I’d forgotten the simplest thing—to look up.

  Mr. Ewell stepped toward the jury of twelve men, all white, all in white shirts, one with a white mustache. “Miss Robb. Please tell us where you were the evening of October eleventh of last year.”

  I had gone over these questions and answers with Davis’s lawyer at his fancy downtown office. “At the Fall Ball, otherwise known as the Chrysanthemum,” I said. I’d already told my family everything about the night (except for Nattie, to whom I white-lied), but my eyes slid away from them all the same.

  He nodded. “And after the ball? If Davis Jefferson was with you, he was surely not at the temple. Mr. Jefferson could not be in both places at the same time, isn’t that right?”

  “Objection.” The other attorney, a Mr. Haupt, with mile-long legs and a guarded smile, shot to his feet.

  My fingers found their way to the underside of my dress and tugged at the hem, rending it like I did my jumper the day after the bombing, like a mourner, like the Jew I was, even when I pretended otherwise.

  “I’ll restate,” Davis’s lawyer said. “I’m sorry to put you on the spot—a lovely young lady.” His tongue worked over that bit of food. “Were you with Mr. Jefferson until morning?” There was a wheeze, or maybe it was a gasp from somewhere in the back. “You are still under oath,” he reminded me.

  I looked at Davis for two seconds, ten, twenty. Davis, who’d been straightening his tie, probably gearing himself up for that trademark smile, dropped his hands to his lap.

  “The witness will answer,” the judge said.

  “I was with him.” I answered what I’d been asked.

  “Thank you, Miss Robb.” Davis’s attorney sat down next to his client and gave a good broad grin.

  The other attorney stood up. “Miss Robb, were you and Mr. Jefferson together every minute—every minute—of the night in question?”

  I took a breath. I’d practiced what I would say in front of the mirror over the bureau, watching how my lips looked as they formed the right words. Simple words—words that didn’t have to be clever or charming. “Yes” looked almost like a smile, but “no” forced your mouth into a startled O. Now I could hear the blood thrumming in my ears, like the unearthly sound of the long-distance phone line, except everyone I loved was right here in this courtroom. Everyone except Dad, but I felt him here, too.

  I let out the breath and answered. “Not every minute. About five a.m., Davis disappeared.” I wound the thread from my hem around my finger.

  Mr. Haupt straightened up, looking even lankier. “For how long did he disappear?”

  “Until he came back with Oren.” I uncrossed my ankles from their S position and I looked to Gracie, but she was suddenly engrossed with a speck of something on her skirt. I tried to catch Davis’s uncatchable eye. I remembered the mixer, the ivy that was a yew, the car wash that was more than a car wash. I remembered turns around the turn­table. It was love, and it was fast, and it was true. Davis—of course Davis—but all of it, all of them. The just-for-iced-tea glasses delicate enough to break your heart. The nickname-bestowing best friend. I’d fallen in love with the whole shebang. I kept spinning the thread, spinning it tighter, until the tip of my finger turned the color of a bruise.

  “Is it possible Davis Jefferson went to the temple that night?” Mr. Haupt asked.

  “Yes,” I said. And then I said yes to the rest, just as I’d rehearsed, telling the truth quickly and with confidence. The mystery miles, missing hat, moonlit robes, smell of bananas, club-terrace confession. Yes to it all.

  I glanced at Davis, who was folding and refolding a piece of paper, eyes drilled to the defendant’s table.

  “You may step down,” said the judge.

  I got up, wrinkled sheath, torn-up hem, and all, glad the dress looked like it had gone through something. The sunlight streamed through the courthouse windows, and I walked across stripes of light back to our row. Sara gave me a sideways hug, and Mother handed me my pocketbook. I couldn’t keep my hands still, clicking the latch open and closed, until Mother put her hand over mine and we listened to the lawyers’ closing arguments.

  The prosecutor went first, summarizing the evidence against Davis, circumstantial though it was, along with my non-alibi. “There may be no smoking gun, no smoking bomb, but he withheld information critical to the authorities. Remember, a good young man can be capable of unconscionable acts.”

  Davis shifted a bit, enough for me to see the sun hit his impossibly handsome face.

  I sighed a Mother sigh, and she leaned over and swept a piece of my hair from my face.

  Davis’s attorney stood up. “Mr. Jefferson did not aid and abet this bombing. Do not be swayed by the version of events put forth by the witness. Her testimony is not fact—it’s simply her interpretation. It’s not a crime to be loyal to one’s brother. It’s not even a crime to be opposed to the Jewish race, not that I’m saying that’s Davis Jefferson’s point of view. This is a law-abiding Christian, an athlete with a Southeastern Conference future. Let him fulfill his destiny.”

  With that, the case went to the jury.

  Eighty-four minutes later, after we’d swilled cup after cup of awful coffee, we got word: The jury was back. The L
andry/Robbs sat as a family—shoulder to shoulder to shoulder to shoulder to shoulder to shoulder. I imagined Dad sitting next to me, in our usual order.

  Max slid into the row behind me.

  The talk in the room hushed as the clerk stood in front of the judge’s desk and announced, “All rise.”

  Mr. Hank, his cane crooked in his elbow, was the first to his feet. Fontaine twirled the middle strand of her triple-rope pearls. Nattie held one of my hands, and Mother took the other.

  Davis stood up, squared his shoulders, and buttoned his blazer.

  To the jury, the judge said, “On the charge of aiding and abetting the bombing, in the case of the People versus Davis Jefferson, what be your verdict?”

  Davis turned to look at me. When he wasn’t smiling, he was dimple-less. When he wasn’t smiling, he was just a boy.

  The mustached man said, “We the jury, duly sworn to try the issues in the above entitled case, find the defendant, Davis Edwin Jefferson, not guilty.”

  Tears burned the corners of my eyes—tears of relief that Davis wasn’t found guilty and tears of grief that I found him guilty, at least in the neighborhood of guilty.

  I’d had that very conversation on the telephone with Sara just after the Magnolia. I’d stayed up most of the night, while Davis’s father arranged bail for his boys, spinning Davis’s grandmother’s ring along with the idea of what he had and hadn’t done. The next morning, I snuck the keys for the Savoy, drove without running any stop signs to the Jeffersons’ place on the other side of Nancy Creek, and dropped a breakup note in his mailbox.

  Now, Mr. Jefferson clapped Davis on the back. “Justice was served, my boy!”

  “The state will appeal,” Mother said. Her hand stroked the back of my head.

  “State can’t appeal, Alice,” Mr. Hank said. “Can’t undo a not-guilty verdict.”

  “You did the right thing,” Sara said to me. Nattie nodded fiercely.

  I sat with a thud. “But it made no difference,” I said.

  “Oh, a difference was made,” Fontaine said, her perfume filling the air. “I told you when y’all arrived: It’s a gift knowing what to do.” I squinted, not following her Fontaine-ism. She went on. “At the time, I was talking about the rules of the pink booklet. And I was right—but I was also wrong. Etiquette-ly speaking, a lady should keep her opinions to herself.”

  “But—” I said.

  “But”—Fontaine nodded—“when hatred shows its face, you need to make a little ruckus. And you, dear Ruthie, you made a very important little ruckus.”

  I gave Fontaine a kiss on the cheek.

  Gracie headed my way, T-Ann at her side, both of them in short kidskin gloves and cashmere twinsets; no doubt they’d consulted with each other about how to dress for a trial.

  Just as the girls were close enough to say hey, T-Ann peeled off with a curt wave. Gracie stopped, her smile just a step behind. “Well, Ruth, maybe I’ll see you around. The Valentine’s Gala is open to everyone in the city, even public school girls.”

  I was still shallow enough to miss it—the dresses, the club (and the Club), the sweet tea, the Cokes—now that Nattie and I had transferred to public school.

  “Thanks, but I’m helping out over at the newspaper on weekends,” I said. “Just a copy girl—running bulletins from one section desk to another.”

  Gracie tilted her head. “How nice for you,” she said before drifting away.

  Mr. Hank took off for the newsroom while the rest of the family went to lurch the Savoy around.

  Max stepped into my row. “Ruth Robb.”

  “Max Asher,” I said.

  “Turns out you’re righteous.”

  That made me smile. “Sometimes.”

  “You can use that, you know—that righteousness.”

  “What? You have a picket line for me?”

  He shrugged. “Always. There’s a boycott Saturday—downtown stores.”

  I hoped it wouldn’t be the lovely Lumet’s.

  The Jefferson family and friends made their way up the center aisle of the courtroom to resume their well-mannered, well-manicured lives—Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson, followed a few seconds later by Claudia, then Davis.

  Davis, ever the gentleman, stopped and let the others pass before speaking to me. “You took me by surprise up there, Ruth.” His foot tapped a jillion miles a minute, a frantic metronome. “But I know you said what you thought you had to say. At least it’s behind us now.”

  “That’s my cue to move on,” Max said.

  Davis’s hand hovered inches from my waist. “Maybe I’ll see you at the Valentine’s Gala?”

  “I’ll help,” I called over my shoulder to Max. “With the stores. I’ll be there.” I turned back to Davis. “We can’t. I can’t.”

  “I know.” Davis’s jaw twitched. “But it would be nice, right? It was nice.”

  I clicked my pocketbook open and took out a handkerchief, pale blue with Mr. Hank’s monogram in the corner. I unwrapped it and pressed the opal ring into his palm.

  “Don’t,” Davis said, the ring wobbling in the center of his hand. “You know me. I’m not one of them. I’m on my brother’s side, and I’m on your side, but I’m no cross burner. I’m no Jew hater.”

  A long quiet hung between us. A trace of fragrance lingered, and at first I thought of Fontaine, but then I realized it was Davis—his signature mix of sunshine and soap and pine and possibility. “You can’t be on two sides,” I said finally. He couldn’t defend Oren and be somebody I love.

  “Ah, c’mon, Babe Ruth.” Davis slipped the ring into his pocket and opened his arms, ready for me to step inside them.

  I could imagine how it would feel, his fingers pulsing against my back. I flinched, even though we weren’t touching. A tremble worked up my body—toes, knees, stomach, heart. The tremble shoved its way right up to my throat. “Bye, Davis.”

  Then Claudia was at his elbow. “Let’s get a move—we’re celebrating at the club.” She whipped her hair around in her ever-Claudia way and guided him up the aisle.

  I thought of all those nights, at the club and not at the club, and how I’d still somehow never seen a constellation. And I thought, constellations weren’t the point. Constellations were just a bunch of separate stars. They didn’t become constellations until you connected them, one to another. Like families, like sisters, like friendships, like prayers.

  And, anyway, it turned out Nattie was memorizing all eighty-eight constellations. I didn’t need Davis in order to fall in love with the night sky.

  Out front, Mother and the others were waiting in the Savoy, all of them bathed in late-day brilliance. Nattie flung open the passenger-side door, and I jumped in.

  Author’s Note

  The people in this book, along with their sweet teas and misdeeds, trials and betrayals, are fictional. Ruth, Davis, Fontaine, Covenant, Temple Shir Shalom, Rabbi Selwick, the Magnolia Ball, the whole premise—inventions, all.

  The seed of the story, though, is inspired by a real-life event—the bombing of Atlanta’s oldest synagogue, the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, better known simply as “the Temple.” In the 1950s and ’60s, the Temple was a center for early civil-rights advocacy, led by the outspoken and charismatic Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, who urged his (sometimes reluctant) congregants to join the fight for racial justice.

  The bomb—fifty sticks of dynamite detonated early on October 12, 1958—caused extensive damage, though, fortunately, didn’t hurt anyone. Still, the blast was front-page news at the Atlanta Journal (a paper with the tagline “Covers Dixie Like the Dew”) and at newspapers around the country. President Eisenhower condemned the bombing while detectives and FBI agents fanned across the city. Soon five suspects, known for their anti-Jewish beliefs and membership in the National States’ Rights Party and other white supremacist groups, were arrested. The high-profile
trial of the alleged ringleader of the bombing ended in a mistrial, and his second trial ended in acquittal. Eventually, charges against the other men were dropped.

  And yet the bomb had a lasting impact on the city; many leaders thought it brought Atlantans together, black and white, Jew and Christian. The mayor at the time, William Hartsfield, took a strong stand: “Whether they like it or not, every political rabble-rouser is the godfather of these cross burners and dynamiters who sneak about in the dark and give a bad name to the South. It is high time the decent people of the South rise and take charge.” Rabbi Rothschild’s widow, Janice Rothschild Blumberg, titled her own memoir of the blast “The Bomb That Healed.”

  Years later, in the early 2000s, my family moved to Atlanta, where we became members of the Temple and were welcomed with a hearty “Shabbat shalom, y’all.” But the memories of what had happened there still reverberated. Our younger daughter attended Sunday school in one of the classrooms that had been bombed decades before.

  And the hate has continued to echo. In Charlottesville, Virginia, where our older daughter lives, in the summer of 2017, white nationalists brandished torches in front of Thomas Jefferson’s rotunda, yelling, “Jews will not replace us.” And then in Pittsburgh in the fall of 2018, eleven congregants were shot during Saturday morning services at the Tree of Life synagogue. I watched the unfolding horror of the Pittsburgh shooting on TV news with my eighty-eight-year-old father, remembering the bat mitzvah the whole family had once attended at a different synagogue nearby. As the names of the dead were read, I kept thinking that my dad could have been one of them. And then I thought, it could have been any of us—over and over, across decades and state lines.

  Almost sixty years to the day after the 1958 Atlanta bombing, I found myself pulling up a copy of the sermon Rabbi Rothschild delivered to his congregants after the blast: “Out of the gaping hole that laid bare the havoc wrought within, out of the majestic columns that now lay crumbled and broken, out of the tiny bits of brilliantly colored glass that had once graced with beauty the sanctuary itself—indeed, out of the twisted and evil hearts of bestial men has come a new courage and a new hope.” The sermon was titled “And None Shall Make Them Afraid.” All these years later, I want to believe these words are both a challenge and a stand taken by all people of good faith, no matter what faith that is.