A Soft Place to Land: A Novel Read online

  Jeez, did I just wax nostalgic about Coventry??? Virden must really suck.

  So how are you, Goofy Ruthie? Granddaddy Rhubarb told me a joke about San Francisco. Not sure where he got it from because all he and Granny Elsie do is sit around and watch the PTL channel. (That’s Praise The Lord to you, my lil’ San Francisco heathen.)

  Anyway, wanna hear it? Wanna hear it?

  Of course you do!

  Here goes: There was this mussel and this clam and they were best friends. The clam was named Sam and the mussel was named Fred. Well, one day they each die, and Fred the mussel—who was a good and noble mussel—shoots straight up to heaven, where he meets Saint Peter and is given a golden harp. Sam the clam, who was always a little naughty, shoots straight down to hell, where he promptly opens an all-night club, called Disco Inferno.

  Fred the mussel misses his friend Sam the clam terribly, so he asks Saint Peter if he might go visit. Saint Peter grudgingly approves, and Fred grabs his harp and shoots down to visit Sam. They have a hell of a time. They eat fried foods, talk all night, play music, drink, catch up, etc. The next morning Fred is due back in heaven. He says his good-byes to Sam and heads back up. Saint Peter is waiting for him at the pearly gates. The first thing Peter says is, “Fred, where is your golden harp?” Fred looks all around, realizes what happened, gulps, and says, “I left my harp in Sam clam’s disco.”

  Get it? Get it? “I left my harp in Sam clam’s disco” . . . “I left my heart in San Francisco”?

  Did you laugh so hard you peed your pants? Surely. (And are you crying great tears of sympathy for me that Sam the clam jokes are what pass as high entertainment in Virden? Or, at least, at Granddaddy Rhubarb’s house?)

  Goofy Ruthie, I miss you so much. More than Mom even, in a weird way. I mean, she’s gone. And you’re still here. Except you’re not. At least, you’re nowhere near Virden, VA. Which is great for you, sucky for me.

  I think about you every day. You and your stinky farts.

  Write back, write back, write back! I’ll be waiting with bated breath. Hope I don’t pass out.

  Love,

  Your older and infinitely wiser sister, Egg

  October 8, 1993

  Dear Egg,

  That joke about Sam the clam was the worst! Robert and Mimi say so, too, but then, maybe it’s not so bad, because last night Robert told it to one of his friends who came over for dinner and his friend laughed really hard at the punch line. Then again, his friend drank about five glasses of wine, so maybe he was just drunk.

  Probably I shouldn’t tell you this, because I know you will think it’s sick, but last night I ate rabbit. Yep, rabbit. Uncle Robert, who does most of the cooking, had fixed rabbit a couple of times before, but up until last night I just sort of pretended to eat it and filled up on bread instead because, you know, I kept thinking about The Runaway Bunny. But last night he cooked the rabbit with mustard and cream and served it over polenta with all of these really yummy vegetables—roasted butternut squash and greens and a few roasted beets—and it just looked so good that I had to try. Julia, it was DELISH. We will have to get Uncle Robert to make it for you when you come out here! Rabbit meat actually does taste like chicken, but more flavorful, more chickeny, if that makes sense.

  Shoot, I have to go. Aunt Mimi is calling me. We are going to the alteration place to have my school uniform hemmed. TO BE CONTINUED . . .

  Okay, I’m back. The alteration lady is also the dry cleaner. She’s Oriental—I mean Asian. (That’s what Mimi says is nicest to say.) Anyway, I guess the dry-cleaner lady lost one of Mimi’s sweaters a while back, because today when we walked into the shop she cried out, her voice getting louder and higher with each word: “I. Found. Your. SWEATA!!!” I’ve been saying it over and over again to Aunt Mimi all afternoon.

  Aunt Mimi: Should we go get a hot chocolate?

  Hilarious Ruthie: I. Found. Your. SWEATA!!

  Aunt Mimi: Do you want to eat at La Med or at home tonight?

  Hilarious Ruthie: I. Found. Your. SWEATA!!

  Okay, so this is also kind of funny: At the dry cleaner’s, Mimi and I fought about the length of my uniform skirt. All year she’s been bugging me to get it hemmed, like five inches above the knee. She says the goal is to look cute, not frumpy. I told her about Dean Brown at Coventry, how she would walk around the school carrying a ruler in hand, measuring all of our hemlines. Mimi thought that was hilarious. “Phil certainly put you in the lion’s den, didn’t he?” she asked. I told her that no one took Dean Brown too seriously, that everyone made fun of her walking around with her stupid ruler, wearing her beehive from the 1960s.

  Arguing with Mimi over the length of my skirt made me think about the time that Mom and I got into that big fight over whether or not I could wear a piece of her cut-up nude panty hose as a headband. Remember how we would tie our hair back with her old hose? Mom hated it. She made me take the hose out before she would unlock the car door so I could get out and go to school. She said if I wore cut-up hose to class everyone would think I was raised in a trailer. I remember being so mad at her, thinking that she was just so snobby and clueless. And now I can’t imagine wanting to go to school with part of someone’s hose hanging off my head!

  But just that year Mom started going to that little shop at Phipps Plaza that sold all of those crazy sequined outfits. You said she was going through an “Adventurous Period.” That was around the same time that weird client of Dad’s took them to that nightclub called Lipstick, where all of the men were dressed like women. They were so giggly about having gone there! Like they were just the coolest two people on earth. Anyway, I remember being really embarrassed by the clothes she bought at that shop. There was this one outfit that I thought was super tacky. It was a black sequined pants suit and it was made of this stretchy lacy material that was see-through all the way up her thighs. I remember thinking, as she said good-bye at the door before she and Dad went to their Christmas party, that I was glad I didn’t have a friend over that night, because I wouldn’t have wanted anyone from school to see her.

  I have a photo of Mom and Dad from that night. I’m looking at it right now. Dad is wearing a tuxedo and his hair is neat and short. Mom is about five inches taller than him because she is wearing heels. In the photo Mom is smiling really big and she looks really pretty. Really pretty and really thin. (Remember how all she would ever eat for lunch was a fruit plate? But then she said she ruined her diet every night by always having a drink with Dad and chocolate for dessert?)

  It makes me so sad to look at these photos of Mom. She looks so alive.

  But I know she’s not.

  Send me some of those expensive chocolate-chip cookies you made.

  Love,

  Biscuit

  October 15, 1993

  Dear Biscuit,

  Aw, sweetie, I miss Mom, too. And I find looking at photos of her harder than anything. You’re right, she looks so real, so alive, you think you can just pick up the phone and call her. For me the hardest thing about looking at photos of Mom is knowing that she’s never going to age beyond the most recent ones. Knowing that her life ended at thirty-nine. That that was that.

  It’s so sad to think about. Too sad.

  Also sad is the fact that you are eating bunny rabbit for dinner and enjoying it. Let me just take a moment here to say: EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

  Forget The Runaway Bunny. What about that pair of hares we used to see in Granny Wigham’s yard every spring? Those sweet, soft brown rabbits that frolicked together in the grass! Who were always together, who had probably mated for life. Jeez. There’s probably some lonely bunny in someone’s backyard in San Francisco right now, looking for his mate, having no idea that she was cooked with mustard and cream.

  Cruel. Cruel.

  Just teasing. Though seriously I don’t think I’d do very well eating Robert’s food. My imagination is much too strong to start eating bunny rabbit. I’ll stick to Peggy’s meat loaf and mashed potatoes, thank you very mu
ch, ’cuz meat loaf is just made of—well, meat. That already comes ground up and in its Styrofoam package. (Right?)

  So guess what? I’m smarter than anyone in my class at school. I know, I know, one is not supposed to “toot one’s own horn,” as Peggy would say, but Ruthie, I’m not kidding. I’m a genius compared to these people. I cannot believe how different the public high school in Virden is from Coventry. I guess I was naïve. The highest math class here, which they erroneously call Trig, is pretty much all Algebra II, which I have already taken. No one in French class speaks any French, including the teacher, who has a deep and dreadful southern accent (“par-lay view France-say, y’all?”). And the big book we’re reading in eleventh-grade English—I repeat: ELEVENTH-grade English—is To Kill a Mockingbird. Yep, To Kill a Mockingbird, which Mom and I read together when I was, oh, nine, and which we studied from cover to cover in Mrs. McGibbon’s eighth-grade English class.

  Virden Victory, yeah! (As the cheerleaders say.)

  I guess I should consider myself lucky, ’cuz I don’t think I’m going to have to do much studyin’ to make good grades. Jesus, I could be valedictorian. (Can you imagine?) It’s funny. At Coventry we always complained that classes were really hard, but I didn’t honestly believe that they were that much harder than classes at public school. Or maybe it’s just public school in Virden. Let me tell you, this town is not a collection of Virginia’s best and brightest.

  On the friend front: It’s kind of like that Berenstain Bears book The Trouble with Friends. Did I ever tell you about the time that I went to B. Dalton at Lenox Mall, looking for a Berenstain Bears book to give to you for your birthday? It was a joke gift, of course. I was just doing it to be obnoxious, debating whether or not I should give you Too Much TV or Too Much Junk Food. So I’m at the little display case with all of the books, and this cute but slightly overgrown-looking redheaded girl walks over, picks up the Berenstain Bears book Trouble with Friends, and says to me: “Trouble with friends. That’s what I have. Trouble making ’em, trouble keeping ’em.”

  God, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Poor girl. I mean what causes someone to walk through life like that, with no filter?

  Speaking of filters, I’ve got to learn to use more of one when dealing with La Peggy. I am, ahem, grounded right now for my “smart mouth.” Not that being grounded really changes my life or anything. There is seriously nothing to do here.

  Ah, woe is me.

  Your poor, bored, supersmart sister,

  Julia

  October 23, 1993

  Dear poor, bored, supersmart sister,

  I’m sorry that you are grounded, but I’m so excited that in just a few weeks you are coming to San Francisco for Thanksgiving! We are going to have so much fun! Mimi, Robert, and I are planning the whole trip. We’ll take you to Sausalito, which is this really cute town just on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s on the water and there are sailboats everywhere and places to get ice cream, and it’s just really fun. Oh, and there’s this really good sushi restaurant in Sausalito that we’ll take you to that Robert says has the best sashimi in the Bay Area. And I can take you all around Mars and Venus (streets, that is!) and we can climb the Vulcan Steps and burn a thousand calories and then go get smoothies in the Castro. And we can go down to Union Street and shop and get more smoothies and then Uncle Robert can cook each of us our very own bunny rabbit for dinner!!

  I can’t wait. Make the next four weeks go by fast, okay?

  November 1, 1993

  Dear Julia,

  WHAT IS PEGGY’S PROBLEM? How can she ground you from coming to see me? What right does she have? And why doesn’t your dad tell her she’s not allowed to do that?

  If she hates you so much, why isn’t she happy that you are going to be away for a week? I don’t understand. I’m so mad. I’m so mad I took a ceramic coffee cup and threw it against the wall. It didn’t break, though, just bounced against the rug.

  Aunt Mimi says Peggy’s punishment is “unreasonable and unfair.” She says it’s cruel to keep us apart after all we’ve been through, no matter what you did. (What did you do?) Maybe if she doesn’t change her mind you could just come out here anyway? I bet Mimi would send you a plane ticket. She’s really upset about this.

  God, I hate Peggy. You are right. She is a BITCH. Not just a mag. A BITCH!

  November 10, 1993

  Dear Ruthie,

  I hate it here. I hate it here so much. Peggy does not want me. She doesn’t want me in her house, but she doesn’t want me to leave her house, either, because that would mean that I “win.” I never knew what it meant to really hate someone until I came here to live. Nothing Mom or Phil did compares to this. Nothing. It’s like Peggy has this impression that she always has to keep up, that she’s a perfect homemaker, a perfect mother to Sam and me, a perfect Christian who never misses a week of church, a poor martyred woman who provides for her wayward stepdaughter no matter what.

  BULLSHIT!!!

  She sucks.

  I don’t think I’m going to be able to talk her into letting me go to San Francisco for Thanksgiving, even after Aunt Mimi’s call. Truth is, Mimi’s call probably even made things worse, because it embarrassed Peggy, made her storm into my room and call me a little “snitch.”

  You are right. Dad should be defending me. He should tell her to step the hell aside, that he’s my father and he’s in charge of whether or not I can go to California to visit my sister for the break.

  So I got caught drinking. I had two wine coolers, Ruthie. Two wine coolers! I know you don’t drink yet, but that’s like having a glass of grape juice with a tiny bit of white wine poured in. But since Peggy doesn’t drink at all (what a good Christian she is!), she thinks that this is a really, really big deal. She keeps telling me that Sam knows how to have fun without using mind-altering substances. I wanted to tell her: “Some people consider round-the-clock masturbation mind-altering.”

  I held my tongue. Luckily. I’m in too much trouble as it is. I had skipped a day of school the week before I got caught drinking and somehow Peggy found out about it, so now she’s on this big kick that I am “headed nowhere, fast.” Not like her precious Sam. Did I tell you he still does Boy Scouts, in the seventh grade?! Vomit.

  God, he’s such a dork, Ruthie!! He has no friends, besides the little Christian prayer group that he’s a part of from church, and they have to be his friends. You can’t call yourself a Christian group and then not let in the losers.

  Seriously, Ruthie, Sam is such a freak. The other day I was in the shower and I just had this feeling come over me that I was being watched. So I pull back the shower curtain, and I don’t see anyone, but the bathroom door is cracked and I hear someone padding down the hall. He was watching me, I swear to god he was. What a perv. It’s like he’s getting off on having me in the house. Which is sick. I mean, not that I’m thrilled about this fact, but he is my half brother. Yick.

  Ruthie, I’m so, so sorry that I’m not going to get to see you for Thanksgiving. I really wanted to be in San Francisco with you. I would have even eaten a little baby bunny if you had really wanted me to.

  I love you,

  Egg

  Chapter Eight

  It was cold and wet in San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day, the first holiday without her parents, and no Julia, either.

  Peggy had not been swayed.

  At least the weather matched Ruthie’s state of mind: clamped down, gray.

  She spent the morning in the kitchen with Uncle Robert, helping him prepare the meal they would share that evening with their neighbors the Woodses. Robert had brined the turkey—which he had special-ordered from Drewes—for two days in a black Hefty bag filled with salt water and peppercorns. He took the brined bird out of the refrigerator, poured it out of the Hefty bag and into the sink, and proceeded to rinse it with cold water. He then took a bunch of paper towels and dabbed the turkey dry before placing it in the roasting pan that sat on the counter.

&n
bsp; “We’ll let Mr. Bird hang out for a couple of hours,” Robert said. “It’s always best to roast meat at room temperature.”

  Ruthie could not imagine her father ever calling the Butterball turkey Naomi roasted each year Mr. Bird, let alone going through the hassle of brining it. Not that he would have known how to do such a thing. The only food Phil knew how to prepare was fried bologna sandwiches, which he would fix for Ruthie and Julia on the rare nights that Naomi was not home.

  Next Robert took out an uncooked tart shell that he had made the day before and had refrigerated. He placed the shell on the island in the middle of the kitchen. The refrigerator door still open, he took out a package of bacon. After peeling off six slices, he spaced them apart in the cold Le Creuset Dutch oven. Turning on the gas, he adjusted it so that it burned at a medium flame.

  Before Ruthie moved in with Robert and Mimi, she had never seen anyone fry bacon in a pan. When her mother fixed bacon she cooked it the microwave in a paper towel-lined casserole dish, one minute for every slice.

  “Was your dad a cook?” asked Ruthie, who was, as instructed, rubbing a piece of Gruyère over a box grater, the shreds landing on the waxed paper Robert had placed beneath it. (She imagined rubbing off a layer of her own skin. She wondered how much she would have to grate before she felt the cut.)

  “Oh God, no. My mother wouldn’t let him near her kitchen. Not that her cooking was all that great. Lots of bland pot roasts.”

  “Who taught you, then? I mean to do things like brine? Mimi?”

  Robert barked out a little laugh. “Not Mimi. Definitely not her . . . though she loves a brined turkey, she’s not going to be the one doing it. I’ve always been the cook in our relationship, but I really got into it a couple of years ago when I wrote a little piece about the Tante Marie cooking school for Sunset. Had so much fun learning professional truques that I continued taking classes even after the article was published.”