A Soft Place to Land: A Novel Read online

  “She could?” asked Ruthie.

  “She could,” said Robert, and it was clear to Ruthie that this was something he and Mimi had already discussed.

  As if it were an inflating balloon, Ruthie’s chest filled with hope.

  For the first few minutes of dinner no conversation was had. Everyone just raised fork to mouth, murmuring compliments between bites.

  The turkey was salty and tender; the gravy, thick and smooth. The roasted baby potatoes were enlivened with little flecks of bacon and lots of butter and salt. And Ruthie had to admit, the sweet potatoes Robert had mashed with butter, cream, bourbon, and a little molasses were even better than the ones topped with marshmallows. There were two kinds of dressing, one made from crumbled cornbread and one made with white bread, sausage, and sage. There were green beans sautéed with garlic and butter. There was a homemade cranberry sauce dotted with orange zest, and homemade biscuits that Robert had made with real lard, purchased from one of the many Mexican markets in the Mission. (The biscuits were tender and flaky, but Ruthie missed her mother’s rolls.) There was a salad of bright Bibb lettuce and green onions, loaded with grapefruit, ripe avocado, and toasted pecans.

  Tatiana, a notoriously picky eater, swallowed one bite of turkey and then ate three biscuits, each slathered with butter.

  “Enough with the butter, sweet pea,” said her dad. “Have some salad.”

  Nina shrugged in her dismissive eastern European way. “It’s Thanksgiving,” she said. “She should eat what she wants.”

  “Would you mind not sabotaging everything I say to my daughter?” asked Tim, and the room grew quiet in a different way than it had been the moment before.

  Ruthie, hating the tension, tried to think of something to say. “Do you think Mitchell’s avocado ice cream would taste good with tortilla chips?” she asked.

  Mitchell’s was an ice cream shop in the Mission that almost always had a line of customers out the door. Whenever Robert and Ruthie ventured there, Ruthie would sample the more exotic flavors—avocado, green tea, lychee, purple yam—before ordering her usual, a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of caramel praline.

  “I don’t know if my poor heart could handle ice cream plus chips,” said Mimi, placing her hand on her chest in an exaggerated gesture, which, now that she no longer lived there, Ruthie recognized as southern.

  “You had better keep in good health,” said Nina. “Otherwise you’re going to be in big trouble if Hillary Care passes.”

  Robert rolled his eyes. He often said it was unconscionable that the United States didn’t have universal health care, and he was a huge fan of the Clintons.

  Nina noticed the eye roll. “What do you like about Hillary Care? Is it the task force that holds secret meetings? Or the prospect of having Soviet-style hospitals?”

  “That’s pushing it,” said Tim.

  “Look,” said Robert. “The closed meetings were probably a mistake, but to focus on one tactical error when there’s a health-care crisis in this country? I’m just glad someone in power is addressing it.”

  “Oh please,” said Nina. “By adding to the bureaucracy?”

  “You do realize we already have a costly and inefficient health-care system in place, don’t you?” asked Robert. “It’s called the hospital emergency room. And if you’re poor in this country, that’s where you go for everything.”

  “Or you get motivated to find a job,” said Nina.

  “You have got to stop reading Ayn Rand,” said Robert.

  Tim let out a surprised laugh; Mimi glared at her husband.

  Ruthie knew that Mimi agreed with him on health care but felt it was rude to invite people over only to argue politics, especially Nina, who would never be swayed. Indeed, Robert and Mimi privately joked that they had to keep Nina as a friend because otherwise they wouldn’t know anyone in San Francisco who had ever voted for a Republican.

  “Ruthie, why don’t you tell the Woodses that funny joke Julia shared with you?” said Mimi.

  Ruthie was momentarily confused. Julia had told her a joke that past weekend, during one of their increasingly rare phone calls, but Ruthie was pretty sure it wasn’t a good one to share. The joke was about the difference between condoms and coffins: how they both held stiffs, but one was coming and one was going. Had Mimi been listening in on the phone call?

  “You know, the one about Sam the clam and his disco,” prompted Mimi.

  “Oh,” said Ruthie. “You want me to tell it now?”

  “Please,” said Tim. “I beg of you.”

  Robert and Nina both looked like they wanted to keep arguing, but they remained quiet and Ruthie began the joke.

  Mimi beamed at her. The conversation was saved.

  They were sitting in the living room again, plates in their laps, eating pie. Robert had made lemon chess and pecan, and there was vanilla ice cream to go on top. Ruthie loved the sweet-tart combination of lemon desserts, and was eating a large slice of the chess pie. It reminded her a lot of a lemon square, except there was a tang to the pie’s custard, because of the buttermilk Robert had added.

  She thought about her mother’s lemon squares, how they were the best she had ever tasted. She remembered how crisp and buttery the crust was, how gooey the filling. She tried to imagine her mother, baking in the kitchen, and then was overtaken with anxiety, because she could not picture her mother, could not picture her with the green and white polka-dot apron tied around her waist. All Ruthie could remember was the photo from the obituary in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a formal picture that Naomi had taken for the church bulletin at Trinity Presbyterian. In the church photo she was smiling stiffly above a blue turtleneck sweater. She looked bland, conventional.

  And then the jangle of metal permeated the air as someone outside twisted the old-fashioned ringer on the door. And just like that the spit dried in Ruthie’s mouth because suddenly she knew. The person on the other side of the door had to be Julia.

  Mimi was walking across the room to open the door, and Ruthie’s heart was pounding.

  When Ruthie called, Julia had not been at the Kroger buying marshmallows! She had slipped away instead, driving her Saab fast toward the Roanoke airport, thirty miles away, or perhaps even all the way to D.C., where she could catch a direct flight. She had been saving money and it was with this money that she had bought a ticket. Once past security and on the plane, she had settled back into her seat, not at all nervous, even during turbulence, because she knew it was her destiny to see her little sister. It had been five months since they had seen each other. Five months. Enough was enough and finally Julia had taken action.

  As a little girl, Ruthie had believed that Julia possessed magical powers. For a moment, she believed in Julia’s magic again.

  Mimi opened the door. There stood Dara.

  Dara.

  How could she have believed that Julia could have traveled all that way without Peggy knowing she was missing?

  “Hi again!” Dara said to Ruthie. “I looked you up in the Hall’s directory.”

  And though Ruthie did not answer, Mimi invited Dara in.

  She was an idiot for having believed—even for a minute—that Julia was just going to show up in San Francisco, after being forbidden to come.

  “Ruthie,” said Mimi, her voice in full hostess mode. “Why don’t you introduce us to your friend.”

  Ruthie looked at her aunt, tried to speak, but her throat was so tight she couldn’t.

  As if Julia could just slip away unnoticed.

  “I thought if you were through with dinner maybe you could come over to my house and have ice cream,” said Dara.

  “How lovely,” said Mimi. “I’m sure Ruthie would love to, wouldn’t you, hon?”

  Even if Julia somehow managed to secure a plane ticket, she would first have had to get to D.C., which was over three hours away. That or drive down to Roanoke and take a small plane from there to D.C. And surely by the time the turboprop landed in the capital city there would
have been a policeman waiting to intercept her as she deplaned.

  “Sweetie?” asked Mimi. “Are you okay?”

  Everyone was looking at her, concerned. She hated their concern. She hated being the center of their attention.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel sick. I’m sorry, Dara. It’s really nice of you to offer, but I just need to lie down. Another time, okay?”

  “Oh, sweetie,” said Mimi.

  “Maybe it wasn’t a great idea for you to have that champagne,” said Tim.

  “It was a big meal,” said Robert. “Everyone probably needs to lie down.”

  “Another time, Dara?” asked Mimi, as if she were the one turning her down.

  After Dara left, Ruthie assured them all that she was fine, that she just needed to lie down for a few minutes. She assured Uncle Robert that she did not need any Pepto-Bismol, even though he swore by the stuff. She thanked him for the delicious meal, told him it was the best turkey she had ever had. She thanked Tatiana for the pot holder, said good night to Tim and Nina.

  Once safely ensconced in her room Ruthie lay on the bed, staring at the bulletin board with photos of Julia and her tacked to it.

  It had been five and a half months since she had last seen her sister. Five and a half months since Julia, her Saab packed with everything that had not fit into Peggy’s minivan, had hugged Ruthie good-bye for the final time and gotten behind the wheel of her car, to follow her stepmother and father out of the driveway and into a new life.

  Ruthie’s sister seemed as far away as her parents. But she kept expecting that to change. Ever since she had moved to San Francisco, she had been on the lookout for her sister. Ruthie kept expecting her to show up. It wasn’t Ruthie’s fault that she held such high hopes. How many letters had Julia written Ruthie plotting just such an escape?

  “What’s Peggy going to do?” Julia wrote. “Ground me? Well, fine, there’s nothing for me to do in this fucking town anyway. It wouldn’t make a difference.”

  About a month ago, returning home from Rosenberg’s deli, where she had gone to get a sandwich, Ruthie spotted a long-haired young woman sitting on the front steps of Mimi and Robert’s building. Ruthie was walking toward the setting sun and was a bit blinded by it, so she could not make out the woman’s features with any distinction. But the way the woman was sitting—Indian-style—looked like Julia; her messy red hair looked like Julia’s; her peasant top with the embroidered flowers looked like something Julia might wear.

  And who would sit on the front steps of someone’s house unless she was waiting, specifically, for the people who lived there to arrive?

  Ruthie started walking faster up the hill that was Mars Street, her heart racing from both anticipation and exertion. She was only twenty or so feet away when the girl—woman, Ruthie realized—

  looked straight at Ruthie and Ruthie saw a face that was pockmarked and scarred from acne.

  It wasn’t her sister at all.

  It wasn’t even someone who resembled her sister.

  It was an ugly woman who, upon closer inspection, looked like she was probably homeless, who looked like she might ask Ruthie for change. Which was exactly what she did, as soon as Ruthie got close enough to her. As soon as Ruthie was standing by the steps, holding the front door key tightly in her hand.

  “I don’t have any to give, but I can direct you to a shelter,” Ruthie said.

  This was the line Aunt Mimi had taught her to say.

  “Oh, go fuck yourself, you little snot,” said the woman, and Ruthie jerked back her head in surprise. Though she knew it wasn’t Julia, it still shocked Ruthie to be cursed at by someone she had, just seconds before, believed to be beloved.

  And now here Ruthie was again. Fooled once more. Fooled and alone, in this Armani green room with its view of the garden, its framed Ansel Adams print, its corkboard that served as a shrine to Julia. It was all so strange. What the hell was she doing here? How had life spit her into this room, in this flat, in this city, when she was supposed to be at Wymberly Way, eating Parker House rolls and sweet potatoes with marshmallows, bland turkey, and cornbread stuffing?

  If they had not boarded that plane . . .

  No. It went beyond that. Where the blame fell.

  She stood, walked to the corkboard filled with photos. There was one of Julia alone, standing beside the Chattahoochee River, one hand pushing against the trunk of a tree. She was wearing old Levi’s that she had painted designs on, flowers, a sun, a moon. Her hair was blown back from her face and she was looking rather boldly into the camera. Rather arrogantly.

  Ruthie felt a rush of anger toward her sister. Why couldn’t Julia do anything right? Why did she get caught drinking weeks before her scheduled trip to California? Why was she locked so tightly in battle with her stepmother? Why was she out getting marshmallows during the very moment Ruthie needed to talk with her?

  And then Ruthie allowed herself to have the thought that she had been avoiding ever since she and Mother Martha discovered that Julia had not been at the beach over spring break, had instead been camped out at a boy’s house, not four miles away in Ansley Park.

  If Julia had not lied and gone off to be with Jake Robinson, none of this would have happened.

  If Julia had not lied and gone off to be with Jake Robinson, my parents would still be alive.

  Chapter Nine

  Cafe Flore, where Ruthie was meeting Dara for breakfast, was midway between Ruthie’s house on Mars Street and Dara’s dad’s house in the Duboce Triangle, where Dara was staying over spring break while her mom went on a yoga retreat in Costa Rica. It was kind of a pain to have to schlep all her stuff over to her dad’s, Dara said, but ultimately it didn’t bother her that much. At her dad’s house she could watch TV, and he always had Cap’n Crunch cereal and Cheetos waiting for her, two of Dara’s favorite foods, and two foods her “whole foods” mother expressly forbade.

  Normally Ruthie would have just walked down the hill to Cafe Flore, but Mimi happened to be heading to work just as Ruthie was leaving, so her aunt offered to give her a ride.

  But first Mimi had to run to the bathroom. Whenever they were leaving the house, Mimi always had to run to the bathroom. It was as if she had an irrational fear that in the fifteen minutes it took to drive from her house to her office she would be overcome with a desperate and possibly uncontrollable need to pee.

  Ruthie waited for her in the kitchen, opening the door to reveal the near-empty refrigerator. Other than the carton of half-and-half, some anemic-looking parsley, a half-empty carton of chicken stock, and a stick of butter, all that was in it was the usual collection of condiment bottles that they never used but never threw away: some chowchow friends of Mimi’s had brought back from South Carolina, an old bottle of Dijon mustard, a couple of different brands of hot sauce, some sort of chocolate liqueur, a bottle of raspberry jam that had become hermetically sealed and no one had been able to use now for a month.

  Robert and Ruthie were planning to shop for groceries at Andronico’s that afternoon. In addition to buying all of Julia’s favorite foods—bagels, cream cheese, Doritos, Pop-Tarts, Mallomars, orange Fanta—they planned to buy ingredients for the feast they would cook in honor of her arrival.

  Julia was scheduled to arrive the next afternoon at 3:45. She was staying for a week, not flying back to Virginia until the following Saturday, which meant she would be in town for the actual anniversary of Phil’s and Naomi’s deaths, March 24. Not that Ruthie wanted to make an occasion of the day. It would be enough to get through it. It would be enough to have Julia to talk to, one-on-one.

  Still, Ruthie told herself not to get her hopes up too high. Just because Peggy and Matt said they were allowing Julia to come to San Francisco for a week—luckily her and Ruthie’s spring breaks coincided—did not mean that Peggy, at the very last moment, might not hold her stepdaughter back. After all, Peggy hadn’t let Julia come to San Francisco for Christmas, claiming it was important for the Smiths to take a family sk
i vacation to Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia.

  It was hard to believe that ten months had passed since Ruthie had last seen her sister. It was impossible to fathom that her parents had been dead for a year.

  Ruthie heard the sound of the toilet flushing and then water running and soon after Mimi breezed into the room, bright eyed and ready to go. Her hair was in its standard chignon and she wore green wool trousers with just the faintest checked pattern on them, along with a crème-colored silk blouse and several long, thin gold chains. The trousers looked like money.

  They walked out the back door and down the stairs that led to the garage where Mimi and Robert’s Audi was parked.

  “Please let Tim Woods already have left for work,” Mimi intoned.

  Robert and Mimi shared the garage with the Woodses, a garage that was not big enough to park two cars side by side. If Tim had already left for work, then Mimi was in luck and could back right out with few obstacles. But if Tim was still at home, she would have to back his car out onto the street (using the spare key hanging from a hook in the garage, her spare key hanging beside it), leave it parked in the street with its hazard lights on, back her car out, leave it parked in the street with its hazard lights on, and then pull his car back into the garage before she and Ruthie could finally leave.

  They were in luck. Tim’s car was already gone. Once in the car Mimi and Ruthie both put on their seat belts and Mimi started the engine.

  “God, I hate backing out of here,” she said, her right arm stretched so that it rested on the back of Ruthie’s seat, her head turned to look behind her as she backed the Audi up the steep driveway that led from the basement-level garage. Muttering a quick prayer, Mimi stepped on the gas and shot up the driveway, over the sidewalk, and onto Mars Street with a bump, somehow managing not to hit any pedestrians or get hit by an oncoming car.