A Soft Place to Land: A Novel Read online

  “Good job,” said Ruthie.

  She always said “good job” after her aunt made it out of the driveway successfully. Such a feat required some sort of acknowledgment. It was funny how the simplest tasks in San Francisco took so much more effort than the same tasks in Atlanta had. Ruthie never gave a moment’s thought as to whether or not her mother would be able to back the car successfully out of the garage in Atlanta, and there was certainly never a vehicle obstructing the way, a vehicle you first had to move. In Atlanta, their three-car garage was located behind the house, where there was enough space to turn the car around before you drove it down the front driveway and turned onto the road.

  No one ever backed out onto Wymberly Way.

  “It’s nice you’ve made such a good friend,” said Mimi, turning the radio dial from KPFA—the talk station that Robert liked but Mimi said was too militant—to a station that played classical music.

  Ruthie shrugged noncommittally. She liked Dara, liked her a lot, and spent most weekends with her. Yet Ruthie still harbored reservations about her. Dara wasn’t the type of friend Ruthie would have made in Atlanta. She certainly wasn’t like Alex Love. Dara was not preppy and pretty and athletic, her eyes gleaming with competition. Dara was odd looking, with her blue metal braces, her purple-tinted hair, her steady rotation of band T-shirts, most passed down from her older sister, Yael. Dara was both eager and subversive, and while Ruthie found that such a personality mesh was great fun, she was still sometimes struck by self-consciousness that this strange girl had become her closest friend.

  Her aunt glanced at Ruthie. “Has Dara been at Hall’s since kindergarten?”

  “Yep,” said Ruthie. “She’s pretty sick of it.”

  “I’m sure she’s thrilled to have you in class, then. You must be a breath of fresh air.”

  “I guess,” said Ruthie, shrugging.

  It wasn’t that she wanted to be elusive, to hold Mimi at arm’s distance. It was just, well, Ruthie was sure that Mimi thought Dara odd, and that she was just being a good sport about Ruthie having befriended her. When Mimi was in eighth grade, she had been a cheerleader.

  At the intersection of Market and Castro they passed what Ruthie assumed to be the world’s largest pride flag. Mimi drove one more block, then turned left onto Noe. All of the spaces in front of the café—which looked a bit like a greenhouse—were taken, so she punched on her hazards and double-parked.

  “You have your quarters, right?” Mimi asked.

  Mimi insisted that Ruthie carry a roll of quarters with her whenever she ventured alone into the city, so she would always have a way to phone home if necessary. Mimi also gave Ruthie a stack of her business cards, to keep in her bag and in her pockets, so that if Ruthie were to be found unconscious (God forbid) the authorities would have a way of contacting her.

  “I’ve got them,” said Ruthie, patting the side of her canvas tote bag.

  “I don’t mean to be such a worrywart. But do be careful. And of course have fun!”

  Mimi often apologized for being a worrywart, which was comical, really. Relative to Naomi or any other mom Ruthie knew in Atlanta, Mimi was not a worrywart at all. As long as Ruthie carried that roll of quarters, and that stack of business cards, Mimi pretty much let her do whatever she wanted.

  “I’ll be careful,” said Ruthie. “Not that I think there’s that much danger of anyone bothering me here in the Castro. Unless someone wants to, you know, drag me off and make me listen to Judy Garland albums or something.”

  It was a joke Dara once made, talking of how she wasn’t afraid to walk alone at night through her dad’s neighborhood because it was primarily populated with gay men. Dara was allowed to make such jokes because her father, after leaving her mother when Dara was nine, moved in with his boyfriend, Truong, who was from Vietnam and was always bringing home strange produce from the Asian markets in the Sunset, most noticeably a durian fruit that filled the apartment with the sweet smell of rot.

  “You are becoming a true San Franciscan with that wicked wit,” Mimi said, then immediately looked troubled. “What I mean is, you’re picking up the tenor of this town. I know Atlanta will always be your hometown.”

  Mimi was forever going back over the things that she said to Ruthie, combing her words for anything that might offend or be hurtful. Ruthie knew Mimi did this out of kindness, but she found Mimi’s constant editing a little exhausting. Besides, Ruthie hadn’t spoken to anyone from Coventry since she had moved in with Mimi and Robert, except on her fourteenth birthday, when Alex Love phoned and they shared a few awkward moments breathing into their receivers and trying to come up with things to say.

  For Ruthie, Atlanta had become the past, and she didn’t like to dwell there.

  She found Dara at one of the outdoor tables that offered a good view of Market Street. Dara, nibbling on a muffin, wore a Sonic Youth T-shirt over ripped jeans, an olive green sweater that looked as if it once belonged to someone’s granddad, Doc Martens, and black lipstick. Her purple-tinted hair was pulled into pigtails held in place with thick, pale rubber bands, the kind intended to hold together loose pens and reports, not the kind intended for hair. Ruthie felt particularly preppy compared to her friend, with her white wool rollneck sweater from J.Crew, her Gap jeans, and her yellow Converse One Stars.

  “Hey, Roots,” said Dara.

  Whatever private qualms Ruthie had about Dara, she always felt buoyant upon seeing her friend.

  “Hey, Dars. How’s the muffin?”

  It was 10:00 A.M. and Ruthie was hungry.

  “You won’t like it. It’s from Safeway.”

  “Why’d you bring it here? They have a good menu.”

  “My dad bought them for me. I felt bad not taking one. He’s such a Jewish mother. He’s always pushing me to eat.”

  “Let me try it,” said Ruthie.

  Dara handed it to her and Ruthie took a small bite. Apple cinnamon. The cinnamon was overpowering and the apple flavor tasted artificial. Wordlessly she handed the muffin back to Dara.

  “What, you don’t like it?”

  Ruthie shrugged. “It’s fine.”

  “Oh my god, you are worse than my mom. Can’t someone just eat a muffin in this town and not have it turn into the Pillsbury Bake-Off or something?”

  Dara was smiling.

  “Like your mom eats Pillsbury products,” said Ruthie.

  “God, I know. She’s so annoying.”

  “Where’s the menu?” asked Ruthie, glancing around. “I’m starving.”

  “You have to order at the counter,” said Dara. “Remember?”

  “Oh yeah.” She stood. “Do you want anything?”

  “I’ll take a hot chocolate, extra whipped cream.”

  “Don’t you need some protein?” asked Ruthie. “Have you eaten anything besides that muffin?”

  “God, you’re just like my dad.”

  Ruthie returned to the table carrying two mugs of hot chocolate, the rims overflowing with whipped cream. A server would bring her breakfast—the spinach frittata with feta—as soon as it was prepared. She put the hot chocolates on the table, and then sat down. Dara swiped a bit of whipped cream from the mug closer to Ruthie.

  “Hey!” said Ruthie, and swiped some off the top of Dara’s mug.

  “Thief,” said Dara, teasing.

  “So ‘What’s Happening!!’?” asked Ruthie, quoting from the title of a show she and Julia used to watch together, a sitcom about a skinny black teen, his sarcastic little sister, and his two best friends, one of whom was so fat he had to wear suspenders just to keep his pants up.

  “Just playing a solo game of Who the Hell Is He?” said Dara.

  Who the Hell Is He? was a game that Dara and Ruthie had come up with while waiting for Dara’s mom to pick them up from the shops at Laurel Village. They had sat on a bench by the metered parking spaces, waiting and waiting for Mrs. Diamond, who was always, perpetually, late. Bored, they started inventing narratives for everyone they saw coming
out of Bryan’s Grocery, making a competition out of who could come up with the best story.

  “Okay, who the hell is he?” said Dara, pointing to a short Asian man, walking alone, wearing jeans and a Charlie Brownesque sweater, yellow with a jagged brown line around the middle.

  Ruthie took a small sip from her hot chocolate, drawing the drink up from beneath the cream. “International pimp. Going incognito.”

  Ruthie had recently learned the word “incognito” during a Wordly Wise lesson in English class, and using it made her feel smart.

  “Jeez, do you have a dirty mind,” said Dara. “I was going to say exchange student from Japan who got out at the wrong stop on Muni.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” said Ruthie. “And his host family lives on your mom’s street and he’s wandering all over the Castro asking men how to find ‘Uranus.’”

  “Gross,” said Dara. “I mean, I’m fine with my dad being gay and all, I really am. But I just don’t get the whole butt thing.”

  “Shhh,” said Ruthie.

  “Then again, Yael said she did the butt thing once, with a guy.”

  Ruthie put her hands over her ears. “I do not want to hear this,” she said.

  It was just like Dara to start talking about “the butt thing” in the middle of the Castro. Ruthie guessed that most of the other patrons at the café were gay, as well as eight out of every ten people who walked by on Market Street. There were a lot more men in the Castro than women. Sometimes they walked alone, sometimes hand in hand, sometimes bunched together in a group, like fraternity boys on a college campus in their matching polo shirts.

  “Okay, who the hell is he? Or is it a she?”

  Ruthie pointed to a sad-looking man walking up Market wearing a feathered brown wig and white plastic hoop earrings. He had on a denim jumper over a white T-shirt and, below the dress, white patent-leather pumps.

  “That is a very confused person who needs to stop taking fashion advice from commercials for Terrific Toni’s,” said Dara.

  Ruthie laughed. Terrific Toni’s was a chain of discount hair salons that ran commercials showing women with dated haircuts and perms.

  A server arrived with Ruthie’s food, setting the plate down before her. Her breakfast was served with toast and roasted potatoes. Ruthie shook a little ketchup onto her plate and salted the potatoes—she thought potatoes could never be too salty—and then started in on the frittata.

  “You can have some if you want,” she told Dara, who immediately grabbed a potato off Ruthie’s plate.

  Ruthie kept watching the men—and occasional women—walking past. She always hoped to see Mimi’s business partner, Marc, in the Castro. The last time Marc came over to have dinner with Robert and Mimi, Ruthie asked if he ever hung out at Cafe Flore.

  “I try my best to avoid the gay ghetto, sweetheart. There are other places in the city we’re allowed, you know.”

  Ruthie sipped from her hot chocolate, which had cooled to the point of lukewarm. It was still yummy, thick, rich, and almost bitter, not cloyingly sweet the way Swiss Miss mix was, which was the only hot chocolate Ruthie had ever tasted before moving to San Francisco.

  “She’s probably going to get hammered tonight and be too hungover to get on the plane tomorrow,” Ruthie said.

  Dara, who had been especially heavy-handed with the black eye makeup that morning, blinked. “Who are you talking about?”

  “My sister. Julia. She’s coming tomorrow. At least she says she is.”

  “Oh my god, for a minute there I thought you were still playing the game and I was really confused.”

  Dara laughed with more force than Ruthie felt the confusion warranted.

  “Is she a big drinker?” Dara asked.

  “She drank some in Atlanta, but she wasn’t a crazy alcoholic or anything. From her letters it sounds like she drinks a lot in Virginia. I mean the reason she couldn’t come for Thanksgiving was because she got caught drinking wine coolers at a party. And then later she got in trouble because her stepmom found a bottle of vodka under her bed.”

  “She should totally go straight edge like Yael,” Dara said.

  In addition to being a vegan, Dara’s sister, Yael, did not drink, smoke, or do any drugs. Still, she considered herself a riot grrrl and a punk. On one of the few occasions that Ruthie actually spoke to her, while Yael was fixing herself a lunch of quinoa, red pepper, and avocado, Yael told Ruthie that she was “totally DIY” and not “adverse to a little civil disobedience every now and then.”

  Ruthie didn’t ask what “DIY” meant, and she had no interest in knowing what form of civil disobedience Yael engaged in. Ruthie intended to stay way on the right side of the law. She didn’t even like jaywalking, which Robert did all of the time, any time a store or restaurant across the street struck his fancy.

  Acts of civil disobedience aside, Ruthie admired Yael for not doing drugs. Admired and appreciated her for it, because it meant Dara probably wouldn’t do drugs, either, which was a big relief. Ruthie had made a promise to herself that she would never take an illegal drug. It would be easier to uphold that promise if Dara made it with her.

  From what Ruthie could gather, kids in San Francisco, especially at the private schools, smoked a lot of pot. Before Hall’s let out for the break she had overheard Robyn and Zoe, the two most popular eighth graders, laughing about how much food Zoe’s older brother and his friends would eat when they came in stoned from the pool house. Zoe said that her dad had nicknamed the pool house the Cannabis Cabana.

  Ruthie figured a lot of people in Virden, Virginia, must smoke pot, too. The last three letters Julia had sent all included details about the foods she and her friend Doug Hambridge liked to consume when they were high and had the “munchies.” Dairy Queen blizzards, entire Domino’s pepperoni pizzas, grilled pimento cheese sandwiches, hoagies with cream cheese, jalapeños, and mozzarella.

  It all sounded really gross to Ruthie.

  “Her plane could crash,” said Ruthie, regretting the words as soon as she said them.

  “Don’t say that,” said Dara, as if she were a parent scolding a small child. “Anyway, that’s impossible. Your parents and your sister can’t all die in separate plane crashes.”

  “She could meet some hot guy on the plane and, I don’t know, decide to go to his house for spring break instead of ours,” said Ruthie.

  Dara stared at her the way that Blanche sometimes stared at Rose on The Golden Girls, dumbfounded by her ignorance, if a little amused.

  “Your sister is going to arrive tomorrow, you are going to meet her at the airport, and the two of you are going to have a great time for the next six days,” said Dara.

  Ruthie liked this about Dara. How she wasn’t afraid just to proclaim things boldly, to put chaos in order, to name the way that things would—by force of Dara’s will—work out. It was like the time Ruthie was panicking because she hadn’t memorized the quadratic formula and they were going to be quizzed on it that afternoon in Math.

  “This is what we are going to do,” Dara had said as they walked together across the courtyard, headed to Spanish class. “You and I are going to the library during lunch, where I am going to drill that formula into your head. If we don’t have time to eat lunch, fine. Buy an extra hard-boiled egg during Snack and you can eat it for energy before Dillard’s quiz.”

  Ruthie bought the extra egg, Dara drilled the formula into her head, and she passed the quiz. In fact, she received a perfect score on it.

  “I just can’t believe it’s been ten months since I last saw her,” Ruthie said. “Her stepmom wouldn’t let her come for Christmas because she had planned this whole bonding ski trip to ‘get them back on track.’ Of course Julia hated every minute of it.”

  “Before she started college Yael went and lived on a kibbutz in Israel and I didn’t see her for a year,” said Dara. “She was a total stick when she came home.”

  Ruthie felt annoyed. “It’s not the same thing,” she said, though she didn’t ev
en know what a kibbutz was.

  The next afternoon Robert, Mimi, and Ruthie sat in traffic on 101 on their way to the airport to pick up Julia. Mimi had first suggested that Ruthie and Robert wait at home while she went and got Julia, but Ruthie said no, she wanted to meet her sister at the gate. Though Mimi didn’t say so outright, Ruthie knew that her aunt was concerned that being at the airport, hearing the flight announcements, going through security, and watching planes come in for landings might trouble Ruthie, might make her think too much about the details of her parents’ own death.

  Not that the huge commercial jet Julia would be arriving on from Washington, D.C., was anything like the Ford Trimotor that had killed her parents.

  “I want to see her the minute she gets here,” Ruthie declared. She kept private from Mimi her anxiety that if she did not grab Julia as soon as her sister deplaned, Julia might disappear.

  Robert said he would park so that Mimi and Ruthie might make it to the gate on time for Julia’s arrival. The two of them speed walked through the terminal. (Regardless of how late they were, Mimi would not be so inelegant as to run.) They made it to the gate just as the incoming passengers were deplaning. First the expensively dressed set from business class, men mostly, with their casual suede jackets, their shiny belt buckles, their leather carry-ons. Then an exhausted-looking mother, her young child riding on her hip, his legs straddling her waist. A white woman with dreadlocks; two well-groomed men whom Ruthie assumed to be a couple; another two men who were talking in the loud, jocular way of businessmen; another family, this one made up of three blond daughters, each with her own rollaway carry-on; a couple of students with backpacks in Georgetown sweatshirts.

  And then a girl, a young woman, with auburn hair, long silver earrings, a T-shirt printed with tiny flowers, faded jeans, leather sandals that looked like something Jesus might have worn. Over her shoulder was a bag woven of brightly colored threads, the bag from Guatemala that Julia’s first boyfriend, Dmitri, had given her.