A Soft Place to Land: A Novel Read online

  She was looking around, and then she locked eyes on Ruthie. Locked eyes and smiled.

  And Ruthie was smiling back. All of her frustration, all of her pent-up anger toward Julia, it was slipping out of her, and what was left was pure excitement. Excitement that her sister was here. Julia was striding toward her, was hugging her hard, was grabbing Ruthie under the arms, which tickled, and lifting her a few inches in the air before putting her down with a grunt.

  “Biscuit,” she said. “You are no longer light and fluffy. You must have eaten too many bunnies.”

  “Shut up,” said Ruthie. “Egg.”

  And then Ruthie started to cry because it really was Julia. Julia was standing in front of her. Julia whose hair looked just like their mother’s. Julia who was teasing her about her tears.

  “I’m only staying a week!” Julia said. “You’ll only have to share a bed with me for a little while. It’s nothing to cry about.”

  Ruthie punched her sister on the arm, smiling.

  “Julia, don’t you look beautiful!” said Mimi, kissing her on the cheek. “Here, let me take your bag.”

  Deftly Mimi unhooked the woven Guatemalan bag from Julia’s shoulder and slung it over her own.

  “Surely this isn’t all you have, is it?”

  “I checked a suitcase,” said Julia.

  “Wonderful. Let’s head to baggage claim. And I’m sure you need to stop off at the bathroom. I certainly always do when I get off a plane.”

  That was Mimi, all smiles and small talk, as she glided the two of them to the restroom, where she and Julia disappeared for a moment while Ruthie waited, and then through the terminal, past security, toward baggage claim.

  As they walked, Mimi asked Julia about her flight, about the food, about whether or not she was hungry.

  “I hope you are,” said Mimi. “Robert and Ruthie have prepared a feast.”

  Ruthie glanced at her sister. It was unreal to have her here, walking beside her, touchable. Ruthie realized what people meant by the expression “in the flesh.” She could not stop looking at Julia. Julia! Her auburn curls pulled back with a rubber band. Her tinkly silver earrings with all of the teeny-tiny bells, earrings that Julia had bought from the mean lady at the Onion Dome. The lady who used to bark at Ruthie not to touch anything whenever she accompanied Julia into the store. In the middle of Julia’s left lobe was a small red scab, evidence of where she had pierced it with a safety pin.

  “I’ll eat anything but bunny,” said Julia, grinning at Ruthie.

  Ruthie returned the smile, but not before glancing at Mimi. She did not want her aunt to think that she had complained to Julia about Robert’s rabbit with mustard sauce.

  Mimi appeared to be unperturbed. “What did you and Robert prepare, sweetheart?” she asked.

  “Crab cakes,” said Ruthie. “With rémoulade. And coleslaw—which might not sound very good, Julia, but the way Robert makes it is super yummy. Trust me. Plus a field greens salad. And I made chocolate pudding cups for dessert.”

  Ruthie had recently learned to make the pudding cups, using a recipe Robert had clipped from Sunset magazine. She had prepped the batter for the “cups” in advance—Ruthie used ramekins—and just before they were ready to eat dessert she would pop them into the oven at 375 degrees. Twelve minutes later she would pull them out and place a small scoop of ice cream into each center.

  When Julia spooned into her cup the outer edges would be solid like a brownie, while the inside would be molten chocolate.

  “Pudding like Jell-O pudding?” asked Julia. “I love Jell-O pudding.”

  “These are more like melty brownies. You’ll see.”

  “I love melty brownies,” said Julia.

  “Then you’ll love these,” said Ruthie.

  They had to wait by the baggage claim carousel for more than twenty minutes. During that time, Robert walked in through the airport’s revolving doors. Ruthie saw him before he saw them.

  It was funny to see him from a distance. He was small, plump, nebishe, to use one of his Yiddish words. He was not someone you would necessarily notice in a crowd, and if you did notice him you certainly wouldn’t think, What a hunk. Yet he was theirs, providing Mimi and Ruthie with food, humor, warmth. He was theirs and he loved them, had seemed to love Ruthie since the moment he first picked Mimi and Ruthie up at this same airport last June, when Ruthie was so new to San Francisco and everything was so very, very cold.

  And suddenly Ruthie felt a fierce surge of love toward her uncle, was so happy to see him, was waving, calling, “Uncle Robert, over here!”

  And he was bounding toward them, smiling.

  “Hello, traveler,” he said to Julia. “It’s wonderful to see you.”

  “Sweetheart,” said Mimi. “Go like this.”

  She swiped a fingernail between her two front teeth, and Robert, mirroring her, did the same thing, dislodging a small bit of black bean.

  Robert often got things stuck between his teeth, and Mimi always noticed.

  “Hi,” said Julia, smiling shyly at him.

  He was a writer. Julia wanted to be a writer one day.

  There was a succession of thumps as the suitcases started dropping onto the conveyer belt, which rotated round and round. A large Hartmann bag tumbled onto the belt, and Julia, pointing to it, said, “That’s mine.”

  Seeing the suitcase made Ruthie let out a little gasp. It had been her mother’s. It was the suitcase Naomi had taken with her on the trip to Las Vegas, returned to Atlanta by the Mirage Hotel, after the accident. It was such an elegant suitcase with its leather handles, its nubby tweed.

  Dinner was delicious and Robert and Mimi were charming, pouring Julia a glass of white wine, asking all about her classes, her interests, her ideas. They wanted to know where she was thinking of applying to college, what she did for fun in Virden, what local politics were like there.

  “I don’t think there are any local politics besides ‘Love It or Leave It,’ and ‘Don’t Take My Gun.’”

  “I can see you fit right in,” quipped Robert, taking a second helping of coleslaw.

  “There has to be more to Virden than that,” said Mimi.

  “I guess,” said Julia, shrugging.

  Ruthie was mostly quiet during dinner, only joining the conversation to tell Julia about the high schools she had applied to for the next year, which were Urban, Lick-Wilmerding, and University. She explained to Julia that Urban was on the block schedule, so you only had a few classes a day, but each was really long.

  “It encourages true engagement and gives the students enough time to dig into their work,” said Robert.

  “Not that Robert has any preference as to where Ruthie goes,” said Mimi, winking at Ruthie.

  The only hiccup to the meal was dessert. Ruthie was so excited about the pudding cups, but after she pulled them out of the oven and went to the freezer to retrieve the vanilla ice cream she could not find the carton.

  She checked the trash can. The empty carton of Breyers was sitting in it. Uncle Robert! He could not be trusted alone with ice cream. That was why they rarely kept it in the house. She poked her head into the dining room.

  “We forgot to buy ice cream,” she said, staring meaningfully at Robert. She did not want to tell on him in front of Mimi, who was forever encouraging him to diet, telling him that they both needed to cut out sugar and snacks, even though she was admirably thin.

  “I’ll whip some cream,” said Robert. “That should go nicely with the chocolate, don’t you think?”

  As he passed her on his way into the kitchen he whispered, “Sorry! I have no self-control when it comes to dessert.”

  And so it was with lightly sweetened whipped cream that Ruthie topped the pudding cups, not Breyers vanilla. It was still delicious, rich and dark and molten, the whipped cream just taking the edge off the chocolate’s bitterness. Except Julia did not seem to like it. She put one bite into her mouth and a look of distaste crossed over her face.

  “Wh
at, you don’t like?” Ruthie asked.

  “You do not like my crêpes Suzette?” asked Robert, but he was just making a familiar joke with Mimi, was repeating what a waiter in Paris had once said to her when she did not eat all of her crêpes made tableside.

  “I’m just used to things a little sweeter,” said Julia, and put down her spoon.

  That night in bed, side-by-side on Ruthie’s full-size mattress, Julia’s curls splayed on the white pillowcase like the corona of an eclipse, Julia grilled Ruthie about Robert.

  “How many books has he published?” she asked.

  “Um, four I think.”

  “Has he ever written a novel?”

  “I don’t think so. He writes books for businesspeople, mostly. But he did write one book about the history of gefilte fish, which is this stuff that only Jewish people like.”

  “What’s it called?” asked Julia.

  “The Carp in the Bathtub,” said Ruthie.

  “He really loves you,” said Julia. “He looks at you the way Dad used to. Like he’s just so thrilled that you are his daughter.”

  This talk made Ruthie uncomfortable. For one thing, she loved Robert, but he was not her father. And she didn’t like Julia bringing up the old charge that Phil loved Ruthie more than Julia because Ruthie was his biological daughter.

  “Mimi is always telling him he’s got something stuck between his teeth, or dust on his glasses, or a stain on his shirt.”

  “Yeah, she’s kind of a bitch to him,” said Julia.

  Ruthie felt suddenly defensive of Mimi. She didn’t want Julia to turn her aunt into a Peggy. “He usually does have something stuck between his teeth or a stain on his shirt.”

  “He’s allowed to be a slob,” said Julia. “He’s a famous writer. If I ever become a famous novelist I’m going to gain a hundred pounds and sit around all day in my pajamas, eating chocolates while I type away.”

  “Gross,” said Ruthie. “Anyway, I don’t think Robert is really famous. It’s not like people stop and ask for his autograph.”

  “Do you think he might look at some of my stories?”

  Ruthie was pretty sure that Robert would, but she suddenly had a tight feeling in her throat. She didn’t want Robert looking at Julia’s stories, didn’t want her uncle to decide that Julia was the talented one, and not Ruthie. She didn’t want Robert’s attention to shift from her to her sister.

  In Atlanta everyone—Naomi and Phil, the teachers at Coventry—knew that Julia was brilliant. And she had proved it sophomore year when she scored 1480 on her PSATs. That she was a bad student was simply because she was lazy, didn’t do the homework, didn’t turn in papers.

  Ruthie had been a solid student, a hard worker who made decent enough grades but did not bowl anyone over, did not have English teachers tell her (as they did Julia) that when it came to her writing, the best thing they could do was step back and not get in her way.

  “He’s pretty busy,” Ruthie said. And then she felt guilty. “But you can ask.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hey, guess what?” asked Ruthie, wanting to change the subject, to make Julia laugh and not brood.

  “What?”

  “I am a C. I am a C-h. I am a C-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n. ’Cuz I’ve got C-h-r-i-s-t in my h-e-a-r-t and I will l-i-v-e-e-t-e-r-n-a-l-l-y!”

  Julia started whacking at Ruthie with the pillow. “Shut up; shut up; shut up! You’re reminding me of Virden!”

  It was a song Ruthie had learned the summer after fifth grade, when she signed up with Alex for what she thought was a regular spend-the-night camp but turned out to be run by fundamentalists. Unless you read your Bible every day, writing down the verses you read on a little chart above your bed, you did not get dessert. And every morning a fourteen-year-old boy wearing white gloves came into the cabin to do room inspection and everyone had to stand at attention by their beds and salute him when he walked by. And he could inspect any item in the room. Once he even looked through a girl’s box of tampons.

  “Maybe I’ll sing that to Peggy when I get home,” said Julia. “Tell her I found Jesus in San Francisco.”

  “Good idea,” said Ruthie. And then, because she felt so bad that Julia had to live with her awful stepmother, Ruthie asked her sister if she would like for her to scratch her back.

  Julia rolled onto her stomach and lifted her T-shirt so that it bunched around her shoulders. “Not too hard,” she instructed.

  This, if nothing else, made things feel normal. Ever since Ruthie could remember she had been scratching Julia’s back, following her sister’s instructions as to exactly how she liked it done.

  The next morning Ruthie woke to a series of pokes in her side.

  “Rise and shine,” said Julia, who was already dressed in a purple tie-dyed T-shirt and used Levi’s.

  Ruthie put a pillow over her head and moaned. Since turning fourteen she had lost her ability to be chipper in the mornings.

  “What time is it?” she asked, her voice muffled from the pillow.

  “Time to get up!” said Julia. “Time to explore San Francisco!”

  Julia walked to Ruthie’s CD player and pressed play. Loud music filled the air, music that Julia had clearly chosen just for this moment. Seventies stuff, corny but fun, declaiming the band’s urge to celebrate life.

  “Oh my god,” said Ruthie, sitting up as her sister started dancing to the music, raising her arms above her head, moving her hips back and forth, shaking out her auburn curls.

  But then Julia was walking toward the bed, was bending down and pulling Ruthie up by the arms, was forcing Ruthie to dance with her.

  “Don’t you want to celebrate?” asked Julia, gently mocking the song’s lyrics.

  Ruthie felt like an idiot, and she wondered if they were waking Robert, who tended to sleep late in the mornings, but then something sparked inside her and she threw up her hands, started shaking her hips, too.

  She was having fun.

  After a breakfast of Pop-Tarts and chocolate milk (both purchased especially for Julia) the girls went back into Ruthie’s room so she could get dressed and Julia could put on her makeup. While they readied themselves, Julia played “Sugar Magnolia” from the Dead’s greatest hits album.

  “Let’s go to Haight-Ashbury,” Julia said.

  “It’s just like Little Five Points,” Ruthie said. “It’s not that exciting.”

  “Dude, I live in Virden, Virginia. Where the most exciting thing that happens is Biscuit World’s two-for-one special on Wednesday mornings.”

  Julia was sitting by the little dressing table Mimi had set up for Ruthie, complete with a three-way mirror and a silver tray to keep her cosmetics on. With one eye open, the other closed, Julia dusted her left lid with gold shadow, and then her right. This was new. In Atlanta Julia had hardly ever worn makeup.

  “Biscuits are exciting,” Ruthie said.

  “Want me to do your makeup?” asked Julia.

  Ruthie had already applied a little brown liner to her eyelids and Clinique blush—from a free sample Mimi had received—to her cheeks.

  “I’ll take a little eye shadow,” she said.

  She walked over to Julia, stood facing her, and closed her eyes. Felt the soft brush tickle her lids.

  “Now you’re Tinkerbell,” said Julia.

  Ruthie opened her eyes, looked in the mirror. The gold shadow was barely noticeable, just a thin sheen on top of the ordinary.

  “Beautiful,” she said.

  It was easier just to pretend that she loved it.

  As they walked toward the Haight, Ruthie eyed Julia surreptitiously. Ruthie knew she was being shallow, but Julia’s purple tie-dye made her cringe. Teenagers didn’t wear tie-dye in San Francisco anymore. They wore J.Crew, or they dressed Goth, or they went grunge, like Dara, who was forever wearing granddad cardigans and black Doc Martens. Or they donned vintage T-shirts, the cornier the caption the better.

  The only person Ruthie knew in San Francisco who wore tie-dye was Abby Beringer
’s dad, an independently wealthy man who “missed his little girl so much” when she was away at school that he signed up as a substitute teacher at Hall’s. An older dad with curly hair and a silver beard, he looked a lot like Jerry Garcia. Indeed, he was in a Dead cover band comprised of men in their fifties called More Than Just a Touch of Gray.

  Though Mr. Beringer was nice, the Hall’s girls rolled their eyes over what a hippie he was. Abby especially, who complained that her dad’s Grateful Dead tie-dyes, which he wore with khakis on days he substitute-taught, broke the dress code.

  Julia didn’t look as goofy as Mr. Beringer, of course. She was young, slender, and pretty with her cloud of crazy auburn curls. Still, Ruthie thought Julia looked like she was trying way too hard.

  Ruthie knew that to Julia, Haight Street represented freedom, a place where bohemia was on display both in the stores and out on the street. Where people could wear what they wanted, say what they wanted, smoke what they wanted.

  To Ruthie, Haight Street was crowded, junky, touristy, and gross. In particular she did not like the groups of kids who congregated on the sidewalks in front of the shops, white kids mostly, with facial piercings and dreadlocks, dirty clothes, and mangy dogs surrounding them.

  “Hey, man,” one of them would say in a plaintive tone. “Can you give me some money so I can go get fucked up?”

  And then, when he was ignored, “At least I was honest.”

  And collectively the group would snicker and laugh, as if they alone were in on the joke that the world was playing on humanity.

  Despite Ruthie’s dislike of Haight Street culture, there were a few stores, scattered between the head shops, in which she enjoyed browsing. There was a bath and body shop that sold yummy soaps and Japanese robes made of the softest cotton Ruthie had ever felt. There was an independent bookstore that had hosted Robert’s last reading. There was a women’s clothing store where Mimi once took Ruthie shopping, though the clothes were a little expensive for someone who was still continuing to grow. And there was a Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream parlor, which Ruthie and Julia were fast approaching.

  “Want to get ice cream?” Ruthie asked.