A Soft Place to Land: A Novel Page 21

  “Jesus,” said Gabe. “Makes my junior high experience look tame.”

  “Um, yeah, I’d imagine. Your junior high wasn’t run by a bunch of fundamentalist sadists, was it?”

  She experienced a feeling of slight irritation toward Gabe. Junior high was a universal hell, but no one’s experience could compare to what Julia went through during those five months of being locked up and at the mercy of “Christian” counselors who thought suffocating a kid would put her on the road to recovery.

  “I’m just talking about this crazy teacher I had at White Oaks. Crazy, but kind of great. He had us write autobiographical stories, and he rode you really hard if he thought you weren’t committed, weren’t putting in real effort. And he really went apeshit if he thought you were bullshitting. Or being maudlin or self-pitying.

  “When I was in eighth grade I wrote a story about how I wanted to slit my wrists because my mom drove me so crazy with all of the men she would bring over to our house. I swear to god I’d wake up each Saturday and Schwartzy would be toasting an Eggo for some new guy. Well, three days after I turn in the story Howard saunters in, tells us he’s read all of our papers, and says that one of them was particularly nauseating. From his satchel he pulls out mine, looks right at me, and says, ‘Shit, kid, if I wrote such whining, driveling crap I’d want to slit my wrists, too.’ And then he chucked the paper at me.”

  “Are you kidding? He didn’t make you go see a counselor?”

  “He did. I had to talk to the school shrink. But what I remember about the experience is Howard making me rewrite the story. He told me he’d kick my ass if I turned in anything less than brilliant. I believed him, too, spent two weeks solid working on it. Skipped a couple of days of class just so I could focus single-mindedly on it. It was probably the best piece of writing I’d ever done. Might still be. And he knew it, too. He published it in the Book, which was a collection of the class’s best stories, sold at the school’s annual auction.”

  “They sold a story about you trying to kill yourself?”

  “I was just being dramatic with all of the slitting-my-wrists talk. It was really a story about my mom. About how much I loved her but how mad I was at her for bringing home all those men. I mean there I was, this horny little eighth grader, embarrassed to death by my own boners, and my mom is flaunting her own extremely active sex life.”

  Ruthie pretended not to be flustered by Gabe talking about his pubescent erections. “What did your mom think about your paper?”

  “Oh, she loved it. Thought it was genius. Thought Howard was genius. She was always saying he deserved one of those MacArthur awards.”

  Ruthie laughed. “I remember when she came to our class at St. Catherine’s. She told us to call her Schwartzy and we all said, ‘Yes, Mrs. Schwartzy.’”

  “That sounds like St. Catherine’s all right.”

  “Is she still in Atlanta?”

  “Yeah. She bitches about it, says I’m so lucky to be on ‘the best coast.’ But she’s not going anywhere. She’s a defense lawyer, the court-assigned kind for the sorriest, poorest, saddest sons of bitches in the state. Does a lot of work for the Southern Center for Human Rights, too. She’s too needed to leave. And she lives in Inman Park, which is its own little liberal ghetto. Has a great house. Reminds me of the bungalows around here, only she bought hers for nineteen thousand dollars. Of course that was in 1982 and there was a homeless man living in the basement.”

  “You come from a very different Atlanta than I do,” said Ruthie.

  “Ah, but at least we have St. Catherine’s.”

  She smiled at him. “Hey, lift up your shirtsleeve. I want to see that tattoo.”

  Dutifully, he rolled up the right sleeve of his shirt. Tattooed on his arm, in blue ink, was an utterly realistic Christ on the cross, complete with nails through his wrists and his ankles. When Gabe flexed, the Christ’s bare abdomen tightened.

  Ruthie squinted her eyes at him. “What is a nice Jewish boy doing with a full-out crucifix on his arm?”

  “I’m a Roman Catholic,” he said. “Converted my sophomore year.”

  “What!?”

  Ruthie would have been less surprised had Gabe said he was actually born a woman.

  “I don’t know. It just sort of suits me. I like the structure. I like the history—that it traces all the way back to Peter. I like going to mass. I especially like that half of the masses are in Spanish. I like Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor and Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day. And sure, maybe I did it at first to piss off Schwartzy, but it took. I’m a mackerel eater, as Owen Meany would say.”

  Ruthie knew very little about Catholicism and was not sure what Gabe meant by it tracing all the way back to Peter. She had read a lot of novels, though, so she got his reference to Walker Percy and John Irving.

  “What in God’s name did your poor mother say when you informed her that her Jewish son had converted to Catholicism?”

  Gabe laughed. “She had the perfect thing to say, the perfect thing to deflate me of any notion that I have the ability to upset her. I remember her words exactly. She said, ‘Well, I guess this is another one of your Alex P. Keaton moments. I just hope you don’t stop using birth control.’”

  “Ha! So do you?” Ruthie tried to make her tone as breezy as possible.

  “Most Catholics do actually. It’s especially important for me to be really vigilant about it because of the whole abortion thing.”

  “What, you’re antiabortion?” Her tone was light, joking. She did not know a single person in Berkeley who was not pro-choice, except, perhaps, for Dr. Finney.

  “I say ‘pro-life,’ but all of the language around that stuff is probably just designed to create wedges between people who share more in common than not.”

  Ruthie felt on the defensive. He was really pro-life? Why did he even think he could have an opinion on such a topic? It wasn’t as if he could get pregnant.

  “If you’re antichoice, pro-life, whatever, I don’t see how we can share much in common. At least not philosophically.”

  “Are you against the death penalty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, so am I. It’s part of taking a sacramental view toward all of life—from womb to tomb. So why is it that instead of talking about what we agree on—being anti—death penalty, for example—we instead become polarized over the issues where we disagree? I’m always telling Schwartzy, if Democrats could just be a little more open-minded toward pro-life progressives, then that overgrown frat boy from Texas might not have won the election.”

  “I don’t think he really won it.”

  “Okay, whatever, if there had been a critical mass of people voting Democrat, Florida wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “Hmm,” said Ruthie.

  She thought about Dara, with whom she had lived all four years of college, first in the dorms and later in their apartment in North Berkeley. Dara volunteered at a Planned Parenthood clinic in San Jose every other Saturday morning. She left in the middle of the night in order to arrive by 5:00 A.M., when the appointments began. Her job was to escort patients from the parking lot to the front door of the clinic. To ensure that the first voice that greeted each woman, many of whom were poor and young, was one of support. Otherwise the only voices they would hear, walking through the parking lot, were those of the protesters yelling loudly from the sidewalk, “Mom, mom! Please don’t kill your baby!”

  If Dara knew that Ruthie was attracted to a man who was antichoice, she would give Ruthie hell. And even if Ruthie were able to “find common ground” with Gabe on such an issue, what would he think if she were to tell him that her deeply entrenched belief in a woman’s right to choose was rooted in her own history? That at eighteen she had chosen. She had chosen not to remain pregnant.

  God, he was so good-looking, so funny, so smart. But a Jew who had converted to Catholicism and was pro-life? What kind of deep neuroses did that reveal? Better to look at her watch, exclaim at the time, and quickl
y, before he could say anything to pull her back, dart away.

  As she hurried down Bancroft, she had a feeling of averting disaster, like swerving the car to avoid hitting the child crossing the street.

  She managed to avoid him the next week by rushing into class at the last minute and then dashing out as soon as it was over. He called her twice, but she, regretting that she gave him her cell phone number during their marathon conversation at Caffè Strada, did not answer. She could not help but steal glances at him during class, though, when she was sure he wasn’t looking her way. She could not help still being attracted.

  That Tuesday Ruthie awoke to the ringing of her cell phone. She turned, looked at the face of her alarm clock. It was 7:30 A.M., too early to answer. She put her pillow over her head, willed the phone to stop ringing. A moment after it did, the landline rang. She remained motionless for a few more seconds and then, figuring someone really needed to reach her—Mimi? Robert?—grabbed the cordless phone, which lay on the floor beside her bed.

  “Ruthie honey, it’s Mimi. Are you watching your TV?”

  “No. I was sleeping.”

  “Turn it on.”

  “What channel?”

  “Any channel.”

  The urgency in Mimi’s voice forced her out of bed. “I have to walk to the other room to do it. What’s happening?”

  “Oh, sweetie, it’s terrible. Terrorists have been hijacking commercial airplanes. They flew two of them into the World Trade Center, and both towers—the north and the south—are down.”

  “What do you mean, down?”

  “I mean gone. I mean collapsed. It’s horrible, Ruthie; there were so many people inside.”

  When she reached the living room, she noticed that the coffee table was cluttered with dishes from the night before. She found the remote, punched on the TV. Saw a haunting image. An airplane plowing into one of the towers, followed by a line of thick gray smoke rushing toward the sky. And then a newswoman was talking, saying that they had just watched a recording of the first plane that crashed into the north tower at approximately 8:45 A.M. Eastern time.

  “Holy shit. Is this for real?”

  “I’m afraid it is, sweetheart.”

  They were playing another clip, this one of the second plane hitting the south tower. Ruthie gaped at the twin lines of billowing gray smoke, the flames shooting out of the side of the building. Tears popped into her eyes, though she couldn’t really make sense of the images. They did not compute.

  “Oh my god. Have you spoken to Julia? Is she okay?” Ruthie asked.

  Upon finishing her MFA at Virginia, Julia had moved to New York, to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

  “I tried calling, but I can’t get through. I heard everything is down in New York right now, so it probably doesn’t mean anything that I couldn’t reach her on the phone.”

  Another image played on the news, this one of the north tower collapsing, starting at the top. It collapsed so quickly. As if it were a vertical sand castle, held together by a frame. As if someone had hit the sand castle on the head with a hammer. The idea that cement and steel were part of that building—it was almost unfathomable.

  “Have you sent Julia an e-mail?”

  “I have, but I’m guessing that connection is down, too.”

  “Look, I’m going to come to your house, spend the day with you and Robert.”

  “I would love that, sweetie, but I don’t want you crossing any bridges. Not today. We just don’t know what else might happen. There may be more attacks.”

  Ruthie was chilled, though she usually complained that their apartment was stuffy. Dara walked into the living room, her hair, which she had cut short, sticking straight up. She wore only a T-shirt and underwear, her usual sleeping attire. She was holding her cell phone against her ear, and she looked wild-eyed.

  “Oh my god,” she said as she looked at the TV screen, which showed New Yorkers on the ground, running away from the collapsing building, shirts, scarves, sweaters over their mouths to keep from inhaling the smoke.

  “Dara just woke up,” said Ruthie.

  “Why don’t you two keep each other company. I’ll call you later. And I’ll call the minute I hear from Julia. You do the same if you hear from her first, okay?”

  Ruthie said okay, told her aunt she loved her. When she hung up, Dara was still talking on the phone. There went the plane into the first tower again. Apparently they were playing the image on a loop.

  Julia was there, in that city under attack. Ruthie went back to her bedroom to get her cell phone, where she had saved Julia’s number. So infrequently did she call her sister, Ruthie did not have it memorized. She scrolled through her contacts until JULIA came up. She hit the call button.

  The line was busy, but it didn’t sound like a normal busy signal. The beep was longer, haunting.

  Ruthie knew that Julia lived in Brooklyn—Williamsburg—but didn’t know what she did during the day besides write. What if she rented a writing office in downtown Manhattan? And wasn’t there a restaurant on top of the World Trade Center? What if Julia had gone there for breakfast that morning? What if an editor from Penguin had taken her there? No. That made no sense. She couldn’t become panicky, illogical. Why would a literary editor meet a writer at a pricey restaurant for tourists and Wall Street people? Julia was probably okay. Probably. But it wasn’t as if Ruthie believed her family was immune to disaster. Taking her cell phone with her, she returned to the living room with Dara, who now sat, Indian-style, in front of the TV.

  “Classes are canceled, I’m sure,” Dara said, not taking her eyes off the screen. “And if they’re not, it doesn’t matter. We’re not going.”

  The news showed the clip of the north tower collapsing again. Dara turned to look at her.

  “Holy shit, Ruthie. This can’t be undone.”

  They watched TV for seven hours straight. Seeing the same images again and again. The two separate planes going into the towers. The firemen in their black protective gear with the yellow stripes. The profile of a woman watching the towers in horror, tears in the corner of her eye. The people clutching shirts and bandanas against their faces. People running after each tower collapsed. Mayor Giuliani at a press conference.

  Ruthie phoned her sister every half hour but never got through. She told herself not to panic, that all of the lines in New York were down.

  There was nothing to eat in the house besides Cheerios, old milk, and a six-pack of beer, which she and Dara finished quickly. Ruthie had been planning on grocery shopping that day, but now the thought of going to the Berkeley Bowl exhausted her. It was 2:30 and they were starving.

  “I want more beer,” said Dara. “Don’t you?”

  They decided to go to Ulysses, an Irish pub nearby that had two TVs for watching sports. Normally sports bars were not the type of place Dara and Ruthie frequented, but they felt as if it was wrong to turn away from the TV. They felt that by watching the horrific images they were somehow showing their support for the people of New York, for the country. Ruthie had an urge to call Gabe, to see if he wanted to meet them at the pub, but she decided against it. Her earlier impulse to nip their budding relationship was correct. Were she to see Gabe on this day of vast destruction, she would lose all self-control.

  Dara called Yael, asked if she wanted to meet them at the bar. Yael said she would. She was also living in Berkeley, working on her Ph.D. in comparative literature. Yael now spoke Hebrew fluently, along with German and some Yiddish. She was dating a much older man, a writer in his forties, who lived in a beautiful glass and wood house in the Berkeley hills. Ruthie and Dara had gone to dinner there once. It was strange to see Yael, whom Ruthie would always think of as a riot grrrl, at home in such a refined atmosphere. It was as if she had jumped over years and years of striving and landed in comfortable middle age.

  People were smoking inside Ulysses even though smoking was not allowed. The bartender did not seem to be bothered by it. Both of the TVs were turned t
o CNN. Ruthie and Dara sat at the bar and watched, waiting for Yael. The same images as before rotated before their eyes, only now there were more images of firefighters, astonishing in their bravery. Ruthie and Dara drank Guinness stout, which normally Ruthie did not like but on this day found comforting. They ate sliders and fries, which Ulysses called chips. They glared at the man sitting next to them, the man who said, “I hate to say this, but America had this coming.”

  He was as noxious as the group of boys who came in a few minutes later, drunk, chanting, “USA! USA! USA!” As if they were watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

  Yael arrived an hour after they did, looking expensive in her thin cashmere shell, her black pants made of cotton and linen. Ruthie assumed Yael’s man friend was now buying her clothes. She and Dara put their arms around each other and hugged for a solid minute, and as always, Ruthie felt envious of them. Felt that they had the kind of relationship she and Julia would have had, should have had, if not for the accident.

  Yael ordered a Black and Tan, asked Dara if the pub had a pool table.

  “In the back,” said Dara. “But I think people are playing.”

  “I’ll check it out,” said Yael. “Put our names on a wait list if I need to. I don’t think I can just sit and watch TV anymore.”

  As Yael walked toward the back of the bar, Ruthie hoped the wait list for the pool table would be long. She hated pool. She was terrible at it, no matter how many times Dara tried to coach her. She thought of it as geometry with balls, and she had never thought of math as fun. She was startled from her thoughts by the ring of her cell phone. Julia! Please be Julia, calling to say she was fine. But no, when Ruthie glanced at the screen she saw it was a 510 area code. She answered.