A Soft Place to Land: A Novel Read online

  She walked, fantasizing about one day living with Gabe in a house like that. A house where at night they could sit on the front porch swing, sipping beers and watching their children catch fireflies, just as she and Julia used to do during the summers. Not that there were fireflies in Berkeley. They would have to be in the South for fireflies. And Gabe would have to have forgiven her.

  She walked past a falling-down home, its windows covered in newspaper. She walked past the rust-covered bungalow with the chain-link fence that contained Maizey, a yellow Lab, who was always outside, even at night.

  “Hey, Maizey,” she said, as the dog bounded to the fence. Were Ruthie with Gabe, he would have some sort of a treat in his pocket for the Lab. He kept a box of Milk-Bones at his house for the next-door neighbor’s dog and always took a few with him on walks. He told Ruthie that he couldn’t wait until he could get a dog of his own. As soon as he was more or less settled. He had smiled when he said that, and Ruthie imagined he was smiling at the idea of settling with her.

  She walked and walked. She had to see Gabe.

  Except when she got to his house, and rang the doorbell, no one answered. She rang the bell again. Waited. No one came. Usually at least one of his three housemates was there, watching TV or studying. It occurred to her that Gabe might be home and he simply wasn’t answering. But no. All of the lights were out, including the front porch light. Gabe wouldn’t just hide out inside, in the complete dark.

  Was he at his church? Was he at a bar? Was he sitting in a cozy booth with some other, prettier girl, throwing back shots and shooing Ruthie from his mind? She dug her cell phone out of her purse, dialed his number. It rang four times and then his voice mail picked up. His recorded voice sounded warm and open, so different a tone from when she last spoke with him outside the restaurant. She waited for the beep and then, unsure what to say, hung up. She dialed again. The voice mail picked up after one ring. Again she listened to the greeting, listened to the beep. This time she spoke.

  “It’s me. I’m at your house, but I guess you’re out. Look, I’m so, so sorry. I should have told you—it’s just . . . It’s hard. I wanted to tell you, but then, it doesn’t really have anything to do with us. Or, maybe it does. I don’t know. I’ve never done this before—I’ve never really been in a relationship. I don’t know what’s expected. Please. Just call me; just come home. I need to see you. I just want to hold you. If I could just see you I think we could figure this out. I’m sorry. I’ll be here, waiting.”

  She sat on the top step of his front porch and waited, wishing she had a book or a magazine to read, something to occupy her, something to keep her mind from spinning with worry. (Did couples break up over things like this? She did not know. She had no prior experience.) She thought wryly of Julia’s book, which she had thrown in the trash. She could have read that little charmer again. She considered checking Gabe’s mailbox, just in case a New Yorker or something had arrived that day. But then she remembered that the mail was put through a slot in the door. Whatever mail he and his roommates had received was already inside.

  And that was when she remembered the time that Gabe got locked out and unscrewed the mail slot’s brass cover. How once the brass cover was removed, the rectangular hole in the door was wide enough for him to slip his arm through and unlock the door from the inside. He had used the screwdriver from one of those glasses repair kits, purchased for two dollars at the drugstore. Ruthie did not have a glasses repair kit, but she did have a Swiss Army knife that Mimi had placed in her Christmas stocking a few years ago. The blade of the knife had her name engraved across it, which Ruthie thought was delightfully sinister.

  She retrieved the Swiss Army knife from her purse, pulled out the screwdriver arm. She was not sure it would match with the screw on the door. She tried, and though it wasn’t an exact fit, with enough pressure she was able to loosen the screw. In this way, she managed to get all four off and then pull off the brass cover. She reached her arm through the rectangular hole in the wall, just as Gabe had done, and felt around until she found the doorknob. She turned the lock in its center, and then turned the knob. The door opened, with her hand still inside it. She pulled out her hand, checked the outside knob to make sure it was now unlocked, pulled the door shut, and reattached the cover to the mail slot.

  When she had finished she walked inside and was greeted by the smells of stale beer and boy sweat. Familiar smells to her now. The living room was almost entirely dark. She thought of turning on a light but did not want to disturb anything else. Doing so, somehow, would make what she was doing feel more invasive, even more like a break-in. She tiptoed down the hallway, going slowly until her eyes adjusted to the dark.

  Once in his room she pulled off all but her underwear, put on his Barton Fink T-shirt, which was crumpled on top of the dresser, and got into bed. His pillow was redolent of him. The sharp clean smell of Head & Shoulders, the mustier smell of oil and body grease. He was a dirty boy all right, just as Dara joked, but to Ruthie his smell had become home. She imagined him entering the room quietly, slipping into bed with her, and then slipping inside her, easily, the trust between them restored.

  She wasn’t sure when she fell asleep, but she awoke to find the overhead light on and Gabe standing above her, still in his tissue-thin Braves T-shirt, reeking of smoke and booze.

  “Hi,” she said, rolling over so that her back touched the bedroom wall, making room for him in his narrow bed. “I broke in.”

  He looked at her coldly but didn’t reply, just grabbed the extra blanket from the foot of the bed and walked out of the room. She rose, followed him down the hall and into the living room, where he flicked on the light, revealing a surprisingly clean space, with no dirty mugs on the floor, no crusted plates on the coffee table.

  “Did you clean up?” she asked.

  He sat on the sofa, put the blanket over his knee, and looked up at her wearily. “John’s mom is in town,” he said. “I’m pretty sure she did it.”

  “Where is everyone?”

  “She took them to Chez Panisse. And then to Yoshi’s for a concert.”

  “They invited you, too, didn’t they? And you said no because of Julia’s reading.”

  “Yep.”

  “Bet you’re glad you made that call,” she said.

  He didn’t smile at her attempt at a joke. He was sitting on the far left side of the couch, not making room for her to squeeze in beside him. She walked around the coffee table, to the other end of the couch, and sat down, a few feet away from him.

  “You know, a lot of things happened to me before we met. Like my parents dying, and all of the shit that happened between Julia and me. And then when things finally seemed to be settling, Julia was doing okay and I was heading to Berkeley, I got pregnant. And it wasn’t like I was in love with the guy. He was just a kid from my high school. We were both virgins. That’s why we slept together, to get it over with before we went to college. Which was really dumb, I know, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway. It was just too much. Too much for me to have a baby right then.”

  Gabe leaned forward, put his head in his hands, rubbed his forehead with his fingers. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to find out about it by reading a book your sister wrote?”

  “I had no idea she was going to publish that. I don’t understand how she could have done that without talking to me.”

  He straightened his back. Turned his head to look directly at her, his blue eyes projecting confidence in his rightness. “You should have told me.”

  She knew that she should just agree, apologize again, move a little closer to him, put a hand on his leg. But there was a part of her that could not. A part of her that was fierce and stubborn. That refused to lie even though she knew that by not lying she might forfeit the relationship.

  (But would she want a relationship that required her to submerge her fiercer parts?)

  “Listen to me. If somehow I got pregnant from us having sex, I would no
t hide it from you. I promise. And I would be open to—you know—to your concerns, your desires about what steps to take. Or not take. And that’s a big fucking thing to promise. But what happened to me when I was eighteen, it’s my past. Mine. It’s as if you’re upset with me for not showing you my past medical records, my dental history.”

  “Telling me you had an abortion is a little different from showing me your dental records.”

  He sounded tight, petulant.

  She studied the ring on her right ring finger. A gold band with a flower in its center, each petal made of a tiny amethyst stone. It was her mother’s ring, though Naomi hardly ever wore it. Naomi said it was too youthful for a woman in her late thirties to wear.

  “I don’t know what else I can give you,” Ruthie said.

  “Would you ever have told me?” His voice was softer now.

  “Yeah, I think I would have. Eventually. I mean, if we were to move in together or, I don’t know, one day get engaged. I would have told you.”

  “You mean once I was too invested not to walk away.”

  Her heartbeat picked up. And again she broke with her father’s advice about not asking a question unless you knew you wanted the answer.

  “Are you going to walk away now?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  She felt a rush of anger. “I have to tell you, I don’t really get it. I mean, your womb-to-tomb sanctity of life argument, it’s a very pretty idea. It’s very sweet. But it doesn’t really apply to the complications of real life. Like, what if a fetus, in utero, is horribly deformed—I mean a desperate case—and it’s an impoverished woman who is going to have it and she doesn’t have health care. Should that fetus be born?”

  “It’s not about the individual cases. It’s about the soul of humans in general, as a society. If we just zap out all that is painful and hard, we’re going to lose our souls. We need to learn to care for all incarnations of human life.”

  “That is a very lovely sentiment. Now let me ask you this: do you think I lost my soul when I chose, at eighteen, not to allow a cluster of cells to grow into a baby?”

  “I don’t think it’s my place to judge any more than it’s our decision as humans to decide which clusters of cells get to live and which don’t.”

  “Jesus, Gabe. I really don’t think you’d feel this way if you were a woman. I think you’ve just romanticized this nineteenth-century view on life.”

  “Well, Schwartzy would agree with you. And she certainly exercised her twentieth-century freedom of choice.”

  Ruthie looked at him. Remembered the boy he had been at St. Catherine’s. Shy, long-haired, teased.

  “She had an abortion?”

  “At least one that I know of. I was seven. I overheard her talking on the phone to her best friend. Said she was pregnant, throwing up every morning. Said it was shitty timing, but then laughed. Said, ‘What can you do?’ I was thrilled. Thought I was getting a sister or a brother, someone to play with. Someone else to have Schwartzy as a mom. But that sibling never came. I just kept waiting, kept waiting for Schwartzy’s stomach to get big and then for a baby to arrive. But nothing changed. Schwartzy stayed skinny. I stayed an only child. Later I figured out what must have happened, though I never asked her about it.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s really sad.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “Do you think that’s why you became a Catholic? Because if Schwartzy had been a Catholic she would have had the baby?”

  He laughed, a little ruefully. “Schwartzy says I converted because I was embarrassed as a kid to be Jewish. That I wanted to be one of the little goyishe southern kids who shoot squirrels in the backyard with BB guns and assume everyone puts up a tree at Christmastime.”

  Ruthie didn’t say anything, but she thought that Schwartzy was probably on to something.

  “But if all I wanted was to fit in, do you really think I would have become a Roman Catholic in Berkeley, California?”

  Ruthie laughed and Gabe smiled, a little.

  “You know, I don’t want to get pregnant right now, obviously. But if I did, I think we’d have a really cute kid.”

  Gabe looked at her, sighed. “Oh, Ruthie.”

  It was not an utterance of acceptance, or even forgiveness. He sounded pained. He sounded like he didn’t know what to do.

  She scooted a little closer to him on the couch. Rested her palm on his thigh. They sat like this, heads leaned back on the couch pillows, absorbed in their own thoughts, their own pasts, until the front door burst open and the living room was filled with Gabe’s drunk and sated roommates, one of whom put in a videotape of recorded Simpsons episodes, which Ruthie and Gabe watched with him until Gabe fell asleep in the middle of an episode and started to snore and Ruthie woke him up, telling him it was time for them to go to bed.

  Part Four

  Chapter Fifteen

  Winter 2009

  Ruthie pulled into the driveway of the yellow craftsman bungalow on Sinclair Avenue in a bad mood, having received yet another “helpful” Post-it note from her boss, Chef A. J. Aiken, owner and creator of Pasture, the acclaimed Atlanta restaurant, where practically every item diners put in their mouths—including the ketchup that accompanied the black truffle burger on challah—was house made from sustainably sourced ingredients.

  Whether it was the failing economy, or the fact that Ruthie’s signature dessert, her “Elvs” (peanut butter cookies, filled with roasted banana ice cream, the sides rolled in crumbled caramelized bacon) was listed in Atlanta magazine’s “100 Things You Must Eat Now,” while Chef A.J.’s signature chicken legs sous vide stuffed with homemade sausage were not, the chef was on the warpath. Every day when Ruthie arrived at the restaurant to make that evening’s desserts, she would find a yellow Post-it note waiting for her. Across the top of the note the words “Tip o’ the Day!” would be jauntily written. Beneath lay that day’s missive.

  Today’s “tip” had read: “20 Elvs left unsold last night. This equals money in the garbage. Try to budget better, okay?” Yesterday’s was: “We can’t afford to buy new ingredients for every dessert. Be creative with leftovers!”

  That “tip” especially rankled. Ruthie always included a bread pudding on the menu, made from the leftover sourdough bread they served at the beginning of each meal. And today’s tip—about the extra Elvs? Chef A.J. knew that the ice-cream sandwiches weren’t assembled until ordered and that the peanut butter cookies left over from the night before would be perfectly fine the next day, wrapped tightly as they were in waxed paper and stored in the refrigerator.

  And was it Ruthie’s fault that reservations at Pasture were dwindling, that in the terrible economy of George Bush’s twilight days (only six more days until he left office!) people were cutting back on lengthy and expensive meals? Indeed, customers often came into the restaurant just to sit at the bar and order coffee and dessert. Ruthie was helping the restaurant stay in business, goddamn it, not running it into the ground with frivolous spending and bad kitchen economics! If anyone was hurting Pasture’s business it was Big Steve, the house manager who once took a photo on his cell phone of a steak sent back to the kitchen by a diner who said it was overdone. Cell phone in hand, Big Steve crouched by the offending diner and showed him the picture, saying, “It’s cold now, so we’ll fix you a new one, but I want to show you that you sent back a perfectly medium-rare steak.”

  Ruthie released an audible sigh, put the car in park, and, though she no longer parked on hills, engaged the parking brake. Six months of living in Atlanta and she still couldn’t get used to parking on flat ground, not after so many years of driving, and parking, in San Francisco. (Though she was in Berkeley for four of those years, she returned to visit her aunt and uncle in the city so often that her San Francisco parking habits never died.)

  Stepping out of her ancient Volvo sedan—a gift from Schwartzy, as evidenced by its many bumper stickers advocating a Bush-free White House and a nuclear-free world—R
uthie was immediately greeted by Solomon, the big black tomcat who had refused to leave the house on Sinclair when Schwartzy moved to the Artisan condos in Decatur.

  Schwartzy had lured Ruthie and Gabe back from San Francisco to Atlanta by promising to sell them her bungalow for half of its assessed value. Little did Gabe and Ruthie realize that by the time they actually took ownership of the house the real estate market would have crashed. Still, getting the bungalow at half its assessed value, even in the bad economy, was a real deal.

  “A once-in-a-lifetime deal,” Schwartzy had declared that past spring, over salads at Café Gratitude, the raw vegan restaurant she always insisted on going to when she visited Gabe and Ruthie in San Francisco. Gabe, who had been looking for any excuse to move back to his hometown, who had in fact already sent his résumé to the White Oaks School, in case they were hiring, looked so pleadingly at Ruthie that she knew she was going to have to acquiesce.

  Solomon waddled up to her and stretched his front paws against the chocolate-stained leg of her pants.

  “Come here, buddy,” she said, scooping him up with a grunt. Solomon snuggled into her, wrapping each arm around her neck, purring maniacally.

  She walked toward the front porch, still carrying the cat, stopping to open the back of the old-fashioned metal mailbox that had a swinging door that locked with a key. Schwartzy (of course!) lost the key years ago and Gabe and Ruthie (of course!) never bothered to replace it, so the door could only be closed, not securely locked. Ruthie pushed it open with one hand, holding Solomon with the other. There was lots of mail, including several envelopes that looked like bills, a couple of catalogs, and one large blue envelope that looked promisingly personal but was probably just some gussied-up plea for money from one of Schwartzy’s many activist groups.

  It was too much to hold both the mail and Solomon, so Ruthie dropped the cat onto the ground and gathered all of the mail in her hands. Giving a closer look to the blue envelope, she recognized the slanted script—which included the instructions DO NOT BEND. Ruthie was shocked. The letter was from Julia. It had been years since Ruthie had last received a letter from Julia. The two of them were hardly in touch. An e-mail or two every year or so to keep each other informed on major life changes: that Ruthie got an externship at Chez Panisse after culinary school, that Julia published a second book, this one a novel, which, to Ruthie’s secret delight, sold rather poorly, that Julia and Molly moved to Red Hook for the cheaper rent, that Ruthie and Gabe moved to Atlanta.