A Soft Place to Land: A Novel Read online

  “Sweetie, can you run upstairs and get Mr. Parker a towel?” asked Aunt Mimi.

  “Sure,” Ruthie said, pushing a lock of her straight brown hair behind her ear, which was newly pierced, the gold starter ball still the only earring she was able to wear. You had to wear the starter ball for six weeks, and her ears had only been pierced for five, since her thirteenth birthday last February 22. That had been one of Naomi’s few unbendable rules: no pierced ears until the girls were teenagers. Naomi herself never pierced her ears. She always wore clip-ons, which Ruthie and Julia would divide among themselves when they sorted through Naomi’s “costume” jewelry. The real stuff, the three gold bracelets, the emerald necklace and earrings, the long chains embedded with tiny diamonds, the rings, all would be split up according to the will.

  Ruthie walked up the front stairs. The banister scrolls were made of wrought iron. Once when Ruthie was four she put her head between two of them and got stuck there. Naomi tried everything to get Ruthie out, including spreading butter behind her ears, but Ruthie’s head was firmly lodged. Luckily, their house painter arrived that day. A strong man, he was able to pull apart the scrolls and slip Ruthie’s head back through.

  She walked up the stairs, covered in a burgundy Oriental runner, thick bronze bars securing the rug to each stair. Phil loved Oriental rugs and had covered the floors of every room downstairs with them. At the top of the stairwell the house became less fancy, more utilitarian. The floors up here were covered in wall-to-wall beige carpeting. Phil loved to tease the girls about the first night after the carpet was installed, when they both sat up in bed and vomited the strawberry milk shakes they had drunk that evening for dessert. At the time, Phil had been angry with the girls for throwing up. He had felt the girls’ sickness was a sort of sabotage, and while Naomi cleaned up the mess he seethed, muttering that the carpeting he paid good money for, the carpeting he did not even want to install in the first place, had already been marred. In both Julia’s and Ruthie’s rooms there was still a pale brown stain by the side of each bed.

  The linen closet was at the top of the stairs. Ruthie opened it, revealing shelf after shelf of neatly stacked towels and sheets, her baby blankets with their satin edging on the very top, perfectly folded. On the bottom shelf were toiletry supplies: multiple packs of Ivory soap, two huge bottles of Scope, a three-pack of Crest, and two containers of Reach floss.

  Ruthie stared at the shelves, blinking back unexpected tears. Her mother had always been so neat, so organized, so prepared. The smell of clean linens and Ivory soap was redolent of her. She could see her mother, in the den after dinner, sitting on the sofa and folding laundry while she and Phil watched TV.

  Ruthie grabbed a blue beach towel from the middle rack, closed the door, and brought it to the lawyer waiting downstairs.

  Now toweled off and dry, Mr. Parker, slim in his black suit, sat with Aunt Mimi in the study, making polite conversation while they waited for Matt and Peggy to arrive from their hotel so that Mr. Parker could read them the will. Matt and Peggy had been in town since the day before the funeral but were headed back to Virden tomorrow. Though everyone pretty much knew they would be returning to Atlanta in the near future to fetch Julia, for now they needed to get back to their twelve-year-old son, Sam, who was staying with Peggy’s mother.

  Julia was upstairs in her room, listening to Morrissey’s Viva Hate again and again. When Ruthie knocked on her door earlier that morning, Julia had barked, “Not now,” with such menace that Ruthie had backed away, stung.

  Ruthie hovered in the doorway of the study, listening to her aunt and Mr. Parker make small talk. Mimi had gone to Vanderbilt as an undergrad, and Mr. Parker seemed to have lots of friends who went there, so they had plenty of names to exclaim over: Skip Ball, Holden Avery, Margaret Strickland.

  “Maggie was in Tri Delt with me,” said Mimi.

  “Did Vandy Tri Delts answer the phone, ‘Delta, Delta, Delta, can I help ya, help ya, help ya?’” asked Mr. Parker.

  “Not if I answered,” said Mimi. “But that’s not saying much. By no stretch of the imagination was I a model member.”

  “I imagine you were pretty enough to be a model,” said Mr. Parker. Ruthie noticed a quick change in his expression, a flash of intensity.

  Mimi blushed and made a little tsking sound with her tongue.

  Just the other night Mimi had mentioned to Julia and Ruthie that while she generally disliked the politics of southern men, she enjoyed their audacity. Ruthie didn’t enjoy Mr. Parker’s audacity at all. She knew that Mr. Parker was married, with two cute kids who went to Coventry. His wife, Mrs. Parker, was one of those women whom Naomi was intimidated by. One of those women who seemed to have memorized that elusive handbook that explains the correct thing to do in every situation, just like Alex Love’s mom.

  And now Mrs. Parker’s husband was flirting with Aunt Mimi.

  Married men shouldn’t flirt, Ruthie thought. She walked away from the study, hoping that Aunt Mimi and Mr. Parker could tell by her receding heavy footsteps that she disapproved.

  She wandered through the house. Rattled, really. Rattled about, like a bony old lady, like a ghost. She walked into the dining room, with its formal wallpaper left over from the previous owners of the house, its heavy silk curtains, the antique sideboard where Naomi kept her Rose Tiara silver flatware, the long oval table that could extend even longer. Their family hardly ever ate in here, dining instead at the round wood table in the kitchen that had been hand-painted by a local artist with curling vines and flowers.

  The dining room was reserved for holiday dinners, plus occasional parties for Phil and the other members of his firm. Naomi only deigned to host when it was an absolute necessity for Phil’s career. She strongly disliked entertaining. There was a reason for that, and Naomi would explain it any time Phil pestered her about throwing an open house. “You don’t remember what happened the last time we did that?” she would say. Eventually Ruthie had heard Naomi’s story so many times she could repeat it to her father.

  When Naomi and Phil first moved into the house they threw a big Christmas party for all of the neighbors. Naomi, late in her pregnancy with Ruthie, wore a red maternity dress with a big white bow at the neck. She looked like she was wearing a red tent, she said, but at least she knew Julia would look cute, wearing the red plaid taffeta dress with the wide sash that Naomi had sewed for her for the occasion.

  Naomi had also prepared all of the food, prepping for weeks in advance. She made chicken and ham pinwheels, little pizzas with black olives, meatballs in sweet-and-sour sauce to be eaten with a toothpick. She made chicken liver pâté with cognac and lots of butter, pigs in a blanket, miniature quiche lorraine. She made two cheesecakes with blueberry sauce, marshmallow cream fudge, oatmeal date cookies, and homemade boiled custard, which required hours and hours of stirring at the stove.

  Naomi set the food out buffet-style on the fully extended dining room table. On the antique sideboard she placed three stacks of plates next to two red straw baskets, one filled with white paper cocktail napkins, the other filled with cutlery. In Virden she would have used plastic forks and knives, but she didn’t want to seem too informal. Also in Virden, parties were often dry, but Naomi knew Atlantans were drinkers. So Phil bought a case of André champagne.

  Naomi spent the evening sliding trays of appetizers in and out of the oven, replenishing the platters she had arranged on the dining room table. Phil walked around with a bottle of André in hand, refilling glasses. Even little Julia had a job. She was to circulate downstairs, carrying a red straw basket of M&M’s, offering them to guests. At one point Julia tripped, scattering the candy all over the floor, a pattering of hard, bright confetti. Julia gathered the M&M’s up quickly, put them back in the basket, and continued serving, until someone told Naomi what had happened and Naomi came and whisked the M&M’s away.

  “I’m not done,” said Julia, indignant.

  “Sweetie, everyone’s had enough candy,” said Naom
i.

  The next day at breakfast, Naomi looked tired but pleased. Phil, in his robe, ate leftover chicken liver pâté spread on toast for his breakfast, while Naomi and Julia ate Product 19 brand cereal, Julia’s with a big spoonful of sugar dissolving on top.

  “Any other funny stories besides Julia and her spilled M&M’s?” Naomi asked Phil.

  “That story’s funny?” asked Julia, grinning. Naomi said that even as a little girl Julia had liked to entertain.

  Naomi nodded at her, smiling.

  “Bob Tingle locked himself in the study and watched the game,” said Phil.

  Naomi made an exaggerated motion of rolling her eyes. “Funny stories, not stories that demonstrate rudeness.”

  “A group of ladies laughed really hard. They said it was funny that you served André champagne,” said Julia.

  “Who said that, honey?” Naomi asked, her voice a little too high.

  “I don’t know,” said Julia. “They were pretty. One of them had on a long gold skirt that was very shiny.”

  Naomi glared at Phil. “That’s Elizabeth Spencer she’s talking about. Oh, what a bitch!” She squeezed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “Oh God. I can’t believe we served André. What was I thinking? This is Wymberly Way, not Virden.”

  “What does ‘bitch’ mean?” asked Julia.

  Phil laughed heartily. This laugh was one of the things Naomi loved about him; she said it showed how he embraced the pleasures of life.

  “Ask your mother,” he said, before taking a huge bite of his toast and pâté. However invested he was in living where “Old Atlanta” resided, he had never been particularly invested in impressing anyone from it.

  “It’s a bad word, sweetie. Mommy shouldn’t have said it.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “It means someone whose nose is stuck so high in the air, when she spits her saliva lands back on her face,” said Phil, his mouth full of pâté.

  “That’s really more the definition of a snob,” said Naomi, her voice sad, tired.

  Ruthie wondered what would happen to the house. Would they sell it? And if so, who would do it, Aunt Mimi? The lawyer?

  Maybe—Ruthie hoped—the house would just be put aside until she and Julia were all grown. Ruthie knew her father would not want the house to go on the market. Nothing made him prouder than owning a Philip Schutze—designed house on Wymberly Way, arguably one of the most beautiful streets in Buckhead. Julia referred to its purchase—which Phil spoke of endlessly—as her stepfather’s greatest triumph.

  The funny thing was, when he and Naomi first started looking for houses their Realtor wouldn’t even show Phil ones in town.

  “The public schools have gone to hell,” she said. She was sixty years old with the posture of a ballerina; her name was Dot and she had silver hair.

  “We’ll do private,” said Phil, unconcerned. He and Naomi sat in the back of Dot’s Cadillac holding hands while she drove.

  “The suburbs are really the place to be,” Dot said. “You can zip in and out of the city on the freeway and have your own acre or two just outside the perimeter. Often on a wooded lot.”

  “Dot, how many times have I told you I don’t want longer than a fifteen-minute commute?” said Phil, pressing against his seat belt as he leaned forward to make his point. “Now I know you have listings in the city, so why aren’t you showing them to me?”

  Dot glanced back to look at Phil before saying in the most gracious tone, “I have found that my Jewish clients tend to be most comfortable living in Sandy Springs or Dunwoody.”

  Phil threw back his head and laughed. Naomi did not. She stared out the window at the other cars on the freeway.

  She always said that at that moment she wondered: What in the world was she doing in this car, with this man? Why wasn’t she in her ranch house in Virden on Fairwoods Road, sharing coffee with her next-door-neighbor, Sharon?

  “Dot, did I ever tell you about how Naomi and I first met?” Phil asked.

  “You did not,” said Dot.

  “It was at a Wesley Fellowship event at Duke. Wesley Fellowship as in John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church.”

  “Oh,” said Dot, glancing back at her two clients. Giving them a brilliant smile of inclusion. “Well. I do understand your concerns about commute time from the suburbs. Why don’t we just turn around at the next exit? There might be time for me to show you a listing I just got in Buckhead, on Wymberly Way.”

  Phil grinned at Naomi. She did not smile back. She was three months pregnant with Ruthie. She felt sick. She would have low-grade nausea for the entire pregnancy, a learned detail Julia used to tease Ruthie about, as if it were a mark against Ruthie’s character.

  Ruthie headed back upstairs, to her room, but this time she used the back staircase. On a whim she decided to ride the moving chair. Just because it had been so long since she had. The chair was covered in cracked yellow leather and looked slightly ominous. Julia always called it the electric chair.

  Ruthie sat down on it and pressed the button underneath the right arm. The button looked like a doorbell, but instead of ringing when pressed it began the chair’s slow ascent up the rail. There was also a doorbell-shaped button on the wall that operated the chair. When she was little, the only thing Ruthie’s friends ever wanted to do when they came over to play was ride the moving chair. It used to bore Ruthie to tears. It used to drive her crazy.

  When the chair reached the top Ruthie hopped off, then turned the handle on the door that opened to the upstairs hall. Once in the hall she saw that the door to Julia’s room, which was catty-corner from the back stairwell, was still closed, Morrissey’s melancholy lyrics slipping through the cracks.

  Looking at the closed door angered her. There was no reason for Julia to shut herself away so meanly. And so Ruthie marched up to it and knocked loudly.

  A moment passed before the door opened, a crack. Julia peeked out, her long curls loose and tumbling over her shoulders.

  “Is anybody else around?” she asked, her voice an urgent whisper.

  Ruthie shook her head.

  “Okay, come in. Make it fast.”

  Julia opened the door just wide enough to let Ruthie slip in before closing and locking it again.

  “I take it the solicitor is here,” Julia said. What should be the whites of her eyes were streaked with red lines.

  “What’s a solicitor?”

  “A lawyer. A scumbag.”

  “Dad was a lawyer,” Ruthie said.

  Julia shrugged. “I’m not saying Dad was a scumbag, just that it’s a corrupt line of work.”

  “What about lawyers who defend innocent people? What about that guy in Inherit the Wind?”

  Coventry had staged a production of that drama. Julia played Rachel Brown.

  Julia waved away Ruthie’s rebuttals. “None of the members of Phil’s firm defend innocent people,” she said. “Believe me.”

  And then, “Want to see something cool?”

  Ruthie looked around Julia’s room to see what might be new. There were the two pink lamps attached to the wall, each decorated with a pink metal bow below a white shade. Dangling from the arm of the lamp closest to the door was a card with the Playboy bunny symbol printed on it. There was the antique sleigh bed that had cost Phil a fortune and that Ruthie and Julia once broke by doing flying somersaults on top of the mattress. There were the posters of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix that Naomi had forbidden Julia to hang—for fear of messing up the paint—but that Julia had hung anyway.

  “What am I supposed to be looking at?” asked Ruthie.

  Julia pointed to her ear, which was covered by her auburn hair.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Ruthie.

  Julia lifted her hair, holding it away from her face in a ponytail, her hand the rubber band. In addition to the dangly beaded earring Julia wore, there was a safety pin stuck through the middle of her lobe. Bits of dried blood crusted around the needle o
f the pin.

  “Ew,” said Ruthie.

  “Shut up. It’s cool,” said Julia. “Want me to do it to you? You just have to ice down the ear and then stick the pin in real fast. You’ll barely feel it.”

  “I think it’s against Coventry’s dress code,” said Ruthie.

  She wasn’t joking, but Julia responded as if she were.

  “Ha. Very funny. Come on. We’ll be the only two people in the world who have them.”

  “But it’s ugly,” said Ruthie. “And it looks like it really hurt.”

  “No pain, no gain,” said Julia, quoting her least favorite PE teacher, a petite blond woman who favored all of the popular kids and was always eager to jump in with stories about her days as a Theta at UGA.

  Ruthie looked out the window, saw Matt’s white Ford Taurus pulling into the front drive. “They’re here,” she said.

  “Oh fuck,” said her sister. “Time for our execution.”

  Ruthie knew what the will would say. Julia had told her. Still it was shocking to hear the words read aloud, shocking to hear the lawyer John Henry Parker decree that the girls would be split up: Julia to live with Matt and Peggy in Virden, Ruthie to live with Mimi and Robert in San Francisco. It was like a harsh sentence being handed down at a trial, though no one had yet been found guilty.

  Chapter Three

  Though Ruthie had been warned, she was still shocked that she and Julia really were going to be separated. A date had even been set, June 10, a week after Coventry let out for summer break. Peggy, Matt, and Sam would drive down from Virden the day before. Early the next morning, they would load all of Julia’s belongings into their minivan and Julia would follow them back to Virginia in her Saab 900. Two days later, Mimi and Ruthie would board a plane that would take them to San Francisco.

  Until then, Mimi would stay with the girls in Atlanta, supervising them as well as the sale of the Wymberly Way house. She would let her husband, Robert, take care of things at home, while her business partner, Marc, handled the interior design needs of wealthy San Franciscans.