A Soft Place to Land: A Novel Read online

  “Oh gross! Why do you have to say things like that?”

  (The truth was, Ruthie actually wanted to know more about Dmitri’s penis. Or not Dmitri’s specifically, just any boy’s. Ruthie was curious about what one—a grown one, not a baby’s—looked like in real life. The only grown one she had ever seen had been a quick flash of flesh that made its way through the scrambler on the Tuxedo channel.)

  Julia roared through the green light at Howell Mill, rounded a corner, and picked up even more speed as she drove along a straight section of road. Ruthie felt powerless and about to cry.

  “Slow down! God! If you do I’ll shut up about the letter—I’ll let you be the ‘master negotiator.’”

  Julia tapped the brake, slowing down to 50. “If I get a major detention, I’m blaming you.”

  Ruthie was new at Coventry that year, having attended St. Catherine’s—an Episcopal elementary school known for its nurturing attitude and wealthy parents—from pre-school through sixth grade. St. Catherine’s was a sort of feeder school for Coventry, though Coventry was certainly not known for its nurturing attitude. In fact, Coventry was notorious for being the toughest school in Atlanta, both socially and academically.

  Many of the students at Coventry had been there since kindergarten and would be there through the twelfth grade—barring expulsion, sudden poverty, or the discovery of a severe learning disability. These students were called “lifers,” and they seemed to take a personal sort of pride in their parents’ decision to have enrolled them at Coventry back when they were five. The girl lifers especially seemed to resent the influx of new blood that was admitted in the junior high, forty new students in sixth grade, thirty new ones in seventh.

  Before Ruthie matriculated at Coventry she imagined that she would be popular there, same as she had been at St. Catherine’s. Being popular at St. Catherine’s was really no big deal. There were only fifty students in her sixth-grade graduating class, and besides Gabriel Schwartz, the classroom pariah who left in the middle of fifth grade, everyone was more or less accepted.

  Especially after the sixth-grade trip to Jekyll Island, where they got to sleep in tents and roast marshmallows over campfires built by their teachers. It was on that trip that Ruthie allowed Derrick Bridges to kiss her, during a forbidden game of Truth or Dare. Instead of pecking her on the lips, Derrick darted his tongue expertly into Ruthie’s mouth. She developed an instant and overwhelming crush on him. At St. Catherine’s, such crushes were easy to explore: she sent word to Derrick through Alex Love that she wanted to “go” with him; he said yes, and for two months, though they never spoke a word to each other—or, for that matter, kissed again—they were a couple.

  Figuring out the social equation at Coventry required a much higher skill set. It was like going from the multiplication tables to algebraic equations. Except instead of manipulating numbers, you had to learn how to manipulate people. Mostly this seemed to hinge on the ability to detect and administer sarcasm, even when you were dying for someone just to be nice.

  It was 7:53 when Julia and Ruthie pulled into the back gate of Coventry. Homeroom started at 8:00.

  “I’m too late to drop you off at the junior high,” said Julia. “You’re going to have to walk with me.”

  Julia was a sophomore, and while sophomores at Coventry were allowed to drive to school, they had to park by the back tennis courts, a good half mile away from the main campus. And there was a campus-wide rule that forbade anyone—parents or students—from stopping their car to pick up sophomores trudging up from the back lot. The school claimed this was to keep its morning traffic flowing smoothly.

  Ruthie thought that Julia was being a pain to make her walk, because Julia was going to be late regardless. Dropping Ruthie off at the junior high building wasn’t going to change that fact. And besides, it was Julia who had punched off the alarm clock that morning. Still, Ruthie wasn’t going to argue with her sister. What leverage did she have? Her sister had the license, the car, the keys.

  “Fine,” said Ruthie.

  At least she knew her homeroom teacher, Mr. Roman, wouldn’t mark her as tardy. Ever since the accident, all of her teachers had been letting things slide.

  Julia parked the Saab in one of the last spots in the sophomore lot, and they began the long trudge to the main campus. It was a pretty walk, actually. It was late April and everything was in bloom, including the pink and white dogwood trees that grew on the periphery of the woods that surrounded the campus.

  Julia’s auburn curls were loose, wild. She wore a pair of used Levi’s, cowboy boots, and a short-sleeve black T-shirt. Around her neck hung a long strand of tiny red beads. She looked cool, even though she had thrown on her clothes in less than a minute. Ruthie, on the other hand, in her khaki pants from the Gap and blue polo shirt, did not look cool. She looked fine—acceptable—but she did not stand out in any particular way. For the millionth time she wished that she looked more like Julia, that she, too, had her sister’s sense of style. That she, too, had inherited her mother’s vibrant auburn hair. Instead Ruthie’s hair was plain and flat and often full of static. And of all of her mother’s features, the most prominent one she had inherited was Naomi’s long nose.

  Julia took a last sip of her coffee before chucking the empty cup into the bordering woods.

  “Julia!” chided Ruthie.

  “Chill. I’ll be back here Saturday morning to pick it up.”

  Ruthie watched as car after car passed them, mostly moms driving car pool. She imagined Naomi behind the wheel of her Volvo station wagon, the radio station tuned to 90.1—NPR—even though Ruthie preferred listening to Z93 and Julia claimed to like the college station Album 88.

  It occurred to Ruthie, while walking, that it was hypocritical of Coventry to have a rule against people in cars giving lifts to pedestrians. Didn’t the school claim to be Christian? And wouldn’t Jesus have pulled over to pick up the least of those amongst him, which surely would have included the sophomores who had to park in the crappy lot?

  Just then a tiny vintage BMW 2002—the color of butter—slowed down and came to a stop beside the girls. Ruthie recognized the driver as Jake Robinson, his blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, a Marlboro Red hanging from his mouth, even though being caught with a cigarette on campus was grounds for suspension.

  “Get in,” he said.

  “Um, that’s okay,” said Ruthie. “We’re almost there.”

  But Julia was already opening the passenger door. “We are not almost there. We’ve still got a quarter of a mile to go.”

  Ruthie hesitated. She didn’t want to walk the rest of the way by herself. But she didn’t want to sit in the back of Jake’s car, either—most notably because he was smoking but also because she associated him with her parents’ deaths. After all, it was his house she had to call in order to tell Julia the news about Phil and Naomi.

  “Come on,” Julia said to Ruthie. “Squeeze in the back.”

  Ruthie sighed, then walked to Julia’s opened door. She slid behind the front seat and sat in the cramped back, where there were no seat belts. The car smelled like stale smoke and the song Jake was blasting was disturbing, its singer stating, again and again, that sex was violent.

  Julia adjusted herself in the passenger seat while Jake started driving toward Allen Hall, the junior high building.

  He glanced at Ruthie in his rearview mirror, and she realized he had just asked her a question.

  “What?” she said. “I can’t hear you.”

  He turned down the music, just a little. “You’re Ruthie, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Ruthie.

  He whispered something to Julia, something about Julia being the sexy one.

  “Shut up,” said Julia. But in the rearview mirror Ruthie saw her sister’s private smile.

  Sometimes Ruthie hated her sister.

  They were almost to Allen Hall. Ruthie did not want Jake to pull up in front of it. Usually there was a teacher stationed by the front en
trance, making sure drop-off ran smoothly. Ruthie did not want to be caught in the car of a smoking student.

  “This is fine,” said Ruthie, pointing to a curb a good three hundred feet from the entrance. “Just drop me off here.”

  Jake pulled over to the curb Ruthie had indicated. Once the car was stopped Julia got out of the passenger seat so she could tilt it forward and let Ruthie squeeze through. As Ruthie was walking away from Jake’s car, her L.L. Bean backpack swung over one shoulder, she heard Jake ask her sister, “Want to get out of here?”

  “Fuck yeah,” said Julia, and before Ruthie could say anything Jake was swinging a U-turn, then peeling down the main drive, headed toward the back gate of campus.

  They were going to get caught. Ruthie knew it. Dean Hasher made a point of hiding out in the woods by the back gate, on the lookout for students trying to get away.

  Ruthie was so occupied thinking about Julia and the hell she would catch—if not from Mimi, then from the school—for leaving campus to cut class with a smoking, speeding boy that at first she did not notice the commotion taking place in the turnaround in front of Allen Hall.

  And then suddenly Ruthie was upon it, looking down at Laney Daley along with twelve or so other students. Laney was scrambling around on the sidewalk on her hands and knees, wearing jeans so tight they squished her rear flat as an ironing board. She was picking up what looked like little white cigars rolling about. But of course they weren’t cigars; they were tampons. Somehow they had fallen out of her purse, which lay open and abandoned a few feet away.

  There must have been twenty tampons on the loose. Ruthie could not fathom why Laney would choose to bring twenty tampons with her to school. Then again, most everything Laney did was unfathomable. Laney, who was also new to Coventry that year, was so awkward, so earnest, and so nakedly desperate that sometimes Ruthie wanted to pull her aside and just give her a few tips for survival. Like that tampons were a private thing, a shameful thing, something to be zipped away in an inner pocket of a backpack or a purse. And you only brought two to school—at the very most!—on days when you had your period.

  Ruthie registered the looks on the faces of those observing Laney. Their expressions were short on sympathy, long on scorn. Within the half hour, everyone would know about this.

  But now the second bell was ringing and so the gawkers rushed inside.

  Ruthie was on her way in when she saw a familiar burgundy diesel Mercedes wagon pull up to the curb. It was Mrs. Love’s car, the same one she drove when Alex and Ruthie started pre-school together at St. Catherine’s.

  Ruthie hadn’t seen Mrs. Love since the funeral.

  Alex stepped out of the front seat of the wagon, wearing a button-down pink-and-white-striped shirt over a short khaki skirt, Keds, tiny ankle socks. Ruthie smiled at Alex, and waved at Mrs. Love through the closed passenger window. Mrs. Love rolled the window down. She was wearing tennis whites. Atop her blond hair was a visor with the words “The Cloister” spelled across it.

  “Hi, Max!” said Mrs. Love, her face taking on an expression of delight, affection, and perhaps a little pity.

  Max was what she had called Ruthie ever since Ruthie had changed her name to Ellen, her middle name, when she was four years old and then decided to change it back to Ruthie when she was in the second grade. Upon this second name change Mrs. Love had declared, “I’m so confused I’m just going to call you Max!”

  “Come here, sweetheart; let me see you up close,” said Mrs. Love.

  Ruthie poked her head in the window and felt the spring of unexpected tears. It was the smell of Mrs. Love’s Joy perfume that brought them on, the essence of rose that brought back so many easy afternoons of playing at the Loves’ house with Alex, dressing up in Mrs. Love’s old clothes, pulled from the spare closet in the guest room, before Mrs. Love would finally shoo them out of the house and into the backyard, proclaiming that “wild Indians need a little sunshine.”

  “How are you doing?” she asked, her voice leaking sympathy.

  Ruthie swallowed. Blinked. “I’m good.”

  “We are going to have you and Julia and your sweet aunt over to dinner soon.”

  “Okay,” said Ruthie. “Great.”

  “You take care now, sweetie.” Mrs. Love waved good-bye and drove off, the tailpipe of the wagon blowing black diesel smoke.

  Alex walked over to Ruthie, her brows raised in a question.

  “What the heck is going on?” she whispered, pointing to Laney, who was trying to reach underneath a parked car in order to gather the last of the tampons.

  “I guess she brought an entire box of tampons with her and they fell out of her bag.”

  “Should we help her?” asked Alex, her tone indicating that was the last thing she wanted to do.

  “No! People might think they’re ours.”

  “Gosh, you’re right,” Alex said, clearly relieved.

  “Anyway, the second bell already rang.”

  The girls hurried inside, where they split off, each headed to her own homeroom.

  It was the first quasi-normal conversation that Ruthie had had with Alex since the accident. Actually, it was the first quasi-normal conversation they’d had in a long time. They had been so excited the year before when they both were admitted to Coventry. But soon after classes began, Alex and Ruthie became socially competitive. Each yearned to be friends with the Eight, that elite group of pretty white girls, all of whom had been at Coventry since kindergarten, who had grown up splashing in the Piedmont Driving Club pool together and smacking their tennis balls back and forth on the club’s courts.

  It didn’t matter that the Eight seemed to have no idea that either of them existed; in Ruthie and Alex’s desire for popularity, they had turned against each other. Alex began pointing out pimples on Ruthie’s skin, asking sweetly if her mom had considered taking her to the dermatologist. And Ruthie’s teasing about Mrs. Love’s many rules—no R movies, no TV during the school week, no soda—took on a mean, bullying edge.

  And then after the accident, Alex’s attitude shifted toward Ruthie again. Alex became alarmingly sweet. She developed a habit of smiling encouragingly at everything Ruthie said—the way one would with a crazy person—even if Ruthie was just complaining about Mrs. Stanford giving them a pop quiz in math, or the fact that it had rained for five days in a row. Alex would just beam at Ruthie, her eyes widened as if in perpetual surprise, her lips stretched upward, her long white teeth prominent.

  Sometimes she would give Ruthie’s arm a little squeeze of encouragement and Ruthie would yell “Ow!” just to startle her.

  Ruthie definitely preferred the scheming, plotting, competitive Alex of the pre-accident days, rather than this saccharine version. Ruthie wondered if future interactions with others would always feel so fake, if no one would ever again know how to strike up a conversation with her for fear of accidentally reminding her that—oh yeah—her parents had died.

  As if she could forget.

  When she finally made it to homeroom, which was also her English classroom, Mr. Roman gave her a squinty look of concern and motioned for her to come to his desk.

  Being summoned by Mr. Roman was cause for much stomach fluttering. He was just so gorgeous, with his green eyes, his square jaw, his light brown hair that he kept just an inch past respectable. He was a young teacher, twenty-six or twenty-seven. He had been in the Navy after college, and the girls in his class—at Coventry the middle school English classes were segregated by sex—would whisper about how cute he must have looked in his Navy blues. He had been in an a cappella group in college, and on special occasions he would sing to the girls.

  She walked over to his desk, where he sat with his attendance book in front of him. Ruthie noticed that he had marked her on time for that day, as well as on Monday when she had also been tardy.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “My sister accidentally turned off the alarm clock, that’s all. I’m sorry.”

  Mr. Roma
n smiled, revealing his dimples. “Don’t worry too much about it. I know there’s a lot on your plate right now. A lot on your sister’s, too. Just check in with me, okay? Let me know how you’re doing.”

  Since the accident all of Ruthie’s teachers had been really kind toward her, which felt weird. The middle school teachers at Coventry were in general a cranky, prickly bunch. But Mr. Roman’s kindness was different. It did not feel fake. It did not seem to be a cover-up for his own discomfort with grief.

  Just as Ruthie had predicted, by the end of first period everyone in the seventh grade knew about Laney’s loose tampons. But the rumors didn’t end there. People were saying that when Laney got on her hands and knees to retrieve them there had been blood on the seat of her pants. The fact that the back of Laney’s jeans was perfectly clean was irrelevant. The stain existed in everyone’s mind, and that was all that mattered.

  Laney Daley. What a cautionary tale. Laney, by negative example, had taught Ruthie everything not to do when dealing with the popular kids at Coventry.

  Lesson one: Do not appear to be trying too hard. This was Laney’s gravest sin. Waving frantically at the Eight whenever they walked by, sitting near them during assemblies, attempting to sit at their table in the cafeteria, despite the fact that day after day they chirped, “Sorry, that one’s taken,” at whatever seat she tried to claim. And every day Laney acted surprised by their rejection.

  Lesson two: Be wary of sudden, unexpected friendliness, especially from Eleanor Pope, the prettiest and the meanest of the Eight. That past February Eleanor had slipped Laney, through a crack in her locker, an invitation to a slumber party at her house. Only the invitation was a joke, a gag, listing a fake address on Valley Road, giving a fake telephone number to call to RSVP.

  Did Eleanor intuit that Laney would be so thrilled to receive the invitation that she would forego the formality of phoning to say she could come and would instead rush up to Eleanor, surrounded by friends at her locker, and tell her that yes, yes! She would be there. If only she had phoned, it would have been an automated operator who announced, in a cheerful voice, that the number she was trying to reach was not in service. Or maybe the number Eleanor gave Laney did work, was some stranger’s number, was perhaps the phone number of an old man who would answer on the fifth ring, confused and disoriented. Would that have been enough to clue Laney in? Would that have prevented her from having her mother drive her up and down Valley Road—one of the ritziest streets in Buckhead—searching for an address that did not exist?