A Soft Place to Land (35 page)

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—Ruthie 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.

Ruthie knew she should be over it by now, that it had been years since the betrayal, but she never forgave Julia for writing about her abortion, for “outing” Ruthie to Gabe. Even though Ruthie and Gabe had worked through it, even though it was important that they did work through it, Ruthie had lost all sense of trust in her sister. Ever since she read the epilogue to
Straight
. And apparently Julia had lost her warm feelings toward Ruthie, too. Perhaps because Ruthie accused her of having “narcissistic personality disorder” when Julia telephoned to apologize again for referring to Ruthie’s abortion in her memoir. Or perhaps because when Ruthie and Gabe got married, two years after they graduated from Berkeley, they eloped in order not to have to invite Julia. In order not to have to deal with her.

Once on the porch Ruthie noted that the Christmas wreath was still hanging from their front door. She was pretty sure that if left to Gabe, the wreath would remain until Christmas 2009. She dumped the mail on the front swing, lifted the wreath off the nail it hung from, and walked it to the trash. She should have driven the wreath over to the chipper at Agnes Scott College, where it would be chopped into mulch and used to landscape people’s yards, but she just didn’t have the energy to do the environmentally responsible thing. Besides which, she was pretty sure that she was too late, that the chipper had been put away for the season.

Instead she dumped the wreath into the Herbie Curbie, first peering inside to make sure that the baby opossum that sometimes nested there was gone. If she and Gabe could find the lid to the Herbie Curbie, the opossum wouldn’t be able to climb inside it,
but being who they were, Ruthie knew that the lid would remain missing, in perpetuity. And Gabe being who he was (a fanatical animal lover), Ruthie could not call animal control to take the opossum away.

“He’s adorable,” Gabe had said the first time they spotted the marsupial.

“He’s disgusting,” said Ruthie. “Like a white rat. Do
not
bring him into the house.”

Ruthie walked back to the porch, scooped the mail off the swing, balanced it in one hand while unlocking the door with the other, and stepped inside. Gabe was in the living room, lying on the couch, their chocolate Lab, named Berger (short for Scharffen Berger), settled on the floor below him.

“Honey, I’m home!” said Ruthie, an ironic nod to the fifties couple they had not become.

Berger jumped up to greet her, and Gabe, following the dog’s lead, jumped up, too, running toward her, putting his hands in front of his face as if they were paws, sticking his tongue out and panting like the dog. This was all part of their shtick, a routine they performed often.

“Down, boy,” she said to her husband, which was also part of the shtick. “Let me just put this stuff down, and I’ll give you a real hello.” Walking into the kitchen, she dumped the mail on the counter.

“What’s this white crap stuck on here?” she asked, knowing the answer. It was dried-up blobs of Greek yogurt that Gabe had smeared on the counter for Solomon to eat. Gabe had a thing about not eating in front of the animals without sharing.

“I’ll get it up,” said Gabe, following her into the kitchen and walking to the sink to get a sponge. “How was your day?”

She told him about the latest missive from Chef A.J., trying not to get too worked up in the telling, for Gabe became upset when she got too riled.

“Tell him if he keeps messing with you, I’ll kick his ass,” Gabe said pleasantly, dabbing at the counter with the sponge.

(Gabe used to try to reason Ruthie out of her fits of agitation, which only ended up agitating her further. “What do you want me to do?” he had asked when she barked at him to stop minimizing her feelings. “Tell you that if people don’t stop messing with you I’ll kick their ass?” “Yes,” said Ruthie. “That’s exactly what I want you to do.”)

He glanced at the mail, noticed the blue envelope with Julia’s slanty script. Picking the envelope up, he studied the Red Hook address in the upper right-hand corner.

“This is a surprise,” he said. “Are you expecting anything from her?”

“Nothin’ but trouble,” Ruthie said, as if her feelings about Julia were breezy.

“Perhaps it’s an essay she plans to publish detailing our dilemma over whether or not to have a baby.”

Ruthie humphed at his gallows humor but was relieved that at least on this particular day he could joke about Their Big Issue.

“I think it’s a photo,” she said. “See the
DO NOT BEND
?
”

She walked to the refrigerator and took out a Sweetwater 420 lager. Ruthie was just a tiny bit concerned that she depended too much on her evening drink (or two, or sometimes—but not very often—three). Indeed, having to cut out alcohol for nine months was just one of the many reasons why she was ambivalent about having a baby.

She always had thought she wanted to have a child with Gabe, but now that it was time to actually do so, she was deeply resistant.

“Are you going to open it?” Gabe asked.

“My beer? Why, yes. Yes, I am.”

“Ha. The letter—or whatever it is—from Julia.”

Ruthie twisted the top off her beer and took a long sip. “I will later. I can’t deal with it right now.”

“Oh, come on, Ruthie. You have to see what she sent.” He picked up the envelope, breaking its seal with his pointer finger.

“At least let me do it,” she said, grabbing it from him.

She opened the flap, turned the envelope upside down. Two photos landed on top of the wood counter. The first was of Julia and her. Ruthie couldn’t be older than five in it, which would make Julia eight. They were standing in the dining room of Wymberly Way. (All of these years later and Ruthie still recognized the elaborate moldings on the crème-colored walls, the green marble fireplace with the brass screen in front of it.) Julia, her auburn curls pulled into two pigtails, wore shorts and a yellow-and-pink-striped Izod shirt. She stood behind Ruthie, her hands resting on her little sister’s shoulders. Ruthie, her hair parted on the far side and held back with a green barrette, wore an emerald bathing suit with pale green stripes. Her hands rested, embarrassingly, along the sides of her crotch.

The second photo was of Ruthie and Naomi. Ruthie was younger in this one, only two or three. She had on a blue-tiered dress with tiny Swiss dots, each tier trimmed with white lace. Naomi was holding her, wearing a yellow silk shirt with an oversized collar, a black sweater-vest on top. Both Ruthie and Naomi had variations of a bowl cut, though Ruthie’s hair was plain and brown while Naomi’s was auburn and vibrant. Ruthie looked so tiny in her mother’s arms, almost as if she were a little doll. On the back of the photo Julia had stuck a Post-it note that read: “Was going through old photos and found these. Thought you might like. Will talk soon. XO, J.”

“Why do you think she sent me these?” asked Ruthie.

“Maybe she misses you,” said Gabe.

“Look at her hands on my shoulders in this one. Like I’m hers.”

Gabe took the photo out of her hands, studied it. “She looks like she’s being protective of you. Like she’s your bodyguard.”

“That was Julia. My protector.” She put the photos back in the envelope. Shook her head as if to rid herself of them. “Weird. Anyway. What do you want to do for dinner? Pasta or go out?”

On days when Ruthie worked at Pasture she was never up for cooking much at home. The same had been true when she was at cooking school at Tante Marie, where she learned everything from
butchering large cuts of meat to pressing thin layers of butter into a dough made of flour and water in order to make puff pastry. For most of that year all she ate at night was plain pasta with a little butter and Parmesan cheese.

“What do you think, Berger? Huh? Should we have pasta or go out?” Gabe pulled on the dog’s ears while he spoke to him. Ruthie knew that Gabe did this in part because he wanted Berger to be desensitized so that if they ever had a child ear and tail pulling wouldn’t rile the dog.

“Let’s go out,” she said.

They decided to eat at Mofongo, a Latin American restaurant nearby on North Highland. Mofongo would have been a splurge, but in the last few months Ruthie had become friends with the chef, Armando Sanchez, and he often gave them free food. Indeed, they received free appetizers, drinks, and desserts at many of their favorite restaurants now, because the Atlanta chefs—with the notable exception of her own boss—were supportive of each other. Her friend Billy Allin, whom she had known from Chez Panisse, had opened a great restaurant in Decatur the previous year. It killed her to think that if the timing had been right, she could have worked with him.

Even though it was January, the night was pleasant. Gabe suggested walking, but Ruthie said no. Just a week ago a man was walking home from a bar in Little Five Points when a car came to a screeching stop beside him. Two young men—boys, really—jumped out, one waving a gun, while the third stayed inside the car, keeping the engine going. The boys took the man’s wallet, made him lie facedown against the pavement, and sped away.