A Soft Place to Land (40 page)

“I don’t mean to laugh. I just didn’t expect for us to be talking about, about any of this. But go on. Please. I’m very interested. What happened after you read the letters?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that I had an affair.” As Evelyn waved the word away with her right hand, a ray of sunlight reflected off her gold cuff, temporarily blinding Ruthie.

“An affair implies some sort of sustained period of time. Mine was nothing like that. Mine was simply a finishing of something I began long before Spencer and I got married. A romance I never forgot. One that made me—occasionally—question the choices I had made early in life. I read your mother’s letters and I thought, well, if she can do it, why can’t I? Why don’t I just contact this person? Why don’t I just phone? Spencer works all the time, anyway. And the children are gone. What harm will a phone call do? And this person that I once knew, he doesn’t do the sort of strenuous work my husband does. His job is walking to the mailbox.”

“He’s a postman?” Ruthie asked.

Evelyn looked amused. “Hardly. His job is to receive a check. His family was quite wealthy. He’s never really had to work. He’s dabbled, of course, but never had a true career.

“So. We arranged to have a weekend together. I told Spencer I was going to Highlands, where we have our mountain house. Instead I met my old beau in New York City. It was heaven. We picked right back up where we left off. Just talk, talk, talked into the night. Among other things. We stayed at the Carlyle, which is a pleasure in itself with all of its gorgeous, original artwork. Seeing those Calder prints alone made the weekend worth the risk.

“Well, sooner than I could imagine, our time was over. I returned home. It wasn’t like your mother’s relationship with your
father—it wasn’t anything that could come to be. But it was lovely for that brief time. And even though I missed this person terribly, even though I won’t be surprised if someday before we both get too old we arrange another meeting, I returned home feeling better about things between my husband and me. I was no longer so bothered by Spencer’s absence. I had this—this secret self that he would never know about. I had a secret self that he would never see. Most of my secrets I don’t think he cares much about. But this one. This one mattered.”

Evelyn sat tall in her chair, the expression on her face that of a cat who had just licked the last bits of cream off her whiskers.

“I don’t really know what to say,” said Ruthie. Did Evelyn want her congratulations?

“I’d like to give your mother’s things to you,” said Evelyn, standing. “They’re yours after all. And then I’m afraid I must run if I’m going to make it to my manicure appointment on time.”

Evelyn left the room and Ruthie heard her climbing the stairs, headed toward Naomi’s old closet with the hidden door in the wall.

How had she and Julia not discovered that door? With all their games of hide-and-seek, with all the times they played in their mother’s closet, dressing in her clothes? Or when Mimi cleaned out Naomi’s closet, after the funeral. How had she not noticed a door in the wall?

My god
, thought Ruthie. I am going to see my mother’s handwriting again for the first time in years. In her bedroom closet in Inman Park, Ruthie had a paper hatbox stuffed with old letters, but most of them were between her and Julia, during that first year in San Francisco when they still frequently wrote. The only letters she had from her mother were ones Naomi had written while Ruthie was away at summer camp, the one that turned out to be run by Southern Baptists. Only a few of those letters remained. Back then she had not thought to save them. She had never imagined there would be a time when a letter from her mother, written in that perfect round cursive, would be precious to her. Back then
she found her mother’s letters boring and unremarkable, filled with endless detail about what errands she ran that day and what she was planning to fix for dinner. Ruthie used to read them aloud to her bunkmates. “ ‘I’m just sitting down to a little fruit and cottage cheese for lunch,’ ” she would read, and everyone would groan at how boring their mothers all were.

She heard Evelyn Edge’s footsteps, coming back down the stairs. She rose from the linen-covered sofa and went to meet her in the front hall. It was time for Ruthie to leave. Certainly she was returning home with more than she had bargained for.

Evelyn held an oversized yellow mailing envelope, large enough to hold a manuscript. It reminded Ruthie of the envelope that had delivered the bound manuscript of Julia’s book,
Straight
, all those years ago. How she had sat down on her couch and read it right away, feeling so very sad for Julia, for what she had been put through at the Center, that sadistic place that claimed to rehabilitate. And then how angry Ruthie had become months later, when she read the epilogue of the finished book, the epilogue that revealed to the world—or at least to Gabe—that she had once had an abortion.

She could have lost Gabe over that. And it wasn’t as if that piece of her history has just gone away. It still haunted their relationship. Even more so lately. Beneath his outward cheerfulness ran a current of resentment. He wanted a child, and the knowledge of her terminated pregnancy from years back only added to his anger at her for not being willing to grant him one.

(It had been easy to say that she had the abortion because she was too young to be a mother. But if she pressed deep enough on her feelings, she knew that she might not ever feel comfortable taking on the responsibility of a child. How could she, knowing how it felt to lose her own mother so young? How could she subject a child of her own making to such a risk? At the age of thirteen Ruthie had internalized the unsettling knowledge that just because she had thought the world was safe did not make it so. “So what?” she could hear Gabe argue. The world was never
safe—that wasn’t the point. And besides which, there were plenty of women who, having lost their mothers young, tried to become mothers themselves as soon as possible. Gabe had a friend from high school who lost her mom when she was ten. Now, at twenty-nine, his friend was pregnant with her third child. Ruthie wished she had this impulse—to re-create what she lost—for her husband’s sake if nothing else.)

“Read these and then go have yourself a hell of an adventure,” said Evelyn Edge, handing Ruthie the stuffed yellow envelope.

“Maybe I’ll go to the Carlyle.”

Evelyn squinted a little, then reached out her hand and patted Ruthie on the right side of her face. “Cheeky girl,” she said.

She walked Ruthie to the door, turning the lock at the same time as she pulled on the door handle. It was a stubborn door, impossible to open if you didn’t know the trick. Ruthie’s friends never could figure it out, yet all these years later Ruthie still remembered how it was done.

“Thank you,” said Ruthie. “I’ll treasure these.”

“Wonderful of you to come by,” said Evelyn, as if she and Ruthie were old friends.

Stepping outside, Ruthie was surprised by how light it was. She glanced at her watch. It was only 3:30. The Wymberly Way house never let in enough sun. She walked to the car, eager to get home so that she could read whatever it was Naomi had written. She would share Naomi’s writing with Gabe, too. Let him “meet” her mother. And Julia. Julia would be ecstatic over the discovery. These writings of Naomi’s would be pure gold for her memoir.

Yes, Julia would be thrilled. Would eat Naomi’s words right up. Would, in fact, take Naomi’s story, her “selfish bravery,” and turn it into her own. Would cannibalize their mother’s words, would lock them in print, would say to the world, “Here. This is our mother. This is who Naomi Harrison was. Take her.”

And Ruthie wouldn’t have any choice in the matter. Julia would get to decide what to leave in and what to leave out, because Julia had a publisher and this gave Julia a power and authority that
Ruthie did not have access to. This had allowed Julia to publish Ruthie’s own private history, without asking her permission. And surely Julia would not really ask Ruthie’s permission for what she might publish in the new memoir she was writing. What was it Julia had said: she couldn’t promise to take anything out but they could “discuss” anything Ruthie might have a problem with?

Well. There was nothing she could do about the fact that Julia was writing another memoir. But she could keep her mother’s journals and letters for herself. Who said she had to surrender all pertinent material? She could make sure that some things remained private. She could claim her mother’s words for her own.

As soon as she got into the car and pulled the door shut, she opened the large yellow envelope given to her by Evelyn Edge and slid its contents onto her lap. Two black-and-white-speckled composition notebooks fell out, along with several Polaroid pictures (including the one of her mother Ruthie had seen all of those years ago) and a white envelope, “Julia” written in blue pen across its front. She flipped through the notebooks, filled with Naomi’s perfect round cursive, the entries dated, starting with 1978. She was hoping that somewhere, caught between the pages, she would find a second envelope, this one marked: “Ruthie.”

She did not.

Overcome with what she knew was probably irrational hurt and jealousy, she raised her hands, palms open, and started talking to herself, to her mother.

“Really? Really? You leave behind one letter and it’s addressed to Julia and not me? That’s fantastic, Mom. Fantastic. It really is. Thanks. Thank you so much.”

Irrational though she was being, she was so consumed by a sense of posthumous betrayal that she started making little noises. Little snorts. Little “ha’s!” Was this some idea of a cosmic joke, that after she decided to block her sister from having access to
their shared past her mother would “send” a letter Ruthie’s way, addressed to Julia?

Evelyn Edge remained at her front door, watching Ruthie talk to herself in the car. Ruthie imagined that Evelyn was probably having second thoughts about having given her the documents found inside the secret door. Or maybe she was having second thoughts about letting Ruthie into the house, into the upstairs rooms. Perhaps she was wondering whether or not Ruthie was really who she said she was, was perhaps an imposter, faking her history in order to case the joint for a future break-in. Evelyn did not budge from the door frame, even though she had said her manicurist was waiting. Probably she would stay there until Ruthie drove away.

Fuck.

Ruthie put the keys in the ignition and turned on the car, wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan. She put the clutch in reverse, backed up to the driveway’s curb, then put the car in first and drove forward, turning the wheel. Reverse, forward, turn. Reverse, forward, turn. She did this until the nose of the Volvo was pointed toward the street.

She made a left onto Wymberly Way, no longer paying attention to the houses she passed. She could hardly pay attention to drive. She was crying in earnest now, driving and crying—just like the name of that band Julia used to listen to, the one that sang “Straight to Hell,” which became a sort of anthem for fraternity boys all over the South.

Music. She needed music. Or voices. Something else, anything else, besides this terrible anger she felt, this anger that exceeded all proportions. She switched on the radio. The station was programmed to 90.1, NPR, just like her mother used to listen to. Well, good. Maybe the calm, rational voices of public radio would soothe her.

Only the voices weren’t soothing. They were talking of a plane crash, a plane that just crashed, moments ago. US Airways Flight 1549 had left New York’s LaGuardia Airport en route to Charlotte, North Carolina, when both engines went out. It
was thought to be a flock of birds that killed the engines, but no one yet was certain. There had been an emergency landing. On the Hudson River. And somehow, the pilot landed the plane smoothly—as smoothly as possible—on top of the water. Witnesses said it looked as if the landing was intentional. The plane did not break up into pieces, or tailspin, or flip. So far there were no known fatalities. People were calling it a miracle.

Ruthie began to sob. Never before had she heard of a plane crash with a happy ending. She could not keep driving. She could not keep listening to this story while trying to drive. And how could she turn it off? There were passengers waiting on the wings of the plane. It was only twenty-two degrees in New York. She had to see what would happen to them.

She was back on Peachtree Battle Avenue, that long stretch of road that cut a curvy line between some of the great lawns of Buckhead, each topped with a distinguished manor. The road that she drove on when she was only thirteen, on the day of her parents’ memorial service, when Julia let her take the wheel. What if the plane crash her parents were in had ended with a miracle? Until the exact moment of his death, her father was probably expecting just that. Hadn’t he experienced a miracle forty-two years earlier, when he had sailed out of his mother’s lap and through the front window of their Ford Custom Deluxe sedan? The medics had pushed the bloody baby out of the way, presuming him dead. But he had lived. Had thrived even though the doctors predicted that if—
if
—he were to make it he would be permanently brain damaged.

Phil had told Ruthie and Julia that his aunt paid no attention to the doctors. She knew he was a child of God, saved for a reason. She held him and loved him for the first two years after his mother’s death, while his daddy was in Korea, fighting in the war. She picked out the pieces of glass that rose from deep within Phil’s skull and surfaced on the flat spot of his head, the spot where he hit the windshield, where his hair would from then on grow in a strange cowlick, until it stopped growing there at all. At night his aunt would pick out that glass, ever so delicately, while humming hymns.

And he had survived. Not only survived but thrived. Always an excellent student, he was named valedictorian of his senior class. Was voted “Best Boy Citizen” by the Union City Press for his oration “I Speak for Democracy.”

And the 155 people, the passengers and crew who were on US Airways Flight 1549, it sounded as if they were going to make it, too. The radio announced that a commuter ferry had already made its way to the starboard wing. Those standing there, shivering in the twenty-two-degree weather, were being pulled aboard, were being draped with the coats and sweaters of the paying ferry passengers. And more ferries were on the way; more help was to come.