A Soft Place to Land (6 page)

“Remember how you used to tell me not to swing too high or I’d flip over the bar?” Ruthie asked.

“That once happened to me,” said Julia, smiling. “I had red marks from gripping the chains so tightly when I flipped. Otherwise I would have come slamming to the ground.”

“You are so full of it,” said Ruthie.

Julia smiled.

“The moon didn’t follow you, either,” said Ruthie.

“What are you talking about?”

“At night, when we were in the back of the car while Dad was driving us back from dinner or something, you used to tell me that you cast a spell on the moon to make it follow you wherever you went. Then you’d point the moon out to me through the window, and the whole drive home I would watch it follow us.”

“Face it,” said Julia. “I’m full of magic.”

“Ha,” said Ruthie. “You couldn’t really cough up money, either.”

Julia used to amaze Ruthie with that trick. She would cough, hold her hand to her mouth, and pull away a ten-dollar bill.

“You forget I’m part Mattaponi,” said Julia. “On my dad’s side. It gives me mystical powers.”

“Okay, so if being, like, one-sixteenth Indian gives you mystical powers, use them to tell me where Mom and Dad are right now.”

Julia sighed, and Ruthie thought she might not answer, that Ruthie had annoyed her by bringing up the subject they were trying to avoid. Ruthie pushed against the ground with her feet and started swinging in earnest.

“Honestly,” said Julia. “I think they’re gone. I mean, maybe some of their ash floated into the atmosphere, and in a billion years will become a part of a star. But other than that . . .”

Julia shrugged her shoulders, defeated.

Ruthie felt an ache in her chest. “You don’t believe in heaven?” she asked, remembering afterwards one of her father’s favorite lawyer sayings: “Never ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer.”

“No,” said Julia. “I’m sorry, but I kind of think this is it.”

Ruthie wondered why, given her sister’s capacity for storytelling, Julia couldn’t believe—or even just pretend to believe—that their parents were more than dusty, weightless things.

Ruthie felt so strange swinging back and forth with her sister. Swinging made her realize, in a way that she had not before, how thoroughly the laws of physics had been changed. Before the accident, before the funeral, before Julia told her that she was to go to Virden and Ruthie to San Francisco, she had been anchored so securely to the world. What a terrible thing to now be loosed.

The day after the funeral one of the attorneys from Phil’s firm, John Henry Parker, arrived at Julia and Ruthie’s house to read the will. It was raining outside, raining hard, and he was wet, smiling apologetically at Aunt Mimi as he stood in the entry hall of the house, his overcoat dripping.

“I usually carry an umbrella,” he said.

“You poor thing,” said Aunt Mimi. Though she was Naomi’s age, Mimi looked younger. She was wearing slim black pants and a bright green button-down shirt, her blond hair pulled into a girlish ponytail that twisted into the shape of an S. “Let me take your coat and get you a towel.”

Ruthie was standing in the front hall by the marble table with the antique music box, watching. Mr. Parker put down his brown leather briefcase before sliding out of his coat. She knew that a copy of her parents’ will was inside that briefcase, the document that would soon reveal her future. Hers and Julia’s.

“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 Naomi.

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.