A Soft Place to Land: A Novel

by Susan Rebecca White

  “Y’all don’t mind if I tag along with you to dinner, do you?” asked Schwartzy. “All I’ve eaten today is a PowerBar, and I’m starving. I’ve been working on the Marcus Willis case all day, only stopping to drive to the airport.”

  Ruthie wondered if she was supposed to know who Marcus Willis was.

  “Of course,” said Ruthie. “Please come. Am I okay going out like this?”

  She was wearing jeans and green Saucony sneakers, a cream-colored waffle-knit T-shirt with a long black cardigan on top.

  “Are you kidding me? You’re dressed nicer than most of the people in Little Five Points will be.”

  They walked two blocks to the Yacht Club, a dive bar in Little Five Points that served southern food. They sat in a smoky booth and drank Pabst Blue Ribbon beers, two dollars a can. Ruthie and Gabe sat on one side of the booth, Schwartzy on the other. They ate fried okra and pulled pork barbeque sandwiches, and then Schwartzy said, “what the hell,” and ordered some wings. Several men stopped by to say hello to her, including a bearded guy with twinkly eyes who Ruthie was pretty sure was the owner of the place. Schwartzy was loose and at ease over dinner, her arm draped over the booth, asking Ruthie questions about her uncle (she had read Chi Your Mind), her major, her thoughts on what she might like to do when she graduated.

  “I’m thinking about going to culinary school,” said Ruthie. “My uncle taught me how to cook when I was thirteen and I’ve kind of been obsessed with food ever since.”

  “That sounds so wonderful! Not that I can cook for shit. Poor Gabe had to eat a lot of Stouffer’s.”

  “I would rather eat Ruthie’s cooking than go to dinner anywhere in Berkeley,” said Gabe. “She’s that good.”

  Ruthie allowed herself the pleasure of the compliment. “Thanks,” she said, glancing at him almost shyly. “That’s so nice.”

  “It’s true,” said Gabe, his mouth full of pulled pork.

  “I think you’ve got the right idea,” said Schwartzy. “Choose a career that brings you pleasure. I mean, I find a lot of meaning in my work, I really do. But Christ almighty it can bring me down. Take the appeals case I’m working on right now: a death row case. This kid, Marcus Willis, was convicted of murder ten years ago, when he was eighteen, on the basis of two convicted criminals’ testimony—men who were offered lighter sentences if they turned state’s evidence, by the way.

  “So Marcus’s execution date is set for this March, and it’s probably going to happen, despite the fact that both of the men who testified against him have now retracted their stories. And the damndest thing is, Marcus is pretty much ready to go. I mean, when you’re on death row they keep you in solitary twenty-three hours a day. It’s a hellish existence. So why am I busting my ass trying to get a stay of execution for Marcus even though I know in my gut it’s hopeless?”

  “Because the death penalty is wrong,” said Gabe. “Simple as that.”

  “Sure,” said Schwartzy. “But that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m busting my ass for Marcus’s mother, LeVanda Willis. Forty-six years old, and waiting for her son to die. She’s who the state is really killing in March.”

  God, did Ruthie feel shallow. How could her culinary ambitions appear as anything but light, frivolous, next to Schwartzy’s dedication? Gabe’s mother had spent a lifetime fighting death row convictions; Ruthie wanted to beat egg whites for a living.

  “What about the governor? Is he sympathetic to Marcus’s case?” asked Ruthie, wanting to show Schwartzy that she had something intelligent to contribute to the conversation.

  Schwartzy practically spit out her beer. “The governor? Sympathetic toward the plight of a poor black man from Grady Homes? No, we don’t have him on our side. Now, if LaVanda Willis had wanted an abortion back when she was pregnant with Marcus, then the good governor would have been very concerned. Very concerned with the sanctity of life. Just like my son, here.”

  Gabe glared at his mother. Ruthie was too surprised to say anything. She was stunned by the bitterness of Schwartzy’s tone.

  Schwartzy shook her head, pulled on a strand of her hair, stretching it from a ringlet to a straight line. “Oh God, I’m sorry, sweetheart. That sounded awful. I’m too tense. You are nothing like those political assholes. You have a good heart. It just still surprises me, you know? My son, Gabe Schwartz, the Catholic.”

  Schwartzy looked pleadingly at Gabe. Gabe’s jaw was clenched and he was staring down at his fried okra. Ruthie wanted to excuse herself, to hide out in the bathroom, to walk to the bar and order another beer, and yet she felt stuck to the seat, her discomfort with the situation keeping her glued down.

  “Oh God, did I just reveal something that you two haven’t even talked about yet? You know Gabe’s a Catholic, don’t you, Ruthie?”

  “I do,” said Ruthie, carefully. “I think it’s great, the social justice work Gabe does.”

  “You do know that your biggest anti-death-penalty supporters are the Catholics, don’t you, Schwartzy?” asked Gabe, looking intently at his mom.

  “What do you think about his stance on abortion?” Schwartzy asked Ruthie.

  God, Ruthie did not want to be in the middle of this. How irritating, really, that Schwartzy was pressing on the issue, especially when Gabe was so clearly upset.

  “We’ve just agreed to disagree,” she said, acting as if the subject were something they had dealt with long, long ago. In truth, she and Gabe had avoided the topic of abortion ever since that first conversation at Caffè Strada. Ruthie knew that if their relationship continued at its current intensity she was eventually going to have to tell him about what happened with Brendan. But for now she just wanted to enjoy being coupled without all of the messy remnants from her past leaking into the present. He knew all about Julia and her parents. For now that was enough.

  “You’re so full of shit, Schwartzy. You pretend to be all about free speech, the First Amendment, blah, blah, blah, when in fact you can’t tolerate any opinion other than yours.” Gabe was clearly on the attack.

  “Oh, sweetie,” mused Schwartzy. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I know you are. You’re entitled to believe whatever you want. It’s just—”

  “It’s just what?” he asked.

  Schwartzy reached across the table, squeezed Gabe on the forearm. “It’s nothing. I love you,” she said.

  Gabe slanted his eyes at her, but the tension seemed to have dissipated, somewhat.

  “Anyway. New subject. Are y’all going to go see Catfish at the WP tonight? I would, but I’ve got a dozen files to get through before tomorrow morning.”

  “You want to hear some blues?” Gabe asked Ruthie.

  Ruthie smiled. “Sure.”

  What a relief to have the evening alone with Gabe. Ruthie hadn’t realized how much tension existed between Gabe and his mom. They were close, obviously, but there was an angry center to the relationship. Funny, in Berkeley Gabe never shut up about Schwartzy. His love for her was so obvious. Ruthie had expected that in Atlanta it would be obvious, too, that she would be witness to Gabe treating his mother with abject adoration. Had expected, even, that she might be jealous of how close he and Schwartzy were. But no. It was Ruthie Gabe looked at adoringly.

  The Westside Pub—or WP, as Schwartzy called it—was a run-down little one-story shack on Howell Mill Road. Growing up, Ruthie had a friend from St. Catherine’s who lived on Howell Mill, though her house, a two-story white-columned estate near Trinity Presbyterian Church, was five miles to the north, in Buckhead proper. There were no columned ancestral homes near the WP, only the city’s waterworks, an outpost of the Atlanta Union Mission, and the Atlanta Humane Society. Ruthie was pretty sure she wouldn’t see anybody from Buckhead proper inside the bar, either. That was a relief. She did not want to have to make small talk with people who knew her from that other life, from before her world flipped upside down.

  The parking lot was full, so they parked down a side street. As Ruthie and Gabe walked, holding hands, from the car to the bar
, Ruthie glanced around furtively, sure they would soon be mugged. Gabe, wearing a plaid scarf with his Army jacket, looked completely at ease, not worried at all.

  The inside of the Westside Pub was as low-rent in appearance as the outside. There were pool tables to the left, the stage to the right, the bar straight ahead. The band—Catfish—was on break, but they had left some of their instruments onstage, including a set of spoons and an old washboard. Drunk people, mostly white, ordered shots and beer from a plump woman with pale skin and red hair whom Gabe, walking up to the bar, called to by name.

  “Eugenia,” he said. “You got any food left?”

  He turned to Ruthie. “Eugenia makes a mean chicken-fried steak, for those on her good side.”

  Eugenia flicked her eyes from the change she was counting to Gabe. She smiled. “Where you been hiding out, darlin’?”

  “California,” he said. “Don’t you remember? I’m in my final year of college out there. And thank god for that, because you can not get a decent piece of chicken-fried steak in Berkeley.”

  “Well, you cain’t get a piece of chicken-fried steak here, neither. You’re too late. You know Catfish and them bring an appetite. Wish I’d saved something for you, though. You’re too damn skinny.”

  Gabe laughed. “Eugenia, meet my girlfriend, Ruthie. She goes to school with me out in California, too, but she’s a southerner at heart.”

  Ruthie loved that Gabe introduced her as his girlfriend, but she thought it was ridiculous that he claimed her to be a southerner at heart. If anything she felt like a Jew at heart, not that she was one, but Uncle Robert and Dara, the closest people in the world to her, were. Gabe was, too, at least by blood.

  “Ain’t you been feeding this boy out in California?”

  “I’ve been trying to, believe me,” said Ruthie, with an affected southern accent. It wasn’t that she was trying to imitate Eugenia; it was just that the woman’s way of talking was contagious.

  “Well, darlin’,” said Eugenia, turning to grab an empty beer mug off the shelf behind her before holding it beneath the fountain and pulling on the tap labeled BUDWEISER. “Try harder. And get this boy on back to Georgia as soon as you can. His mama misses him, and we do, too.”

  Ruthie wanted to say something about how much she would miss Gabe if he were to leave California, but she knew better than to try to turn this conversation into anything serious. They were just talking, just shooting the shit, something that came as a relief after their tense dinner with Schwartzy.

  “Okay,” she said. And then she ordered a Bud.

  The band was great, loud and raucous, but the most fun occurred afterwards when half of the bar emptied out into the parking lot and someone started shooting off firecrackers.

  “Where am I, Alabama?” asked Ruthie.

  “You’re going to see a lot of firecrackers going off this week,” said Gabe. “Southerners get really excited about the New Year.”

  “There were no spontaneous firework shows where I grew up,” said Ruthie.

  “That’s a shame,” said Gabe, slipping his arm around her waist.

  An older man with a white beard stood next to her, holding an unopened pack of Roman candles, bound together with plastic wrap. He said something to her, but she couldn’t understand him. He had a thick accent and kept his cigarette in his mouth while he spoke.

  “Excuse me?” said Ruthie.

  He pulled out the cigarette. “You want to help me set these off?”

  He held up the Roman candles.

  “Take one,” said Gabe. “They’re fun.”

  Ruthie shrugged. “Okay.”

  The man tore open the plastic wrap and handed Ruthie the explosive.

  It was over a foot long, a red and white cardboard tube with ROMAN CANDLE printed down its side. There was a bit of tissue paper wrapped around the wick at the top.

  “Technically you’re supposed to plant this baby in the ground and light it from there, but you get more leverage if you just hold it,” the man said. He put the cigarette back in his mouth, inhaled, then released a line of smoke.

  “Damn straight,” said Gabe. “If you stick it in the ground you can’t aim at anyone.”

  Ruthie turned to look at Gabe, rolled her eyes at his joke.

  “You’re sure it’s safe for me to hold it?” Ruthie asked the man.

  “Oh yeah, it’s real safe. One of my buddies once taped together about one hundred of these things and lit them all at once. Made a Roman candle machine gun. Now that might not have been the safest thing in the world, but this sure is.”

  Gabe clapped his hands together, laughed. “Are you serious, man? That’s insane.”

  This was a new Gabe, this man who delighted in chicken-fried steak and jerry-rigged fireworks instead of Catholic mass and social justice work. Ruthie sort of liked it. Sort of liked the southern Gabe. Or maybe it was simply that she liked Gabe in general. Who knew? She was a little drunk. She had imbibed three Budweisers, plus the PBRs at the Yacht Club. She wanted to set off the firecracker in her hand. The whole thing seemed surreal, to be out in this parking lot with all of these strangers, lighting explosives in the middle of the street, the Atlanta skyline glowing in the distance.

  “So should I just light it?” she asked the man.

  “I’ll do it for you. Hold it way out in front of you, yeah, like that, arm’s length, and when you’re good and ready just give me the word.”

  Ruthie held the explosive as far in front of her as she possibly could. The night air cool against her exposed skin, she felt exhilarated, like anything could happen. Like she could take a risk and it wouldn’t blow up in her face.

  She imagined her parents, boarding the Ford Trimotor, giddy with their shared sense of adventure.

  “You ready?” the man asked.

  She said a silent prayer—of sorts—to God. Try me, she said. Just try me.

  “I’m ready.”

  The man took the cigarette from his mouth and held it against the wick of her Roman candle. There was a flash of light, and then a sizzling sound, and then she felt the force of the explosive leaving the cardboard tube. Thwump. The star shot from the tubing and traced a streak of light against the sky, ending with a pop that came sooner than Ruthie had imagined it would. Another star followed, then another, and another, and another again. Thwump. Thwump. Thwump. Thwump.

  “Now you’re an official redneck,” said Gabe, after the Roman candle released its final light.

  “I want to do it again,” she said.

  Gabe leaned into her, whispered in her ear, “That’s what you’ll be saying later tonight.”

  He wiggled his brows at her, in an exaggerated motion. She punched him on the shoulder. Told him he was a dork.

  She loved being with him.

  They left the Westside Pub at 1:00 A.M., but Ruthie wasn’t tired. It was only 10:00 California time, and besides, she was wired from the band’s exuberance, from the illegal fireworks.

  “Want to go to Krispy Kreme?” asked Gabe once they were back in Schwartzy’s old Volvo sedan.

  “Let’s drive by my parents’ house,” said Ruthie, surprising herself with the idea. “I want to show you where I grew up.”

  “Don’t you want to go during the day? When we can actually see things?”

  “No. I want to go now.”

  She was feeling charged, feeling reckless, and besides, she thought it might be easier to see the house at night, after a few drinks, with Gabe driving the car. She directed him, and though they weren’t far, she was surprised that she still knew the way.

  “This is a beautiful neighborhood,” said Gabe as he cruised down Peachtree Battle Avenue, even though in truth it was hard to make out much of anything. It was so dark, and the houses were set so far back from the street.

  “Go slow,” she said. “I don’t want to miss the turn.”

  He slowed down, was creeping along. She remembered driving this same stretch of road with Julia, the day of her parents’ funeral, w
hen Julia let her take the wheel. She saw the green street sign in the headlights, WYMBERLY WAY. It seemed strange that the street still existed, that it had not vanished as soon as she did.

  “Turn left here,” she said.

  They were on her old street, a place she had not returned to in nearly ten years. Wide lawns stretched on either side of her, each topped with a gorgeous home. If she thought about it hard enough she could remember the façade of each one, though not the insides. They had never really known their neighbors. Naomi had never really had any neighborhood friends.

  Naomi. Her mother. Her mother who was so alive and then—so quickly, so finally—was simply gone. From matter to memory. Like that.

  Ruthie felt something rising against the back of her throat. Gabe was driving so slowly, probably because he’d had too much to drink, was nervous about driving at all. It was the opposite of how Julia used to drive, used to careen, really, and yet it was as if she were back in Julia’s car, in the Saab, approaching the drive of 3225 Wymberly Way, during those months after the crash when they were still living in Atlanta, when it was Julia and not Naomi who chauffeured her to and from school. There were afternoons when somehow— how? —she would momentarily forget that it would not be her mother waiting inside to greet her; it would be her aunt Mimi instead. And though Mimi was lovely, and though she was kind, she was never enough. She could never fill the loss. Still didn’t, though that was not something Ruthie allowed herself to think about much.

  She remembered the dread feeling of waiting, waiting to lose her sister at the end of the school year, and not being able to do anything about it. She remembered, with a startling intensity, that she had been angry at her parents during that time, so angry at them for leaving instructions to split up her and Julia, and yet it had seemed so wrong to be angry at them, when they were the ones who no longer got to be alive. When they were the ones whose bodies had burned after the crash. It was so wrong that she had forced herself to stop feeling it. Yet here it was again, that forbidden anger, from all of those years back. She thought of Mr. Z, her ridiculous eighth-grade English teacher, the man who made his girl students sit in a circle on the floor and hold “powwows.” Who was upset with her for bringing in an orange instead of some meaningful memento from her past. Who warned her that whatever feelings she shoved down were going to have to come up again.