A Soft Place to Land: A Novel

by Susan Rebecca White

  “I’m sure that replacing the old toilet will be a good investment in the long run.”

  This was what Ruthie had learned to say to anyone in Atlanta who spoke of home renovation projects. That whatever the project was, it would be a good investment in the long run. That seemed to be what everyone wanted to hear.

  “If you go up the front stairs and turn left, you can use the one in John’s old room.”

  “That was Julia’s room,” said Ruthie.

  Evelyn Edge gave a sad smile. “Isn’t it funny how even when things change you hold on to how they once were? It’s been years since Johnnie lived at home and I still call it his room. I suppose I always will.”

  Ruthie put her wineglass down on the coffee table before rising. As she made her way out of the living room, she noticed Evelyn putting a coaster beneath it, even though it was a stemmed glass that would not sweat. Ruthie walked up the three steps that led to the entry hall, turned again, and walked up the front stairs. Running her hand along the smooth wood of the banister railing, she remembered how Julia used to dare her to slide down it. She never took Julia up on the dare. She was afraid she would topple over the wrong way and smack her head against the marble table where her father kept his antique music box that played “Frère Jacques” every time you turned the crank.

  At the top of the stairs she saw that the wall-to-wall carpeting Naomi had installed had all been removed, revealing beautiful wooden floorboards. As she turned to enter Julia’s room, she remembered how it used to be: the pale pink walls, the mounted lamps with their decorative pink metal bows, a Playboy bunny decal dangling from one of them. The wooden dresser that had held Julia’s clothes and secret things, the heavy wooden bed, the green and pink floral coverlet.

  Everything had changed. The walls were now painted kelly green. There was a pair of twin beds with plaid bedspreads, and a glassed-in case holding some sort of sports trophies. In the corner of the room was a set of free weights. Framed and hanging on the wall, centered between the two twin beds, was a blown-up photo of a boarding school campus. EPISCOPAL HIGH SCHOOL, where Johnnie must have gone, was printed at the bottom of the photo.

  Ruthie walked to the bathroom, now painted tan, pulled down her pants and underwear, and sat on the toilet, staring at the tub in front of her while she peed.

  A memory swam to the surface.

  It was in this very tub that she had once urinated, after Julia had drawn herself a warm bath. Ruthie must have been four or five, and when Julia left the room to get a clean towel from the linen closet she had climbed right in and relieved herself, just because the water looked so inviting.

  “What are you doing?” Julia had asked, when she returned, holding a fluffy, folded towel in her hands. “Why are you smiling like that?”

  Ruthie could not remember whether or not she actually told her sister she had peed—though she would have said “tinkled” at that point in her life—or whether Julia just figured it out, maybe by a shot of yellow dispersing into the water. What she remembered was how surprised she was by Julia’s angry reaction. How silly she thought it was of Julia to make her get out, drain all of the water, wipe the tub with a washcloth, and fill it back up again.

  Ruthie smiled at the memory of such innocence.

  Still sitting on the toilet, she reached for the shower curtain and pulled it back, revealing a collection of toiletries propped on the corner of the tub. A brown bottle of Crew shampoo, a green bar of Irish Spring soap, a striped can of Barbasol shaving cream, a rusty disposable razor.

  What was she doing here, peeing in a stranger’s toilet, peering at the items in a stranger’s tub? And what had her family been doing here all of those years ago, smack in the middle of Buckhead, in this grand Philip Schutze—designed house that was intended to be occupied by the likes of the Edges?

  The door swung open and for a moment she thought Evelyn was barging in on her until she realized it was just the little dog, just Shugah, nosing her way in through the crack.

  “Hey, pretty,” said Ruthie, scratching the dog’s neck underneath her thick leather collar.

  Ruthie wiped, flushed. Pulled up her pants, stood.

  This was somebody else’s house. Had been for almost twenty years. What was she trying to accomplish by using her old toilet? By comparing the way things were to how they are now? Life went on. There was nothing anyone could do about it.

  She scooped Shugah into her arms, but the dog wriggled and kicked until Ruthie put her back down on the floor. She ran the water in the sink and pumped two squirts of liquid soap into her palms. Her training as a pastry chef had made her forever vigilant about washing her hands. When she walked out of Julia/John’s old room, instead of turning to go back down the front steps, she opened the door that led to the back stairway, wanting one last look at the chair that moved up and down its metal ramp with the press of a button that looked like a doorbell.

  Except there was no chair, no ramp, not even the button. It must have been taken out. Ruthie examined the wall; it had been smoothed and sanded where the button once was.

  How many times did Alex Love make her ride that thing up and down, up and down, though Ruthie had long grown bored with it?

  She was going to become emotional if she didn’t watch out, discovering all that had been changed about her old house. And she had been gone far too long from her hostess, nearly ten minutes, much more time than it takes to use the bathroom in a ladylike way.

  She peeked very quickly into her old room—utterly different—Laura Ashley print wallpaper, four-poster bed with a white eyelet bedspread, silk curtains, jute rug, photos from sorority events tacked to the pink-framed corkboard in the corner of the room.

  Though she really needed to go back down, Ruthie quickly walked over to the corkboard so she could see which sorority Evelyn Edge’s daughter had been in. It was a good one, she was sure. Girls from this world were almost always invited to join the good ones. She studied a picture of four tall blondes, all wearing black tights and leotards, bright toothy smiles on each of their faces. The caption below the picture read: “Delta Delta Delta, Delta Underground.”

  Just like Mimi.

  Ruthie hurried out of the room and down the stairs, trying not to feel a ping of melancholy over the absence of the antique grandfather clock ticking time away in the downstairs hallway. Phil had loved that clock, had treated it like a treasured son. He used to explain to Ruthie in detail how to care for it, which included winding it every eight days. In the will Phil had left the clock to his first grandchild. And since at the time of his death no such grandchild existed—still didn’t—the estate lawyer decided to sell it at auction, along with most of Phil’s other antiques. Mimi considered buying it, but it would have overwhelmed her flat and at the time she had no clients interested in an eighteen-thousand-dollar clock.

  The money received from its sale had gone directly into Ruthie and Julia’s trust. As had the money from the sale of the house, once the considerable mortgage was paid off.

  Ruthie stepped back into the living room. Evelyn Edge was sitting same as before, ankles crossed, though her wineglass, with its “country club pour,” was now empty.

  “I thought you might have gotten lost up there,” she said. “But then I remembered that you know your way around.”

  Ruthie blushed as she sat back down on the sofa. “I’m sorry. There are so many memories here. It’s hard not to get pulled in.”

  “Your parents’ marriage, it was the second time for each of them, yes?”

  Ruthie nodded yes, surprised that Evelyn Edge remembered this detail about Phil and Naomi.

  “You have a half sister, Julia, who was your mother’s biological child?”

  How shiny Evelyn’s eyes had become.

  “I do. I’m impressed that you know all of this.”

  Actually, she was more alarmed than impressed. Hadn’t Evelyn only minutes earlier had trouble remembering Phil’s name? Evelyn Edge was morphing into a different person, rig
ht in front of Ruthie’s eyes. She was smiling but trying not to smile. She looked like a mischievous child, delighted by her own naughtiness.

  “Don’t be alarmed. It’s simply that I found some of your mother’s personal papers a few years ago. There’s a little hiding place in the closet of the master bedroom. A secret door that gives access to a hidden storage place. So discreet it took me years to notice. It’s for storing fine jewelry, I suppose, but it also works for hiding things you don’t want others to read or see. Your mother kept a stack of letters back there, along with journals and some photographs. Some of the photos might be a little embarrassing for you to look at, dear, but remember, she was a woman before she ever became a mother.”

  Evelyn Edge had a hidden stash of letters and journals written by her mother? Ruthie reached for her wineglass. She was not sure, but it didn’t seem as full as it had been when she left it with Evelyn.

  “Did you read my mom’s letters and journals?” she asked.

  “Wouldn’t you have?” asked Evelyn, leaning back in her chair, amused.

  Of course she would have. It was human nature—wasn’t it—to be curious about others.

  “Do you still have them?”

  Evelyn Edge nodded, her eyes glinting.

  Letters and journals of her mother’s. And pictures, too. Ruthie thought she knew what the pictures might be like. She had found a sexy one once of Naomi, a Polaroid that Phil must have shot. In the picture Naomi was staring at the camera from the bathtub, looking a bit annoyed. The lower half of her body was covered by bubbles, but her breasts were exposed. Without a bra they hung heavy, and her nipples looked like raspberries.

  Ruthie had taken the photo from her mother’s jewelry box where she was poking around, and held it in front of Naomi, who was trying on clothes in front of the full-length mirror.

  “What’s this?” Ruthie had demanded.

  “Give me that,” said Naomi, snatching the picture out of her hand. “That’s nothing. That’s nothing for you to see.”

  But of course it had been something. Back then Ruthie thought it was further proof that her parents were strange and other. Alex Love, she was sure, never found pictures of her mother naked in the bathtub. But now Ruthie considered it further proof of her parents’ love, hard evidence of their unabated lust for each other, even after so many years of marriage. Astonishing, really. How their desire never seemed to fade. After only four years of marriage it was difficult to remember the time when her passion for Gabe had felt like an addiction, so much had it mellowed. And while Robert and Mimi mostly got along, their relationship seemed to be grounded in compatibility, not passion.

  In truth, Ruthie had never known anyone who had a long-term relationship that matched the romantic intensity of her parents’ feelings for each other. It occurred to her that perhaps her parents’ romance set too high a bar. For her own marriage or for anyone’s marriage. Phil and Naomi’s relationship had been a special thing, and perhaps she should treat it as that, a rare bird not often sighted.

  “Your mother’s letters changed my life,” said Evelyn.

  “They did?”

  “Your mother was a brave woman. Brave and selfish, I’d venture to say. How hard it is to be selfish as a woman! At least it was when I was young. Today that’s all you young women know how to be, isn’t it?”

  Ruthie ignored the undeserved jab. What did Evelyn Edge know of Ruthie’s life? Of her dedication to her job, her craft? Of her dedication to her husband, despite the fact that their relationship had been a struggle this past year, ever since Gabe had become obsessed with having a child?

  “How did my mother’s letters change your life?”

  “Before I read her letters, Spencer was the only person I’d ever slept with.”

  Ruthie couldn’t help herself; she giggled. And not because what Evelyn said was amusing—though it was, a little. It was just the way she said it, so grave, as if she were giving Ruthie the nuclear code.

  Evelyn looked hurt.

  “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, an
d 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.)