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Authors: Susan Rebecca White

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BOOK: A Soft Place to Land
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“They would have kept the windows of the convertible rolled up, even though the top was down, so Phil’s shirt wouldn’t get dirty from all of the dust kicked up on the drive.”

“They were on the highway,” said Ruthie. “It wasn’t like they were driving
through
the desert.”

“They would have had the windows rolled up anyway. To protect Mom’s hair from getting all windblown.”

Their mother, like Julia, had been a natural redhead, auburn, really. But while Julia’s hair grew in loose curls, Naomi’s was straight like Ruthie’s. Naomi, who had been self-conscious about her looks, about her long nose and the little gap between her front teeth, always said that her red hair was her best feature.

“She would have wrapped a scarf around it,” said Ruthie. “One of the silk ones she and Dad bought in Florence.”

“Right. That’s right. A Ferragamo. So they were all dressed and ready to go—no need to pack the luggage; they were coming back late that night—but just before they left the room Mom suggested that they call home, just to check on you, just to say hello.”

In fact, her parents had not called the morning of the accident, and the possibility that Naomi had considered doing so caused Ruthie’s throat to tighten, caused her to have to lay her head on Julia’s bed to account for the heaviness she suddenly felt.

“But Phil said no. If Mother Martha answered they would have to talk with her for at least ten minutes—she was so hard to get off the phone—and besides, they had spoken with you just the night before. Plus, it was already nine
A.M.,
they had a long drive ahead of them, and they did not want to waste away the morning in the hotel room. So Mom said fine, she’d call tomorrow when she could tell you all about seeing the Grand Canyon.

“Phil would have already arranged to have the rental car
dropped off at the hotel, and so they would have stepped outside the lobby doors to find the cherry red Mercedes convertible waiting for them, keys in the ignition, top already down.”

“Otherwise Dad wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to do it,” Ruthie said.

(Phil’s lack of mechanical know-how had always been a running joke between the two girls. They used to tease him mercilessly about his habit of watching
This Old House
every Saturday afternoon.

“Do you even know how to hammer a nail?” Ruthie would ask her father.

You had to be careful about teasing Phil, because if his feelings were hurt he might lash out fiercely. But he always had the same response to his daughters’ jokes about his devotion to
This Old House
.

“I need to know what to look out for when I supervise the help,” he would say, and Julia and Ruthie would groan and roll their eyes.)

“They would climb in the car, which smelled of new leather, and Phil would slip
The Eagles—Their Greatest Hits
, brought from Atlanta, just for the occasion, into the CD player. Mom would check and make sure he had his driving directions with him, and he would wave away her concern but then go ahead and pat his breast pocket to make sure the directions were there. And then they were off.”

There was not too much they could imagine about the drive to the Grand Canyon, besides the wind whipping around their parents’ hair, despite the windows of the convertible being rolled up. Neither Ruthie nor Julia had been anywhere out west besides San Francisco, so they didn’t really know what the scenery looked like. They imagined that the road was empty, the sun was big, and there were cacti everywhere.

The noise from the wind would have made it too loud for their parents to talk during the drive, but Julia imagined that Phil slipped his hand onto Naomi’s leg once they made their way out
of the city of Las Vegas and onto the open road. And both girls imagined that Phil drove way too fast, for he always sped, even when his daughters were strapped into the back of the car. Ruthie remembered one time when they were driving to Union City, Tennessee, to attend Naomi’s parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary and Phil took the car up to 100 mph. Naomi was asleep in the front seat, her head leaning against the window, but Julia, who was sitting behind Phil in the back, noticed where the needle on the speedometer was and pointed it out to Ruthie, who screamed, convinced that they were all going to die in a fiery crash.

“Phil must have driven even faster than normal to the Grand Canyon, because they arrived at Grand View Flights by two
P.M
. And we know they stopped for lunch before doing that.”

That detail had been revealed in the front-page story about the accident that the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Metro section ran. Of course, you had to read past the jump to learn that Phil and Naomi last dined on huevos rancheros at a gas station in Arizona that housed within it a breakfast counter known for good Mexican food. The owner of the gas station, Javier Martin, a white-haired man with a waxed mustache, said the couple stood out to him, and not just because they were the only folks eating.

“They just seemed real in love, is all,” Javier was quoted as saying. “Making googly eyes and touching their knees together like they was on their honeymoon.”

To Javier Martin, Ruthie and Julia’s parents must have seemed like a couple from a movie: Naomi with her vibrant red hair, her silk scarf, her linen pants and crisp white shirt; Phil with his linen shirt, Stetson hat—surely purchased sometime during the vacation, for it was mentioned twice in the newspaper article, but neither Ruthie nor Julia had ever seen it—and cherry red Mercedes.

Perhaps even Phil and Naomi were aware of the cinematic nature of their jaunt to the Grand Canyon; perhaps that was why they readily signed the pages of release forms at Grand View Flights, agreeing not to sue should anything happen to them on their flight. Perhaps the whole day felt a little unreal and so they
took a risk that they might not normally have taken, because, hell, they were on vacation, it was a beautiful day, they were dressed so elegantly: what could happen?

“You know Phil talked Mom into it,” said Julia. “You know she would have been nervous about boarding that rickety old plane, she would have suggested they just look at the canyon through a telescope, or even ride a donkey down into it. And Dad would have thrown his hands up in exasperation, said, ‘Naomi! You look for a snake under every rock.’”

This was something Phil often said to Naomi, who was a worrier like Ruthie. Or he would say, “See what I have to put up with?” when Naomi scolded him about driving too fast, or told him Julia was absolutely too old to order off the children’s menu, despite the deal, or refused to use the “nearly new” Kleenex he dug out of his pocket when Naomi sneezed, the folded halves of which were stuck suspiciously together, even though he promised he had not used it to blow his nose. He would grin at his daughters, repeating himself: “See what I have to put up with?” While everyone—Phil included—knew it was Naomi who had to put up with him.

“He might have talked her into it, but she wouldn’t have boarded the plane if she didn’t really want to do it,” said Ruthie. “She liked adventure.”

“And so they got in, waved to Dusty at the controls, his headphones already on, his eyes a little bloodshot from the six-pack of beer he had finished at his trailer earlier that day. The plane’s interior was elegant if antiquated, its wicker seats bolted to the floor. There was room for ten passengers on the plane, but there was only one other couple besides Mom and Dad on board. A childless couple in their fifties, on vacation from Canada. The rows were only one seat wide, so Mom and Phil had to hold hands across the aisle. They fastened their safety belts tightly against their laps. They waited to take off, excited. And then the engine noises intensified, and they were moving forward, picking up speed until the plane was going fast enough to lift off the ground.

“Everything was so loud around them, louder even than it had
been on the convertible ride across the desert, and then they were going up, up, up, toward the clear blue sky. And Mom would have whispered, ‘Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,’ because she always whispered that at takeoff on airplanes. And her heart would have lifted at the excitement of what she and Phil were doing, she would have felt light and free and alive, and then she would have heard a terrible noise and the plane would have shook—”

“Stop,” said Ruthie. “I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to think about the actual crash.”

But clearly Julia was feeling devilish, was feeling charged. She wanted to finish her story; she wanted to tell all its details, including the conclusion: the nosedive that ended in an explosive crash against the side of the canyon, the crash that left all five of them, the childless couple from Canada, Dusty, Phil, and Naomi, dead. To tell the story was to control it somehow.

“What did Mom think about during those last few seconds? Did she think about what would happen to us? Was she furious at Phil for pressuring her into boarding the plane? Did she try and pretend that everything still might turn out okay, that the plane might touch ground lightly, despite all evidence to the contrary? Did she pray? Did she cry? Did she and Phil kiss?”

Ruthie could not listen to her sister anymore. She banged her fists against her sister’s chest and shoulders, yelling, “Shut up, Julia. Just shut up!”

Part One
Chapter One

Spring 1993

When the call came from Grand View Flights in Arizona, Ruthie was in the kitchen fixing dinner while her grandmother—stepgrandmother, really, but she had served as Phil’s mother since he was three—was sitting in the sunporch, sipping from an Amaretto sour that Ruthie had prepared.

Ruthie loved to prepare and serve food. She had been doing it since she was a little girl and would squish Cool Whip between Nilla wafers and invite Julia to a tea party. More often than not Julia said no, preferring that the time she spent with her little sister be on her own terms. Naomi would come to Ruthie’s tea parties, when she wasn’t too busy cleaning up around the house or fixing dinner. Some Saturdays when Naomi was off getting her nails done, Ruthie was able to talk her father into joining her, though he often acted bored, and would bring the newspaper to read while she poured tea and served him Nilla sandwiches.

Mother Martha, who had a black maid named Gwen in Tennessee who prepared and served her meals, was delighted for Ruthie to fill Gwen’s place. Indeed, the meal Ruthie planned to serve—chicken breasts cooked in cream of mushroom soup, baked beef rice, and steamed broccoli with cheese—was not all that different from what Gwen would have fixed.

Using the back of a wooden spoon, Ruthie spread the soup over the skinless chicken breasts, which she had arranged in an eight-inch-square Pyrex dish. The soup was so gelatinous that when Ruthie first plopped it out of the can a ringed indentation remained around its middle. Ruthie knew from past experience that once heated the soup would loosen and turn into a yummy sauce.

The phone rang twice and then stopped. Mother Martha must have answered. That was okay. Ruthie’s parents usually called later in the evening—it was only 5:30—and all of her friends were out of town with their families, on spring-break vacations that had been planned months in advance.

Then it occurred to Ruthie that it might be her sister, Julia, calling. Julia was spending spring break with her friend Marissa Tate, at the Tates’ beach house on Pawleys Island, and had not yet phoned to tell Ruthie “hi.”

Ruthie walked toward the phone. She would rescue Julia from Mother Martha, who was notorious for never letting anyone hang up. Even if you said, “I’ve got to go; I’m going to be late” for a birthday party, ballet practice, youth group, whatever, Mother Martha would ask you a new question, would refuse to let you say good-bye.

Ruthie picked up the phone. “Julia?” she asked.

“Hang up, dear,” said Mother Martha, a little sharply. When Ruthie hesitated—was her grandmother crying?—Mother Martha said,
“Now
.

Ruthie hung up the phone with a sinking feeling. Julia must have gotten in trouble. Julia was always getting in trouble, and the problem was, her getting caught was almost always unnecessary. At least that was what Ruthie thought. Like the Saturday night that Julia came home from a cast party drunk. Had she gone straight to her room and closed the door, neither Naomi nor Phil would have bothered her. But instead she approached Ruthie’s room, waiting in the doorway while Naomi said good night. Julia pretended to read while she was waiting, but she was so tipsy she
didn’t realize that she was holding her book—
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
—upside down.

Naomi noticed.

And once Naomi noticed that, how could she not notice the fact that Julia smelled of alcohol? And so Julia was busted, grounded for two weeks, the use of her Saab limited to driving to and from school. In a way this pleased Ruthie—it meant Julia would be forced to spend more time with her—but also, it scared her. Ruthie hated for her sister to be in trouble, hated that her sister got drunk.

Ruthie couldn’t worry about Julia. She would think about dinner, about the chicken. It would take about forty-five minutes to cook, and the rice an hour, so she would put the breasts aside for a moment. She went to the refrigerator to take out a stick of butter, then to the pantry for the rice and the beef consommé. To a yellow porcelain pot her mother had bought in France Ruthie added a cup of uncooked rice, a chopped onion, the can of beef consommé, four tablespoons of butter, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Following her mother’s instructions, written in perfect script in a black-and-white-speckled notebook Naomi had filled with recipes when she was in the tenth grade, Ruthie would bake the ingredients, covered, in the oven at 350 degrees. The ingredients would meld, and an hour later the rice would be tender, rich, and buttery.

She was sliding the yellow pot into the oven when Mother Martha walked into the kitchen, her face pale and drawn. The pink rouge she wore stood out against her white skin.

“Ruthie dear,” she said.

Ruthie closed the oven door and turned to face her grandmother.

BOOK: A Soft Place to Land
13.16Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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