Enduring (62 page)

Latha gives her to take home (meaning the Madewell place) some clothes, some paperback books, two packages of spaghetti noodles, and a young calico kitten, who will ride to its new home atop Robin’s laden backpack.

The two women hug, and Latha explains to her the litany of “stay more,” the drawn-out ritual of polite leave-taking, invitations and counter-invitations, and the two women perform these warmly. Robin has written a nice note for her mother, which Latha will mail, but must promise never to reveal to anyone where Robin is. Then she is gone, and for the first time in memory Latha feels lonely.

Two years later—or is it three? her memory is not failing but her sense of the irrelevance of time is strengthening—Latha hears a commotion among her cats and her dogs, who are barking like mad, and she looks out the window to see an expensive foreign-made “Sports Utility Vehicle,” with a lone man sitting in it. She goes out to find what he’s there for, and he steps out of the SUV to greet her. “Howdy, Miz Latha,” he says bashfully, and she instantly recognizes him, although he’d only been twelve the last time she saw him and he must be in his mid-forties now.

“Lord have mercy,” she says. “Is that
you
, Ad Madewell?”

“Yes’m,” he says. “You’re sure looking pretty good.”

She holds out her arms and embraces him, although she had never done that to the twelve-year-old boy. She invites him to dinner, and he tells her how he had never got used to people calling the noon meal “lunch.” He provides from his SUV a splendid bottle of a wine called Stag’s Leap Cabernet, and tells her the long story of how he has made his fortune in the wine cooperage business. But he has taken an early retirement and would like to revisit the old haunts of his childhood. He has had enough of California. “There’s probably nothing left of the old home place up on Madewell Mountain, but it’s still home to me,” he says.

She has decided, from the moment she first saw him, that she will tell him nothing about Robin. She observes, “You must’ve really left a part of yourself up there.”

“I sure did, ma’am,” he says.

Nor will she tell him anything about the idea of “
in-habits
.” All she says is, “You’uns be sure to come and visit me whenever you can.” She will just leave him to wonder why she uses the plural rather than the singular.

Chapter forty-nine

I
t seems the only times she gets out of the house, other than going to her vegetable garden or fishing in Banty Creek (she is convinced that the commercial fish has yet to be frozen which tastes as good as fresh-caught “wild” fish), are when she attends somebody’s funeral. One by one all the old-timers of Stay More die off. One by one the others have said to her, at someone else’s funeral, “Well, Latha, I reckon you’ll be the next to go,” but one by one they have been the next, and the next, and the next, until she is the only old-timer still living in Swains Creek Township. Does she envy the departed? Not at all. Does she miss them? A little, sometimes, when she puts her mind to it, but she doesn’t usually put her mind to it.

She has to leave town to attend Rindy’s funeral. Dorinda Whitter Tuttle, the bosom pal of her childhood, living for years in the village called Pettigrew, some fifty-odd miles southwest of Stay More, has battled cancer for years until she has succumbed to it. Latha can’t think of a good excuse for not attending the funeral. Her grandson Vernon is driving to Fayetteville on business, so she hitches a ride with him, asks him if he wouldn’t mind stopping in a Fayetteville card shop and buying her a supply of condolence cards, enough to last for years, and then when he drops her off in Pettigrew she discovers that Rindy’s daughter, named Latha after her best friend, will be happy to give her a ride home to Stay More, which she has never seen but always wanted to take a look at. Latha Tuttle Simpson at the age of seventy bears no resemblance to what Latha looked like at the age of seventy, and even seems older than Latha does now at an age approaching one hundred, and is not much better than Latha at driving a car, which is to say she can scarcely drive at all. But she gets Latha safely home. They don’t talk much en route, but Latha has one question: “Did your mother ever say anything about Nail Chism to you?” Latha Tuttle Simpson’s hearing is impaired, and Latha has to repeat the question.

“Was he one of her beaux?” the other Latha asks.

“No, he was a man who was wrongfully sent to the penitentiary because of her.”

“Law, me,” the other Latha remarks. “You’d think she’d of tole me something about that, wouldn’t you? But no, she never said no word about no Nail Chism.” She will shake her head at the mild wonder of it.

In time, Vernon visits his grandmother and gives her what he calls “a lifetime supply” of assorted cards of sympathy, which, as it will turn out, do not last her a lifetime. Vernon informs his grandmother that he has decided to run for governor of the state of Arkansas, following in the footsteps of his ancestor, Jacob Ingledew. Why on earth would he want to do that? He has always been so devoted to intellectual pursuits and scientific pursuits and the acquisition of useless knowledge. Because, he says, he has investigated just about every field of human endeavor except politics, and now it is time to take a shot at politics. Latha shakes her head in wonder at the idea, but assures him that she will vote for him.

Vernon also tells her of a “conspiracy,” of sorts. Does Latha remember Sharon’s friend Ekaterina? Of course. Well, Ekaterina has become fabulously famous and wealthy from the sales of her novels, and has taken over the entire penthouse floor of the old Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs. But her fame has become too much for her. She can’t work any more because of the constant publicity and fan mail. She has decided that the only way to escape from the deluge is to have herself “killed.” With the help of Vernon and Sharon and Dawny and a very few other conspirators, she is going to stage her “assassination,” and then go into permanent hiding as a resident of the Jacob Ingledew house. Would Latha cooperate in the deception? Latha is delighted, because Ekaterina was the most interesting woman she’d ever known.

Latha is pleased that Ekaterina does nothing to the exterior of the old Jacob Ingledew house. It will always look as it always has, its clapboards bare of paint, dust-colored by the dust of the road. But Ekaterina spends a small fortune to fix up the interior of the house, beginning with the patching of all the holes that Larry had shot into it, and extending to the latest in pushbutton lighting and conveniences and gadgetry. George Dinsmore is in charge of secretly transferring all the contents of Ekaterina’s penthouse apartment in Eureka Springs to her new home in Stay More. For Ekaterina’s house-warming the first person she invites is Latha. And a few others: Day and Diana, Vernon and Jelena, Larry and Sharon, Dawny and Kim, and George Dinsmore. Champagne flows. Everyone gets a little tipsy and then they all solemnly take a vow to tell no one that the inhabitant of the house is the same Ekaterina Dadeshkeliani who under the nom de plume of V. Kelian has written many bestsellers. Ekaterina will never use that name again. She shows Latha a wall of her house that has been decorated with framed magazine and newspaper clippings about the murder of V. Kelian. Latha, smiling, tries to recall the last time she had to keep a secret. It must have been way back when she kept from Sonora the secret that she was her mother.

Latha visits Ekaterina often, and becomes like a mother to her. It is from Ekaterina, not from Dawny himself, that Latha learns the reason Dawny has not been coming around: he loves Latha so much, and always has, and always will, that it gives him physical pain to be in her presence, which explains why he grimaced when he gave her a mild hug and a kiss on the cheek when he met her at Ekaterina’s house-warming. “Of course I’ve read all the novels he’s written about you,” Ekaterina says to Latha, “so I can easily imagine why he’d feel that way. But you mustn’t let it lead you to believe that he holds any ill will whatsoever against you. Quite the contrary. He worships you, and always will.”

Not long afterwards, Ekaterina is also the hostess for a lavish party in honor of Latha’s centennial. Again the champagne flows freely, and again all their important friends are there, as well as all the remaining inhabitants of Stay More and its environs. Dawny does not appear, but Latha understands, and she is happy with a birthday present he has sent her, a book called
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by some Latin American novelist. She will greatly enjoy reading it, and will note that Pilar Ternera, an exciting courtesan of the town of Macondo, Colombia’s Stay More, lived to be over one hundred and forty-two years old. Latha chuckles with the realization that she will easily surpass that.

George Dinsmore, who is even more solicitous of Latha’s welfare than her grandson Vernon, will protect her from assorted newspaper reporters and television anchors who want to interview her and ask her for the secrets of her longevity. A good thing, because she hasn’t paused to consider what if any secrets she possesses, other than the secret of Ekaterina’s famous pen name. She has never smoked, she drinks in moderation, preferably champagne on such occasions as this, she gets plenty of exercise, she still goes fishing now and then, she loves life and she tries not to dwell upon the faded glory of Stay More.

If a note of magic realism is needed, Latha is not surprised to discover that all of her cats and dogs gather in the dogtrot (and/or cat-trot) of her house and sing “Happy Birthday” to her. She has no human witnesses, however, so if anyone would like to accuse her of senility, they are free to hold whatever beliefs they like.

The only “interview” she will grant, for now, is with a handsome woman named Lydia Caple, who is Vernon’s “media manager” or press secretary in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor. The woman appears on foot one day, reminding her of her previous visitor, Robin. Of course she comments on the great number of cats and dogs about the premises but instead of asking her “Why so many?” she answers it, “You’ve got plenty of company, haven’t you?” and Latha says, “Not more than I can handle.” Lydia Caple admits that she has a half dozen cats herself but they are more than she can handle.

Lydia broaches the topic of a human-interest story about Latha, with an interview and a photographer, to help Vernon’s campaign for governor. Latha answers, “Miss Caple, whatever that boy Vernon does has always been okay with me, but when it comes to his wits and his ways and his twists, he takes after his momma, my daughter Sonora, and I’d just as soon not have anybody looking at me as if I had anything to do with it.”

The woman seems to know a lot about Sonora, as if she’d asked Vernon about his mother. She asks, “What about his daddy?” Did Vernon inherit any of his character or features?”

“You haven’t met Hank Ingledew?” Latha asks, surprised.

“I haven’t been aware he existed,” Lydia says. “Vernon hasn’t talked about him.”

“I’m sorry to say my son-in-law and I don’t visit, but I reckon that’s as much my fault as his,” Latha says.

In time Latha will come to know all of the campaign staff of Vernon, who has spared no expense in hiring a corps of professionals. For the next several months, until the primary balloting, and then for another several months until the election, Stay More becomes a busy town again, and Ekaterina complains that some of the visitors have offered her money to put them up for the night, or the week, or the month. Latha is sorry for her, that she has gone to such pains to obliterate her existence in order to achieve some privacy, but then has had that privacy invaded, although none of the visitors, including Vernon’s staff of professionals, ever discovers that the lady living in the Governor Jacob Ingledew house is the legendary novelist V. Kelian.

Ekaterina comes to relax her restrictions about visitors in the case of a woman and a man from Oklahoma, both Native Americans, because they happen to be Osage Indians, the original inhabitants of Stay More (after the Bluff-Dwellers), and V. Kelian has written a nonfiction book called
The Dawn of the Osage
. They are not a couple. The woman is young, beautiful, tall (like all the Osage), and has inherited untold amounts of Oklahoma oil money. Her name is Juliana Heartstays. The man is just as young but much taller, much bigger, in fact positively huge, but not with a menacing mien. He is very courteous and his name is Thomas Bending Bear. He is apparently Miss Heartstays’ bodyguard, chauffeur and general handyman. Latha learns from Ekaterina that they have come to Stay More with the express purpose of obliterating all of the Ingledews, who descend from the Jacob Ingledew who had supposedly driven away the original Osages, and who had impregnated his Osage friend Fanshaw’s squaw, who was the ancestress of both Juliana and Bending Bear. In time, the visiting Osage pair are able to learn to their satisfaction, and with the help of Jacob Ingledew’s journals, that Jacob had not actually raped Fanshaw’s squaw, as they had believed for generations, but rather that he impregnated her with Fanshaw’s consent and with the squaw’s joyful cooperation. But having learned this, Juliana and her major domo do not leave. In time, Latha will watch with fascination as Bending Bear, with the help of George Dinsmore, builds a double-hut beehive basketry dwelling in the same spot where supposedly Fanshaw had had his dwelling when he met Jacob Ingledew, and, later in time, Latha will watch the erection across the creek of a full-blown modern mansion in the same style for Juliana, who falls in love with Vernon and complicates his run for governor and, later still, his years in the governor’s mansion in Little Rock. Latha knows that somehow Dawny will find out about all of this and use it in a future book of his, and she decides just to wait and read the book instead of trying to keep up with all of the things that are happening in Stay More, which stops being a ghost town for the duration of Vernon’s campaign and governorship.

In fact, there are so many strangers coming around that Latha decides to withdraw a bit from the world. With the help of George and of Bending Bear, a “two-spirit” or “man-woman” who takes a great liking to her and remains her faithful friend for the rest of his life, Latha contrives to make her double-pen dogtrot house inaccessible to autos, the roadway itself planted with seedlings of pine and oak which will in time grow to a size sufficient to keep out any traffic except foot travel along a path known only to Latha—and to Bending Bear, who, after Vernon has gone to the governor’s mansion in Little Rock, will assume Vernon’s regular habits of bringing to Latha what few staples she needs, primarily cat food and dog food. She uses this path to visit her mailbox at the spot where the path empties into what is left of the main road to Stay More. Her house thus becomes hidden to all the world except those few like Bending Bear and George and of course Sharon, who still come to visit her. Jelena also visits, at least once for sympathy or advice on the fact that Vernon has impregnated Juliana. This is all so complicated that only Dawny can make eventual sense out of it, but even he, Latha will conclude after reading that novel, does not know how to deal with the fact that Vernon is not going to be the last of the Ingledews after all, although the boy when he is born is not given the Ingledew name but an Osage name not directly translatable into English but which his parents will shorten to “Conundrum,” further shortened by his mother to Con and by his father to Drum, the name by which Latha will call him all the years of his life, as he becomes devoted to her as no one but Dawny has ever been devoted to her. Drum has red hair but resembles his mother much more than his father, and there is scarcely any Ingledew in him, so that those who prefer to believe that Vernon was indeed the last of the Ingledews are perfectly free to go on thinking that. Vernon will never abandon Jelena. But Juliana will never abandon Stay More. We will realize that we have employed the future tense over twenty times already in this chapter, as if eager to get to that tense in which nothing ever comes to an end, so we will decide that we might as well make the tense shift official as of now. We will be forgiven, first by Sharon whose handiwork this narrative is, and eventually by Dawny, who will seem to be desperately tugging at the future tense to save us all.