Final Rights (11 page)

NINETEEN

2004

Asheville has been a
traveler’s destination throughout its history. It was originally the ancestral
homeland of the Cherokee Indians; their footpaths crisscrossed the area. Those
trails slowly grew into bigger crossroads as the white settlers arrived, and
those new inhabitants attracted traveling tradesmen who came to barter pots,
pans, knives, sugar and other hard-to-get-supplies for the deer, bear and
beaver furs available from the local mountaineers.

The town had grown at a leisurely pace until
the late 1800s when George Vanderbilt made his first visit. In addition to his
French-inspired mansion, he built a village to house his craftsmen and
supervisors and a church for the community.

Forest Glen Manor joined
the varied accommodations that sprang up in the early 20th century to serve the
many travelers to the city. Tate recognized it as one of the nicer ones. It had
been converted to a retirement center in the 1970s.

Besides a collection of
small buildings set among the rolling slopes on a broad expanse of land on
Hendersonville Highway, the grounds held several ponds and the landscaping
accented the gentle ridges and well-worn, paved walkways winding through the
four acres that housed the complex. Tate imagined it had been quite successful
back in the heyday of cross country traveling, when automobiles were the
conveyance of choice by families from across the continent. It enjoyed a
desirable location, on a major thoroughfare and within a short distance from
the Biltmore Estate, which had been opened to the public in the aftermath of
the Great Depression.

Tate parked as close as
she could to the entrance, grumbling about the number of empty handicapped
spaces holding the choice locations. She felt a bit ridiculous for feeling this
way, especially given the facility’s status as a retirement home. But it always
annoyed her to see dozens of rarely filled spaces designated for handicapped
parking in all the parking lots in the world, it seemed. She laughed at herself
as she approached the reception desk.

“Afternoon, honey. How can I help you?” Tate
blanched at the unwarranted familiarity even though the woman’s open smile
signaled her eagerness to be helpful. Tate asked to see Leland Howard.

“Mr. Howard?” asked the receptionist.

“Yes, Leland Howard.”

“Are you a relative?”

That’s quite nosey
of her.
Tate felt her irritation building. “Do I have to be in order to see him?” she
challenged.

“Oh, well . . . excuse
me. No. No you don’t have to be.” The warmth in the woman’s voice disappeared,
replaced by a cold and clipped response. “I’ll just get someone to take you to
him.” The receptionist scowled at Tate.

Serves her right.
Tate sank into one of the worn chairs in
the lobby.
Why do people
have to ask such dumb questions?

And why am I being
so bitchy?
She could feel the old Tate pushing her way to the surface, the Tate
easily angered by the behavior of others when that behavior clearly had little
or nothing to do with her.
I must watch that.

The receptionist picked up the phone and
dialed the extension in the Common room. “Someone here to see Mr. Howard,” she
said. “No, it’s not a relative. I don’t know who she is. She wouldn’t say.”
Tate heard the sarcasm in the woman’s voice, confirming she had been
confrontational.
Clearly I
still have a lot to learn about Southern charm and conventions.

“Ma’am,” called the nurse who entered the
lobby moments later. “You’re here to see Mr. Howard?”

“Yes.” Tate rose and as
she passed the receptionist, she stopped and said, “Look, I’m sorry for being
rude. I shouldn’t have acted like I did.” The receptionist nodded grudgingly,
clearly not willing to forgive. Tate bent close to her and said, “I’ve been
learning about Mr. Howard’s work, and I’m just here to meet the man who is
responsible for so many beautiful things.”

The receptionist softened. “Oh yes, he is
very talented, isn’t he? And he’s such a love. It’s so sad he never gets
visitors, but no one’s left anymore. He’ll be glad to see you.”

Tate followed the nurse
into a large room filled with light from the expansive windows running the full
length of the back wall. About a dozen people sat at small tables throughout
the remarkably quiet room. No one there seemed willing to laugh out loud or
speak in a full voice though many joined in on hushed conversations. Card players
occupied two tables, one group engaged in a game of Hearts and the other in
what looked to Tate like Hand and Foot.
I wonder . . . that’s a pretty complicated game for
old people.
She chuckled at her own stereotypical thinking.

Hand and Foot, a derivative of Pinochle,
required a great deal of strategy to play successfully. With the large number
of cards a player could be holding, it also required some physical dexterity
that Tate thought could be difficult for old hands stiffened with arthritis.
The four players involved in this game had card holders to deal with that
problem.

“He’s over here,” said
the nurse. Tate turned away from the card game. All the residents in the room
looked clean and well groomed. Even those in wheelchairs appeared well taken
care of.

I
n the far
corner, Tate saw an old man hunched over a rectangular folding table filled
with various chisels and pieces of wood—beautiful wood, not the cheap fragments
of pine Tate would have expected to see in an arts and crafts room in a
retirement home. Even from a distance, she recognized some cherry and ambrosia
maple. As she approached Leland, he focused on her with eyes of the softest
blue she had ever seen. They sparkled, yet reflected an ancient sadness.

“Mr. Howard,” said the nurse. “You have a
visitor.” Tate stopped beside Leland Howard and looked into the face of a man
who, despite all he had lost, peered up at her with hope and curiosity.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Mr. Howard.
My name is Tate Marlowe.”

“Do I know you?” Leland
searched her face hopefully.

“No, we haven’t met before. I’ve been
learning about your work, and I’ve seen the old house you own on Chestnut
Street.”

Tate saw pain hijack
Leland’s whole being as he took in what she said. He turned away, shutting her
out, the light dimming in the sparkling blue eyes.

“Oh, Mr. Howard. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean
to upset you.”

He picked up the wood he had been carving
and turned it in his hands, inspecting it closely and humming quietly.

What did I do wrong? I shouldn’t have
jumped right in like that. Now he’ll never talk to me. Too abrupt.

Tate’s visit had aroused the curiosity of
the Forest Glen staff, one of whom hovered nearby eavesdropping on their
conversation. As Tate stood in perplexed silence, one of the aides motioned to
her.

“He doesn’t talk about his past. I think he
has a lot of bad memories and you may have stirred them up.”

“I just wanted to meet him. I have so many
questions, and I think he could answer them, but I never intended to cause him
any pain.”

“Well, he can be talkative and I’m sure he’d
like to have a visitor now and again. We can’t provide each of our guests as
much personal attention as they’d like. Give him some time, then come back and
try again.”

“Do you think he’ll
give me another chance? I can be a bit of a bull in a china shop, if you know
what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know.” The
woman smiled at Tate and gave her a wink. Obviously the word had spread quickly
about her encounter with the receptionist.

“Oh. Well . . . I guess
I have more amends to make then.”

“Don’t fret about it.
We’re happy to have someone take an interest in Mr. Leland. He’s such a
darlin’. His sadness runs real deep, and we’d all like to see it lifted a bit.”

“Do you think he might talk to me if I came
back in a couple of days? Or maybe tomorrow?”

“Well, he loves to show off his woodworking.
He makes wonderful little boxes with hiding places in them. Maybe you could
start there. And I think he’d be even more inclined to talk to you if you’d
bring along his favorite treat—peanut butter cookies. But he only likes the
homemade kind, and he can definitely tell the difference. For an old man, his
taste buds are in remarkably good shape!”

Tate left Forest Glen and spent the rest of
the afternoon looking for instructions online and getting the ingredients
necessary to make peanut butter cookies. She fought the urge to experiment with
some of the updated recipes she found, opting for the original, simple version
that harkened back to the days when people—when she—did not worry so much about
things like high cholesterol, glycemic index and expanding waistlines.

These were my
favorites when I was a kid. Sitting in the sun on the back porch with peanut
butter cookies right out of the oven and a big glass of milk—that was Heaven!

Some of Tate’s childhood memories remained
crystal clear even after many decades, and often the most pronounced ones
involved food. Her mother had taught Tate much of what she knew about cooking,
and though Tate’s diet had changed significantly over her lifetime, the skills
she learned in her earliest years, standing on a stool beside her mother at the
kitchen stove, still served her well now.

She had not baked
cookies in ages. She couldn’t remember the last time, but she could remember
the first. She was about 5, and her mother was in a good mood. They pulled out
the tattered recipe handed down from Tate’s great-grandmother, scrawled on
lined note paper in a spidery script. Then came the sugar, flour, eggs, peanut
butter and the rest, which they mixed into a sticky, sweet dough. Tate rolled
it into little balls between the palms of her tiny hands and then flattened the
balls out by making crisscrosses in the top using a fork. She licked the stuff
off her fingers and scooped up the leftover dough from the bowl, gobbling it
down, too.

Her mother hugged her. They giggled. They
made white spots on each other’s noses with flour-dipped fingers. Easy
laughter, sun-filled kitchen, chewy cookies, fleeting joy. Children do not
forget moments like this, especially when they occur so rarely.

Tate savored this memory the next morning as
she prepared cookies to take to Forest Glen. She baked three dozen, some
crunchy and some chewy, sealed them up in plastic wrap and again set out on her
quest for information.

TWENTY

1954

Rita
Marie Thornton provided proof of the complexity of the debate regarding nature
versus nurture. Did her problematic behavior as a child result from her genetic
heritage or the circumstances of her family life? A powerful argument could be
made for either side, and such debates took place frequently in the principals’
offices and teachers’ lounges of the various schools she attended in the many
towns her family migrated through during her tumultuous formative years.

She arrived in Asheville in 1952 at the age
of 15. With bad skin and limp hair, popularity proved elusive for Rita. But she
now had new weapons. Her approaching womanhood brought with it the transition
from skinny beanpole to voluptuous femininity, complete with firm full breasts,
rounded hips and a bad attitude. She embodied the definition of a girl from the
wrong side of the tracks, and she embraced her status with enthusiasm.

Her clothing consisted mainly of cheap
chemise dresses cinched in tight at the waist and worn shorter than the
fashionable length of the day to show off her shapely legs. Occasionally she
added a tight cardigan buttoned to just under her breasts, and she always
sported an abundance of rhinestone jewelry from the 5 & 10 cent store.

She gained just the kind of attention she
wanted. The bad boys began lining up, and within two months of her arrival,
Rita had her pick of them.

Although she had no real
friends to speak of, Rita’s social calendar kept her busy every day and
evening. She attended school sporadically, preferring to hang out under the
bleachers with the greasers and smoke Lucky Strikes. The shallowness of her
existence never occurred to Rita. She cared not who she dated so long as she
had a boy on her arm every night and something fun to do every weekend. Then
she met Clay Howard.

Almost ten years her senior, she considered
him the sexiest man she had ever seen. From the first time she laid eyes on
him, she set out to bed him. She put her hips in motion and sashayed across his
path. He pretended not to notice her the first time or any of the many times in
the following week she made it a point to be in his presence. Then one day she
caught him giving her a sidelong glance as she passed.

“Hey there, handsome,”
she cooed, acting as grown up as possible for a 15-year-old. Clay had that unmistakable
look of interest in his eye, so she pushed forward. “Why don’t you buy me a
pop?” Rita asked.

“What’s a pop, little girl?” Clay tried to
cover his confusion with swagger.

Rita’s insecurity raged to the surface. She
knew they called it “coke” down here. “Pop” had slipped out, an old habit. She
pulled in her tummy, threw her shoulders back to make her budding breasts more
prominent and stared Clay straight in the eyes.

“Oh, that’s right. You
rebels
call it ‘coke’ don’t
you? Guess I figured a smart guy like you would know what a pop is.”

Clay surveyed her up and down. Slow.
Deliberate. “Oh, I know what it is all right,” he announced, his voice smooth
and silky.

Rita blushed and broke out in a fine sweat
from ankles to hairline. But she never took her eyes off Clay.

“Now that we know what we’re both talkin’
about, you gonna buy me one or not?”

“Nah,” said Clay. “You’re jail bait for a
guy like me.” He chuckled and his perfect mouth curled into a sly grin. Rita
felt herself melting, but she maintained her confident tone.

“Really? Jail bait is a good thing, ain’t
it?”

“Not unless a man wants to go to jail,”
quipped Clay. “I’ve been there, and it’s not the place for me.”

“Then we’ll have to be
careful not to get caught.” Rita sauntered down the street, leaving him to
watch every movement of her arms, her hips and her long, slender legs. Now that
she had his attention, she would take her time reeling him in.

Four months later, Clay made it clear he had
no intention of marrying Rita in spite of her pregnancy. So it came as a big
surprise to Rita when his parents, whom she had met on a couple of occasions,
invited her to dinner and gave her gifts for the child she carried. They made
it known they cared about her and wanted to be a part of her life and the baby’s
life, no matter what their no-account son chose to do.