by Tena Frank
Final Rights
A Novel
Tena Frank
Grateful Steps
Asheville, North Carolina
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Grateful Steps Foundation
159 South Lexington Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801
Copyright © 2014 by Tena Frank
Library of Congress Control Number 2014916294
Frank, Tena
Final Rights
Photograph of the author is by Murphy Funkhouser Capps,
Kudzu Branding Co. Asheville, NC.
Photograph of the house on the cover is the Snead-Adams House, used with permission from the North Carolina Collection, Pack Memorial Library, Asheville, NC. The Photoshop treatment of the photo is by Cheri Britton.
ISBN
978-1-935130-84-0 Paperback
Printed at Lightning Source
first edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission from the author.
www.gratefulsteps.org
To Linda, who taught me the joy of learning
1962
He’s prob’ly gonna kill me. This one thought raced a tight track through Ellie’s mind as she huddled in the corner of her bedroom. She hoped her ferocity would come when the moment arrived, but she knew she lacked the physical strength to withstand the fury raging in the living room once it reached her. The destruction of her world came to her in sounds—furniture cracking like kindling, bric-a-brac smashing to the floor, potted plants shattering against the walls.
Maybe I can’t save myself, but I will protect the girl. Ellie’s determination cemented into resolve and she wrapped her arms around her small body to quell her trembling. She went to the quiet place inside herself, the place that had always been her refuge, her salvation. She hunkered down into it and rested for a bit, creating a cocoon of safety where she could think and plan. She could not save herself, she knew that, but she could and would take care of the girl. Just before the bedroom door flew open, Ellie tucked a quickly scribbled note under the pillow, then stood up and faced the inevitable.
“Where is it?”
“It’s for the girl. You’ll never get it. I swear you’ll never get it.”
These words came from her depths, and Ellie uttered them with conviction and forcefulness. She liked the sound of them. She felt invincible in that moment even as the blow to her chest sent her crashing to the floor.
She looked up at the face she had known so well for so long but no longer recognized it. She saw a beast there now, inhabiting the body of the son she had once loved fiercely. Only repetitive, devastating disappointments and overwhelming grief had finally broken the bonds created by her love.
The final kick to Ellie’s midsection broke a rib, which punctured the atrium of her heart. She spent the final moments of her life in the arms of her husband, extracting from him a promise he would never keep.
ONE
2004
Tate Marlowe huffed her way along the street, barely aware of her surroundings. She jogged until the stitch in her side forced her to slow to a walk. Sometimes the walk slowed to a near-crawl, but she did not stop. Once she got her breath back, she jogged again, determined to quell the anger pulsing through her body. She had a choice, work it out or give into it. Go on a tirade against the unknown creeps who had egged her truck the night before, or push to her physical limits until the adrenaline rush subsided and she could think clearly again.
An hour earlier, Tate had stepped out onto her small porch, breathed in the clean air and stretched out her sore muscles. The warm morning sun and crisp, dry air held the promise of a beautiful day. Tate loved this weather. Last week had been cold and damp, but now late fall ruled, and she looked forward to the day ahead.
Her mood had taken a detour as she headed down the cobbled walk and saw the mess awaiting her. The day after Halloween, and her truck dripped with congealed egg snot. Several garbage cans lay on their sides along her block and the obligatory toilet paper streamers hung from trees just down the street. Miraculously, her motorcycle, parked behind her truck where it had been languishing for over a year, seemed to have escaped all harm.
At least there’s always good news along with the bad. Maybe it was just a typical Halloween prank. Maybe it wasn’t aimed at me specifically. Tate wished that were true, but she knew better. These childish pranks could easily be blamed on a bunch of recalcitrant teenagers, but it seemed equally as likely to Tate that she had been targeted by some disgruntled neighbor.
She had moved to Asheville, North Carolina, the previous year and purchased two neighboring duplexes on the east side of Broadway, across from Montford, one of the city’s most beautiful historical districts. Ever since she had started renovating one of the rental units she owned, her For Rent signs routinely disappeared within hours of being posted. The culprit even took down signs from her private property. Obviously, someone was determined to thwart her efforts to find new tenants for the remodeled apartment.
Rather than focusing on cleaning the gunk off her truck, Tate had changed into her walking shoes and headed into Montford. Intent on working off her irritation and preoccupied with who might be targeting her, she had strayed into an unfamiliar part of the neighborhood.
“I don’t care what they think. It’s my property and I’ll do what I damn well please with it.” Tate exhaled her declarations along with her breath as she propelled herself past the elegant homes gracing the street lined with towering trees dressed in late-fall color. “They’ll just have to adjust.”
The stabbing pain in her left side finally forced Tate to stop. She stood hunched over, hands on knees, eyes pinched closed. Her breathing restricted by the spasm in her rib cage, she swayed gently and willfully slowed her breathing. Once she could stand up again, she arched her back, hands on her hips and expanded her chest to allow in more air. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was a huge abandoned house sitting at the top of a sloping hill and surrounded by a weed patch that had once been an expansive lawn.
“What the hell is that?” Tate gasped at the sight of the derelict house.
“That’s our local eyesore.”
Not expecting an answer, Tate whirled around and took a step back when she heard a man’s voice coming from directly behind her. “Whoa! Where’d you come from?”
“Around the corner. Saw you about to take a nosedive onto the sidewalk. Thought maybe you needed some help.”
The best defense is a good offense. Tate leaned in toward the man a bit and adopted a slightly menacing tone of voice. “I was not about to take a nose dive, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Coulda fooled me. Have it your way then.” The man retraced his route and disappeared.
The threat of being the recipient of a random act of kindness having subsided, Tate turned her attention to the old house at the top of the hill. It could only be described as a dream in ruin. Both outlandish and beautiful at the same time, the house exhibited a hodgepodge of styles from Asheville’s architectural history. It somehow managed to reflect its era while ridiculing it at the same time. Tate guessed the house had been constructed in the early to mid-20th century. The pebbledash exterior walls of the first floor crumbled in spots. The soft green of the original paint, now gray from age, looked the color of mold. The second story boasted the cedar shingles common on old Montford homes. The upper-story windows had Tudor-style sashes and trim, now peeling and rotting.
With the turrets and gingerbread trim that had been added, the house appeared clown-like, yet sad in its disrepair. In spite of all this, Tate immediately resonated with this disheveled behemoth sitting at the top of the gentle hill at 305 West Chestnut Street.
She walked up the shallow and graceful stairs cut into the fieldstone retaining wall decorated with cheap pieces of colored glass. This appealing touch from an earlier day now looked tawdry.
Though mismatched as a whole, elements of the house radiated beauty. A spacious porch belted three sides of the first floor, and the second story sprouted large balconies on each end.
Stepping onto the porch, Tate continued her exploration, peeking through the windows to see the inside, frustrated with the closed drapes that allowed only the smallest glimpses around the tattered barrier they created.
The back section of the wrap-around porch overlooked a large, quiet garden and a dry fishpond overgrown with weeds. As she did at times like this, Tate began talking aloud as she continued her exploration. “This would be a perfect meditation spot! How beautiful. How nurturing!”
She spied a long set of uncovered windows spanning some thirty feet and peered into a massive kitchen at the back of the house. She gasped. The room looked like an abandoned set from a movie, everything perfectly in place and neatly ordered, but now covered with decades of dust. Still, its beauty could not be denied.
“Amazing! This kitchen is fantastic. I want to cook here. So much space! I love the tiled countertops, and those cabinets are incredible! Look at the craftsmanship!”
Whoever had created this house and this kitchen had clearly loved it, she knew for sure.
Tate imagined all the wonderful parties she could host in a house like this—a place to be proud of, with no need to wiggle out of inviting visitors by doing a fine balancing act between welcoming and warning them off.
Tate allowed herself unfettered daydreams as she walked around the entire house again. After half an hour in reverie, while heading back across the lawn, she turned back for one last look. What she saw shocked her. How could she have missed it?
This grand old dame of a house, obviously once a showpiece of the rich owner, had a distinctive front door that so closely echoed the dimensions and design of the door on her simple house in the working class section of town that it left her stunned. There were subtle differences—each had two panels, hers with windows in the top half, this one without windows, and this door had a triangular panel above it that hers lacked, giving it a more imposing appearance. The main exception seemed to be in the craftsmanship. The wood was heavier and more rough-hewn here, and the detailing in the oversized hardware lacked the finesse of that on Tate’s house. Still, she knew instinctively that whoever had made this door had crafted the one on her house as well.
Tate heard what sounded like a whisper. Then a flash of light flickered through the autumn foliage of a huge maple tree and bounced off the grimy upper windows. She shuddered as a sudden gust of cold wind swirled through the crackly leaves gathered in a corner of the wide porch.
TWO
1916
Big dreams that seem reasonable to the dreamer serve as a common hallmark of early childhood, and even as a very little girl, Marie Eleanor Vance believed she would live a happy life filled with everything she wanted. Her parents had enough of everything to take care of her and her brother. Kind and gentle folk, not given to drama nor attractive to difficulty, they nurtured their children with a healthy balance of love and discipline. Families just like Ellie’s populated the quiet neighborhood where she lived. She had plenty of friends and peaceful days sprinkled with sunshine, freedom and security.
Then she entered first grade. She approached this phase of her life with great expectations, just as she did any new adventure. So when little things began to happen that challenged her beliefs about herself and her life, she let them slip by barely noticed. She avoided engaging in battles with the other children. When they tried to provoke her, she smiled sweetly and went to find other playmates. When it rained, she anticipated the sun coming back out. In the heat of the day, she awaited the cool evening ahead. In the cold grip of winter, she bundled up and looked forward to the arrival of spring. Ellie’s approach to life worked very well indeed, but even the most optimistic outlook sometimes must give way to reality.
Ellie got her first bloody nose at the hands of a bully. Grace was sorely misnamed by her parents who believed they had received a child with a good disposition following an uneventful and easy delivery. Big and gawky, she towered over most of the other first graders. Bossy, demanding and downright mean spirited for no reason apparent to anyone, not even Grace, she enjoyed nothing more than making the other kids squirm.
Ellie didn’t squirm well. Being an optimist, she took little notice of Grace. For a bully, it is close to unbearable to be ignored or, worse yet, not even noticed. So Grace had little choice, in her own mind at least, but to take all necessary action to get Ellie’s attention.
This took the form, one fine morning, of a threat to throw a shovelful of sand into Ellie’s face. Ellie had to acknowledge a danger so imminent and personal. She looked up from her play just in time to meet the flying sand head on. It filled her mouth and eyes and slipped under her dainty dress, covering her body with grit. Stunned, she could barely move as Grace dropped the shovel and came at her with clenched fists.
Ellie scrambled away at the last second, heading across the playground. Almost within reach of safety, Grace hard on her heels, Ellie slipped and fell against the swing set, and that’s when she got the bloody nose.
Of course the adults in charge had reached her by this time, and they coddled and tended to her. She saw others haul Grace away. Her classmates, uninjured and secretly grateful, cowered on the playground as they watched the scene unfold. They had learned long ago that Grace picked on those who paid no attention to her. Ellie the Optimist had not learned that lesson. So, the fault lay with her, didn’t it?
The adults washed Ellie off, cleaned her up and sent her home. The nosebleed stopped quickly with no real harm done—according to the adults in charge, at least. Ellie’s parents took the same approach. One of life’s little lessons: be more attentive next time, steer clear of trouble, watch what’s happening around you, pick yourself up, brush yourself off and move on.
In the world of an optimist, these helpful hints seemed puzzling. Ellie wondered how bad things could happen to a good child like herself, in a peaceful world like the one she lived in, on a lovely day like this one. Many years passed before Ellie began to find answers to these troubling questions. Nonetheless, her life unfolded much as she originally expected it to in the years that followed.
Grace disappeared from school when her family moved on shortly after the playground incident. Ellie settled into first grade easily after that and quickly became a star pupil. Intelligent and creative, she did as well in reading and writing as she did in arithmetic. She participated joyfully in arts and crafts and enthusiastically presented her mother with her macaroni collages and handprints in plaster of Paris. First grade faded into second grade, then third, then fourth, and although small glitches occurred along the way, she typically sidestepped any real harm. As a natural problem solver, whenever little things came up to disturb Ellie’s happy life, she quickly found a way around them or through them.
By the time she entered high school, however, Ellie began to understand the flow of her life would not always be as smooth as she had hoped. This realization formed about the same time Ellie became interested in boys. Although popular with all her classmates, Ellie knew the boys she found most attractive did not seem drawn to her.
Dating age arrived for Ellie and her girlfriends with mixed results. Some of them developed breasts and hips and winsome smiles, but not so for Ellie. She retained her little girl shape too long, and when her body finally began maturing, she grew up, not out—no breasts or hips to speak of—but suddenly she towered several inches taller than her friends and, in man
y cases, taller than the boys in her class.
She wore nice clothes, always clean and neat, but not stylish ones like the other girls. Her mousy brown hair lacked the rich chestnut glow she longed for. Fine, thick and almost straight, it fell short of the wavy, full and luxurious hair of her mother. She could live with all those little shortcomings. With a nice smile, pretty laugh, generous nature and strong, healthy body, only one problem truly stood in Ellie’s way: Ellie was almost pretty.
Close-enough-to-pretty meant she had friends. It established her place on the fringe of the popular crowd. It resulted in invitations to parties and landed her a part-time job at the soda fountain at Woolworth’s. Close-enough-to-pretty attracted just about everything she wanted except those cute boys who asked girls out.
While her friends began dating, Ellie sat home alone. She studied her face in the mirror. If only my eyes were not quite that close together, she thought. If only my hair were wavy; if only my face was more oval instead of so square. If only, if only, if only . . .
Then Ellie would quietly cry herself to sleep and hope for dreams of being more than almost pretty.
THREE
2004
Tate’s excitement about finding the old house offset her physical exhaustion as she headed back home. In fact, she found herself enjoying her walk now that she took a more leisurely pace. Surprisingly, walking had become one of her favorite activities since arriving in Asheville. She had trudged her way through New York out of sheer necessity, so the notion of walking for pleasure had taken some time to cultivate.
