Final Rights (29 page)

“Well, I did a lot of rearranging to make
the place more usable. There used to be a doorway there.” Jim indicated the
wall with the new sink and stove. “And the bathroom was on the left down the
hall. And there were only two bedrooms.”

“Sounds like it took a lot of work.”

“Yeah, and I did it all myself, pretty much.
Maybe I should a kept ‘em, but I got busy with other things and they took up
too much of my time.”

“You clearly loved them, Jim. I’m glad I
bought them from you.”

“I’m glad you got ’em, too, Tate. You’re
doing right by them.”

Tate brought their attention back to the
wood floors. She gestured to the small rectangular depression at the entrance
to the hallway. “We have to patch that one spot. I wonder why the boards were
cut out there, though.”

“They weren’t cut out. There used to be a
fireplace there.”

“I knew it! My carpenter said there was
probably a fireplace here at some point a long time ago. What happened to it?”

“Yeah, there was a fireplace there, but we
took it out. It was a beautiful old thing, with a slate hearth and a carved
mantel. Shame to let it go, but we needed the space, and you don’t want a fireplace
in a rental unit, believe me.”

“So you just ripped it out?” Tate’s voice
was edgy as she tried to hide her disbelief.

“Oh, no, we didn’t destroy it! I would never
do something like that!”

“So where is it?” Tate’s heart raced.
It isn’t gone. It may not be here, but
it’s somewhere, and I’m going to find it.

“We sold it to an architectural salvage
company, along with the original cabinetry.”

An original Leland Howard mantelpiece. “What
happened to it? Do you know?”

“Don’t rightly know, but unless someone
bought it, it’s probably still at the salvage warehouse.”

“What warehouse would that be?”

“Conservation Salvage, up in Weaverville.
That guy has every kind of thing you can imagine from the old houses that were
torn down.”

“Jim, I can’t thank you enough. I owe you
lunch, for sure. Maybe we’ll have it right here in this apartment once it’s
finished. I make a mean turkey and cheese sandwich!”

“I’ll take you up on that. We’ll have to
invite Mazie to join us. I’m gonna stop over there now and say hello. See ya’
around.”

“You sure will, Jim. Thanks again.”

Tate dropped down to the floor and leaned
against the wall. She closed her eyes and let all the information she’d just
learned swirl through her head. She began constructing her to-do list as she
sat in the empty, unfinished apartment.
I’ll
go to Conservation Salvage right now. Maybe the mantel is still there. Please
let it be there. Have to call Cally. Need to take her to see the place on
Chestnut. What if I don’t find the fireplace? What if I do find it? Will
Cally’s things still be in the compartment? Unlikely, not after all this time.
She needs a lawyer to get control of that trust. We need to visit Leland again.
I’m starving. I need to eat something before I head out.

She pressed the heels of her hands into her
eye sockets and massaged them slowly trying to slow down her racing thoughts.
One thing at a time. Lunch first, then
Conservation Salvage, and I’ll try Cally while I’m on my way there.

FORTY-SIX

1921

Even
though the calendar said Tuesday, Mary Alice Clayton Howard carefully laid out
her Sunday-best dress on the bed. With her husband and son at work in the shed
behind the cabin, she had privacy and quiet. She warmed a teakettle of water
and poured it into the chipped porcelain washbasin, then quickly bathed
herself. She took special care with her grooming, smoothing the fabric of her
dress after slipping it over her head, cleaning the dust from her only pair of
shoes and tucking stray hairs into the bun of coiled braid nestled at the back
of her neck.

Once satisfied she had done all she could to
make herself presentable, she went to the cupboard and took out her cherished
sugar bowl. A long crack ran halfway down the side, and she cradled the vessel
gently so as not to further the damage. The bowl came into the family as a
wedding gift to Mary Alice’s great-grandmother. It had been handed down through
three generations of Clayton women before reaching her, and each one had
treasured it. The last had been Aunt Ida—the only woman to actually mother
her—and now it belonged to Mary Alice.

She lifted the lid and removed a small roll
of bills. She spread them out on the table and counted. She still had
forty-seven dollars and a few coins, about three dollars less than Arlen had
given her when they sold her aunt and uncle’s homestead in the mountains.

Her husband treated her well. Mary Alice
smiled as she clutched the money to her bosom and thought about how easily he
had agreed to split it with her right down the middle. No other man she had
ever known would have done such a thing. No woman she knew had ever been the
recipient of generosity like this from a father or a husband. She had been
blessed to find him and blessed with all he provided her—not just this money,
but safety and love and a beautiful son, too.

But the sugar bowl was
not a bank and having the money so closely at hand proved to be a great
temptation, an emotion Mary Alice deplored and had given into only once.
Shortly after the family moved to Asheville, before Arlen had established his
business and at a time when provisions had almost run out, she had succumbed
and used almost three dollars to stock up on cornmeal, flour, beans, coffee and
sugar. She did not feel guilty about the meal, flour and beans. She had used
them along with the eggs from her chickens and the preserved vegetables and
smoked meat they had brought with them when they moved to town to feed the
family until Arlen found steady work. She could even justify the coffee. A
pound brewed weak and the grounds used twice would last almost two months, and
Arlen loved his coffee. The sugar, though,
that
was pure indulgence, easily done without by all of them.
She should never have spent thirty-five cents to buy sugar. After that misstep,
she vowed never to be led into temptation so easily again. It had taken several
weeks to settle her mind about what needed to be done, and now she was about to
do it.

Her decision had been hastened a bit by the
appearance at her door only days before of her sister, Eulah Mae. Mary Alice
did not recognize the unkempt, mumbling creature at first. Then Eulah Mae
glared at her and demanded to be let in. “Show some ’ospitality to yer sister,
Mary Alice!” she demanded.

Mary Alice flatly refused. “I want no part a
you, Eulah Mae. Go away and don’t come back to my door ever again.” She had not
been face-to-face with her sister since leaving for the mountains nearly thirty
years earlier, but she had heard about Crazy Eulah and even seen her from afar
while shopping downtown a few weeks earlier.

“Here ya are, livin’ in this fancy house and
me strugglin’ fer a bite to eat and a warm place to sleep. Show some
compassion, won’cha?”

“I gladly left ya behind all those years
ago, Eulah, and I ain’t about to pick ya back up now. Go away.”

“Then gimme some money, sister. I bet you
got some hidden away somewheres. Up in yer cupboard? That’s whar Ma keeped hers
when she had some.”

“You’ll get nothin’ from me, Eulah Mae.”
With that Mary Alice shut the door in her sister’s face and dropped the latch
on the inside. And she settled on the details of her plan to put distance
between herself and temptation while simultaneously moving her money out of
harm’s way—said harm taking the form of her estranged sister.

Mary Alice took the bills from the table and
put them in a hidden pocket in the seam of her dress as she left the house.

“You off, then?” Arlen stepped onto the
porch just as Mary Alice closed the door.

“I am.”

“Ya look lovely and determined, Mrs.
Howard.”

“That I am, Mr. Howard.”

“And yer sure you’ll go by yerself? You’ll
not need me to come along?”

“I’ll not need yer company but I thank ya
fer offerin’.” No reason for Mary Alice to say she didn’t want her husband’s
assistance, that she eagerly anticipated carrying her business out on her own.

“I’ll see ya at suppertime then, I s’pose.”

“And don’ stay too late in that workshop.
I’m cookin’ up somethin’ special fer ya.”

Mary Alice chose the
most direct route to her destination. She would make the necessary detours to
pick up the few items she planned to purchase on her way back home. She walked
briskly up Haywood Street and turned on Patton Avenue to reach the American
National Bank building. She stood across the street for a few moments while
summoning the courage to enter the lobby where she then waited her turn to see
a clerk. She approached the window when beckoned by the teller and spread her
money out carefully on the counter.

“I’m here to open me a savin’s account.” She
stood straight and tall, weathered hands clasped tightly at her waist,
shoulders squared as if she expected a fight.

“I can’t help you with that . . .”

Mary Alice had been building up the courage
to carry out her plan for weeks, and she waded into the fray before the teller
could finish. “Why not? ’Cuz I’m a woman?”

“Oh! No, ma’am!” Mary Alice’s unexpected
forcefulness flustered the teller.

Mary Alice studied the young man standing
behind the bars of his cage as she read his name tag. “Then why? My money’s no
good here, Mr. Meeks? Is that it?” The teller’s face had reddened under her
assault, highlighting the clusters of pimples on his flat forehead and broad
nose. Limp hair the color of a field mouse hung in a clump over his right ear,
having escaped from the slick layer of pomade meant to keep it under control.
He wore an ill-fitting suit jacket on his thin, slumping frame. Mary Alice felt
a bit sorry for him, but she meant to do the business she had come here to do
and he would not stand in her way if she held any sway in the matter.

“No, ma’am. That’s not
it at all.” The boy looked as if he may begin crying, and Mary Alice felt her
resolve slipping. “I’m just a teller, ma’am, and a new one at that. This is my
first day at the window by myself, so I wouldn’t know how to help you even if
they’d let me. You’ll have to see the assistant manager to open a new account.”
The teller motioned toward a man sitting at a large wooden desk on the opposite
side of the lobby.

Mary Alice felt the tears welling up in her
eyes as she thanked the teller and turned quickly away, the money clutched in
her hands. She felt remorseful for having spoken to the young man the way she
had. Her mistaken assumption about how to open an account had led to the
exchange between them and she felt foolish as a result. Her courage spent on
the unnecessary encounter, she now approached the assistant manager hesitantly.
He gestured toward the sturdy, leather-upholstered chair in front of his desk,
and she quickly sat down.

“How may I help you?”

“Is a woman allowed to open a savings
account in her own name at this bank?”

Mary Alice had intended all along to simply
present herself as a valid customer like any man would do. Arlen had gladly
given her the money and made it known it was hers to do with as she pleased.
Why should she not be able to open an account? But she also knew banking was a
man’s world. She glanced at the other customers, all men, which proved her
point.

“You are most certainly welcome to open an
account with us, Mrs. . . .?” The assistant manager smiled at her, friendly
like, and waited for her to give her name.

“Mrs. Arlen Howard. But I’d like the name on
the account to be mine, if that’s possible. Mrs. Mary Alice Howard.”

“Of course it is! Let’s just get this
paperwork filled out, shall we?”

Less than half an hour later, Mary Alice
stepped back into the sunlight with her new passbook. She opened it and read it
slowly, brushing her fingers lightly over the writing where it said “Mrs. Mary
Alice Howard” on the line at the top of the first page and “$47.32” in the
column provided for a record of the deposits.

“Forty-seven dollars and
thirty two cents! In my own bank account!” Mary Alice had never done anything
like this in her entire life. She had heard about and seen women stepping out
of the traditional roles assigned them and doing outrageous things—dressing in
scandalously short skirts, dancing into the night, smoking cigarettes, doing
business in a man’s world—she’d heard about these things and while she
considered most of them shameful, she also felt exhilarated to have joined the
ranks of non-traditional women. Opening a bank account in her own name may seem
small by comparison to, say, driving an automobile, but for Mary Alice it would
be the greatest departure from convention she would ever undertake.

Her plan was clear. She
would make a trip to the bank at the end of every month and have the interest
her money earned posted to her passbook. The money would grow and one day she
would have something valuable to hand down to the next generation—something in
addition to a cherished, cracked sugar bowl.

Mary
Alice’s monthly ritual grew over the years. At first, she hurried to the bank
to have the interest on her account posted, then rushed back home to hide the
passbook away. Arlen never asked her about the money, and she offered him no
information about it. She wanted this one thing for herself. Over time, she
became more secure in her monthly trips, often stopping for tea or to do a bit
of shopping, always after seeing the new amount printed neatly in the
“Deposits” column. Mary Alice never took anything out of the account, so the
“Withdrawals” column remained empty. By October of 1930, her $47.32 had grown
to almost $75.00. Mary Alice could not have been prouder of her accomplishment,
which made the fall, when it came three weeks later, all the more devastating.

In November of 1930,
more than a year after the national stock market crashed, the collapsing
economy flooded Asheville. Central Bank and Trust failed to open for business
on November 20, and American National Bank followed suit the next day. Mary
Alice’s money simply disappeared. She believed her pride had led to her
downfall, and she never again engaged in the world of money. Even when American
National reopened its doors and began refunding some money to its depositors,
her shame kept her from laying claim to what belonged to her. Even the pleading
of her daughter-in-law, Ellie, did not sway her.

“Mother, why just let the money go to
waste?”

“A man’s world is not for a woman!”

“Money is not a man’s world anymore. You
have a right to what’s owed you!”

“My pride in stepping out a my place brought
me shame and regret. I wasted good money tryin’ to git more. I’ll not be doin’
that agin.”

Many versions of this
conversation took place between Mary Alice and Ellie over the years until
finally Mary Alice gave in. She would not have an account in her name, but she
would make her claim and give the money to Ellie to do with as she pleased. It
had been meant for the next generation anyway, and now that Leland and Ellie
had a child, the time had come. The two women went to the bank together and
left with half the money Mary Alice had lost six years earlier.

Ellie took the money as
she had promised Mary Alice she would do and opened an account at Asheville
Federal Savings and Loan. Following in Mary Alice’s footsteps, she let the account
slowly grow until she transferred it to her granddaughter’s name in 1961.

The passbook took its
place in the secret compartment along with Ellie’s other valuable possessions,
all the things she intended to give Cally one day. Ellie daydreamed about how
she would present the gift. Perhaps she would wrap everything up in one fancy
package and give it to Cally at her high school graduation. Better yet, she
would save the precious items for Cally’s wedding day. Or maybe she would give
them to the girl one at a time on ordinary days and special occasions alike,
until she had presented all of them—the diamond ring from her mother, the hair
comb from her grandmother, the passbook with a tidy sum of money to usher Cally
into whatever life she chose and, of course, the note which would shake things
up so badly but which would also finally let the truth be known.

She did not know for sure when she would
give Cally all these things, but she knew she would see to it they did not go
to Clayton. They would absolutely not be thrown away on drugs and alcohol just
to appease her son’s addictions. She would make sure they went to someone who
deserved them, no matter what it took to do so.