Mockingbird (13 page)

 

six

Go Set a Watchman

I have a horrible feeling that this
will
be the making of me, that it will be goodbye to the joys of messing about.

—H
ARPER
L
EE
, writing to a friend (1956)

After the double loss in her family, Nelle returned to New York City and continued juggling what would become another six years of work as an airline reservationist with writing at night and on weekends. Meanwhile, the city had polished some of the rougher edges of her personality that had alienated her from people when she was younger. Becoming independent had relieved her of the need to rebel against authority. Her sense of humor, so cutting in college, had evolved into a more self-deprecating wit.

It was through Truman that she finally made two close friends who became a second family. The introduction occurred in autumn 1954 during rehearsals of the Broadway musical
House of Flowers
at the Alvin Theatre on West Fifty-second Street. Nelle wouldn't normally have found herself in the wings of a theater examining the mysteries of light boards, scrims, cables, and pulleys. But Truman had brought her along because he had cowritten the show's book and lyrics with Harold Arlen, composer of “Over the Rainbow” for
The Wizard of Oz.
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As Truman's tagalong friend for the day, Nelle got to listen to run-throughs of songs and dance numbers for the show. The storyline was about a comic competition between the madams of two bordellos in the West Indies, in the midst of which a romance blossoms, defying the show's atmosphere of cynicism about love.

Helping to freshen up some of the lyrics was Michael Martin Brown, originally from Mexia, Texas. Michael was almost exactly the same age as Nelle's late brother, Edwin. After a stint of teaching, he had turned to composing and writing lyrics for a living. And in 1954 he was enjoying life at the top of his form. A novelty song of his, “Lizzie Borden (Fall River Hoedown),” had become a showstopper for the Broadway revue
New Faces of 1952.
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Brown and Nelle shared a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, which tended to go unnoticed at the gabfests she attended in people's apartments. Michael, she said, was “brilliant and lively; his one defect of character was an inordinate love of puns. His audacity sometimes left his friends breathless—who in his circumstances would venture to buy a townhouse in Manhattan?”
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Since she lived only a ten-minute subway ride north of them, Michael invited her over to meet his wife, Joy.

They lived in a two-story, seven-room, late-1800s townhouse at 417 East Fiftieth Street, with Michael's ebony grand piano dominating the living room. Joy Brown, taking care of the couple's two toddlers, was an “ethereal, utterly feminine creature,” in Nelle's eyes.
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She had trained with the School of American Ballet and danced with several companies, including the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and Les Ballets de Paris. But motherhood suited her too, and she had retired from dance. The three friends sang show tunes at Michael's piano or gorged on Joy's latest concoction in front of the fireplace. Joy loved chocolate; during one of Nelle's increasingly frequent visits, she whipped up a big batch of fudge. “Common interests as well as love drew me to them. An endless flow of reading material circulated amongst us; we took pleasure in the same theater, films, music; we laughed at the same things, and we laughed at so much in those days.”
5
Michael and Joy listened as Nelle vouchsafed to them her hopes for becoming a writer, and they applauded the stories she read to them in a tremulously embarrassed voice: “The Land of Sweet Forever,” “A Roomful of Kibble,” “Snow-on-the-Mountain,” “This Is Show Business,” and “The Viewer and the Viewed.”
6

*   *   *

So it happened, in mid-November 1956, that Harper Lee found herself pacing back and forth outside the offices of Williams and Crain at 18 East Forty-first Street. Annie Laurie Williams was Michael Brown's agent, and specialized in handling film and dramatic rights for literary properties; her husband, Maurice Crain, a former journalist, represented authors. Michael had been encouraging Nelle to show some of her work to his agent—he had put in a word for her—but now that she was actually here outside the building, she couldn't get up the nerve to go in. Her fear of being rejected was such that she hadn't published anything since college. She decided to walk around the block once more—her third time.
7

Annie Laurie Williams (she preferred to use all three names) came from Denison, Texas, a bleak cattle railhead near the Texas-Oklahoma border. She quit high school to go into show business, saving her money as an office secretary until she could take drama classes in Dallas. Touring with a vaudeville company brought her to New York in the 1920s, and she appeared in a few silent movies, but the industry was already going west to Hollywood. For six years she wrote feature stories and book reviews for the
New York Morning Telegraph
until she realized that some novels became films, and she knew something about both sides of the equation: show business and publishing.

Her first successful sale was Lloyd C. Douglas's
Magnificent Obsession,
which became a hit movie in 1935. “That took nerve,” she said, “because no movie executive at the time wanted to buy a book by an unknown Lutheran minister.”
8
In 1936, she convinced Margaret Mitchell that her first novel,
Gone With the Wind,
would sell in Hollywood, too. First, 20th Century–Fox made a substantial offer, which Williams turned down; then Warner Bros. almost doubled theirs, but Williams said no, leaving Mitchell shocked by her agent's audacity. Instead, Williams held out for the equivalent of a million dollars—and got it. In 1942, she sold John Steinbeck's
The Moon Is Down
for three times that amount, setting a record for screen rights. To a reporter's query about whether it was true that her Hollywood deals for Clarence Day's
Life with Father,
John Hersey's
A Bell for Adano,
and Kathleen Winsor's
Forever Amber
had totaled $800,000 worth of literature sold in a single day, Williams deadpanned, “Frankly, I don't do that much business in a whole week.”
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She and Maurice Crain had married in the mid-1930s, when he was a city editor for the
New York Daily News.
When war was declared in 1941, Cain enlisted, even though he was almost forty. “Pops,” as the other Army Air Corps cadets called him, made staff sergeant on B-17s as a ball turret gunner. On June 23, 1943, while flying with the 401st Squadron of the Ninety-first Group out of East Anglia, his bomber, the
Mary Ruth,
was shot down over the Ruhr Valley. After eluding capture for five days, he was eventually shipped via boxcar with hundreds of other prisoners to a prisoner-of-war camp near Krems, Austria.

His war experiences left him with two nervous habits: He was extremely fastidious, always keeping his office immaculate and highly organized as if, for some reason, he might not be back. Second, he hated wasting time. He seemed to feel deprived of an adequate share of it. After a long day at the office, he chided Annie if they were late for a dinner at a restaurant: he liked to arrive on the stroke of eight o'clock. His brand of cigarette was Camels, and he smoked two packs a day. The women in the office, amused by his seriousness all the time, affectionately called him “Old Wooden Face.”
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The office policy about submissions from unknown writers was “If it's good, we want it. If it isn't, but you show promise, we are still interested. At any rate, we usually try to offer some helpful comment.”
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Consequently, when the secretary brought in some stories by a young woman who had dropped them off, Maurice gave them a read. Not long afterward, he came dashing out of his office, telling everybody: “This girl is gifted. She's a real talent.”
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He called her and invited her to have dinner with him.

It's likely they met at Sardi's, one of Crain's favorite restaurants. During the small talk, Lee mentioned that she was a “very good friend of Truman Capote's,”
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an innocent gaffe: Annie Laurie Williams had handled some of Truman's work and found him difficult to manage. He went off on long junkets to Europe without letting her know his itinerary, and he insisted on examining all financial statements himself: probably a reaction to his parents' spendthrift ways when he was a child. But Crain liked this nervous young woman with the soft southern accent. His mother went by “Nellie”—Helen Greene Nellie Berryman. Also, he and Annie Laurie considered themselves Southerners because they were both from Texas.
14

Crain complimented Nelle on her ability to tell a good story. One of her submissions in particular, “Snow-on-the-Mountain,” about a boy who avenges himself on an old scold in the neighborhood by ripping up her flowers was especially good. But the others needed more work. At this point, “Snow-on-the-Mountain” was the only story he thought he might be able to place.
15
The others he was returning to her with the caveat that short stories were hard to sell. Novels were easier—“Had she thought about writing one?”
16

She had, of course—most writers do at some point—but the investment of time was daunting. She had already spent seven years on this batch of submissions. In addition, the demands of working full-time put free time to write at a premium. She told Crain she would think about it.

*   *   *

Her annual Christmas visit home to Monroeville was only a few weeks away, and now she would have some big news to share. After all, when she had dropped out of college intending to become a writer, her plan was received with more than a pinch of salt. She would arrive at the railroad station in Evergreen, Alabama, bearing gifts like a female magus from the East and be reunited with Alice and her father. Then she would take a few days to drive back and forth to Eufaula to visit her sister Louise and her family. A trip to the balmy South acted as a vaccination against the long, dark, slushy months of winter about to descend on the Northeast.

But this year, word came from BOAC management that only Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were vacation days; the rest of the time, she would be needed at the reservation counter to handle the holiday rush. Her disappointment brought on a sudden bout of homesickness. “New York streets shine wet with the same gentle farmer's rain that soaks Alabama's winter fields.… I missed Christmas away from home, I thought.… I missed the sound of hunting boots, the sudden open-door gusts of chilly air that cut through the aroma of pine needles and oyster dressing. I missed my brother's night-before-Christmas mask of rectitude and my father's bumblebee bass humming ‘Joy to the World.'”
17

When the Browns heard that she would be alone on Christmas Eve, they invited her over to stay the night and the following day too, as late as possible before returning to work.

So on Christmas morning, instead of waking up in her cold-water flat, Lee opened one eye to see a small early-riser in footie pajamas commanding her to rise and shine. Downstairs, everyone had already gathered at the foot of the tree and were preparing to distribute presents. Michael had built a crackling fire in the fireplace. The Browns were in an especially happy mood because Michael had received a financial windfall from his musical comedy special
He's for Me,
starring Roddy McDowell, slated to air on NBC in July. Things couldn't be better.

Knowing that she couldn't afford expensive gifts, the Browns had suggested that bargain-basement gifts should be all that was allowed. Lee was pleased with herself because she had purchased for Michael a handsome portrait of Sydney Smith, the eighteenth-century founder of the
Edinburgh Review
, for thirty-five cents; and for Joy, she'd rooted through used-book stores for a year until she found a complete set of the works of Lady Margot Asquith, an English wit. With pride, Nelle handed out her presents. And then there was a pregnant pause. The Browns, smiling, let her twist in the wind a little a bit.

Finally Joy said, “We haven't forgotten you. Look on the tree.”

Tucked inside the boughs of the tree was a white envelope with “Nelle” written on it. She opened it. Inside a note read, “You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas.”

“What does this mean?” she asked.

“What it says.”

Several seconds passed before she found her voice. “It's a fantastic gamble. It's such a great risk.”

“No, honey. It's not a risk. It's a sure thing.”

She went to the window, “stunned by the day's miracle,” she remembered later. Her friends had given her, she realized, “a full, fair chance for a new life.” Not through “an act of generosity, but by an act of love.
Our faith in you
was really all I had heard them say.”
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A few weeks later, she wrote rapturously to a friend about the Browns' offer: “The one stern string attached is that I will be subjected to a sort of 19th Century regimen of discipline: they don't care whether anything I write makes a nickel. They want to lick me into some kind of seriousness toward my talents, which of course will destroy anything amiable in my character, but will set me on the road to a career of sorts.… Aside from the et ceteras of gratefulness and astonishment I feel about this proposition, I have a horrible feeling that this
will
be the making of me, that it will be goodbye to the joys of messing about. So for the coming year I have laid in 3 pairs of Bermuda shorts, since I shall rarely emerge from 1539 York Avenue.”
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