The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee (33 page)

It was on that same Wallace and Gromit movie night at my house that Nelle told Judy and me about a phone call she’d made a few months before. We had lingered after watching the DVD, Nelle in my green corduroy rocker pulled up to the coffee table, Judy to her right in a floral armchair, me to her left in a wood rocker.

She told us about calling Brock Peters’s home just before he died. Peters had played the falsely accused Tom Robinson in the film version of
To Kill a Mockingbird
forty-three years earlier. He had died of cancer at age seventy-eight in August 2005.

When Nelle called, the woman whom she identified as Brock Peters’s lady, Marilyn, told her Brock was in his final hours and she was reading aloud to him—from the Bible and a passage from her novel that had always touched him.

Nelle had then written to Marilyn, quoting from
The Pilgrim’s Progress
, the classic spiritual allegory about the search for eternal life: “So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.”

Nelle had that day received a sweet letter in reply.

She was chagrined, however, that neither Judy nor I could name the source of the quote about trumpets sounding. It could be
embarrassing to those called upon to identify such things, and it happened to all of us.

—

I
n January 2006, Nelle came back from the annual Tuscaloosa luncheon exhausted and relieved.

She hadn’t known a
New York Times
reporter would be there, she told me. She was quoted in a front-page story the next day.

In “Harper Lee, Gregarious for a Day,” the
Times
’s Gina Bellafante reported that Nelle agreed to speak to her about the event. She wrote that Nelle was patient in posing for photographs with students, quick-witted in her comments, and appreciative of the event. Nelle got a call the following day from Howell Raines, the Alabama-born former executive editor of the
New York Times,
reporting that the story was the most e-mailed of the day. While Nelle didn’t know exactly how that worked, she appreciated what it meant.

In her article, Bellafante repeated Nelle’s comment that Horton Foote, the
To Kill a Mockingbird
screenwriter, remained a good friend and that as he had aged, he had come to look “like God, only clean-shaven.”

Not long after the article ran, the phone rang on West Avenue. Nelle picked up the receiver to discover it was Horton Foote, Horton with the tender heart, the kind eyes, the sweet, civilized way he had about him. The Texas of his youth was still in his soothing, almost husky voice.

“God here,” he said. They laughed and got caught up. He ended the call by telling Nelle, “Remember, God loves you.”

She laughed again, repeating the conversation over coffee at McDonald’s. She looked wistful. “He’s one of the last real gentlemen,” she said.

Chapter Thirty-four

I
had moved into the house not knowing how long it would be available. Now I’d been here going on fifteen months, which was longer than I had meant to stay, though I would end up staying another two. It was time to return to Chicago. I could gather more information indefinitely but, already, writing up what I had would be a formidable task. I had crates of files, boxes of notes, stacks of taped interviews with Alice and others to transcribe. I thought the lupus might have eased up by now but it hadn’t. Nor had it gotten worse. Resting so much of the time meant work progressed at a snail’s pace.

I had begun discussing with the Lees when I might move back to Chicago. I was pleased they were in no hurry to see me go but also understood.

I’d talk to Nelle about it over coffee. These daily routines, theirs and mine, these rhythms of daily life, had become second nature. Now that would be coming to an end. That Tuesday, the last day in January, I faxed Alice. As I often did, I sent it at lunchtime so she would see it before she returned to the office for the afternoon.

Alice, I spoke with Wes last night. I gave notice for March 1st. I can extend week-to-week if I want and if he hasn’t found anyone by then. Just to keep you posted. I must have been prematurely Journey Proud because I didn’t sleep much.

Hope you’re making progress with your mounds of documents.

To a Chicago/Wisconsin girl, this feels like a sunny, crisp October day.

Marja

I was in bed when Nelle called one afternoon.

“Do you feel like a cup at McDonald’s?”

I hesitated, just for a moment.

I always felt like a cup at McDonald’s with Nelle, even when I wasn’t feeling well. But I was back in bed, feeling worse than usual.

Nelle interjected quickly, “Not if you don’t want to. That’s no problem.”

“No, I’d love a cup of coffee.”

Maybe fresh air, as much coffee as I could manage to swallow, and the best conversationalist this side of the Mississippi would be what the doctor ordered.

“You ready now?”

“You bet.”

“See you at the car.”

“Sounds good. See you in a minute.”

I slipped my shoes back on, grabbed my purse, and headed to her driveway. She sat behind the wheel, ready to go.

I was feeling a little shaky. The gnarled tree roots I usually stepped over with ease seemed higher.

Then I felt the earth rise up and slam me in the head.

It took a moment to realize I was on the ground. I saw my red leather purse next to me, on its side. Some of the contents—my tube of Burt’s Bees rhubarb lip balm and a couple of black felt-tip pens—had spilled onto that patchy grass.

From the car, Nelle saw me go down. I was only yards away. What she saw was me heading toward the car and then dropping out of view from her perch behind the wheel. I got up but went down again right away.

Nelle recounted this to Bill Miller. “She was there and then she was down,” Nelle told him. “Then she was up. Then down again.”

It didn’t feel like fainting or tripping or whatever it was that happened. It felt like I was minding my own business and the earth rushed up to whack me on the head a second time.

“Oh, hon,” Nelle said when she reached me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I think so.” Waves of embarrassment washed over me.

“No, you’re not all right.”

I was on my feet again but trembling. She helped me to my front door.

We hardly ever used this door. It was closer to their house, yes, but the kitchen door was where all the coming and going happened. The to-ing and fro-ing, in Nelle’s words. I fished my house key out of my purse. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t get the key into the lock. Nelle took the key and unlocked the door. She escorted me the short distance to the sofa, under the picture window.

She looked alarmed. I was mortified.

The world felt upside down. My head hurt. We were using the door we never used and I was sitting on the sofa I never sat on.

“Stay here. I’ll get water. And Judy.”

I just wanted to skulk off to my bedroom, recover, and know that Nelle and Judy weren’t having to get involved.

I remember parts of the week that followed. People told me the rest. The Crofts had relieved Nelle and were on the phone to my parents in Madison.

I didn’t know it then, but I had gotten dehydrated, seriously dehydrated, and that was descending into delirium. I was shaking and my coordination was off. I’d be lucid and then not.

This happens more commonly with old people, especially if they live alone and fall ill or lose their appetite. In my case, mouth sores, probably from lupus, had made it painful to eat and drink. The real peril of delirium is this: By the time you need medical care, and fluids, right away, you’re too muddled to realize it. If you’re lucky, someone recognizes you need help.

Whatever this was, a mystery at the time, the consensus was I’d be better off with my own doctors at Northwestern Hospital. In Madison, my mother booked the last available seat on the only direct flight out of Pensacola the following morning.

In my kitchen, Judy heated some of her homemade vegetable soup and placed it before me. I wanted to show I was okay but it was hard to keep the soup on the spoon.

I remember sitting at the kitchen table, mentally “running the differential,” as the docs say. I felt a door was closing, a nothingness descending, and I needed to get a handle on this while I still had my wits about me. Even if half of them had jumped ship already.

I didn’t tremble like this, ever. Was lupus attacking my central nervous system? Unlikely. Was I having a nervous breakdown? Doubtful, but how embarrassing would that be? An infection? Maybe.

It’s an odd predicament, wanting to appear normal while you are losing your faculties.

Later, Judy and I were in my bedroom, gathering anything I’d need for my hastily arranged flight. I passed out again that evening. Judy
saw it coming and leaped over to break my fall. She dived over and fell with me, protecting my head, like some kind of superhero in a sensible sweater and glasses.

An ambulance took me to the local hospital. On the mortification scale, this was getting progressively worse. I got fluids in the ER and was released to spend the night at home. Judy lay beside me on my bed that night. I slept. She didn’t. So much for not wanting to put anyone out.

The next morning, the Crofts made the nearly two-hour drive to the Pensacola airport. Because this was a one-way ticket booked at the last minute, I was flagged by the TSA. Finally, after that rigmarole, Judy got permission to deliver me, a shaky, confused mess in a wheelchair, right to the gate.

I remembered her saying something to me about a friend’s son. A cute, nice son who was about my age. It turned out he was at the gate as well. For Nelle and Dot and Judy, my would-be matchmakers, the dating prospects never got past the musing-aloud stage. And now here was someone else who conceivably, improbably but theoretically possibly, could be a match. If I had been coherent. Hard to make a good first impression otherwise.

My parents would meet me at the other end of the two-and-a-half-hour flight. They drove from Madison to O’Hare and bundled me off to Northwestern Hospital. Chicago made it to twenty-six degrees that day; Monroeville, seventy. It was lost on me.

I was out of it for the first couple of days in the hospital, mumbling and making no sense. The doctors diagnosed the delirium, gave me fluids, took me off any newer medications that could have interacted or made things worse.

Within days, I was well enough to write the Lees. Someone faxed the letter for me.

Dear Alice and Nelle,

I believe you owe me a cup of coffee, Nelle. As soon as possible, I’ll be back to collect.

Another small herd of men and women in white coats just stopped by, poked and clucked and predicted I might be released as early as tomorrow.

“Or not,” as someone else usually points out.

I’ll have an EEG and MRI today. Yesterday’s spinal tap and blood tests came out fine.

Hope to see you soon.

Love,

Marja

p.s. Best to Julia.

—

I
was back, but only long enough to finish some interviews, pack up, and say my good-byes. I filled more notebooks, recorded more long afternoon interviews with Alice. I spent time with Alice and with Nelle going over anything else, besides what they had noted already, they felt should be off the record. In most cases, they again told me to use my judgment.

I was returning to Chicago with far more than I’d taken with me. I had more books and a little more clothing. Mostly, what I had accumulated resided in memory and copious notes, going back to that August day in Chicago five years earlier when my editor stopped by my cubicle.

The days became months and the months became years. The notes, the interview transcripts, the file folders captured hundreds of shared experiences. That is what I wanted to do, to preserve the stories
only they and their trusted circle there could tell, those that they were willing to share. And I wanted to understand daily life in Monroeville, its routines and rhythms, past and present, in this out-of-the-way place that shaped Harper Lee and the novel beloved by three generations of readers.

I continue to visit Monroeville periodically, to correspond with my friends. I still get the
Monroe Journal
mailed to my Chicago high-rise once a week. Lupus continued to be unpredictable. I had to rest a lot; most of this book was written in bed on a laptop.