The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee by Marja Mills Page A

up the same. But in another way, we didn’t.”
    Tom’s family, in To Kill a Mockingbird terms, was closer to the fictional Cunninghams, poor folks who eked an existence out of the land, than the Finches, who derived a modest income from the law and socially were a notch or two above.
    Among white families in Maycomb, the violent, foul-mouthed widower Bob Ewell and his passel of unkempt children are at the bottom of the heap. They even live next to—and off of—the town dump. At age nineteen, his oldest, Mayella, is trapped. Trapped by poverty, by circumstances, by her abusive father. She grows red geraniums in a chipped chamber pot, cultivating what little beauty she can in a bleak existence.
    As a pastor, Tom had known versions of all three families. “I’ve been knowing Mayellas all my life,” as he put it.
    Earlier that day, though I didn’t know it then, he had spoken with Lee about what to say, and what not to say, when I interviewed him. I later learned what the list included. He could talk about the book and their friendship, but she didn’t want him to give specifics for the newspaper story on where she spent time around Monroeville. Otherwise, those restaurants and even the homes of her friends might be subject to visits by reporters or tourists in search of a Lee sighting. Already reporters had been known to visit David’s Catfish House and Radley’s in hopes of encountering her. In her absence, they asked waitresses and other customers about the town’s most famous resident.
    He was surprised that both Lees encouraged him to speak with me and, more so, to talk freely about most topics pertaining to them. It turns out he was as curious about me as I was about him.
    I waited for him at the front entrance of the motel. He pulled up in a roomy gray Buick and stepped out to greet me. He was short, only five feet four inches, not much taller than I am. He was what used to be called a natty dresser. Italian leather loafers, a crisp shirt and designer tie, navy blazer pressed just so.
    “Miss Mills,” he said, and extended his hand. He was more formal than I expected there in the parking lot under the Best Western sign. Every now and then I felt I was glimpsing the Monroeville of another era.
    “Have you been to the South Forty?” he asked me. I hadn’t. The restaurant was a fifteen-minute drive from Monroeville, near the tiny town of Repton.
    The South Forty was a down-home place, with a rough-hewn front porch, light oak tables and chairs in a bright room, and the day’s specials listed on a whiteboard. We took a table against the wall in the back.
    “I don’t know why Alice and Nelle have opened up to you the waythey have,” Tom told me. “They are two of the most interesting, intelligent women you will ever meet and they have remained so private all these years. I get after Nelle Harper about it. I say, ‘You need to be out there, teaching or talking to people.’ She says, ‘I value my privacy too much.’”
    So why help out on a newspaper story now, and why me? The reverend speculated that the sisters were pleased by the One Book, One Chicago program and figured if there was going to be a story, it might as well provide some insight. The letter I sent to Alice’s post office box, letting her and her sister know I would be in town and why, might have helped pave the way, he said, since it struck the right tone: polite and not wheedling or demanding. They got a lot of the latter. Once Alice and I developed that quick rapport, other doors opened.
    “I think after that first day or two you were here, word also got back that you were an intelligent, charming young lady who seemed like a thoughtful person as well.” They were kind words, though I suspect “right place at the right time” was a factor.
    Whatever the reasons, the reverend said he was thrilled that Alice was willing to speak on the record at some length, that Nelle Harper had been willing to get together, and that both sisters had