Dad is spending all his time in the office, door shut and locked. I hear typing and low conversations, but without the courage to pick up the other phone to hear the other voice, I don’t know what is happening. He is making plans, and so am I. We haven’t talked about it, but I feel it coming. Something big. I am afraid to tell Plant we are leaving again, one way or another. She’s getting used to the window in my room. Except for the one night with Jim Beam, Garland has been good to her. Well, she’s heard me despair about the seventh-grade Family Tree Project, so I know she’ll understand.
And another strange occurrence is that I found PBroom listed on our caller ID. This has never happened before, so I can’t decide which box this goes in. Good or bad.
I’ve decided I cannot move to Aunt Mariah’s until after the funeral. If there is one thing I want them to say about me after I’ve gone, it is this: Wasn’t it nice of her to stay until Mr. Dupree was buried? Plus, Mrs. Dupree invited me to help her make apple pies today and it would look suspicious if I refused. I left my dad a note and walked across the cul-de-sac. The hot concrete was already sizzling and made me want to crack an egg and watch it fry.
Inside Mrs. Dupree’s house are a thousand sweet smells: vanilla, coffee, cinnamon, apples, and cloves. Her son is so lucky. I bet he had delicious food in his lunch every day, a plate of warm cookies always on the table. I know she loves him that much. There are pictures of her family everywhere, the walls so full of frames that I don’t know what color the inside of her house really is. And the frames on the mantel are placed just the way I would do it. Straight ahead so you have to stop and look.
I watch her rolling out the pie dough under her papery fingers with an amazing strength. She is stronger than you would suspect for an old woman. I want to be honest with her, ask her if she’ll teach me, gift me with useful cooking knowledge before it’s too late and the only recipe I can teach someone is Hamburger Helper, which is no recipe at all. If Dad was a fan of the cooking channel instead of Westerns, maybe I’d know more about cooking than playing poker.
Now, I must know how to bake an apple pie. It is an urgent thing. This is something every girl should know in addition to sewing on a button and applying mascara correctly. Before I know it, I’m asking her, “If you had a daughter, what would you tell her?”
Mrs. Dupree smiles. “Oh, let me think,” she says. “Well, I would say that every time you buy a new blouse or some wrinkle cream to make you look good, go and buy a book right away. It’s just as important to keep your mind beautiful, don’t you think?”
There is no one in the world like Mrs. Dupree. No one. A girl could learn a lot from her.
“Speaking of books, your friend Finn tells me you’ve been reading Ms. Lee’s book,” she says, her eyes staying focused on the dough.
“Yes.”
“And what do you think of it?” she asks.
“I like Scout. And I like the town they live in. Maycomb. They walk all over town, too. I wish we walked more.” I don’t tell her how much Atticus means to me.
What I do tell her is how I wish we had a mysterious house on our block like the Radley place. The Stanley house with its overgrown wildlife is the closest we have to something dangerous, but that’s mostly because of all the bees and bugs. If you used your imagination, I tell her, you could come up with something spooky happening behind those bushes. And then there is that stupid house with the plant sitting up on the dead stump. Much to my annoyance, it has returned, full of yellow flowers.
Mrs. Dupree makes soothing Mmmmmhmmm sounds as I go, which makes me want to keep talking. “Scout’s a little like me, just having a father to raise her.” But she had more courage, for sure.
“True. That’s true. She is a determined young lady.”
“I want to write to her,” I say. “To Ms. Lee, I mean.”
The rolling pin stops and Mrs. Dupree looks at me, through me. “You should, Sarah. People should never have stopped writing letters, even the ones they have no intention of sending. People should especially write those.”
Mr. Wistler would like Mrs. Dupree. Why haven’t I spent more time with her before? She is wonderful and kind, and here I am leaving. Maybe I won’t leave forever. Just go away one year, become an anonymous seventh grader, and then come back as a whole new person.
“Would you care to help me with this pie, Sarah?” What I would care to do is curl up here and hide, read every book under this roof, learn every recipe she knows.
“Yes.”
She puts a dishcloth around my waist, secures it in the pockets of my shorts, then stands behind me, laying her lined hands over mine, putting my palms on the rolling pin just right. I feel more happiness than a person can stand.
“You are a dear to help me,” she says. “This one will be for your father, okay?”
“It’s no trouble,” I tell her.
“You are a sweet young lady,” Mrs. Dupree says. “Raised up right.” Saying this makes her cry, and so it makes me want to cry, too. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll cry over a turnip these days.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her.
I know exactly how she feels. Another person in the house with you can make a huge difference sometimes.
We put two pies in the oven, and I wash the dishes while she sits and dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief.
“That sweet boy Finn reminds me of my son,” she says. “He’s a nice one.”
“Thank you for letting me have the special book.”
“Mr. Dupree would want you to have it. Because you know it’s special. You know, I think we have a biography of Nelle somewhere, which would make a nice complement to your library, I should think.”
Mrs. Dupree folds her handkerchief into a perfect square. “If Mr. Dupree were here, he’d know exactly where it is.” She trails off, caught by the loss as if it just happened. I want to hug her tight in a way I’ve never wanted to hug anyone. I check my brain for the right thing to say, but all that comes out is “In your own words, what is interesting about her story?”
I sound dumb, I know, with Mr. Wistler’s words coming out of my dumb mouth in this dumb moment.
Mrs. Dupree puts a finger to her chin and thinks on my question for a moment.
“Well, her relationship with her mother, for one. From what I understand, her mother practically ignored her,” Mrs. Dupree says. “And her sisters saved her twice from drowning. Or so the rumor goes. Her friend Mr. Capote said that, but you just don’t know about those things. People love a good piece of gossip because it makes them feel special inside of a minute.”
Boy, do I understand exactly what Mrs. Dupree is saying about people. And now, of course, I want to learn about Truman Capote, too.
“The thing to remember, Sarah, is that Ms. Lee wrote a fine book, and that’s what we know for sure. That’s a fact.”
Normally, I would stare at the floor, but I hold on to her warm gaze. I feel naked right here. This part of my life that involves having a crazy mother is not going to let me go no matter what I do. And the same is true for Dad. The news will always follow us. I am starting to think it might be a good idea for me and Dad to live in two different places. For me to move on. Sometimes in Westerns, two cowboys decide to split up and take two different paths. This confuses the person following them. It makes them harder to track, safer somehow. As much as I don’t want to leave Garland, getting ready to leave is still the smart thing to do. I will have to research what Harper Lee did about her own family.
“Sarah, are you okay?” Mrs. Dupree asks me.
I realize I’ve been zoning out again.
“Uh, yeah,” I say. And then, “Did she go crazy?”
“Who?”
“Ms. Lee? Because of her mother?”
“Heavens no, dear! What a thing to say.”
“Stuff runs in families.”
“Well, that can be true, but people are usually what they make up their minds to be, no matter who they came from.”
I have a million more questions. My mind writes a list of facts:
There is another person in the world who survived like me.
She wrote a book.
She is not crazy.
She says, “I’ll let you know when I’ve found her biography.” But I am already picturing myself checking the biography out of the library the minute I can get a ride from Finn or Charlotte.
We sit together at her small, square table while the pies bake and the apple-shaped clock tick, tick, ticks. I am at least smart enough to ask her more questions about where she’s traveled, let her talk uninterrupted so my mind can roam free for a little bit. How you can already miss someone when you are in the same room with them, I have no idea. But I do. I miss her right now, and I haven’t even packed my suitcase yet. She touches that achy spot where my mother should be.