Spencer Tracy_ A Biography - James C. Curtis [518]
He was anxious and short of breath again on June 6, and there was a mounting sense of dread about him, as the attacks were coming with greater frequency. He was “all right and stable” by the eighth, but the doctor was concerned: “I went to see him, and I was thinking of taking him to the hospital … He didn’t want to go.” The doctor’s note in his file that day: “We’ll wait.”
He visited Tower Road again on the morning of the ninth, driving himself in his old T-bird, the top down, his ever-present sunglasses giving him a jaunty look he rarely affected on screen. “He would wear—even on the warmest days—a shirt, a sweater, and a jacket,” Susie said, “and I wondered if that was to make him look a little heavier.” He seemed fine, stayed for about an hour. Susie told him a friend in Australia had written a script and asked if he would read it when he had some time. “Oh, sure,” he said. “Give it to me now.” Bill Self was reading it, she told him, and she would have to get it back. “Well, when he’s done with it,” her father said.
They all walked outside, stood at the car and chatted. Louise kissed him on the cheek, and he told her that he would call her later. Louise, John, and Susie took in an unlikely double feature that night: The Dirty Dozen—action John could easily follow—and Georgy Girl. The second phone in Louise’s bedroom—the hot line between the hill and St. Ives—rang when they got home, the familiar signal—two rings and then silence. “Sometimes he would carry on long, long conversations,” Louise said. “Other times it would be just ‘How is everybody?’ and ‘How is everything?’ and ‘Well, all right, talk to you later.’ ” On that night he said: “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Weezie.”
He went to sleep, and when Kate thought him settled, she crept out of the room as she always did and down the long hall to her own bedroom at the opposite end of the house. He had the buzzer right next to his bed if he wanted anything, and she always took the bell with her if she went anywhere inside, its cord “two miles long.” He didn’t ring, but about three o’clock she heard him shuffling down the hall toward the kitchen. They always kept the kettle at a very low boil, and he would get up in the middle of the night and brew himself a cup of tea. When she heard that he had reached the kitchen, she got up, put on her slippers, and started for the door.
“Just as I was about to give it a push, there was the sound of a cup smashing to the floor—then clump—a loud clump.” He had arrested; his heart had stopped beating. “Just stopped—BANG! The box broke. The container had just become too small for all that—what would you call it?—all that wild stuff whirling around inside. Peace at last.”
She crouched down and took him up in her arms. “No life—no pulse—dead.” His eyes were closed, the tea spilled all over him. “Dear, dear friend—gone. Oh, lucky one. That’s the way to exit. Just out the door and—gone.”
She called Phyllis Wilbourn up at the old Barrymore place. “Spence’s dead.”
“I’ll come …”
She called Ida and Willie, who lived in the cottage next door, and they helped her get him onto a rug, and then the three of them dragged him the length of the house and managed to get him back into bed. She drew up the covers and then lit some candles. “He looked so happy to be done with living, which for all his accomplishments had been a frightful burden to him.”
Dr. Covel was the first to arrive. He found Kate in a state of shock, unsure of what to do next. “Call the family? Call Stanley Kramer? Move out—no—yes—then call. Phyllis came. We moved all my stuff—clothes, personal stuff—out into my car. Then I thought—God—God—Kath—what are you doing—you’ve lived with the man for almost thirty years. This is your home. Isn’t it? These walls—this roof—this spot on the earth.” Calmly, deliberately,