My Mrs. Brown (8 page)

P
ROBABLY ALL ACROSS AMERICA
that night, in at least one out of every three households, someone was sitting at the kitchen table crunching numbers to see how and where they could find or make some extra, much-needed cash.

As Santo snoozed on bended paws at one end of the table, Mrs. Brown, pencil and pad in hand, sat at the other end reviewing her income and her expenses.

She had nothing in terms of art or furnishings she could sell. Concerning financial securities, there was a very modest investment in a retirement fund that she couldn't in all good conscience invade. In a savings-checking account was a slender stash of cash for April's taxes. To pay her monthly bills she relied not just on what she earned but also the income she received each month from Mrs. Fox, and now from Alice, who'd begun to contribute to the rent despite her grandmother's kind offer to pay it all herself.

No, she could not, she would not, ever think of raising her friend's rent. A few years ago, Mrs. Fox had proposed she might pay a bit more every month—not that she could afford any extra expense either. Mrs. Brown wouldn't hear of it.

“You're too good a friend, and too excellent a tenant,” she said and immediately changed the subject.

What were her options? Her only reason to raise the rent now would be greed, and this, despite her dress calling to her, went against every spiritual principle she believed in.

She could try chanting, like Bonnie this morning. Except Mrs. Brown couldn't imagine herself chanting, making sounds like an old, cold seal on a slippery rock. She could advertise in the local newspaper for babysitting jobs in the evening, although parents weren't going out so much these nights because they too were saving their money. Ashville's restaurants were suffering as a result. There were lottery tickets, of course. Mrs. Brown, unlike everyone she knew, never bought these. She considered them an obsession and a waste of time—hoping, watching for the results, being disappointed when one didn't score; they were little paper heartbreakers.

Maybe it was time to reconsider? Just the other day, the television news had been filled with the good-luck story of a twenty-three-year-old, dirt-poor rancher in South Dakota who won $232.1 million in the Powerball lottery.

“I want to thank the Lord for giving me this opportunity and blessing me with this great fortune. I will not squander it,” the rancher said as he took a lump-sum payout of $118 million.

Mrs. Brown was looking in her kitchen cupboards for signs of any purchases she could do without in the future when Alice tapped at her door.

Seeing the cupboards opened, the yellow legal pad on the table with an itemized list, her open checkbook . . . Alice figured that Mrs. Brown had been laid off today.

“Everything okay?” Alice asked with great concern.

Mrs. Brown paused. “Sure it is. No complaints. In fact, I never had it so good.”

The women laughed. Mrs. Brown explained to Alice that was something a beloved uncle used to answer, regardless of the real truth, when you asked him how he was. “Always tell a better story, Emilia,” he would say. “And you'll feel better.” He was the same uncle who also always insisted she take second helpings when she ate at his house. “Eat, Emilia, eat. We'll say you ate anyway.”

Mrs. Brown was so prepared to pinch pennies that tonight she thought twice before putting the kettle on for tea, since doing so involved the cost of electricity.

Alice watched the older woman; she seemed a bit jumbled up somehow. Something about Mrs. Brown's expression told Alice more than tea was in order tonight.

“I have been having trouble sleeping the past few nights,” she lied to help Mrs. Brown say yes, “and I was wondering if you might want to have a glass of my grandmother's sherry with me. It will make me sleepy, but I wouldn't drink alone.”

That wasn't entirely true. Alice was very happy to drink alone, a bottle of wine, a bath filled with bubbles, and maybe a joint? Add some great music, and it was a recipe for bliss.

One of Mrs. Fox's best customers at the bookshop had given Mrs. Fox a bottle of dry sherry every year for Christmas. She uncorked the bottle only on New Year's Eve so she and Mrs. Brown could toast the new year, and pretty much the rest of the year it stayed on a kitchen shelf. There were six bottles left.

“But it is only Thursday night,” Mrs. Brown said. Saturday seemed the only acceptable night to have a drink. Drinking on weeknights was decadent or, worse, a sign there was a problem. Mr. Brown had drunk on weeknights. Not in the beginning, when they were first married, but later, toward middle age, every night drinks and eventually every night drunk.

Still, getting out of her kitchen meant getting away from thinking about the past, at least for right now. Having something as relaxing as a bit of Mrs. Fox's sherry did appeal to her. Mrs. Brown followed Alice to her living room across the way. Alice poured the sherry in short-stemmed crystal glasses that had originally belonged to her great-grandmother. She poured the sherry almost to the top of the glass. Again, Mrs. Brown thought, It's the difference in our generations. We'd never pour that high.

Two sips of sherry and Mrs. Brown told all. About what had happened when she saw Mrs. Groton's suit dress, and about the novel Rachel Ames had given her,
Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris,
which could be a blueprint for how she might get her dress.

“That's a lot of money you will need to save, Mrs. Brown,” Alice said. “In the novel, which I'd like to borrow if that's okay with you, how does Mrs. Harris save for hers?”

“I haven't finished reading it. I am not the fast reader that you are or your grandmother is,” Mrs. Brown said. “But as far as I got last night she was doing without extras, like the bunch of flowers she'd buy herself on the weekend. Then she wins a football pool. She wins big, I guess.”

“That easy, really? Then what happens?”

“That's as far as I read. In fact,” Mrs. Brown said, “that's as far as I'm going to read.”

“Why?” Alice asked.

“Because, Alice, if it doesn't have a happy ending, I do not want to know.”

Lest Mrs. Brown feel anything less than enthusiasm and support, Alice resisted the urge to ask too many more questions. But she explained that if this was really and truly something she wanted to do, then once Mrs. Brown had saved up the money, she wouldn't have to go to New York to buy the dress. She could shop online, like most people Alice's age do. Even people Alice's mother's age, late forties, shop online. Everyone does.

Mrs. Brown smiled but didn't respond, nor would she tonight. That Alice didn't understand was clear to her. Why the sudden urgency for the odyssey ahead? Mrs. Brown had only a slightly better understanding. She couldn't articulate more, not yet.

It was getting late. Mrs. Brown thanked her young friend for the tipple of sherry. It certainly had worked its soothing charms. Before she returned to her place, she reminded Alice that she'd mentioned something about a tweed jacket she'd gotten from the Ashville Thrift Shop that didn't fit quite right? Mrs. Brown had an idea for fixing the problem that she'd like to try.

“Tomorrow night, we'll have a look,” Mrs. Brown said. “I'm no Oscar de la Renta, but probably there's a seam or two I can do something with.” She added, “No charge, I mean. Just so you know that, after all this talk about money.”

Alice walked Mrs. Brown to the door. “You know, Mrs. Brown, about going to New York, I'll come with you if you want. I know the city okay enough. I did an internship there three summers ago. Remember? That's when I visited Granny here in Ashville before I went back home in August.”

While she carefully washed and dried her grandmother's sherry glasses, Alice reflected on Mrs. Brown's resolution to save for a suit like Mrs. Groton's and then go all the way to New York to buy it.

It was weird, and it didn't make any sense to her.

Looking at the time, a bit before 11:00
P.M.
, she figured that, given the time difference, her grandmother would be cleaning up after dinner in Vancouver and sitting down to read whatever book it was she was reading this week.

Alice telephoned, and Mrs. Fox answered on the first ring.

“What's wrong, Alice? It's late for you with teaching early tomorrow morning.”

When it came to understanding Mrs. Brown, and keeping her word to her grandmother to support her, Alice was out of her element on this “go-to-New-York-and-buy-a-dress thing,” as she called it—and would call it again many times over.

“I mean what, Granny, like, what the fuck, right? It's only a black jacket and dress. It's an effing suit. What's that? So boring!”

“Don't swear, Alice, it isn't ladylike and much more is expected of a college-educated person,” Mrs. Fox said. “Use words that reflect your intelligence, not your slang.”

This was exasperating, but Alice pressed on. “Yes, Granny, sorry. Big words. Coming right up. As polysyllabic as possible.”

Mrs. Fox laughed. She was slow if ever to admit it, but she enjoyed her youngest granddaughter's punkish attitudes—sometimes.

“What don't you understand about a woman of a certain age wanting to step out of her shell and travel somewhere, in this case New York, where she has never been, and to buy a dress?” Mrs. Fox asked. “Just because it might be found online? And I would have thought you'd like this suit that Emilia is wanting. It's black, after all, your favorite color.”

“Well, yes, there's that. It's black, that's a plus, but don't they sell boring black dresses at Penny's?” Alice took a breath, and continued. “It's a suit, Granny, it is utilitarian. It isn't fantastic, it won't be pretty and it will be dull. No matter how well made it is. If she's going for something so expensive, there are lots of other dresses, beautiful dresses, red carpet dresses. She's missing the opportunity to have something that makes her feel young and sexy, or is that the idea? Maybe she can get something that's great and gets her more attention, you know, from men—she isn't too old for men, is she; people your age still do it, don't they, Granny? But with this suit, I don't get it, she'll look like a lawyer. And she isn't a lawyer. She's just a cleaning lady in a beauty shop.”

Mrs. Fox waited to respond. It's always best to let the young empty the tank when they are ranting. “I want to tell you something about women like Mrs. Brown, and like myself, really, living on small fixed incomes, we'd give anything to be accepted in a boardroom, if the fashion world only understood that. We don't all want to be sexpots, or cougars, or just covered up in droopy blouses and trousers. There's also something alluring, very, very alluring about a dress that is perfectly correct. But in an effort to make my generation disappear, no one sells clothing that empowers us. There's only ridicule, condescension, or dismissal.”

Alice had never thought about it this way. Could a really well-made suit dress be as much a fantasy for a woman as an evening gown or, in Alice's case, one of the amazing leather jackets that designers like Rick Owens or Ann Demeuelemeester make but that only heiresses and rock stars can afford?

“Sometimes a dress is not just a dress,” Mrs. Fox said. “It's a symbol.”

“I get it, Granny,” Alice said. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes it's a penis, a big swinging symbol, that's what you mean.”

“Alice!”

“Oh, come on, Granny. Lighten up.”

Mrs. Fox would. Lighten up, that is, as she continued to explain to Alice that Mrs. Brown obviously felt she needed this bold plan, this late-in-life odyssey, and for reasons that were none of their business unless Mrs. Brown disclosed them herself.

“We won't press her to discuss it and we won't analyze it,” Mrs. Fox told Alice. “And it's probably much more respectful not to ask when she planned on wearing it once she gets it, assuming of course that she can and does get it. How
is
she going to manage that, I wonder.”

More would be revealed, and their job as friends was to just get out of the way, wait patiently for more details, and be supportive throughout.

“Keep me posted about this, please, Alice?” Mrs. Fox said before they hung up. “I love you and I love how you're taking an interest in others, especially someone like Emilia. I do realize that she is so different than you or anyone you know.”

After the call, Mrs. Fox, subdued and concerned, looked out the kitchen window of her place in Vancouver to where a strong oak stood. How well it still looked, and probably would in spring, too, no matter what hell of weather this winter brought.

Trees survive winter and are revived by spring—so much hope in the cycle of nature—but people? People weather away unless spring keeps in their hearts.

Mrs. Fox was glad for the news about Mrs. Brown. Even if it was just a dress and jacket, it was a beginning. How people endure the complexities of their lives with faith and cheer, finding their own measure of hope, is one of the constant miracles, and often surprises, of life.

But her friend's first trip to New York would be a daunting prospect, just as saving enough money to buy the dress would be.

Mrs. Fox would do everything to support Mrs. Brown and wished she could be there in person to do so. Instead, she vowed to make sure that her granddaughter, Alice, did a great job in her place. But there was just one more thing . . . was it too late to call home to Rhode Island?

Mrs. Fox dialed. Alice, who was checking her various social media accounts as she always did last thing before lights-out, answered on the third ring.

Alice was scrolling through Instagram, her favorite new hashtag—#MarieAntoinetteInBellBottoms—postings of recognizable fashion and other celebrity people wearing outrageously priced bohemian styles.

“Granny, what's wrong?”