My Mrs. Brown (17 page)

I
T HAD BEEN A
summer of lilacs and roses, heat waves and thunderstorms in Ashville.

In mid-August, Florida had completed her studies at Guilford with great grades and accolades. After a tearful goodbye, she left Mrs. Brown's, although she would return, ten months later, to receive her diploma during Guilford's annual graduation ceremonies.

Finally, the time had come. Mrs. Brown's trip to New York City was tomorrow.

Alice was helping Mrs. Brown prepare.

Now that it was September Alice was back to work full-time. She'd stayed in Ashville to teach in her school's summer program—and to be near to Milo, while he ran the summer arts program at the boarding school where he taught.

Alice and Milo were having a wonderful time. Because it stayed light so late in the evenings, they often met midweek for picnics somewhere in the distance between them. They'd fallen in love, and their love was still so new, that they never had to talk about it. The feelings just were. No need for discussion, except where and when to meet next. If only love could always be that light.

Having conferred with her grandmother many times on the telephone over the course of the days leading up to Mrs. Brown's trip, Alice was determined tonight not to show how worried Mrs. Fox was, or for that matter how worried she was, about Mrs. Brown's maiden day in New York City.

Their concern was for the obvious. That Mrs. Brown had never been to New York City, its energy field more rage than romance. The city is a horse that throws you the minute it smells fear, and the first visit for anyone—even the most sophisticated traveler—is overwhelming.

As Mrs. Fox liked to remind Alice, she had been to New York quite a few times in her many years, usually a very exhausting day trip with her church group for a matinee of a Broadway show, a performance at Lincoln Center, an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, and then home to Ashville after midnight. The drive to Manhattan took at least four hours, and, even in the safety of a group of church friends, she was always rattled by something, whether it was the sirens, the traffic, or a painful situation she saw on the streets.

And if the city got to Mrs. Fox, so comparatively sophisticated, how would it affect Mrs. Brown?

Alice had spent a summer three years ago interning at a charter school in Harlem, and although it seemed, in memory, like it was only a matter of hours before she felt perfectly at home, out on the town in Manhattan and other boroughs—Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens—it was more like a month before she found her footing, and, truth be told, survival every day was a negotiation with the city beast.

How was Mrs. Brown going to cope when she entered the wild kingdom right off the train at Pennsylvania Station?

In conversations between Mrs. Fox and Alice, and in consultation with Mrs. Brown, a list of things to pack, remember, and do had been prepared and vetted many times over.

It was to this list, written on a pad of yellow legal paper, now on the kitchen table next to a small vase of pink Ashville roses cut from a bush outside the kitchen door, that Alice referred tonight:

“You've packed a bottle of water and smelling salts in case you feel suddenly faint?” Alice asked, sitting at the table, Santo in her lap. She couldn't believe that in the twenty-first century she was discussing smelling salts, but her grandmother had insisted.

“I have them,” Mrs. Brown said. “And by the way, I telephoned the store again this morning. The dress is there.”

Alice checked this off the list.

“Read me the rest and I'll make sure I've done everything,” Mrs. Brown said.

Alice cleared her throat and read: “Bus tickets from here to Westerly?”

“Check,” Mrs. Brown answered.

“Train tickets to Pennsylvania Station, round trip, plus receipt to prove purchase, just in case?”

From a white canvas Rose Festival 2008 commemorative tote, bought at the Ashville Thrift Shop, Mrs. Brown produced a Ziploc bag. It held all the important documents for tomorrow, the bus and train tickets to New York and back, and a MetroCard that Alice had asked a friend in Manhattan to send her for Mrs. Brown to use on city buses.

“Next: address of the Oscar de la Renta store on Madison Avenue?”

Important phone numbers and addresses were written on a white unlined five-by-seven-inch index card. “Here it is,” Mrs. Brown said, reading from the card, “772 Madison Avenue at Sixty-sixth Street.”

“And you've got your cell phone and you've charged the battery?”

Mrs. Brown, who rarely used her mobile, nodded. She'd charged the phone.

Mrs. Brown had already memorized the directions but nonetheless read from the card where they were written: “Exit train and once inside Pennsylvania Station look for signs that say Seventh Avenue, not Eighth Avenue. Exit Pennsylvania Station on the Seventh Avenue side, which will be between Thirty-first and Thirty-third Streets, cross the avenue to West Thirty-second Street, then look for signs for the M4 bus which will take you up Madison Avenue. Watch out the windows of the bus for signs on the street corners and get off the bus between Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth Streets. You will be on the east side of the avenue. Walk north to Sixty-sixth Street and cross Madison Avenue to the northwest corner where the store is located at 772 Madison.”

Alice pointed to the MetroCard. “Follow the little white arrows on the card when you insert it. Point it downward, as the arrows indicate. Or just ask the bus driver how it works,” she advised. “Don't be shy, Mrs. Brown. You won't be the first person who has asked a New York City bus driver for assistance, believe me. And don't take it personally if when he or she answers they aren't especially polite. They don't do Ashville polite in New York.”

Santo left Alice's lap for Mrs. Brown's.

“Now we should go over your travel itinerary again, just, well, just because,” Alice said.

At 5:00 tomorrow morning, September 10, Mrs. Brown would leave her house and walk to the Ashville bus station, about twenty minutes away. At 5:40 she would board the bus for Westerly, getting in at 7:00. She would walk from the bus stop to the Westerly train station and wait for the 7:25 train to New York's Pennsylvania Station scheduled to arrive at 10:20. Exit Pennsylvania Station; walk to and find the M4 bus; and, assuming the bus was operating on a timely schedule, estimated time of arrival at the Oscar de la Renta boutique? 12:30
P.M.

“If not sooner,” Mrs. Brown said.

“If not sooner.” Alice smiled.

Next they discussed Mrs. Brown's return to Pennsylvania Station in time to catch the 7:50
P.M.
train back to Westerly, which would be much easier than getting to Oscar de la Renta because it had been decided Mrs. Brown would splurge and take a taxi back to the station. She would be carrying her dress, and a taxi promised more space than the helter-skelter crush of the bus, especially if it was crowded.

“To know which taxis are available and which aren't, just look to see if the On Duty sign is lit on the roof of the cab,” Alice explained. “The majority of tourists don't know this is why so many empty taxis zoom past them. You'll see.”

A few minutes past nine Alice got up from the kitchen table; it was time for her to go home. She repeated her promise to Mrs. Brown that she would feed Santo tomorrow.

Alice's heart ached, not in a sorrowful way, but with gratitude and appreciation. A lot of people only give lip service for wanting support. Mrs. Brown genuinely seemed to benefit from Alice's help, and it felt good to be useful.

“God, what can I say to Mrs. Brown that sounds right,” Alice asked herself in that moment.

The words came.

“I hope you know, Mrs. Brown, that if I ever seemed not to understand why this trip is so important to you, I apologize. I appreciate and respect you so much. I'm so happy I've gotten to know firsthand why you're Granny's best friend.”

Alice paused. “And my heart's with you all the way, Mrs. Brown. And you know it's not too late to change your mind. If you want, I can still come with you. I haven't missed a day of teaching since I started last year. I can call in sick. I get sick days. Even if you decide in the morning, just give me thirty minutes' advance notice and I'll be ready to go with you.”

What Alice didn't say was that she had already put her go-to-the-city outfit at the foot of her bed and packed a handbag with everything she'd bring if Mrs. Brown needed her to come along at the last minute.

Mrs. Brown stood. She smiled. Looked into Alice's kind blue eyes. Quite uncharacteristically for someone so reserved, she opened her arms to embrace Alice, not the melodramatic way the women in Bonnie's beauty parlor did, or like the reality show wives on TV, all silly kisses and arms bruising the air with champagne glasses and expensive pocketbooks. But the way Mrs. Brown used to hug her mother, and the way Mrs. Brown's mother would return the embrace.

Alice's was a generation of huggers and shoulder bumpers, but the embrace surprised her nonetheless. As she returned the affection, in physical contact so close that she could smell the violet soap Mrs. Brown washed with, tears of worry, and of parting, which she didn't want Mrs. Brown to see, filled her eyes.

Real tears are contagious, and Mrs. Brown didn't escape. Her eyes filled with them, too. “I'm glad, Alice, that you don't think I'm silly,” she said.

“I never did, Mrs. Brown,” Alice said, wiping a tear from her eye. “Silly is the last thing you will ever be.”

M
RS. BROWN WAS EARLY
to the bus depot, walking Ashville's village streets as if she, and she alone, were tasked with drawing back the night for the morning light.

She boarded the almost empty bus to Westerly, the driver gruff as rust, what you might expect of someone who drives too early for too long. It was hot, bubbling doubt—equal parts fear and shame—not tea or coffee that woke Mrs. Brown up. What was she doing? Who did she think she was?

She closed her eyes and saw her dress and the eventuality of owning it. Then her purpose and courage returned, and she was calmed.

Arriving in Westerly, Mrs. Brown walked the short distance to the train station. She bravely asked a complete stranger if she was standing on the right side of the tracks for the train to New York City. She was. Westerly, certainly compared to Ashville, was the nexus of all activity this morning. Noise. Trains announced on the loudspeakers. Security warnings. People yelling down their cell phones with what seemed like urgent details of what they ate for breakfast, or where they had parked the car.

The first train coming through was heading northeast to Boston. The sound was deafening for someone like Mrs. Brown, who was more familiar with sentimental trains in movies and on television than with trains racing up and down the Northeast Corridor.

Mrs. Brown was dressed in her standard uniform, her gray lighter-weight wool-blend trousers, a brown twinset—cardigan sweater and shell—and nondescript black loafer-style shoes with a small rise of heel. She was carrying her mother's favorite handbag, a black leather bean-shaped purse in a style that was popular in the 1950s. Inside was a small clipping, a photograph probably of what? Her dress, you'd suppose. She studied it. Smiled. Reached for a white handkerchief she'd sprayed this morning with a favorite rose scent that would remind her of home. She took it from her purse now and dabbed at her nose, inhaling, exhaling.

Breathe, she told herself. Breathe.

She could turn back. There was still time to be at Bonnie's by eleven. She would apologize. She'd say she finished early, that she didn't need the entire day off after all.

Who else was here, waiting for the train? What was their purpose in going to New York? On the bench next to her was a young man in a brown khaki cotton suit, blue shirt, and red necktie reading a salmon-colored newspaper, the
Financial Times;
she'd never seen this paper before. Were the headlines always so grim?
WEEKLY JOBLESS CLAIMS RISE
and
FACTORY ORDERS FALL
 . . .
WORLD BANK PRESIDENT WARNS EUROPEAN LEADERS,
a reminder that Mrs. Brown wasn't alone in her fears and concerns about financial security.

It's not too late to turn back and save your money, her inner voice cautioned. Go forward, a stronger voice said.

The train from Boston came speeding into view. Thundering until still, it had arrived at the platform forty-three seconds ahead of schedule. “New London will be next. . . . All aboard!”

She boarded the train, mindful of her footing. To Mrs. Brown, a travel novitiate, the train was as elegant as anything in an Agatha Christie novel. Hercule Poirot might appear at any moment with his knowing smile. It was the plush seats, the handsome and attractively dressed businesspeople absorbed in their newspapers and digital tablets that all looked so luxurious.

Mrs. Brown was happy when she saw an empty seat near the window. She could look out and not miss any scenic Long Island Sound waterfront on the way to New York. She got comfortable, never letting go of her pocketbook fixed in her lap. Alice and Mrs. Fox had both warned her never to let her bag out of her sight. Mrs. Brown opened it and rummaged for a rumpled piece of notepaper. She'd written down the lines of a favorite prayer, one that always calmed her nerves, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: