My Mrs. Brown (9 page)

“Nothing's wrong. Just something I wanted to say about Mrs. Brown.”

“Yes, Granny?”

“That book Mrs. Brown read? What was it called? The one you said she wasn't going to finish reading because she didn't want to know how it ends?”

Alice couldn't remember the title, but she remembered the book.

“I've read everything, but I don't recall this book,” Mrs. Fox said. “I want you to read it. Will you, Alice? See how it ends.”

Alice promised her grandmother that she would.

I
T WAS INTERESTING, SO
Mrs. Brown thought, that the topic at the beauty parlor the next morning was money, as it probably was in shops and offices all over the world.

Mrs. Brown had opened up shop, donned her turquoise work jacket, grabbed a broom, and started sweeping when Bonnie blew into the shop in a state of apoplexy.

“Coffee?” She could barely get the word out.

When Bonnie wanted coffee, rather than her usual latte, Mrs. Brown knew that something was troubling her employer, that she would have been up late worrying, or not slept at all, smoking something “herbal,” as she would occasionally admit, and drinking red wine.

Mrs. Brown brought the coffee, black with two sugar substitutes, in Bonnie's favorite mug. The words “Love Spoken Here” were written in script on it.

Slumped in the chair by the cash register, Bonnie sipped the coffee. (When revived, she would perch herself on a swivel stool right at the cash register.) “Business is slow, Mrs. Brown, I don't know if you've noticed? I mean, people are still coming in for the hair, but they aren't booking the other services, manicures and pedicures, and facials, which means they aren't buying any of the skin products. I might have to let one of the beauticians go.”

Mrs. Brown lowered her head, and did not know what to say. She instinctively knew if anyone was let go it would be Teresa, the youngest of the six beauticians that Bonnie employed, also the nicest, if not the brightest.

“I don't know what Teresa will do if I let her go,” Bonnie said, confirming Mrs. Brown's fears. “Her husband is a son of a bitch—oh, sorry, Mrs. Brown, excuse the French—and she is supporting him. In fact, she has taken the morning off to go with him to a job interview. But I have to watch every penny. It's this economy. It is not a time for carelessness with your money. I hope you've saved a lot over the years; you should have. I don't see you have many extravagances, must be one of the advantages of getting old, isn't it? You crave less.”

Mrs. Brown thought about her perfect black suit dress and resumed sweeping and tidying up. Bonnie kept talking. “I can't stand to listen to the news anymore, all the gloom and doom about the economy.” She closed the cash register and crossed the room to the window onto Main Street, looking south as if she was expecting someone. “I started screaming at the NBC news last night, ‘Tell a better story, asshole! Tell a better story!' ”

She turned away from the window and smiled. “But the anchorman didn't,” Bonnie said.

The beauty parlor opened for business. The beauticians positioned themselves at their chairs waiting for the first customers of the day. The place began to buzz. Moments after her first client had left her chair, one of the senior beauticians, Hillie, a sassy brunette from South Carolina who relocated with her first husband to Rhode Island several years ago, rushed up to Bonnie at the register.

“Old Mrs. Casey just told me she couldn't afford to give me a tip!” Hillie exclaimed.

“Why not?” Bonnie asked.

Hillie leaned in and whispered as if she was telling some kind of dirty secret. “Says she is cutting back. Has to. Reduce expenses. Well, get her. Isn't she one of the richest dames in Ashville?”

Bonnie nodded. “Maybe the richest, now that Millicent Groton has gone to the big charity ball in the sky.”

Georgie, a curvaceous beautician in her mid-forties with a salad of curls on her head the color of ripe red plums, overheard this exchange and joined in. “I didn't want to say anything, but two of my customers have asked me for a discount.”

Bonnie gasped. “What did you tell them?”

“I told them, Discuss it with Bonnie, she's the boss,” Georgie answered, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

“Discounts!” Bonnie exclaimed. “What the fuck do they think this is, the Red Cross? Free blowouts and free facials!”

As the morning wound down toward noon, there was one last customer left before business picked up again during lunchtime (followed by a lull in the afternoon, and then again a hectic period after five until closing at seven). The customer was Mary Smithers, owner of the local shoe shop, and a kindred spirit with the beauticians because they were all Main Street businesswomen—as opposed to the local grandees, the well-heeled married or single ladies. Their conversation concerned the current economy.

“The one good thing about the bad economy I am glad for is that ‘bling' is over. Not in good taste anymore now that austerity is fashionable. I won't have to sell so many god-awful gaudy shoes, like those gladiator sandals last season with coins dangling all over, so damn ugly,” Mary said, digging in her brown suede handbag for a Life Saver. She had been trying to quit smoking, and the Life Savers, butterscotch, were meant to help. Three years later she was still smoking, and eating three rolls of butterscotch a day.

The women, except Mrs. Brown, gathered around the cash register. Bonnie perched on her swivel stool, the queen bee. Mrs. Brown cleaned and dusted on the sidelines, and listened.

“Why do you want ‘bling' to be over? It was pretty. It was sexy. It was hot, honey. And I just hate dull,” said Francie Brunie, another beautician. “Dull gives me hives.”

“Hives aren't dull,” Mary said, and laughed. “They itch.”

Francie pressed on. “Any of you looked at the new clothes in the fashion magazines lately? They're either freakish, perfect for stoned Amish people, boiled wool and the like, or they are simply dull, not dressy, you know, for old ladies.”

Francie was preening in the mirror on the wall behind Bonnie, arranging her lemon-yellow helmet of hair and applying a new pink lipstick. “Who wants to look like old Mrs. Brown here?” she said, not trying too hard to whisper. “Have you ever seen such a dull thing in your life? I mean, I feel sorry for her, you know, I really do, but still, come on, honey, put on some lipstick, will you? Add some color! Boost your aura.”

Over by the sinks, where she was cleaning up after the beauticians, Mrs. Brown pretended not to have heard what Francie said and not to have noticed that no one disagreed. Always polite, she retreated into the good manners of turning the other cheek, “rising above,” and remaining kind. Here Mrs. Brown was brave. In today's frightened world, kindness takes courage sometimes.

She just kept on. She wiped hair cuttings off chairs and swept under the shelves and sinks. This wasn't the first time something like this had happened, and it would not be the last time either. Mrs. Brown told herself she was here to work, not here running for Miss Popularity. Besides, she had other things to think about. Her plan for getting her dress!

“Well, everyone I know is trying to make some extra dough, me included,” said Hillie. “I'm starting to charge for it.”

“Charge for what?” Mary asked.

Hillie laughed and patted her ample buttocks dressed in paisley stretch corduroy pants worn with high, black heels.

The other women giggled.

“Laugh all you want, girls,” Bonnie said, “but this is really serious. The economy is tricky business, especially for us women. I find nothing funny about it.”

Hillie shook her head. “Honey, why do people say not to be funny? It seems to me that is the least you can do these days. Make a joke.” She paused and lowered her voice. “At least
we
have careers,” she said, looking in Mrs. Brown's direction but avoiding catching her eye. “I feel sorry for the women who get by willy-nilly. If things get any worse, they are the ones who are going to suffer the most.”

Everyone at Bonnie's thought they knew everything there was to know about Mrs. Brown's life, but they didn't. You only really come close to knowing another person when you can begin to identify with their feelings. They were clueless about Mrs. Brown.

The earliest of the lunchtime customers began arriving for their haircuts, colorings, and coifs. The click-clack midday conversation sounded like a concert of so many spoons on jelly glasses. Teresa came in, apologizing to anyone who would listen for taking the morning off. But she hoped her husband's job interview went well. He needed moral support.

Bonnie, still enthroned at the cash register, was reading the
Ashville Bulletin
and offering her commentary on the local news. She supported the farmers' market trying to get more space on Mystic Green near the river on summer Saturdays; she was against the fire station selling air rights so Verizon could put up a cellular phone tower. (The phone company was offering $35,000.) When she got to the television listings and saw that Suze Orman, the money guru, was going to be a guest on one of the afternoon chat shows today, talking about “how to make the bad economy good for you,” she exclaimed her delight.

“It's a sign from God! From the Goddess!” Bonnie said.

She decided to feign a headache after lunch and go home early to watch the show, after which she would chant for prosperity and abundance for an hour before Solomon Aquilino stopped in. (She'd buy wine—California chardonnay could be bought cheap—on the way home.) She asked Mrs. Brown to lock up after all the beauticians finished their work.

Of course Mrs. Brown obliged.

Bonnie was off. Zipping herself into her black motorcycle-style shearling jacket, she smiled in the direction of the cleanup woman. How Bonnie envied Mrs. Brown. She lived such a simple life. Without any great expectations, she had no disappointments a cup of hot tea and a night in front of the television—watching nature programs, no doubt—couldn't cure.

A
LICE HAD ALSO READ
the television listings and as a result tuned in to the afternoon chat show with Suze Orman. She even took notes. Not just because it would make her grandmother happy that she was looking out for her friend and neighbor, but because Alice had decided she wanted to do whatever she could to help Mrs. Brown.

It had been on her mind all day.

She hadn't yet connected the dots back to Mrs. Brown and her desire to help, but Alice had been asked to help organize a parent-teacher conference in January called the Village Effect. This was also the name of a recently published book that discussed how the loss of human contact in the Internet age was not just, according to research studies, literally shortening adult lives but turning children into robots—uncaring, unfeeling, isolated robots. One study even found that in dual-income, two- or three-child families, a third of the family members were never in the same room at the same time.

Even Alice, who in her teen years had liked nothing better than the absence of her immediate relations in any room of the house at any given time, was alarmed by this statistic and what it portended for her students' development.

These months in bucolic, small-town Ashville, living in her grandmother's quiet home, becoming friendly with the older woman across the hall, had changed Alice's thinking about certain things. One of these things was that it takes a village—not only to raise children, as the expression says—but also to feel contented.

It was nice to feel like a part of a community, a neighbor amongst neighbors.

Keeping separate, feeling superior—something she had always prided herself on—wasn't the enlivener she'd thought it was when she was a stoner teen and college student.

Having her first real job was a real eye-opener. Trudging to work on time day after day—no later than 7:00
A.M.
—she realized that there is great nobility in routine and also great sacrifice. Getting out of bed took tremendous effort for Alice still, and a lot of self-talk, caffeine, and blasting music. Some days her personal best was just getting to the job on time.