My Mrs. Brown

by William Norwich

  Mrs. Brown’s task, meanwhile, was to go through the various drawers and closets and count the trousers, tops, shoes, scarves, handkerchiefs, sunglasses, and more items that would be sent to the Ashville Thrift Shop.

  The quantity, as well as the quality, of, say, the twenty-seven cotton-knit short-sleeved golfing shirts in various colors bemused her, as did a row of seven pairs of identical white cotton summer trousers. Fortunately, envy was not in Mrs. Brown’s nature. Even when she came upon a red cardigan sweater with a lush chinchilla collar, she felt only pure delight.

  Mrs. Brown opened drawers—many filled with rose-scented or evergreen-scented sachets—counted items, and scribbled the tally on sheet after sheet of yellow legal paper. When she finished with the sweaters and lingerie in all the drawers, Mrs. Brown moved on to the closets.

  The first closet she opened was empty, except for about a dozen fine wood clothing hangers. Rachel had said earlier that Mrs. Groton kept only a few dressy things in Ashville. These Mrs. Brown found in the next closet.

  Two dresses: one was an orange-yellow floral silk caftan-style evening dress with bell-shaped long sleeves and a V-neck. But as beautiful as it was, the confection did not capture Mrs. Brown’s attention as much as the other dress did. This was a sleeveless black dress and a single-button jacket made of the finest quality wool crepe.

  Its correctness was its allure. Suggesting endless possibilities and the certainty of positive outcomes if one wore this dress. The richness of the affect of this suit, its elegance and poise, was the work of a master.

  It was the strangest thing, but even in her youth, never had a dress, or any other item of clothing, spoken to Mrs. Brown this way, a garment so regal—so “grown-up” she’d later explain in one of her letters to Mrs. Fox—so exquisitely tailored and, somehow, thoroughly reassuring.

  Why wasn’t all of life designed so perfectly?

  Lest there be any confusion, this was no “little black dress.” It was not a sibling in the family of frocks you see trotted out on fashion pages at least once a year, a cotillion of easy-breezy, channel-your-inner–Audrey Hepburn black shift dresses to wear from desk to dinner.

  It was the queen of all little black dresses, the jewel in the crown. Mrs. Brown fell under its spell.

  Reaching out to touch the dress, she stopped. Seeing how roughened and red her hands were from cleaning and housework, and aghast at the sight, she pulled them back.

  Rachel, carrying a small pile of books, saw this.

  “Isn’t that a wonderful dress? You’d never know, would you, that it is more than twenty years old; there’s not a thread out of place,” she said as she entered the dressing room from the hall.

  “The style is one of Oscar de la Renta’s most popular. He always has it, or something very much like it, every season. In fact, it’s a style almost every First Lady in the past thirty years has owned.”

  Mrs. Brown recalled seeing photographs in the magazines at the beauty parlor of Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, a Democrat and a Republican, in what she now realized was this dress, or a close version of it. In Mrs. Brown’s opinion, First Ladies, even Jackie Kennedy, were their most attractive not looking like butterfly duchesses in their evening dresses but in these elegant day dresses and skirt suits that said they meant business and that they got things done.

  Mrs. Brown’s ideal dress—this dress—was the complete opposite of Cinderella’s. Cinderella wanted to go to the grand dance in a ball gown; Mrs. Brown’s dream was this dress: suitability in every sense.

  It’s a great fault of the current fashion system that rather than innovating on the functionality of what we wear, the industry mostly only addresses the fear of not looking young, trendy, or rich. And when it comes to new clothes that women with less than upper-middle-class incomes—women like Mrs. Brown and her peers—can afford, fashion fails and discriminates most. Unless mature women want to wear the same things that twenty-six-year-olds covet, there’s very little that’s happily intended for them to wear. And the exquisite enhancements of luxury tailoring? Out of reach.

  Not every woman wants to look like her teenage daughter or granddaughter. Not every woman wants to look better suited for partying in Las Vegas than for holding steadfast at home and at work. Not every woman’s fantasy is to walk a red carpet. Not every woman feels obliged to wear the latest trend just for trends’ sake.

  Rachel could not read the actual thoughts telegraphing in her mind but, with her feminine intuition, understood that something quite major was occurring today in the heart of the Ashville lady.

  From her female relations, or reading the memoirs of dynamic women throughout history, Rachel was attuned to the fact that at any given stage over the course of a lifetime, a woman thinks, and feels, differently about what she wears.

  In the beginning, when she is young, fashion is fast currency, a way of communicating, signaling; an aphrodisiac, whether it is motorcycle leather pants or dotted swiss lacy blouses, something, like feathers, to attract the mate who will parent your children, fill your nest, perpetuate a glittering species. Got to have it!

  In the middle years, it is not so much feathers as it is futures that you reflect in clothing, your prosperity and abundance. Later, the hope of clothing is self-preservation, protection from the eliminations of time fraying life, gravity undoing your hem.

  It is style over sorrow.

  What you wear is your container. It circumvents the chaos and the disappointments; structure holds you, it coddles, it corsets. Fashion becomes an intervention now. The application of lipstick when one is ill to make one feel better. And by doing something so seemingly superficial you console and inspire the people around you, who care and are so worried. You powder your face. You wear your best shoes. You button your jacket. You smooth the folds in your skirt.

  Wanting to relieve Mrs. Brown of any embarrassment from having just been observed, with her hand quite literally in Mrs. Groton’s closet, Rachel sped her conversation into a jolly kind of privileged singsong, something she’d learned from watching Mrs. Groton: in any potentially awkward situation, employ levity and self-deprecating humor to make people feel their best.

  “How embarrassing! Look at me with all these old books. They look pretty interesting, so I thought I’d bring them with me to the city. I always read before I go to sleep,” Rachel said, resting half a dozen books on a dressing table. “I promise, I’ll send them right back to you at the thrift shop to sell.”

  The pile included paperback mystery novels and biographies. But it was a teaberry-colored hardback that intrigued Mrs. Brown.

  “Looks like fun, doesn’t it?” Rachel said, handing the book to Mrs. Brown. “Do you like to read, Mrs. Brown?”

  The cover was an illustration of a sweet-looking lady in a tan twill coat and a green straw hat with a large pink rose pinned to it.

  “I do like to read,” Mrs. Brown said. “What’s this one about?”

  Rachel read the title aloud. “Mrs. ’Arris Goes to Paris, by Paul Gallico. Hmm, I don’t know, looks like a kids’ book for grown-ups, but the fact that the lady on the cover is carrying a Dior dress box certainly is a recommendation—to me at least. Why don’t you take it?”

  “I couldn’t take anything from here,” Mrs. Brown said.

  “Nor could I,” said Rachel, “except a book. You know, Mrs. Groton forgave everyone almost anything if they were readers. Please take the book, Mrs. Brown, and enjoy it. Consider it a loan that never needs to be repaid, or sell it at the thrift shop after you’ve read it, if that makes you feel easier about taking it.”

  Mrs. Brown hesitated.

  “Besides,” Rachel continued, “I think Mrs. Groton would have liked you very much and been pleased to know you had something of hers from her house in Ashville.”

  Hearing that Mrs. Groton would have liked her, had they ever met, gave Mrs. Brown a feeling of pride that pulled her right up, posture perfect. She was very pleased but still not comfortable accepting a present, especia
lly under the circumstances. She was here to help inventory the deceased woman’s most personal effects. Wasn’t it ghoulish to take something?

  But Rachel insisted. Mrs. Brown remembered what her mother always told her. If you are offered a glass of water in someone’s home, always accept it, whether you are thirsty or not. This shows that you visit with pleasure, not resistance.

  Mrs. Brown thanked Rachel for her kindness and accepted the book, taking delight in just holding it.

  But now back to work.

  Concerning the two dresses in the closet, the flowing floral evening dress and the Oscar de la Renta suit, Rachel said: “Both dresses are to be packed in tissue, by me before I am done here this week, and brought to New York, where they will, along with many other things from Mrs. Groton’s closets, go to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum.”

  Rachel touched the sleeve of the flowery dress. “Mrs. Groton was on all the best-dressed lists, and much of her clothing, excuse me, all of her clothing in various special ways, was exceptional and some pieces very important.”

  “Important?” Mrs. Brown wondered.

  “Meaning, they were significant pieces in the various designers’ careers. This evening dress dates back to the late 1970s and was designed by Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo. It was the lead dress in the collection that got him his first Coty Award. So the Met considers it ‘important.’ ”

  Mrs. Brown didn’t know how to respond.

  “Modern women want choices to go with their moods,” Rachel continued. “But since most modern women’s mood is perpetual exhaustion, I think the trickle down is the preponderance of casual jogging suits, jeans, and T-shirts that you see women wearing everywhere, airports, grocery stores, picking the kids up at school.”

  Rachel paused.

  “People dress for comfort, not for occasion or suitability. I went to a funeral the other day of someone who worked for Mrs. Groton at her house in Westchester, and no one dressed up, you know, that one sovereign outfit people used to have for significant occasions,” Rachel said.

  “Except for those wonderful ladies in the South, does anyone dress for church anymore?” Rachel laughed. “I guess the question tells you where I am not on Sundays. Oh, dear. More praying and less bloviating for me!”

  Mrs. Brown was quiet.

  “Mrs. Groton’s advice for older women who want to look good was to dress to look important, not sexy. And by ‘important’ Mrs. Groton meant to look grown-up, a ready and easy-to-identify asset that bettered one’s family and community. What you wear? It not only protects you but projects the best person you want to be, and helps get you to that place.”

  Rachel worried she might have hurt Mrs. Brown’s feelings.

  “Just between us,” Rachel confided, “Mrs. Groton didn’t wake up every morning of her life, especially after her son died, feeling like ‘Mrs. Groton.’ Many mornings she woke up in a cloud of depression. One of the best ways she knew to move that dark cloud from hanging over her was to, as she said, ‘suit up and show up.’ Or ‘put on my war paint.’ The war was her depression and the paint was her makeup and hair.”

  A warrior’s outfit; Mrs. Brown touched the right sleeve of the black suit dress.

  “As I was saying before I digressed, about the Oscar de la Renta here going to the Met? The dress is important for curatorial purposes for several reasons,” Rachel said. “For the designer, it represents one of his most classic and popular designs. Furthermore, it’s significant to the Met because it’s what Mrs. Groton wore to luncheon with the Queen—we were talking about the Queen earlier—at Buckingham Palace ten years ago. And it is what she wore to the White House to lunch with the President and First Lady. Along with the Sant’ Angelo, she eventually retired the dress here to Ashville because her closets in New York were getting too full.”

  Rachel took the dress from the closet and held it closer for inspection. “It is the finest wool crepe sheath, with a bit of stretch, very sturdy but also very lithe. I like the square neck, cap sleeve; the jacket, the notch collar. It’s genius, isn’t it?”

  Genius? Mrs. Brown wondered. She’d never heard anyone less than a scientist—let alone a dress—described this way. Later, she would come to understand that “genius” is fashion-speak for “I like it.”

  “It’s also genius that the jacket has just one button, because you see how it helps the jacket minimize any stomach by providing a sort of bell-shape effect,” Rachel continued.

  Mrs. Brown studied the jacket closely.

  “This one button is beautiful, isn’t it? It’s real tortoiseshell, belonging to Mrs. Groton long before the hawksbill sea turtle was classified an endangered species. Mrs. Groton first had it on an Yves Saint Laurent couture ‘le smoking,’ as the French say, or tuxedo, as we say, that she had from the 1960s, when she was still buying haute couture.”

  The polished, Continental way Rachel pronounced “haute couture” was so elegant, it was like a trip to Paris itself. “Haute couture,” she repeated. “It literally means ‘high fashion’ or ‘finest high-fashion sewing’ and refers to the made-to-order clothing the French design houses are so proud of and so good at.”

  Mrs. Brown knew the word. One did if one had learned sewing back in the 1950s using Vogue patterns to make one’s clothes, and most did because they weren’t expensive but they were chic. Her prom dress was from a Vogue pattern, a floral number with a full skirt that Mrs. Brown was able to make for just seventeen dollars, the cost of the fabric and buttons. Her mother made her wedding dress, from another Vogue pattern, for just over twenty-five dollars.

  “May I?” she asked, indicating that she wanted to examine the dress more closely.

  “Of course,” Rachel answered.

  Mrs. Brown carefully examined the hand-stitched lining of the skirt and the jacket. Just the way the silk fit so smoothly, without a hint of bunching under the arm, showed how superb the craftsmanship was. And was she correct? The lining wasn’t black like the suit but a deep midnight navy blue?

  “The lining is really impressive, isn’t it?” Rachel said.

  “Is it navy blue, not black?” Mrs. Brown asked.

  “So genius, isn’t it? Mrs. Groton said that when you get older you can line your dark suits in navy silk and it will cast a warm glow on your face, much less harsh than if it were black.”

  Nearly invisible piped patching on the pockets hid the topstitching that set them on the jacket, and the pockets were lined in the navy blue silk.

  “Impressive stitching, isn’t it?” Rachel said.

  Mrs. Brown nodded. “How do you know so much about clothes?” she asked Rachel.

  “Well, I love fashion, not only the clothes but the whole business of it and the people who work in the fashion industry. I went to Parsons School of Design and might have gone directly to Seventh Avenue had the opportunity to become Mrs. Groton’s assistant not presented itself,” she explained.

  From the expression on Mrs. Brown’s face, and her fascination with this garment, Rachel could tell that the older woman, despite her plainness, wasn’t allergic to fashion either. In fact, she was falling in love with the dress.

  Hasn’t every woman fallen in love with a dress?

  Rachel certainly had, and on many occasions. But it surprised Rachel that it was this suit dress and not the flowery, elegant evening dress next to it that had captured Mrs. Brown’s heart. She wanted to know why, but good manners prevented her from asking personal questions of someone she had just met, especially this dear older woman from a different era and walk of life.

  Perhaps if she talked about herself, however, Mrs. Brown would reveal more?

  “The one thing lacking in my fashion knowledge is knowing how to sew, I mean really sew well,” Rachel said. “I can manage a hem and stitch together a small tear. I understand construction intellectually, and I’m aware of a great many of the tricks a good tailor can do to create proportions that flatter. But if I had to actually make a dress, I don’t think I could.
”

  Rachel paused. “It would be hubris to say I’m a fashion expert. Rather like someone calling herself a foodie when she only really knows the basics of cooking but is very good ordering at fancy restaurants.”

  Mrs. Brown smiled. “Women my age all had to learn how to sew, and make their own clothes. For something special, we’d use patterns we’d buy at the five-and-dime. My mother taught me,” she said. “I’ve been making my own clothes, as well as mending other people’s to make extra money, since I was a teenager.”

  There was a drawer full of handkerchiefs that Mrs. Brown hadn’t gotten to yet. Rachel helped her count them, a series of faded cotton handkerchiefs with pastel floral prints or green shamrocks. They were beautiful.

  Mrs. Brown noticed the tears in Rachel’s eyes.

  “I miss Mrs. Groton,” Rachel said.

  “Me too,” Mrs. Brown said softly, then embarrassed, quickly added, “everyone in Ashville does.”

  Rachel sighed. “Well, onward and upward. I’m lucky I’ve got a great job to go to in the fashion business as soon as everything in Mrs. Groton’s houses is sorted.”

  It was getting late.

  “How much would a dress and jacket like this cost if someone wanted to buy a new one today?” Mrs. Brown asked.

  “Alas, a hefty amount, Mrs. Brown. About seven thousand dollars, maybe a bit more.”

  Seven thousand dollars!

  It was a huge amount, Mrs. Brown knew. Nonetheless, born was the idea that, as soon as humanly possible, Mrs. Brown would have just such a dress and jacket hanging in her closet. Maybe if she did, it could set something right. Symbolically. Isn’t every act of faith a symbol before it becomes a deed?

  But how dare she? she wondered.

  How dare she not?

  Crystallizing in her mind was what she needed to do. Go to New York? Oh, good God, this would take bravery, she knew—nothing less than the valor of a Marine, nearly a military-style campaign, a grown-up woman’s version of Capture the Flag with real stakes.

  Money.

  Couldn’t she find some copied version of this dress for so much cheaper from one of the bargain brands and discount stores? Maybe, but it didn’t matter, that wasn’t the point for Mrs. Brown. Couldn’t she make this outfit at home and spare herself the trouble? No, she could not. She wished she had the skills, but she just didn’t. Even if she was handed the secret muslin pattern, or toile, this suit dress that so enchanted her was something she could never replicate herself. It was sewing at the highest level.