My Mrs. Brown

by William Norwich

  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.

  ALICE 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.

  As she got to know her colleagues, especially the much older ones, who’d been working for decades, she saw that it’s not easy day after day after day to show up to a job whether you feel like it or not, put in decent effort, earn a meager wage—keep cool and polite when things don’t go your way, your students don’t respect you, or some boss angers or bullies you—then go home and basically spend the few remaining hours of your day getting ready for tomorrow.

  Thanks to the examples of her colleagues, and to Mrs. Brown as well, Alice was realizing how lucky she was to still be young, energized by her hopes and her dreams, even her hormones: getting some teaching experience under her belt in Ashville, then moving to a big city, maybe San Francisco or New York, a better job, a cool guy, maybe marry him, but certainly live with him; travel with him to places that interested her, like Berlin and Japan; maybe have a kid, maybe even two; get a vacation house near the water, like that. Have sex all the time . . .

  Mrs. Brown, on the other hand, had come around and around on this wearying wheel many times already. How that must feel? When every excitement you ever hoped for or imagined had happened or it hadn’t, and now you knew it never would. What was left? What was there to look forward to? Too much old age and not enough money, and memories that, in Mrs. Brown’s case, weren’t all of them happy.

  “A secret grief,” her grandmother had said when she and Alice spoke most recently on the telephone. “She’s a simple, rural woman with a secret grief, try and remember that. God will bless you, Alice, if you just try and see life through her eyes, not your own,” Mrs. Fox said.

  The concept of seeing life from someone else’s perspective was kind of revolutionary, too, and it was something anyone with even the tiniest capacity for imagination could do, but do enough of us try? Alice wondered.

  Close your eyes and catch a glimpse of her neighbor’s life through her eyes, and what did you see? Alice saw what she always saw when she pictured Mrs. Brown: head bowed, standing in her kitchen, her hands on the countertop as if it was the back of the pew in front of you in church, or the railing of a ship lost at sea.

  When the theory of empathy becomes a rhythm of the heart, it’s a big deal in a young person’s life. So why not watch and see what this money guru had to say? It might help Mrs. Brown, and it might also benefit Alice. Lord knows, she could use a few money-saving tips.

  Alice watched Suze Orman while dinner was baking in the oven. A tuna casserole from an ancient recipe that was her grandmother’s favorite standby—the recipe was scribbled on an index card stuck in a copy of the Ashville telephone book.

  Alice needed to practice her cooking skills.

  She had a second date on Saturday with Milo, Milo Benjamin was his full name, and she had invited him home for dinner. Milo was a guy Alice had met on Tinder, a dating website that was more trouble than it was worth when she was in a big place like Vancouver—separating the wheat, so to speak, from the chaff—but was proving useful in this part of the world, where there weren’t many occasions, or places, where young people could hang out if they weren’t students on the Guilford campus.

  There was the tavern on Main Street, but it was mostly older men, or rowdy younger guys from the town; some were hot, for sure. But although always up for the pleasures of the flesh, Alice had enough self-respect not to be blindly promiscuous, and she didn’t trust that Ashville guys would get her. The way she dressed, all in black, a city girl.

  Alice also knew that a schoolteacher, especially a young single teacher living in a new town, should always consider the impression she gave people, particularly the parents of her students. This was something her school’s principal had talked about during teacher orientation in late August, mentioning the tavern as a place to avoid, for the women teachers as well as the men.

  Maybe it was too soon to invite Milo for a home-cooked meal, but she’d risk it.

  A few years older than Alice, Milo was an English teacher at a boarding school in northeastern Connecticut, about a sixty-minute drive from A
shville. For their first date, two weeks ago, they had met equal distance in Woodstock, Connecticut.

  Conversation was easy once Alice stopped judging Milo’s conservative clothing—a sandy-brown corduroy sport jacket, a white polo shirt, and khakis. (And when Milo stopped sizing up Alice, no longer daunted by the I’LL STOP WEARING BLACK WHEN THEY INVENT A DARKER COLOR T-shirt, the tight black jeans—which he liked, they were naughty—motorcycle boots, black chiffon scarf, and thick peacock-blue eyeliner. Besides, she’d arrived in a 2003 gray Ford Focus—“my grandmother’s car,” she said—so how dangerous could she be?)

  Milo had mentioned during this first date that he liked visiting Ashville whenever he had the chance because the town’s greens were “perfectly articulated.” What could Alice say in response except to invite him to visit?

  “Why don’t you come to dinner?”

  “I’d love that,” Milo said without hesitation. “When?”

  The tuna casserole recipe was easy enough and, she hoped, foolproof: a can of Campbell’s mushroom soup, a can of tuna, three cups of cooked extrawide egg noodles, three-quarters of a cup of milk, a favorite regional brand of potato chips called State Line hand-crunched for the casserole crust, top and bottom, and all baked for twenty-five minutes at 400 degrees.

  As soon as Alice heard Mrs. Brown return home, she telephoned her.

  “I’ve been cooking,” she told her neighbor.

  “Are you okay?” Mrs. Brown answered.

  Alice laughed. She explained that she had a date tomorrow night with this interesting man named Milo, who was driving almost an hour to taste her cooking, and that she wanted to try the casserole out on Mrs. Brown before she made it for Milo.

  Mrs. Brown appreciated the offer of a hot meal after a long day and invited Alice and her casserole to her kitchen table (so Alice wouldn’t have to do dishes. They’d share the effort of the meal). She told Alice to bring the tweed jacket she wanted altered with her; Mrs. Brown put the kettle on for tea. She liked hot tea with her meals.

  After they’d exchanged formalities and pleasantries, the tuna casserole was dished out in generous but not overly large servings on white china plates and the teapot positioned in the middle of the table, Mrs. Brown reached for her handbag—it was next to her feet—and opened it.

  “Look,” she said, producing three lottery tickets for the weekend’s big win.

  “I thought you disapproved of the lottery,” Alice said, pouring the tea. “Remember when I bought a bunch of tickets when I first got here from Vancouver?”

  “I do remember. Something about beginner’s luck, you said, now that you were living in a new place.” Mrs. Brown tasted the tuna casserole. “It’s good, Alice. Congratulations.”

  It was fine, the casserole was just fine; Mrs. Brown suggested Alice serve it to Milo with a side of peas and a green salad. Or include the peas in the casserole. Beige food needed something green for color with it, especially if you were serving it to a date.

  “Really, peas?” Alice wondered. “Don’t you think peas are old? I mean, old-fashioned? I was thinking arugula or kale. Kale is very happening right now.”

  “Oh, is it? Kale is very happening?” Mrs. Brown said, and laughed.

  She’s stuck on peas, Alice thought, and wouldn’t push the kale on her. Alice returned to the topic of the lottery tickets. “So what’s this about buying lottery tickets?”

  “Well, I have been thinking about how to pay for my dress and the trip to New York City, and since it is such an exceptional thing to want,” Mrs. Brown said, rising from the table to refill Santo’s water bowl, “I just thought it might call for an exceptional method of getting the money. So I bought the tickets.”

  Alice smiled. “Wouldn’t it be something if you won, Mrs. Brown, and you became a millionaire? Isn’t the pot worth something like $265 million?”

  “I shouldn’t have bought any tickets, really,” Mrs. Brown said with a deep sigh, and returned to the table with Santo following. She put the lottery tickets back in her pocketbook and snapped the clasp closed. “Or I should have only bought one.”

  Alice didn’t understand. “Why just one?”

  “Well, I think if God wants me to win the lottery, then one ticket would be enough, wouldn’t it?”

  “But haven’t you maximized your chances by buying three? You know, helped God out kind of thing.”

  Mrs. Brown shook her head. “If God wants me to win the lottery, then one ticket would be enough. Buying more than one shows him that I lack faith, and without faith, Alice, no one is going to win anything except disappointment.”

  Alice wasn’t raised with much religion, and this sort of talk made her uncomfortable. All she knew was that something that seemed to appear on Instagram at least once a month sounded right: “Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for people who have been to hell.”

  Alice rested her fork on her plate. “When it comes to the topic of God and money, I figure it’s like what they say in gambling terms, a crabshoot.”

  “Crapshoot,” Mrs. Brown said, correcting Alice. “I think the gambling term is ‘crapshoot,’ not ‘crabshoot.’ ”

  Alice shrugged. “Crab is much more colorful, don’t you think? And probably much easier to shoot than”—she leaned in and whispered—“than crap.”

  “Alice!” Mrs. Brown responded. She wasn’t really shocked, but as the elder adult in the room felt obliged to register some distress.

  “Well, I doubt very much that God is thinking much about my dress. Maybe I am being impractical. And, you know,” Mrs. Brown said, “standing in that line at the store to buy these tickets? Everyone looked so dazed, and so needy, so possessed by fantasies about money and their expectations. Me, too, I suppose.”

  Mrs. Brown stood up and began to clear the table. Alice got up, too, and offered to help, but Mrs. Brown declined and told her to sit. Alice lifted Santo to her lap, and the cat purred his delight.

  “So I watched Suze Orman on Granny’s television this afternoon,” Alice said, “and I jotted down some notes that I hope help you save up the money you need.”

  Mrs. Brown returned to the table with a blue tin of store-bought Scandinavian butter cookies. Note to self: no more store-bought Scandinavian butter cookies. Cut costs.

  “This Suze Orman is intense, isn’t she?” Alice said, turning the pages of the yellow legal pad where she’d scribbled her notes. “And so blond. That’s a TV thing, I think. On TV, the older they get, the blonder they get.”

  Santo was now in Mrs. Brown’s lap.

  Alice read aloud: “ ‘Hope for the best, plan for the worst.’ ‘Financial responsibility comes from active responsibility.’ I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. ‘If you plan for life’s what-ifs, there’s no need to panic.’ ‘Wishful thinking can lead to financial ruin.’ ‘If you can’t afford it today, it’s just going to be worse tomorrow.’ ”

  Alice stopped reading. “That’s not a lot of positive thinking, is it?”

  Mrs. Brown didn’t answer.

  “But it is practical advice,” Alice said. “Suze is so enthusiastic about the positive outcome from it, so . . .”

  Santo jumped on top of the kitchen table. Mrs. Brown lifted him to the floor. Looking inside her pocketbook, she found a scrap of paper, an envelope from the beauty shop.

  “I’ve been working on a list of things to cut back to save money,” Mrs. Brown said, reaching for a pair of drugstore reading glasses she kept in the fruit bowl on the kitchen table. Old and scratched, they sloped on her nose like Christmas tinsel tossed on a thin bough.

  She read her list: “Cancel delivery of Ashville Bulletin. No dry cleaning. No new summer shoes. No more store-bought cookies,” she said, staring at the tin of butter cookies. “No movies . . .”

  “No movies?” Alice exclaimed.

  Despite the fact that there were very few films they ever felt the need to see, Alice knew that Mrs. Brown and her grandmother enjoyed their occasional
nights at the movies. And if she and Mrs. Brown ever agreed on wanting to see the same film, she’d be happy to take her.

  “No movies,” Mrs. Brown said, continuing to read her list. “Generic products instead of name brands, including,” she whispered, looking in Santo’s direction, “cat food. Winter will cost me, but you know if you use a hot water bottle to warm the bed, you can keep your heating bills down. What else? Cancel cable television . . .”

  Alice, about to reach for a third cookie, didn’t out of respect for the new austerity plan. “But if you don’t have a computer, you need to have television, don’t you? What if there is a national emergency?”

  “Bad news travels fast enough,” Mrs. Brown answered. “I am sure, God forbid there’s a national emergency, that the news will find me.”

  “Well, you can watch Granny’s TV, anytime you like. I’m mostly watching things on my computer,” Alice said, and paused. “Since I’m subletting, maybe you want to add something to my rent . . .”

  Mrs. Brown answered: “Never that.”

  “Then I hope you’ll let me treat you to the movies sometime?” Alice asked. “And let me pay you for the work you do on my jacket?”

  Mrs. Brown wasn’t going to let Alice pay for the movies. “Didn’t I tell you, no charge for the alterations. But please try the jacket on. Let me see what I can do.”

  Alice stood and did as told. Santo jumped up and took her place on the chair she’d just occupied. Mrs. Brown pinched and pulled at the jacket and sure enough found a couple of seams she could work with. As she did, she told Alice some of her ideas for earning extra income, in addition to the ideas for saving on expenses she’d already mentioned.

  During her break tomorrow Mrs. Brown would stop at the dry cleaners on Main Street, and also at the men’s clothing shop, to offer her sewing services in case they needed any extra help. The hospital might need someone in the kitchen on Sundays. She’d suggest to Bonnie that she inventory her stockroom, where all the beauty supplies were kept; that could be a few extra dollars if she worked a few nights after the salon closed.