My Mrs. Brown

by William Norwich

  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 gla
sses 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.”

  MRS. 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:

  Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

  Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

  Where there is injury, pardon.

  Where there is doubt, faith.

  Where there is despair, hope.

  Where there is darkness, light.

  Where there is sadness, joy.

  O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

  To be consoled as to console;

  To be understood as to understand;

  To be loved, as to love.

  For it is in giving that we receive.

  It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

  It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

  “Amen,” Mrs. Brown said aloud, and then noticed that the train conductor was standing over her.

  “Goodness, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” she said, digging in her pocketbook for the Ziploc with her train ticket.

  “Never need to apologize for praying,” the conductor said, “not in America, ma’am.”

  In New London, then Old Saybrook, more passengers filled the car. The train barreled down the tracks toward New York City, such a foreign destination for Mrs. Brown but probably for everyone else on the train as familiar as their backyards.

  In New Haven, a young woman Mrs. Brown guessed was about nineteen years old sat in the seat next to her, which until then had been empty. She had long wavy brown hair, wore blue jeans with high-heeled black suede pumps, and she carried a canvas bag not unlike Mrs. Brown’s from the Ashville Rose Festival except hers said YALE UNIVERSITY. In the canvas bag the young woman found her iPad, and turned it on, glassy and bright as a Christmas light.

  Mrs. Brown’s attention went right to the pull quote on the page of the magazine the young woman was reading on her device. “She never knew what she wanted to be, but she did know the woman she wanted to become . . .”

  The young woman noticed Mrs. Brown reading and turned her head and smiled. Mrs. Brown apologized for reading over her shoulder.

  “Hey, no problem,” the young woman said.

  Mrs. Brown closed her eyes to rest and instead fell asleep. If you had asked her just fifteen minutes ago if she thought she would be able to sleep on the train, or should sleep on a train given security concerns, she would have certainly answered no. But the lulling of the train, the speeding view she saw of Long Island Sound from the window—the relief of being on time and finally on her journey—set her into a deep slumber with dreams in brief fragments: a desert, sands blowing, gray chiffon and dust, a young soldier with a homecoming smile, a flag; browning red and gold autumn leaves, teaberry-colored native Ashville roses on the banks of the fast-moving river . . .

  IT WAS THE MOST awful, frightening, disturbing smell. How was it that no one else minded?

  On the platform at Pennsylvania Station, Mrs. Brown was overcome with the smells, of damp on rust, machine oils, honeyed roasting peanuts, and urine.

  But here was the first sign she needed, to Seventh Avenue: this way. Mrs. Brown found her footing in the march toward that exit. She stopped at the sight of an escalator. She hadn’t been on one in years. They don’t have them in Ashville. They don’t need them.

  Mrs. Brown stood to the side while everyone else piled onto the escalator with the greatest of ease. Finally, when it was only herself left on the platform, she inched closer to the escalator. She bravely placed her right foot first and then the left and then up she went, heart first. She caught her breath before she would have to attempt getting off the ascending steel trap without stumbling. And mercifully she didn’t stumble. She did just fine. />
  I’ve got to sit a minute and compose myself, Mrs. Brown thought. There wasn’t any place to sit, at least not that she could see. The station was teeming with people crisscrossing in every direction, pulling suitcases on wheels or barking into cell phones, walking and texting, not looking where they were going, holding the other stranger responsible if they collided.

  To her left, she was aware of a group of homeless men; everyone else moved in lines of transit, they moved in circles. One of the homeless men was singing, screaming is more accurate, his version of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” “I’ll find you in the morning sun, and when the night is new. I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you,” the song that was written in 1938 by Sammy Fain. How that song brought back memories. It was her father’s favorite, and she remembered him singing it to her mother, so long ago. Maybe hearing it, even in this tortured rendition, was some sign of protection for Mrs. Brown?

  Instead of exiting on Seventh Avenue as preplanned, Mrs. Brown exited Pennsylvania Station on Eighth. It is an easy mistake to make. Whether it is a highway or a train station or a taxi’s on duty/off duty signal, New York isn’t famous for its accessible signage. It never was. Just ask any old-timer who remembers how tiny the highway signs for Idlewild Airport (now JFK) were back in the day. You scheduled your travel time to the airport to include missing the exit sign.

  Mrs. Brown emerged in the noonday September sun on a baking hot sidewalk with people rushing every which way, the noise of it, the smell of it, from more roasting honey-sweet peanuts at one vendor’s stand to the acid odor of fiery beef sizzling at another, curry to the south . . . this was suffocating. Then there was the babble, a ferocious roar she couldn’t deny even with the cheeriest, greatest intentions for her day. If you factor in the seeming fact that one out of every three people was smoking a cigarette, exhaling eddies of smoke, then this must be what hell looks like, feels like, smells like, sounds like, if it isn’t the real hell itself ?