My Mrs. Brown (15 page)

Mrs. Fox listened carefully. Instead of engaging directly with the problem, she offered something comforting.

“I think about us, Emilia,” Mrs. Fox began, her voice low and quiet down the phone. “Maybe it's a generational thing, or geographic? We're small-town New England girls. We are the quiet, steady types,” Mrs. Fox said. “We're the shovelers.”

“You mean ducks, like the ones at the pond?” Mrs. Brown asked.

Mrs. Fox laughed. “Well, yes, shovelers are a type of duck. But what I mean is shovelers as in shoveling. We're New England girls just after World War Two. Keeping our mouths shut, never complaining, shoveling through the snow so everyone, not just our families, but everyone in the neighborhood, could get to school, to work, to the library, to church, remember?”

Mrs. Brown remembered the bleak winters. As hard as they could be, they were also cozy times staying indoors at home.

“I just wish sometimes, Emilia, well, sometimes you are
too
quiet,” Mrs. Fox said. “Wouldn't it help to talk?”

But she wouldn't press Mrs. Brown, not tonight, or ever. She was friend, not interlocutor.

“I guess something will happen; it'll work out,” Mrs. Brown said, and smiled. “If it is meant to be . . .”

“It will be,” said Mrs. Fox, finishing her best friend's sentence. “Everything is going to be okay in the end. And if it's not okay, it isn't the end.”

Mrs. Brown passed the telephone receiver to Alice.

“Okay, Granny, it's suppertime here. I'll rustle something up for Mrs. Brown and me to eat.”

“Alice, listen to me,” Mrs. Fox said with all the seriousness at her command. “What do I always say? ‘Blood makes you related. Loyalty makes you family.' Emilia is family. Make sure she doesn't get too sad. Keep your eye on her. Promise?”

“Come on, Granny—man . . .” Alice wasn't in the mood for a lecture. She'd begun to say something about how weird Mrs. Brown could be sometimes, and her grandmother should give Alice a break, that she was doing her best to be a good neighbor, but stopped herself just in time, before she hurt anyone's feelings. After all, Mrs. Brown was still sitting right there.

“Yes, yes, I promise you.”

Besides, Mrs. Brown wasn't all that weird. She was just left over from the last century.

“I'm sorry. Yes, I promise. I promise that I will telephone my mother more often,” Alice said, covering so that Mrs. Brown wouldn't suspect anything insulting had ever been intended.

“I promise, Granny!”

L
ATER THAT EVENING, MRS.
Brown sat at her kitchen table mending and sewing some of the pieces from the dry cleaners that she took in to earn extra money.

She was reinforcing some diamanté buttons on a black silk blouse that belonged to the wife of Ashville's only orthodontist, but Mrs. Brown's thoughts were only of this painful day. Thank God she had Alice to go to, and that she was able to talk to Mrs. Fox on the telephone.

Whatever Mrs. Brown did next about her dress had to be more wisely considered. How?

“Go forward,” her inner voice told her.

She put down the sewing, rested her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes. The soothing cliché “where there's a will, there's a way” came to her and then morphed into something more visual. “Where there's a wall, there's a way.” Mrs. Brown saw herself a little girl standing face-to-face with one of the stone walls you saw almost everywhere in the countryside in New England. Where was the best place to climb over? Where was a secret door? There it is, the gold knob! In her mind's eye just as she was reaching for the golden object she heard the sound of Santo rushing across the floor to greet Florida Noble.

Mrs. Brown opened her eyes.

It was just past 8:30, and Florida apologized if she was disturbing Mrs. Brown—she saw the sewing and mending piled on the kitchen table needing to get done—but would Mrs. Brown mind if she made a cup of tea—she carried her own special blend of curative herb tea in a silk sack in her pocketbook—and would Mrs. Brown care to join her in a cup?

“The basis of the tea is chamomile with a dab of hops, too; the chamomile rests the nervous system and the hops soothes the stomach,” Florida said. “When I am in Paris there's a Chinese herbalist I always go see . . . Oh dear, listen to me.”

Mrs. Brown got up to put on the kettle, but Florida stopped her. “You wait on people all day long.” She ran the water from the tap into the kettle and joined Mrs. Brown at the table. Santo leapt into Florida's lap.

“Santo, get down,” Mrs. Brown instructed the cat.

“Oh, please, it's okay, let him stay,” Florida said.

Back in the city, any city—London, Paris, Milan, but especially New York, where Florida reigned supreme amongst the fashion set—very few people would have ever seen this unvarnished, down-to-earth side of the supermodel.

While her professional life was often complicated, and Florida had never won any Girl Scout awards for good behavior, her motives in Ashville were simple. Before her grandmother died five years ago, Florida had promised she would make something of herself beyond modeling.

“The flesh will wither,” her grandmother had said, “but the soul will always grow if you nurture it, Florida.”

She'd promised her grandmother that she would get her college degree even if it meant giving up lucrative modeling jobs. The more time passed, the worse Florida felt about not keeping her promise. But today, her first official day toward her finals and graduation, she had a sense of peace and satisfaction she hadn't known in a very long time.

“My mother's family are from Jamaica,” Florida told Mrs. Brown as they drank their tea, “and they were all farmers. No one went to college and few even finished high school. My mother could sing and dance quite well. She became something of a showgirl and a celebrity in Kingston. That's where she met my father, who was a pilot with British Airways. He lived in London. They fell in love.”

Mrs. Brown looked up from her sewing, stitching the torn inseam on the trousers of a green silk evening suit. “Are your parents in Jamaica or England?” she asked.

“They never married,” Florida said, studying Mrs. Brown's face to see if it registered any disapproval.

It didn't. It wasn't Mrs. Brown's way to sit in judgment. The world was already tough enough. Too many judges and not enough juries. “I'm sure they would have if they could have,” Mrs. Brown said, resting her hands again. They were hurting.

“I think they would have, too,” Florida said. She fixed her herbal concoction and told Mrs. Brown her story. Her father was not only white, the color, especially of men, her grandmother most mistrusted, but was also married with a wife and four children living in England. Grandmother vehemently disapproved of her daughter having an affair with a married man. Then Florida was born. Her mother went to London to be nearer her father, hoping she could woo him away from his wife.

“My mother returned to Jamaica heartbroken. Her looks suffered and so did her health,” Florida said. “She began to drink way too much. My grandmother and I really had to take care of her. She was like our child. Then, when I was twelve, she quit drinking.”

Mr. Brown had liked his liquor. Mrs. Brown had prayed he would not drink so heavily. “How did your mother stop?” she asked Florida.

“She found God, Mrs. Brown, or a reasonable facsimile.”

Mrs. Brown stiffened and Florida apologized.

“Oh, please forgive me, Mrs. Brown, I meant no disrespect to the Lord.”

“None taken,” Mrs. Brown said, and smiled. “It is just when you said that I saw an image of God Almighty coming out of a Xerox machine one after another, so fast . . .”

“Like dollar bills being printed?” Florida said, and laughed.

“Something like that,” Mrs. Brown said.

“I have a tendency to be a bit irreverent,” Florida said. “People were always telling me, especially when I was growing up, ‘Florida, don't be funny.' ”

Mrs. Brown smiled. “You know, that's something I often wonder about, why people tell each other not to be funny. Seems to me, in this crazy world, humor is the least one can offer.”

“Amen,” Florida responded. “I have a photo album with me in my room. I always travel with it. I'll go get it so you can see my relatives?”

“I'd like that,” Mrs. Brown said.

Florida went to get the album. Santo followed her.

When she returned with the photo album, Florida said, “Mrs. Brown, may I ask about that hutch in the living room?”

“Of course. What about it?”

“It's really very beautiful,” Florida said. “How old is it?”

Mrs. Brown didn't know precisely. “Well, it goes back several decades for sure. My father's father, who was born and raised here in Ashville, was in the Navy and stationed at one point in Venezuela . . . Let me see, how does the story go? It's been a long time since I've even thought about it.”

Mrs. Brown got up from the kitchen table and walked to the hallway, where she could see the hutch in the living room.

“One night in a village outside Caracas, my grandfather and some of his shipmates were in the local pub when a young boy ran in frantically looking for a doctor, for anyone who could help; his older sister was sick. My grandfather volunteered to help. He followed the boy home and found that the young woman wasn't breathing well. She had developed pneumonia after some kind of respiratory infection. My grandfather was able to help, the young woman recovered just in time for her wedding two weeks later to the richest young man in their province, and her father gave my grandfather this hutch to thank him. My grandfather shipped it home, and it ended up with me after my parents died.” Mrs. Brown paused. “It was always my mother's guess that it wasn't the hutch as much as something smuggled inside the hutch that made my grandfather so happy to have it.”

“Forgive me if this sounds terribly tacky,” Florida said, “but have you ever had the hutch appraised?”

“Oh, it isn't worth anything,” Mrs. Brown said, and laughed. “And my mother and I looked for anything left hidden inside and never found it.” She interpreted Florida's praise for the hutch as an attempt to make her feel more confident about her humble home. Compared to the wonderful houses and hotels Florida knew in her travels, this house must seem very shabby.

“I am not an expert on antiques by any means,” Florida said, “but my interior designer in New York, his name is Jesse Carrier, has a great instinct about these things. I have a feeling he'd think your hutch is very valuable.”

Mrs. Brown was flattered, but she knew the hutch wasn't a big deal. “It is getting late and I want to see your photo album,” she said to change the subject.

“If you'll permit me, I'll take a few photographs for Jesse just in case he thinks it might be an important piece? He could show it to an appraiser. You never know. Like on the PBS show
Antiques Roadshow,
maybe you're living with a treasure.”

Mrs. Brown really was embarrassed now. “I am living with a treasure.” She smiled. “And that is you, dear.”

Florida laughed. “Maybe we should get a second opinion?”

“About what?”

“About the hutch,” Florida said.

“You make
hutch
sound like a medical issue, a second opinion,” Mrs. Brown said, and laughed.

“I'll go ask Alice, if you don't mind?” Florida said. “Let me get her.”

Before Mrs. Brown could answer, Florida was across the hall knocking on Alice's door.

When Alice saw her through the glass, she worried that there was something wrong with Mrs. Brown, a turn for the worse after their talk earlier tonight. What else could it be?

“She's okay,” Florida said. “I just have an idea I wanted to get your support on.”

Alice invited Florida in. They'd met before, of course, and chatted briefly on several occasions. Just neighborly stuff, exchanging pleasantries; Alice still wasn't entirely sure what to make of the supermodel. Florida really did smile a lot, as all models seem to do judging by their Instagrams. How could Alice trust anyone who smiled so much?

But there was something appealing about Florida nonetheless. And it wasn't just her beauty, which was remarkable even without makeup, or the cool clothes that everyone envied or the perfect hair or her delicious perfume, a mix of evergreen, fig, and white rose.

Florida's heart was in the right place. Alice was beginning to see this.

“So I figure if you'll come with me back over to Mrs. Brown's and if you don't mind agreeing with me . . .”

“What a weird thing to say. Why would I mind agreeing with you?” Alice said.

Florida looked Alice in the eye, and smiled gently.

Apparently, Alice hadn't hidden her distrust as well as she thought she had. But Florida was used to people doubting her motives. It wasn't always personal, she decided. We're a world that tells people how important it is to succeed, while being suspicious of most anyone who does.