My Mrs. Brown (21 page)

I
T SO HAPPENED THAT
the head of Oscar de la Renta's public relations team was at the Carlyle hotel a mere ten blocks north, at Seventy-sixth Street.

When the urgent text came through about the uncertain shopper's meltdown at the Madison Avenue boutique, the PR executive was delighted to have an excuse to bring to a quick close her lunch with a banker whose company was always on the lookout for fashion businesses to invest in. (And equally on the lookout for fashion parties to go to.)

This lunch, organized by a mutual friend, included one further agenda item, to see if they liked each other, liked each other enough to perhaps go to dinner some night. In New York parlance, it was a predate.

Rachel Ames stood and gave the man her hand to shake. He instead leaned in for a social kiss. Not wishing to embarrass him by pulling away and insisting on the handshake, Rachel kissed the fellow gently on his left and right cheeks. His expensively groomed facial hair looked just fine but was unpleasant on her lips, a lasting impression. She rushed off, saying, “Goodbye, yes, of course, hope so, see you soon,” and headed to the Oscar de la Renta boutique. Looking over her shoulder before she left the Carlyle, she was not surprised to see that the fellow wasn't particularly crestfallen by her sudden departure. He was merrily tapping away on his phone.

On the street this glorious September afternoon, her lackluster luncheon “date” underlined Rachel's feelings about her single status. She wished she had it in her to fall in love and marry a successful businessman like the one she'd just lunched with. A girl's got to think about her future, she told herself and laughed, then stopped laughing. But this woman doesn't seem to think that way. Marry money and you earn it. Whether it was dealing with his eccentricity, adultery, aloofness, insane schedule, you name it, nearly every one of Rachel's friends who married a man for his towering finances eventually ended up in some kind of emotional descent, her spirit taxed by the alliance.

Still, though. There was that vacant feeling that crept up out of nowhere, and cast its long shadow. It came now. Usually it waited until she was back home alone, this lonesomeness that stalked her. Uninvited, haunting her especially after those seemingly happy dinners with friends in whatever was the latest happening restaurant, where one chattered merrily through the din about diets, doctors, new clothes, weekends, and vacations by the sea, or Aspen—Aspen in the summer was the rage this year—and the next wedding to which she and her friends were commanded. For all its vim and vigor, youth can be a lonely enterprise.

Rachel shook the gloom away by walking as quickly as she could down Madison Avenue, past lines of tourists outside the Whitney Museum (still on Madison before it moved downtown) and on line for the rainbow-colored macarons at Ladurée. Rachel Ames was all about work now.

“Where's the problem?” she asked briskly when she arrived at the boutique. The salesperson who had helped settle Mrs. Brown in the back of the shop led Rachel to her. Rachel would size up the problem and resolve it with dignity and speed. The troubling lady would be on her way in minutes.

Instead Rachel Ames was speechless when she saw Mrs. Brown sitting posture perfect on the little chair, looking so forlorn and out of place.

Despair in her eyes, her nerves frayed, Mrs. Brown looked up at this blond, beautiful icicle. It took a few moments before Rachel Ames and Mrs. Brown fully recognized each other from those many months ago when Mrs. Brown had helped inventory Millicent Groton's things.

Seeing Mrs. Brown was disorienting for Rachel. Something was wrong. Something was out of context. It was like coming home from work and finding that a bird has flown into your apartment through a window you left open that morning (it happens in the city). Along with the surprise, Rachel was genuinely pleased to see Mrs. Brown again.

Rachel explained that after finishing helping to settle Mrs. Groton's estate she'd gone to work for Oscar de la Renta. She knelt down so they were on the same level and took Mrs. Brown's hands in hers as if they were old friends.

And by this time tomorrow they would be.

T
HE TWO WOMEN, ONE
old, and one young, sat talking in the store's elegant dressing room.

“Haven't you ever stayed awake at night wanting something and shivering from the shame of wanting it so much and fearing you'd never have it?”

The question touched Rachel's heart. “How did you know? How could you tell?”

Having seen how close Mrs. Brown was to collapse, Rachel had taken swift action. Her smartphone blazing, she dialed and e-mailed until she tracked down Mrs. Brown's dress at the Oscar de la Renta boutique in Beverly Hills. Rachel organized for the store manager there to send overnight to New York one dress size eight and another size ten, one of which would fit Mrs. Brown.

Rachel promised Mrs. Brown that the dresses would be here by noon, one at the latest. She did not say that she, and at her own expense—she didn't want to embarrass Mrs. Brown—was actually having one of the young staffers at the Beverly Hills boutique fly with the dresses on the next Delta flight and bring them to the store himself. Except for possible weather delays, there would be no margin for error.

The only things that shock anymore are random acts of kindness. In this regard Rachel Ames liked to be shocking. Doing good deeds in a dirty world renewed her. Rachel would treat Mrs. Brown as kindly as anyone ever had, if not more so.

“But I can't stay overnight in New York,” Mrs. Brown had said. Anticipating that Mrs. Brown's worries would include the high cost of a New York hotel, let alone the frightening prospect of being alone in this strange monster of a city, Rachel invited Mrs. Brown to stay the night at her apartment just a few blocks away.

“I have a guest room that needs a guest,” Rachel said.

Rachel's office would take care of changing Mrs. Brown's train reservations so she could leave Pennsylvania Station at the same time tomorrow night, with her dress safe and secure in her hands.

Mrs. Brown hesitated. Could she really accept Rachel's hospitality? And she was worried. “But my job, I've got to go to work tomorrow.”

“Is there anyone who can fill in for you?” Rachel asked. “Or can't you just call and say you are taking a personal day?”

Mrs. Brown wondered. She shook her head no.

Compared to Mrs. Brown, Rachel enjoyed so many privileges and a charmed life. She felt exceedingly grateful.

“Are you sure, Mrs. Brown? Won't you stay?”

Mrs. Brown thought more about it. “I'll do it. I'll stay. I have to. Thank you so much, Rachel, thank you so much,” she said, though she was still uneasy about her decision. “I'd really like to go home with my dress. I'll telephone my neighbor who is taking care of my cat. She'll be so worried about where I am, what happened to me. You might have to get on the phone so she knows I've not been kidnapped by pirates . . .”

Rachel laughed.

“And I'll let my boss know, too, although I'm not looking forward to that call.”

Once Rachel Ames had showered kindness on Mrs. Brown, the salespeople at the Oscar de la Renta boutique relaxed and gladly did the same. As for Rachel herself, there were many other things she could and should be doing this afternoon—it was Fashion Week, after all—but she could get to them later in the day or early evening. Besides, every once in a while it is a good idea to let your assistant fill in for you. It gives her, or him, an opportunity to mature and to learn and, at the same time, reminds your assistant why you have the big job and he or she doesn't—yet.

Rachel proposed that they continue their conversation over a cup of tea or coffee, maybe something to eat, at the Plaza Athénée hotel nearby on East Sixty-fourth Street.

Walking with Rachel down Madison Avenue, through this glamorous casbah, Mrs. Brown wondered what people thought, if they noticed them and thought about them at all. Such an unlikely duo: one woman who looked like she'd risen from the pages of a glittering fashion magazine and the other like someone who had never read one. Could they be mistaken for mother and daughter?

Arriving at the Plaza Athénée, Mrs. Brown marveled at the elegant good order of the place. Rachel led the way to her favorite corner table in the handsomely appointed bar/tea area of the hotel's restaurant. It was decorated in the Anglo-French style, with wood-paneled walls and thick velvet banquettes. Small recessed pink lightbulbs above each table cast a warm glow. The room was filled with well-dressed ladies and affluent-looking gentlemen of assorted ages, sizes, and nationalities.

“I do understand wanting a dress and fixating on it, saving for it. I think the desire for something feminine and beautiful binds all women together,” Rachel said. “But what I do not understand is why this particular dress, Mrs. Brown?”

Mrs. Brown smiled.

Rachel continued. “I mean, for sure it is exquisitely tailored and chic and appropriate but”—she paused—“why not something more colorful, lighter, more feminine and more silky or frilly? Something most women in this day and age would say was the ideal feminine dress? Like a gown you'd wear on the red carpet, you know, something that you wouldn't wear to work. Or to church, to a funeral, to a board meeting, the sorts of places where Mrs. Groton always wore her suit? This is such a stately sort of dress, highly functional and useful, but not glam.”

“Glam?” Mrs. Brown asked.

“Sorry, that's fashion-speak for glamorous.” Rachel laughed. “Some fashion people use the word ‘fabulous.' ” She paused again, concerned that she sounded like a silly snob or a drag queen or worse, just so deeply superficial.

Mrs. Brown tried to explain. She would confide things to Rachel like you might to someone you've just met on a plane. Something about the anonymity of New York City empowered her. What you say here will not be judged, and it will not be repeated, or even if it is, it's of no consequence because no one knows you. The women Mrs. Brown worked for at the salon weren't interested—were they?—in anything she had to say. Mrs. Fox was a great friend, her best friend, and Alice was her new friend, but in the name of friendship, respecting each other's privacy and boundaries, much was left unsaid, too much perhaps sometimes.

“The feminine clothes you are talking about are party dresses, dresses for making a woman feel young and pretty,” Mrs. Brown said, speaking slowly, holding the delicate Plaza Athénée teacup in the palms of her hands, feeling its warming comfort. “For me”—her voice caught—“for me,” she continued, “what I think is feminine is . . .” Her voice drifted off.

“It's okay,” Rachel said, “take your time.”

“When we were inventorying Mrs. Groton's things and I saw her perfect black dress, this dress I've come for today, a dress I'd seen Mrs. Groton wear to functions in Ashville, the Rose Festival, the opening of the new hospital wing, in so many of her photographs in the Ashville newspapers . . . when you told me more about this style, and how most all the First Ladies in the past thirty years had a version of it in their wardrobes, I was overcome by the need for a dress like that of my own. I know it doesn't make any sense.”

“I don't know that it doesn't make any sense, Mrs. Brown. I think maybe I'm beginning to understand how much sense it does make,” Rachel said.

“Then when you gave me that book,
Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris,
well, I never read such a story,” Mrs. Brown said. “It really put this idea in my head. Did you read it?”

Rachel shook her head. She hadn't.

“This Mrs. 'Arris isn't so different from me, you know. Only the times she lived in were different. It was right after World War Two. The war had drained the world of all joy and color. Everything was rubble. Bombs, blackouts, rationing, everything had been an everlasting mess, and for too many years. Then one day Mrs. 'Arris discovers this bouquet, that's what the dress looked like to her, a huge bouquet of flowers. She sees the most beautiful dress hanging in one of her clients' closets. She reads the label. Christian Dior. What's that? She doesn't know, but never mind. She vows right there and then that no matter how much it will cost, or how long it takes her to save the money, that she will have a Christian Dior dress, too. And even if she never actually wore the dress—where was a cleaning lady going to wear such a fancy thing?—she wanted, like every woman, rich or poor, to live with something that beautiful and hopeful
in her closet
before she died . . .”

Her voice quieted. “Because the war was over. Everyone, including a cleaning lady, deserved beautiful feminine things to look at again.”

A waiter brought a plate of tea sandwiches to their table. Rachel had insisted Mrs. Brown eat something.

“Although it was a very, as you would say, ‘glam' dress, this Dior dress that Mrs. 'Arris wanted, a red-carpet dress, the story kept reminding me of the dress I'd seen in Mrs. Groton's closet,” Mrs. Brown explained. “Maybe it wasn't typically feminine, in fact it's the total opposite of Mrs. 'Arris's dress, but it's so womanly and so, well, it's strong. Tailored. Organized. Purposeful. What's the word I'm looking for?”