My Mrs. Brown

For mothers and mentors, and especially for L.G. in memoriam

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

—
ALBERT CAMUS

E
ARLY ONE SEPTEMBER NOT
long ago, a rural woman with a secret grief traveled to New York City in pursuit of a dream, to buy the most beautiful and correct dress she'd ever seen.

The occasion wasn't a joy trip. Without tremendous effort before her trip, and a lot of luck, the dress was hardly anything she could have ever afforded. As for going to New York City, where she'd never been before? It was a terrifying prospect, dangerous and disorienting, but she did it.

The dress wasn't at all what you might expect. It wasn't a riot of feathers and chiffon. It wasn't designed to catch a man or reawaken her youth. It had nothing to do with a paparazzi-lined red carpet or the glories of shopping, “It” bags, “It” designers, or must-haves. The dress—and the lady's use for it—was something else.

This daring voyager was Emilia Brown, or Mrs. Brown as she was generally known in her hometown, Ashville, Rhode Island. She was sixty-six years old, a widow; if she was a scent, she was tea with honey, but if she was a color, she was a study in gray. Whether from the friction of living without life's buffering luxuries and engaging ambitions, or by the reduction of dreams and expectations that comes with age: gray. Mrs. Brown was drained of color. Except for her green-brown eyes. If and when she smiled, well, it was like watching a rose open in one of those time-lapse films, and her eyes, spring flowers at twilight, lit up her face.

To say that she was overall gray isn't to say she was a sad sight or threadbare. It's just that in a world where status is measured in how much space one takes up and how much noise one makes—and noise takes up its own kind of space, as any pollution does—a quiet person like Mrs. Brown falls invisible.

Mrs. Brown was genteel. That's not a word used much anymore, except maybe when people talk about some of the characters on PBS shows. As it relates to Mrs. Brown, it signifies a graceful way, someone free from vulgarity and rudeness. Aristocratic in a manner having nothing to do with money, fame, and celebrity.

Nor is saying that someone is genteel necessarily the same as saying that someone is humble. We put so much stock and pride in being humble these days that humility has become a brand, not a state of grace.

Mrs. Brown has a noble spirit—the honorable loneliness of the American grown-up. A life sustained by quietude and the energies of tolerance, kindness, courtesy, and acceptance. In a blustery world, it's courageous to move quietly, claiming few, if any, treasures except one's solitary dignity.

She was not a career woman, hadn't been to college; she had always worked. Hers were always blue-collar jobs—a Thermos factory before it went bust, cleaning houses, babysitting, taking in washing and sewing. She was a very good seamstress, as was her mother, who had taught her how to sew and to make clothes using inexpensive Simplicity and Vogue patterns. Most recently her job was the cleaning up and helping out, six days a week, seven to seven, at Bonnie's Beauty Salon on the main street in Ashville.

A good three hours from Boston, and at least five hours from New York, Ashville wasn't a suburb of any city. Its residents relied on the local economy for their living, the stores, the businesses, and Guilford College, one of the oldest in the country. No one had gotten rich in Ashville in decades, but most felt that they were well compensated nonetheless by the lasting Currier & Ives patina of their village, founded in 1649.

Here Mrs. Brown was born, an only child. In Ashville she had met and married her late husband. Older by some ten years than she, Jack Brown was a fireman for the Ashville Fire Department. He died fifteen years ago. Heart attack in his sleep.

Everyone said it was the best way to go, never sick for a day then, pop—you up and leave this mortal coil. Everyone said Jack Brown had gone easier into his death than anything he'd ever done in his uphill life.

Mrs. Brown made do. Financially, emotionally, she made do. As one does.

She avoided excesses of any sort—shopping, overeating, drinking, feelings, and lottery tickets.

Especially lottery tickets. It wasn't because she was risk averse, but because lottery tickets were bedazzlements possessed by expectation. Buying them overexcited the ladies at the beauty salon. Customers and employees alike, chattering a mile a minute, screaming to be heard over hair blowers, describing how and where they would spend the money. Then the next day, crashing so low when they didn't win.

Mrs. Brown tried never to let a tear to drop. (Of course tears dropped, in private, late at night, in the morning light when shadows haunt.) If she never expected too much, she'd never be bankrupted by disappointment.

This was all very New England of her.

Mrs. Brown didn't have a “bucket list,” and she never shopped to cheer herself up. She had her clothes for years and had made the majority of them—a few pairs of pants—gray, black, brown summer and winter weight—a couple of wool or cotton cardigan sweaters, cotton blouses—and wore them for the duration, repairing them when needed. Sewing cheered her up, and helped restore her universe to order, one concentrated stitch at a time.

And although she was good-looking enough—her Yankee slender, high cheekbones and her healthy skin, her hair always clean and brushed—she did not encourage anyone, including the gentlemen, to look.

She took care of herself, but never indulged. Even when Mrs. Brown was most tempted, when it would be so lovely not to cook—so wonderful in the dead of winter to walk home after work carrying a warm supper in her hands—she never bought the costly takeaway food from the Village Cheese Shop. No restaurant dining either. She always ate at home, always cooked at home.

Dull?

Mrs. Brown never took vacations. The big cities she had visited were Providence, one hour away, and Hartford, two hours away. As mentioned, she had never been to New York City, although, admittedly, sometimes those advertisements on the television for Broadway musicals were tempting.

Who Mrs. Brown was, her vocation if you will, was to be a good person and to live an ordered, simple life.

When a student at Guilford College came by Bonnie's one day doing a survey about women's rights, she asked Mrs. Brown if she considered herself a feminist.

Mrs. Brown smiled and answered that, yes, she did.

The college girl seemed surprised.

“Liberated not always by circumstances that I'd have chosen for myself,” Mrs. Brown said.

“What's your first name?” the student asked so she could put it on her survey sheet.

“Mrs.,” answered Mrs. Brown.

“Your first name is . . .”

“Mrs.”

The college student didn't know how to respond. “Mrs.?” She wouldn't forget Mrs. Brown anytime soon.

Keeping grateful was essential to Mrs. Brown. But she didn't need to write a “gratitude list.” Gratitude was an energy she could summon up on a daily basis, grateful for what she had and for what remained after so many years of the rumble and the tumble.

One major contributor to her gratitude was that she owned her own house, a cozy two-unit wood-shingled nest built at the turn of the twentieth century, when Ashville's mills and factories were thriving. Sure it was just like all the other houses on her street—except this one was hers. She thought it lovely, all she needed or wanted. And because Ashville was built on the steep, mossy banks of the Fogg River, when the leaves fell in autumn, Mrs. Brown could see the slate and brindle–colored river from her second-floor windows.

The two-story house was divided into two units. Both units had identically proportioned front rooms, kitchens, a bath, and a bedroom downstairs, and upstairs two more small bedrooms. The units shared a front stoop.

Many years ago Mrs. Brown had rented the second unit to Sarah Fox, a widow whose circumstances were similar to Mrs. Brown's. Except Mrs. Fox's purview, you might say, was wider.

Sarah Fox had been a proud salesperson at the Ashville Bookshop, until it went out of business several years ago. This is where the students from Guilford bought their textbooks until shopping online proved easier for them, and this is where Mrs. Fox, who started working at the bookshop when she was a high school junior, tried to be more than just the local source for the latest potboilers and bodice rippers but also a beacon for the advancement of literature, even the most controversial, dating back to that frigid Saturday morning in 1969 when she insisted bravely to the waspish owner of the store that Mr. Philip Roth's novel
Portnoy's Complaint
should not only be available upon request at the cash register but also displayed proudly in the front window of the store.

Mrs. Fox felt it was always important to be up to speed on not just the latest books but also movies, television, and current events. She'd been to New York several times. She longed to go to Paris before she died.

Most recently, she had gone all the way to Vancouver, Canada, when Clara, the eldest of her two children, daughters in their forties now—had asked her to please come help care for Clara's first grandchild, and Mrs. Fox's first great-grandchild, a boy named Aaron. Sadly, but sadly not uncommon, Aaron's mother and father, emotionally unprepared for parenthood, had split soon after he was born. The young mother was heartbroken, back at her work by day, bookkeeping and scheduling service appointments for a Land Rover car dealership, and thoroughly exhausted at night, so it became Clara's responsibility—“my opportunity,” she said when she explained all this to Mrs. Fox—“to help raise my first grandchild.”