My Mrs. Brown (16 page)

Her plan was this, Florida explained to Alice: Yes, she'd send photographs of the hutch to her decorator in New York, and yes, she thought the hutch was probably worth something and if no, it wasn't, she was going to buy it, anonymously, through her decorator, paying enough so Mrs. Brown could buy her dress, but he'd never let Mrs. Brown know. It would be a secret. A secret Alice also would need to keep.

“What do you think?” Florida asked.

Alice wasn't sure. “Why don't you just give her the money?”

“I can't,” Florida said.

“Why?” Alice asked.

“You know why.”

“Because she wouldn't accept it.”

“Exactly,” Florida said. “Come on, let's go back to Mrs. Brown before she gets suspicious we're plotting something.”

“But we
are
plotting something!”

“Girl, lighten up.”

The camaraderie felt good, and they laughed, stationed in the hallway between the two homes.

“But . . .” Alice began to say.

“But what?” Florida asked.

“Sometimes I think I get it, and then I don't,” Alice began. “I mean, all this money that Mrs. Brown is saving for her dress that she could use to take a really cool vacation somewhere, or renovate her kitchen—I mean, who has linoleum like that anymore?—and then all the stress of her big trip to New York when she could shop online—like the rest of the world already does—or buy it vintage, online, if she wanted to save money, and bottom line . . . why this dress?”

Alice shook her head. “Sure, it's really well made, beautiful, the most proper suit dress in the world, but come on,” she said. “She's as likely to wear it as she is an evening gown. Where
is
Mrs. Brown going to wear this dress, anyway? Really? She doesn't go anywhere. She's not running for office or anything, or even going to an office. Know what I mean?”

Florida's hand was on the doorknob to Mrs. Brown's place. “There's something very empowering when you do something that's really correct, or even wear something that's really correct.”

Alice wasn't convinced. “You mean like people who dress up in their Sunday best for church. Do you think that makes them more religious, in the eyes of God?”

“I don't know if it makes them more religious, but probably the practice of dressing up renews their faith in the ritual of going to church on Sundays,” Florida said. “And that's a good beginning.”

She remembered something she'd read a while ago on a website she liked called PositivePrescription.com. “There was a study of a group of students at Harvard who always dressed up to take their exams. Suits and ties and dresses and jackets, that sort of thing,” Florida said. “The members of the group that dressed up always did better on their exams than the students who didn't.”

“But what test is Mrs. Brown taking?” Alice wondered.

“I've got a few ideas, but I don't know,” Florida said. “Maybe it's still being written. Meanwhile, I think of Mrs. Brown as a butterfly. I know that sounds like a cliché, but really. A butterfly emerging from her cocoon after a long time in darkness.”

F
LORIDA'S INSTINCTS WERE ENTIRELY
correct. Based on the initial photographs she sent, her decorator agreed that the hutch probably was valuable, certainly way more valuable than Mrs. Brown ever guessed. He'd asked Florida for a few additional shots, close-ups of details and markings, and she'd sent them along immediately.

Only a few weeks later, through one of the antiques and furniture dealers the decorator had contacted, a buyer was found for Mrs. Brown's hutch. A month after that, on July 18, Mrs. Brown received a check for fifteen thousand dollars from the dealer, who had then sold the hutch—with a 50 percent markup on what he'd paid—to a man who ran a hedge fund in Greenwich, Connecticut.

“Imagine that, a gardener who wants to pay so much for my old hutch,” Mrs. Brown said in jest to Alice. She knew perfectly well the only thing green about a hedge fund is the cash.

Alice didn't for a minute think a hedge fund guy had parted with all those coins for Mrs. Brown's old hutch. She'd texted Florida right away.

“Bullshit about the hedge fund dude, right? It's #GoodDeedInADirtyWorld.”

“Actually, wrong! Happy to report!” Florida texted back, with three smiley faces for emphasis. “Isn't it great news?”

“I promise you can tell me the truth. I won't tell Mrs. Brown,” Alice responded.

“I give you my word on the head of my firstborn—when my firstborn is born,” Florida texted. “
Truth xoxo.
”

So Alice believed her. Well, the way Alice believed anything to be true. True until proven not true.

The day the check arrived, to Mrs. Brown's regret, Florida Noble wasn't there to celebrate. She was in New York City working. Starring in a commercial for a splashy new mobile phone that was being filmed on top of the Empire State Building. They were paying her a small fortune.

“I'm terrified of heights,” Florida said when she left for the city that morning, “but money, especially a lot of money, somehow always calms my nerves.”

When filming the commercial was completed, Florida would return to Ashville for her final two weeks at Guilford. Having Florida rent a room had been such a pleasure for Mrs. Brown. She'd miss her.

After the initial fuss and curiosity, the good people of Ashville and, even more important, their tween and teenage children, had relaxed and left Florida to come and go with utmost privacy. In fact, most had taken to amusingly asking “Florida who?” whenever her name was mentioned.

And here was the cobalt-blue parchment envelope with the fifteen-thousand-dollar check. All thanks to Florida Noble.

Mrs. Brown brought the envelope across the hall. “You open it, I am too nervous,” she told Alice.

They sat at the kitchen table. After they'd taken their time to admire the envelope—as if it were a Picasso or some other masterpiece—Alice opened it with the precision of a surgeon, using a kitchen knife. She ceremoniously laid the check in front of Mrs. Brown.

Alice and Mrs. Brown were silent, just staring at the regal black ink on light, hopeful green paper from Citibank: $15,000.

“A fortune,” Mrs. Brown said, nervous to touch the check.

The antiques dealer whose check was in the aforementioned blue envelope had included a note that thanked Mrs. Brown for selling the hutch. Made of tropical hardwoods, ash, and mahogany with inlays of imported Italian tiles, it was a 1922 work by a noted Venezuelan craftsman named Humberto Ricardo Garcia. The fact that it was signed by Don Humberto made it even more valuable, the dealer said.

A cranberry and walnut bread that Alice had just baked—she was still rehearsing recipes before she served them to Milo—waited on the kitchen table.

Alice spoke first. Now that the check had arrived, Mrs. Brown would soon set off to New York City.

“Mrs. Brown, um, well, there's just one thing I keep forgetting to ask you . . .”

Mrs. Brown answered before Alice finished.

“Absolutely, Alice, they do. I have telephoned Oscar de la Renta in New York City twice a month, on the first Monday of the month, and then the third Friday in the month, and each time someone has told me that they do. They have the dress and they have it in my size.”

Alice reached across the table and rested her hand on Mrs. Brown's.

“Then isn't that amazing, Mrs. Brown? You're going to get your dress after all and have a nice little nest egg left over.”

B
ONNIE WAS RELUCTANT TO
give Mrs. Brown any time off. On a rainy morning in early August, Mrs. Brown went to the beauty parlor to open up and found Bonnie already there, in her office, stretching on her yoga mat and howling, which, as Mrs. Brown knew, wasn't howling, it was chanting.

“I do not chant for things because God doesn't like that so I just chant for God's will and hope his will is to send me more money!” Bonnie explained.

Bonnie, on her mat with legs crossed, studied Mrs. Brown's face. “You look tired,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” Mrs. Brown responded. Whenever Bonnie said anything about her appearance, she always interpreted her meaning as: you're not looking smart enough to work in my beauty parlor today.

“What are you sorry about? Just make some coffee. I've had a horrible weekend. I woke up yesterday morning, and you know what I realized?”

“What?”

“I realized I was alone.”

Mrs. Brown didn't quite understand her meaning at first. Bonnie lived alone—her grown son lived in Hartford, her daughter in Boston. Unless someone was sleeping over, how else would she wake up except alone?

“I mean really, really alone,” Bonnie continued in the exaggerated, dramatic way she had. “I'm like an apple who falls off a tree. I roll around on the ground until I think it's time to get back on the tree, but then you can't. You're not a squirrel. You don't climb. And then the apple, me, realizes oh, my effing God, I am alone. So, so, so alone down here.”

Mrs. Brown made the coffee while Bonnie went on about apples and apple trees, and then something about a big male poodle raising its leg on trees. Mrs. Brown tried to understand.

When the coffee was ready, Mrs. Brown prepared a mug for Bonnie the way she liked it, black with three Sweet'n Lows, and brought it to her.

“Bonnie, I'm hoping it'll be okay with you if I take a few days of vacation.”

“Why? Since when have you gone on vacations?” Bonnie asked, her coffee mug in her hand. “You got a boyfriend all of a sudden? Well, I hope he is a better son of a bitch than the guy I've been seeing—oh, that's right, you know who he is. Thanks for keeping it our secret, honey. He stood me up Saturday night. Stood
me
up! Never called. And I made vegan! I goddamn chopped vegetables for days for the son of a bitch.” Bonnie made a face, a little-girl oh, me, oh, my smile, to apologize for swearing.

People were always apologizing to Mrs. Brown for swearing in her presence, but no one actually ever stopped swearing. “I threw that vegan slop out and grilled myself a steak.”

Mrs. Brown had no intention of telling Bonnie where she was going or why, but she tried to disclose in a general way the importance of taking a vacation this summer.

“I've learned so much from you, Bonnie,” Mrs. Brown said, attempting to get what she wanted by flattering her narcissistic boss. “And one of the things I've learned is how important it is for a woman to take time to recharge her battery.”

Bonnie, enthroned mission control on her stool by the cash register, swiveled and stared. She was flattered, but not persuaded.

“When do you want to go?”

Mrs. Brown said the first week of September.

“Sorry, not that week. It is the week after Labor Day and we are always very busy then, remember? Everyone's seen the new fashion magazines and they all want their new hairstyles. Old dogs, new tricks, Mrs. Brown.”

Mrs. Brown proposed the week after that. Bonnie had a problem with that, too. In the end, Mrs. Brown was given just one day off.

“Wherever you are going, trust me, short trips are the best,” Bonnie said, handing Mrs. Brown her empty coffee mug. “They cost you less money.”