My Mrs. Brown by William Norwich

Author:William Norwich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

LATER 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.

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