Read Online My Mrs. Brown by William Norwich - Free Book Online Page A

anyone else at Bonnie’s salon, so added to her pride was a fatigue she tried never to admit to.

P ROBABLY ALL ACROSS AMERICA that night, in at least one out of every three households, someone was sitting at the kitchen table crunching numbers to see how and where they could find or make some extra, much-needed cash.
    As Santo snoozed on bended paws at one end of the table, Mrs. Brown, pencil and pad in hand, sat at the other end reviewing her income and her expenses.
    She had nothing in terms of art or furnishings she could sell. Concerning financial securities, there was a very modest investment in a retirement fund that she couldn’t in all good conscience invade. In a savings-checking account was a slender stash of cash for April’s taxes. To pay her monthly bills she relied not just on what she earned but also the income she received each month from Mrs. Fox, and now from Alice, who’d begun to contribute to the rent despite her grandmother’s kind offer to pay it all herself.
    No, she could not, she would not, ever think of raising her friend’s rent. A few years ago, Mrs. Fox had proposed she might pay a bit more every month—not that she could afford any extra expense either. Mrs. Brown wouldn’t hear of it.
    â€œYou’re too good a friend, and too excellent a tenant,” she said and immediately changed the subject.
    What were her options? Her only reason to raise the rent now would be greed, and this, despite her dress calling to her, went against every spiritual principle she believed in.
    She could try chanting, like Bonnie this morning. Except Mrs. Brown couldn’t imagine herself chanting, making sounds like an old, cold seal on a slippery rock. She could advertise in the local newspaper for babysitting jobs in the evening, although parents weren’t going out so much these nights because they too were saving their money. Ashville’s restaurants were suffering as a result. There were lottery tickets, of course. Mrs. Brown, unlike everyone she knew, never bought these. She considered them an obsession and a waste of time—hoping, watching for the results, being disappointed when one didn’t score; they were little paper heartbreakers.
    Maybe it was time to reconsider? Just the other day, the television news had been filled with the good-luck story of a twenty-three-year-old, dirt-poor rancher in South Dakota who won $232.1 million in the Powerball lottery.
    â€œI want to thank the Lord for giving me this opportunity and blessing me with this great fortune. I will not squander it,” the rancher said as he took a lump-sum payout of $118 million.
    Mrs. Brown was looking in her kitchen cupboards for signs of any purchases she could do without in the future when Alice tapped at her door.
    Seeing the cupboards opened, the yellow legal pad on the table with an itemized list, her open checkbook . . . Alice figured that Mrs. Brown had been laid off today.
    â€œEverything okay?” Alice asked with great concern.
    Mrs. Brown paused. “Sure it is. No complaints. In fact, I never had it so good.”
    The women laughed. Mrs. Brown explained to Alice that was something a beloved uncle used to answer, regardless of the real truth, when you asked him how he was. “Always tell a better story, Emilia,” he would say. “And you’ll feel better.” He was the same uncle who also always insisted she take second helpings when she ate at his house. “Eat, Emilia, eat. We’ll say you ate anyway.”
    Mrs. Brown was so prepared to pinch pennies that tonight she thought twice before putting the kettle on for tea, since doing so involved the cost of electricity.
    Alice watched the older woman; she seemed a bit jumbled up somehow. Something about Mrs. Brown’s expression told Alice more than tea was in order tonight.
    â€œI have been having trouble sleeping the past few nights,” she lied to help Mrs. Brown say yes,