The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro [85]
Mrs. Cross also gets presents from her children, but not books. Their thoughts run to ornaments, pictures, cushions. Mrs. Cross has a bouquet of artificial roses in which are set tubes of light, always shooting and bubbling up like a fountain. She has a Southern Belle whose satin skins are supposed to form an enormous pincushion. She has a picture of the Lord’s supper, in which a light comes on to form a halo around Jesus’s head. (Mrs. Kidd, after her first visit, wrote a letter to one of her children in which she described this picture and said she had tried to figure out what the Lord and his Disciples were eating and it appeared to be hamburgers. This is the sort of thing her children love to hear from her.) There is also, near the door, a life-size plaster statue of a collie dog which resembles a dog the Cross family had when the children were small: old Bonnie.
Mrs. Cross finds out from her children what these things cost and tells people. She says she is shocked.
Shortly after Mrs. Kidd’s arrival, Mrs. Cross took her along on a visit to the Second Floor. Mrs. Cross has been going up there every couple of weeks to visit a cousin of hers, old Lily Barbour.
“Lily is not running on all cylinders,” she warned Mrs. Kidd, as they wheeled themselves into the elevator. “Another thing, it doesn’t smell like Sweet Violets, in spite of them always spraying. They do the best they can.”
The first thing Mrs. Kidd saw as they got off the elevator was a little wrinkled-up woman with wild white hair, and a dress rucked up high on her bare legs (Mrs. Kidd snatched her eyes away from that) and a tongue she couldn’t seem to stuff back inside her mouth. The smell was of heated urine—you would think they had had it on the stove—as well as of floral sprays. But here was a smooth-faced sensible-looking person with a topknot, wearing an apron over a clean pink dress.
“Well, did you get the papers?” this woman said in a familiar way to Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Kidd.
“Oh, they don’t come in till about five o’clock,” said Mrs. Kidd politely, thinking she meant the newspaper.
“Never mind her,” said Mrs. Cross.
“I have to sign them today,” the woman said. “Otherwise it’ll be a catastrophe. They can put me out. You see I never knew it was illegal.” She spoke so well, so plausibly and confidentially, that Mrs. Kidd was convinced she had to make sense, but Mrs. Cross was wheeling vigorously away. Mrs. Kidd went after her.
“Don’t get tied up in that rigamarole,” said Mrs. Cross when Mrs. Kidd caught up to her. A woman with a terrible goitre, such as Mrs. Kidd had not seen for years, was smiling winningly at them. Up here nobody had teeth.
“I thought there was no such thing as a goitre any more,” Mrs. Kidd said. “With the iodine.”
They were going in the direction of a hollering voice.
“George!” the voice said. “George! Jessie! I’m here! Come and pull me up! George!”
Another voice was weaving cheerfully in and out of these yells. “Bad-bad-bad,” it said. “Bad. Bad-bad. Bad-bad-bad. Bad-bad.”
The owners of both these voices were sitting around a long table by a row of windows halfway down the hall. Nine or ten women were sitting there. Some were mumbling or singing softly to themselves. One was tearing apart a little embroidered cushion somebody had made. Another was eating a chocolate-covered ice-cream bar. Bits of chocolate had caught on her whiskers, dribbles of ice cream ran down her chin. None of them looked out the windows, or at each other. None of them paid any attention to George-and-Jessie, or to Bad-bad-bad, who were carrying on without a break.
Mrs. Kidd halted.
“Where is this Lily?”
“She’s down at the end. They don’t get her out of bed.”
“Well, you go on and see her,” said Mrs. Kidd. “I’m going back.” “There’s nothing to get upset about,” said Mrs. Cross. “They’re all off in their own little world. They’re happy as clams.”
“They may be, but I’m not,” said Mrs. Kidd. “I’ll see you in the Recreation Room.” She wheeled herself around and down the hall to the elevator