The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro [88]
“There you are, what a relief! I didn’t know where to look for you. Did you think I wasn’t ever coming back? I’ll tell you what I went for. I was going to surprise you. I went to look for one of those books with maps in, what do you call them, so you could show me where you used to live. Atlases!”
He was sitting looking at the pink wall as if it was a window. Against the wall was a whatnot with a vase of plastic daffodils on it, and some figurines, dwarfs and dogs; on the wall were three paint-by-number pictures that had been done in the Craft Room.
“My friend Mrs. Kidd has more books than the Library. She has a book on nothing but bugs. Another nothing but the moon, when they went there, close up. But not such a simple thing as a map.”
Jack was pointing at one of the pictures.
“Which one are you pointing at?” said Mrs. Cross. “The one with the church with the cross? No? The one above that? The pine trees? Yes? What about it? The pine trees and the red deer?” He was smiling, waving his hand. She hoped he wouldn’t get too excited and disappointed this time. “What about it? This is like one of those things on television. Trees? Green? Pine trees? Is it the deer? Three deer? No? Yes. Three red deer?” He flapped his arm up and down and she said, “I don’t know, really. Three—red—deer. Wait a minute. That’s a place. I’ve heard it on the news. Red Deer. Red Deer! That’s the place! That’s the place you lived in! That’s the place where you worked on the newspaper! Red Deer.”
They were both jubilant. He waved his arm around in celebration, as if he was conducting an orchestra, and she leaned forward, laughing, clapping her hands on her knees.
“Oh, if everything was in pictures like that, we could have a lot of fun! You and me could have a lot of fun, couldn’t we?”
MRS. CROSS made an appointment to see the doctor.
“I’ve heard of people that had a very bad stroke and their speech came back, isn’t that so?”
“It can happen. It depends. Are you worrying a lot about this man?”
“It must be a terrible feeling. No wonder he cries.”
“How many children did you have?”
“Six.”
“I’d say you’d done your share of worrying.”
She could see he didn’t mean to tell her anything. Either he didn’t remember much about Jack’s case or he was pretending he didn’t.
“I’m here to take care of people,” the doctor said. “That’s what I’m here for, that’s what the nurses are here for. So you can leave all the worrying to us. That’s what we get paid for. Right?”
And how much worrying do you do? she wanted to ask.
She would have liked to talk to Mrs. Kidd about this visit because she knew Mrs. Kidd thought the doctor was a fool, but once Mrs. Kidd knew Jack was the reason for the visit she would make some impatient remark. Mrs. Cross never talked to her any more about Jack. She talked to other people, but she could see them getting bored. Nobody cares about anybody else’s misfortunes in here, she thought. Even when somebody dies they don’t care, it’s just me, I’m still alive, what’s for dinner? The selfishness. They’re all just as bad as the ones on the Second Floor, only they don’t show it yet.
She hadn’t been up to the Second Floor, hadn’t visited Lily Barbour, since she took up with Jack.
They liked sitting in the corner with the Red Deer picture, the scene of their first success. That was established as their place, where they could be by themselves. Mrs. Cross brought a pencil and paper, fixed the tray across his chair, tried to see how Jack made out with writing. It was about the same as talking. He would scrawl a bit, push the pencil till he broke it, start to cry. They didn’t make progress, either in writing or talking, it was useless. But she was learning to talk to him by the yes-and-no method, and it seemed sometimes she could pick up what was in his mind.
“If I was smarter I would be more of a help to you,” she said. “Isn’t it