The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro [93]
“You can’t do that.”
“Yes I can. If I don’t use my energy I’ll get mad about my Scrabble game.”
Mrs. Cross heaved herself up and into Mrs. Kidd’s wheelchair. As she did so she felt such weakness in her legs that she knew Mrs. Kidd was right. She couldn’t have walked ten feet.
“Now then,” said Mrs. Kidd, and she negotiated their way out of the room into the corridor.
“Don’t strain yourself. Don’t try to go too fast.”
They proceeded down the corridor, turned left, made their way successfully up a very gentle ramp. Mrs. Cross could hear Mrs. Kidd’s breathing.
“Maybe I can manage the rest by myself.”
“No you can’t.”
They made another left turn at the top of the ramp. Now Mrs.
Cross’s room was in sight. It was three doors ahead of them.
“What I am going to do now,” said Mrs. Kidd, with emphasis and pauses to hide her breathlessness, “is give you a push. I can give you a push that will take you exactly to your own door.”
“Can you?” said Mrs. Cross doubtfully.
“Certainly. Then you can turn yourself in and get on the bed and take your time to get yourself settled, then ring for the girl and get her to deliver the chair back to me.”
“You won’t bash me into anything?”
“You watch.”
With that Mrs. Kidd gave the wheelchair a calculated, delicately balanced push. It rolled forward smoothly and came to a stop just where she had said it would, in exactly the right place in front of Mrs. Cross’s door. Mrs. Cross had hastily raised her feet and hands for this last bit of the ride. Now she dropped them. She gave a single, satisfied, conceding nod and turned and glided safely into her own room.
Mrs. Kidd, as soon as Mrs. Cross was out of sight, sank down and sat with her back against the wall, her legs stuck straight out in front of her on the cool linoleum. She prayed no nosy person would come along until she could recover her strength and get started on the trip back.
Hard-Luck Stories
Julie is wearing a pink-and-white-striped shirtwaist dress, and a hat of lacy beige straw, with a pink rose under the brim. I noticed the hat first, when she came striding along the street. For a moment I didn’t realize it was Julie. Over the last couple of years I have experienced moments of disbelief when I meet my friends in public. They look older than I think they should. Julie didn’t look older, but she did catch my attention in a way she had never done before. It was the hat. I thought there was something gallant and absurd about it, on that tall, tomboyish woman. Then I saw that it was Julie and hurried to greet her, and we got a table under an umbrella at this sidewalk restaurant where we are having lunch.
We have not seen each other for two months, not since the conference in May. I am down in Toronto for the day. Julie lives here.
She soon tells me what is going on. Sitting down, she looks pretty, with the angles of her face softened and shaded by the hat, and her dark eyes shining.
“It makes me think of a story,” Julie says. “Isn’t it like one of those ironical-twist-at-the-end sort of stories that used to be so popular? I really did think that I was asked along to protect you. No, not exactly protect, that’s too vulgar, but I thought you felt something and you were being prudent, and that was why me. Wouldn’t it make a good story? Why did those stories go out of style?”
“They got to seem too predictable,” I said. “Or people thought, that isn’t the way things happen. Or they thought, who cares the way things happen?”
“Not to me! Not to me was anything predictable!” says Julie. One or two people look our way. The tables are too close together here.
She makes a face, and pulls the hat down on both cheeks, scrunching the rose against her temple.
“I must be crowing,” she says. “I have a tendency now to get light-headed. It just seems to me so remarkable. Is this hat silly? No, seriously, do you remember when we were driving down and you told about the visit you went on, the visit that man took you on, to see the rich people? The rich woman? The awful one? Do you remember you said then about there being the