LITERATURE: Munro’s Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Kidd

This is a very interesting look at two old women who find themselves in a nursing home. Munro carefully draws out the difference in their lives, though they had known each other in kindergarten, over eighty years ago, and likely grew apart and not seen each other much in the interim. Munro displays the difference in their appearance back then, and the husbands they chose, and even the gifts they've received from their children on view in their rooms. Lit-up plastic roses and crocheted dolls that are pincushions are in Mrs. Cross' room; books fill the shelves of Mrs. Kidd's.

While they seek each other out in their new restricted world of wheelchairs and very sick people, there is still within each a tendency to hold onto their own separate lives. When Mrs. Cross befriends a stroke-afflicted newspaper man, Mrs. Kidd sees much less of her, and eventually finds another patient-resident who is more easily manipulated. Mrs. Cross tries very hard to help the man to speak and communicate despite doctors' warnings and when he gets angry with her for her mothering and tutoring ways, she is flustered and weary. Mrs. Kidd notices that Mrs. Cross does not have her wheelchair (here's where I sort of felt Munro contrived the situation, in having Mrs. Cross say that she left it behind in helping the man to the recreation room) and Mrs. Kidd boldly offers her own chair to Mrs. Cross and pushes her all the way back to her room. With instructions to haul herself out of the chair and lay down on her bed and have the nurse return the chair to Mrs. Kidd's room later, Mrs. Cross disappears into her room and Mrs. Kidd, completely exhausted, sinks to the floor to recuperate.

Again, a beautiful look inside human nature, and yet this last detail spoiled it for me a bit (see previous story review): Why didn't Mrs. Kidd wait until Mrs. Cross had gotten into her bed and then wheel herself back in her chair? While I might understand the show of strength and sacrifice, this little detail seems to undermine the image of both women as quite practical and intelligent. There would have been little lost in having Mrs. Kidd take the chair right then, as Munro has already included the detail of Mrs. Kidd's labored breathing.

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm getting too picky on some things; after all, I accept fiction as it happened that way–not my way. Munro so carefully uses details to define the real story that perhaps I'm just not good enough a reader yet to have understood the image.