Attachment Read Free Page B

probably already knew what it was. So she tried, and found nothing. She was aware women liked Mark, felt lucky if they were seated next to him. Of course they did—everybody did. He was handsome and witty but not too challenging. He was at ease with most people and a frank appreciator of womankind. Jean felt clear about that, and also that he didn’t like to be cornered by other men’s wives. She assumed he had his chances—successful males always have, since long before man separated from monkey—but was also confident he played it straight, did his work, paid his taxes, and slept well at night.
    And she knew, however much she didn’t like to admit it, that he’d had his sexual obsession, more than a decade before they’d even met, one summer in Brittany. Now, by extension, he loved all things French: French clients, which meant more time in France; French wine, French islands, French actresses, French butter—tasteless logs, in Jean’s opinion, unsalted fat. Like Thing 2’s “sweet thighs”? What kind of person called her own thighs “sweet”? But she didn’t mind Mark’s French bug, even if it was a trip to Paris that had made him miss the birth of their daughter. Energetic enthusiasms, comprehensive enthusiasms—these were his kind of charm.
    “Put this on,” said a surprise nurse, leaving Jean alone with her folded green smock. There was a large cutout for the head, and open sides, so it hung over the torso like a saddlebag. Thusdraped, she crossed her naked arms, looked around the cramped examining room, and waited.
    This dead time spent waiting, especially in poor countries…it converted everybody going about his daily business into a disaster victim, queuing for relief. Mass paralysis—a phenomenon, she thought, to compete with mass migration, meriting international treaties, conventions, philanthropic interest. And for Jean? She somehow knew, having failed to confront Mark at once, she’d entered the waiting game of her life.
    The room contained a padded table, another lethargic fan, and, in the corner by a high window, an old-fashioned wicker hat rack where Jean had hung her clothes, bra discreetly tucked under the childish sundress, and the letter folded into childish sundress pocket. Another standing object filled the center of the room, stainless steel and glass, loaded with dials and levers—yesteryear’s futuristic. After a decade of annual mammograms, Jean knew the machine and the drill. Here she was again, stripped, bored, and coursing with dread. She tried to distance herself by considering alternative uses for the Senograph, with its motorized compression device: patty maker, phone booth, mechanical valet, time machine.
    But distraction was not encouraged here. On the wall, above the examining table, hung a framed poster of a vagina and a womb—in the family of the butcher’s chart, sectioned, colored, and neatly labeled in teachers’ script. Jean wondered what sort of image awaited Mark at the Internet café. Photographs of Thing 2’s privates would be a lot harder to ignore than this diagram. As if being ignored might come into a Thing’s plan.
    In England, she thought, hearing footsteps and checking her gown, such a room would have a picture of wild ponies on Exmoor, Brighton Pavilion, or an Alma-Tadema muse draped in billowing gauze. In the States you might get fall foliage or Capitol Hill. And in either country—she now saw a hairy arm opening the door from the corridor—the radiologist would not have been a man. This one was wearing short sleeves and a hospital V-neck, as if to feature his pelt. And a paper hat.
    Jean didn’t want to look at this man, so like an entertainer escaped from a children’s party. She didn’t want to look at the vagina and womb. She didn’t want to say anything, with her hopeless French and miserable state of mind. He wasn’t even a doctor. More like a mechanic, brought in to mind the precious robot. Someone else would interpret the