Attachment Read Online Free
pictures he took, hunting for messages among the lucent smudges and ghost tracks, the familiar crescents rendered deathly in monochrome. So she studied the ceiling fan and imagined herself levitating to just the right height whereby the rotating blades could serve as a guillotine for her obviously imperfect breasts.
Meanwhile the radiologist busied himself. His soap-scented arms extended one of hers around the time machine. Dignity demanded that she be as involved as a mannequin being dressed in a store window, and she, shy flower, could only submit as he fussed with the display—frowning, squinting, making several seemingly insignificant changes to her position. The pose she struck was elaborately casual, like in the first photograph she’d sent her parents of herself with Mark, her arm reaching awkwardly up around his shoulder. Too tall by half, was her mother’s verdict following that first experimental airing of his existence, not knowing that Jean had already decided. His height was the first thing she loved about him, her personal lightning rod. Feeling safe with Mark: before she felt it, she had not been aware of any special vulnerability or want. Much of what he brought her came in this form of unanticipated necessity.
With her upper body strained into the leaning position, Jean’s breast had naturally swung out from the sideless smockonto the machine’s glass tray—the coolness of the glass not unwelcome in this close heat—and the technician positioned it with his hairy hands, as focused as a potter centering a lump of clay. This, Jean thought, was the real reason younger women didn’t get mammograms: their breasts couldn’t yet swing out onto the tray. And then she thought of Thing 2, “26 this week.”
She knew what came next and that it didn’t serve to watch: the central shaft of the machine would be lowered like a dumbwaiter, pinning her to the glass, sandwiching her breast in a painful wedge, as if the whole extrusion was designed not to take a photograph that could save her life but to hasten nature’s decline. Why else did they clamp so hard, as if squeezing the last drops from a lemon? Why crank the vise when no other tissue impeded the view? They’d explain it was to allow the lowest possible dose of radiation, but Jean would be more convinced if they said it was to deter second-thoughters. And what a sisterhood of silent fury, as each annual twenty-second examination undid the faithful bra wearing of the preceding year…
It was best to look away, not just from the radiation but because it wasn’t a good sight. The clamp was released and the dumbwaiter sent upstairs, but the pale breast lay there, spread and settled on the tray like an uncooked Danish. With her arm still thrown in a pally hug around the X-ray machine, Jean was sure Thing 2’s breasts never looked like pastry dough.
“You can remove yourself.” The radiologist startled her, looking her in the eye for the first time before leaving the room.
Jean wasn’t so sure. She thought her breast might stick when she tried to unpeel it from the glass, and possibly rip, like a rug’s rubber underlay.
As she slowly pieced herself back together, looking at the diagram on the wall, she remembered the sheep’s heart she’d been given to dissect in a high school biology class, and how dense it was—rubbery, solid, slime-coated, and intermittently spongy, anything but breakable. Where had that come from, the broken heart? Jean had loved dissecting, and as she left the clinic she realized it had been the graphic precursor to her job as a columnist: that sheep’s heart, one time a whole frog, even the lowly pods and leaves. Then, suddenly, she knew exactly what the secret password was—why hadn’t it struck her before? Munyeroo, a fleshy Australian plant, whose leaves and seeds, as Thing 2 helpfully pointed out, could be eaten. Mark had told her about it just the other day, after his trip home, and even suggested
Meanwhile the radiologist busied himself. His soap-scented arms extended one of hers around the time machine. Dignity demanded that she be as involved as a mannequin being dressed in a store window, and she, shy flower, could only submit as he fussed with the display—frowning, squinting, making several seemingly insignificant changes to her position. The pose she struck was elaborately casual, like in the first photograph she’d sent her parents of herself with Mark, her arm reaching awkwardly up around his shoulder. Too tall by half, was her mother’s verdict following that first experimental airing of his existence, not knowing that Jean had already decided. His height was the first thing she loved about him, her personal lightning rod. Feeling safe with Mark: before she felt it, she had not been aware of any special vulnerability or want. Much of what he brought her came in this form of unanticipated necessity.
With her upper body strained into the leaning position, Jean’s breast had naturally swung out from the sideless smockonto the machine’s glass tray—the coolness of the glass not unwelcome in this close heat—and the technician positioned it with his hairy hands, as focused as a potter centering a lump of clay. This, Jean thought, was the real reason younger women didn’t get mammograms: their breasts couldn’t yet swing out onto the tray. And then she thought of Thing 2, “26 this week.”
She knew what came next and that it didn’t serve to watch: the central shaft of the machine would be lowered like a dumbwaiter, pinning her to the glass, sandwiching her breast in a painful wedge, as if the whole extrusion was designed not to take a photograph that could save her life but to hasten nature’s decline. Why else did they clamp so hard, as if squeezing the last drops from a lemon? Why crank the vise when no other tissue impeded the view? They’d explain it was to allow the lowest possible dose of radiation, but Jean would be more convinced if they said it was to deter second-thoughters. And what a sisterhood of silent fury, as each annual twenty-second examination undid the faithful bra wearing of the preceding year…
It was best to look away, not just from the radiation but because it wasn’t a good sight. The clamp was released and the dumbwaiter sent upstairs, but the pale breast lay there, spread and settled on the tray like an uncooked Danish. With her arm still thrown in a pally hug around the X-ray machine, Jean was sure Thing 2’s breasts never looked like pastry dough.
“You can remove yourself.” The radiologist startled her, looking her in the eye for the first time before leaving the room.
Jean wasn’t so sure. She thought her breast might stick when she tried to unpeel it from the glass, and possibly rip, like a rug’s rubber underlay.
As she slowly pieced herself back together, looking at the diagram on the wall, she remembered the sheep’s heart she’d been given to dissect in a high school biology class, and how dense it was—rubbery, solid, slime-coated, and intermittently spongy, anything but breakable. Where had that come from, the broken heart? Jean had loved dissecting, and as she left the clinic she realized it had been the graphic precursor to her job as a columnist: that sheep’s heart, one time a whole frog, even the lowly pods and leaves. Then, suddenly, she knew exactly what the secret password was—why hadn’t it struck her before? Munyeroo, a fleshy Australian plant, whose leaves and seeds, as Thing 2 helpfully pointed out, could be eaten. Mark had told her about it just the other day, after his trip home, and even suggested
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