Women and Children First Read Online Free PDF Page A

that happened, but sometimes, when they happened in front of him, he used to say he felt like an actor in one of those disaster movies with the Titanic sinking and everyone yelling, ‘Women and children first!’ except that his wife and kid had already gone and left him standing on deck, watching their lifeboat float off.”
    Janet realizes she has never even told Gordie about Will saying this. She only mentioned it once, drunk, at a D.C. party. Someone was talking about the actual Titanic, and she stopped the whole conversation by quoting Will. There was a terrible silence, till finally some lefty lawyer type said something lame and solemn—meant, nonetheless, as a halfhearted come-on—about the whole male sex being stuck on a sinking ship.
    “I used to feel awful when he’d say that,” Janet says. “I’d think: Hey, he’s a doctor, he has enough in his life without envying me and Kevin. But I don’t know. I guess he felt left out; I guess everybody wants everything.”
    Janet pauses, slightly embarrassed and pleased that saying “everybody wants everything” may have made her sound like a greedy slave of appetite. She doubts that it’s even true. One night last fall, when Kevin was in D.C., Janet went home with a man—a candlemaker—she met at a Charlottesville crafts fair. After a while, he showed her into his bedroom; he’d lit mushroom candles all over. Though touched by his attempt at romance, she was appalled by those hideous glowing mushrooms, and she couldn’t go through with it; she excused herself and left.
    What she wants to tell Eric is how, in the end, Will was really the prescient one. Because, finally, wasn’t he right? Janet and Kevin in one boat, Will in another, an ocean—all right, a highway—between them. Sometimes it astonishes her that her strongest—her only—connection is with a child. It’s common enough, she knows, just not what she expected. And now, when she imagines those disaster films, it’s the women’s faces she sees, the looks on their faces as they climb down into the boats: fear mixed with amazement that when the order came, they so readily, so instinctively complied. But saying this might make her life with Kevin sound impenetrable, closed-off, full-up. It’s why, she sometimes thinks, she’s so adamant about not accumulating lots of stuff. What man wouldn’t hesitate in the doorway of a house where a woman and child live surrounded by perfect antiques?
    Eric says, “Was that part of what came between you?”
    “The tiniest part,” she says. Then they both fall silent. Janet remembers a magazine article which claimed that one sign of sexual interest is the reflected gesture: she picks up a glass, he picks up a glass, he crosses his legs, so does she. She hopes that shared silence counts. She thinks about Kevin and Dr. Wilmot on the other side of the wall: if she’s been taking his medical history, they would have finished long ago. Then a red darkroom light blinks on the wall, and Eric gives her the stack of cards and says, “Here’s the story. Simple geometric images—triangles, squares. We’re trying to eliminate the variables.”
    Janet is disappointed: the experiments she’s read about used images like camels in the desert, the Alamo, rockets in outer space. Though maybe that’s why they never got conclusive results. Eric explains that in the first round Kevin will send, Janet receive. He tells Janet to close her eyes and concentrate, and call out whatever comes to mind. Janet imagines triangles, squares. They all seem equally likely. None of them flash on and off or in any way signal her as beaming from Kevin’s brain.
    Her only thoughts are of Eric, how conscious she is of him awaiting her answer; she desperately wants to do well. She thinks: Everything is backwards. Here she is, going through this with her kid, and the only telepathy she cares about is with the guy running the test. It’s hopelessly distracting, but when it’s her turn,