Cat's Eye

The adult Elaine thinks of diseases of memory and is sure she will get one. She thinks about how she always wanted to get older, and now she is older. She thinks about Cordelia and about how her name might have doomed her. Elaine was named after her mother’s best friend.

Elaine has a meal with Jon and remembers the silence of their relationship as well as the things she threw at him. Jon has separated from his new wife, and Elaine feels like she has to forgive him. She thinks it is easier to forgive men than women. After dinner, they leave separately.

Elaine thinks about a painting she did called Falling Women. It did not depict any men but was about the kind of men who made women fall. She saw such men as inevitable and forceful, like the weather. She thinks that the term “fallen women” must have meant women that fell onto men and hurt themselves. The painting showed three women falling, their skirts open, onto unseen men below.

The narrative jumps back to 17-year-old Elaine in a life drawing class staring at a naked woman for the first time.