Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [128]
“Emmie” published her menopause book and made another small fortune, gave the term “menopausal chic” to the New Penguin Dictionary of Quotations, and flourished because her heart is pure—though not all that pure (since she is, after all, an author). She still loves her married Greek and is happy when he sails into town.
“André” also wound up in area code 213, having sold his gallery, divorced his wife, married a twenty-two-year-old actress, and become an “indie prod” and a health food fanatic. It truly amazes your humble amanuensis that so many of the characters migrated to area code 213, but you know what they say about southern California—everything in the United States that isn’t nailed down eventually slithers there.
And what of the “twins” or “Amanda Ace”—a child so vital she seems doubled, twinned, squared? Following her mother’s disappearance and amazing return, she, at eleven, wrote a book, which became a best-seller. A Child’s Guide to Life, it was called, and it told kids of today how to center themselves and be sane, whole, and drug-free in the face of the breakdown of their parents’ crazy, addictive civilization.
Her literary career temporarily suspended by the advent of puberty, “Mike” and “Ed,” aka “Amanda,” now goes to school like any kid her age but has an agent, a business manager, and a lawyer to sift the offers (for TV shows, films, interviews, investments) that pour in weekly. It remains to be seen whether she will make it through the hormonal derby of adolescence without at least temporarily losing her sense of humor. She is, after all, her mother’s daughter, and between daughters and their mothers, intention, alas, is the last thing that matters.
So now I am home. In Connecticut again. The maples blaze on my hillside as the oranges blaze in the garbage cans of New York. A lozenge of light paints the ceiling of my writing studio. A ghostly harvest moon floats over the hills. I am writing. Bessie is singing. My lovely daughter is here.
For the first time in my life, I have been able to hold on to the feeling of air under my wings. I am flying at last.
I cannot tell you it’s because of a man, or because of a book, or because of the moon. I can only tell you that I have gotten free of the prison of myself and that I move through the world without fear.
It has something to do with sobriety, which has everything to do with freedom. It has something to do with grace.
Connecticut, Venice, New York, California, the South Seas . . . what does it matter, if God is in your heart and every word is a meditation, an act of praise?
I cannot tell you that I arrived here without any detours. For starters, I have to confess that I drank again. But apparently even that was necessary—for it made me realize that I hadn’t really hit bottom, that I was flirting with surrender but hadn’t really surrendered. I was not entirely ready.
It was my last married man who triggered my surrender. His name was Marcus. We met at a dinner party in a loft in SoHo—one of those lofts filled with expensive art—Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Helen Frankenthaler—and custom-made furniture. The people were also custom-made. Eurotrash. Debutramps with trust funds. Good jewelry from the Via Condotti and Old Bond Street. Castles on the Rhine and country houses in Orvieto. Azzedine Alaïa shoes. Chanel suits. God bless fashion for keeping us fickle—and trivial, when we long to be deep.
He had silver hair, hazel eyes, a five-o’clock shadow that glimmered. A sweater knitted by some Irish fisherfolk. A tie woven by some