Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [18]
“Yes, yes, dear,” said Mr. Donegal, feigning the jealous mate—albeit rather unconvincingly.
Mrs. Donegal preened, tripled her chins, and smiled fetchingly. Mr. Donegal winked at her in a forties-movie parody of flirtation, and the previous discussion about heating oil futures was forgotten. The ritual dance of their marriage had been choreographed long before and was as unlikely to change as the routines in a tired but long-running musical. They were eating buddies, greeting card buddies, and partners in self-deception. Every good marriage is partly a folie à deux, but this one should have won a lifetime achievement award. It was as if Miss Havisham had mated with Mr. Micawber.
After dinner, Mr. Donegal insisted on taking me on a tour of the family heirlooms. While Dart communed with his mother, I trailed behind Mr. Donegal through rooms and rooms of packing boxes, cobwebby antiques, piled-up newspapers, sagging bookshelves crammed with dusty books, and armoires bursting with all sorts of unidentifiable stuff. Every object before which Mr. Donegal lingered was meant to reflect glory on the family. There was his father’s World War I helmet, his smiling Irish mother’s wedding portrait, the hood ornament from the famous Delahaye that gave up the ghost in the Alps, an aerial view of the family’s former brickworks in Philadelphia (long since liquidated to pay off inheritance taxes). Finally we ascended to the attic, a musty top-floor emporium filled with dusty racks of clothes. It was virtually a costume museum, devoted to all the disembodied clothes of the Donegal ancestors: flapper dresses, World War I uniforms, bridal gowns, frock coats. If the clothes could have magically filled with the vanished forms of all the vanished Venables, Donegals, and Dartons—what a danse macabre they would have made!
Mr. Donegal held up a moonbeamy flapper dress, glimmering with bugle beads.
“My mother’s,” said Mr. Donegal. “Would you like to try it on?”
“Oh, no, thank you,” I said.
“Please,” said Mr. Donegal. “It would give me such pleasure to see someone wear it.”
“I don’t think it will fit,” I said.
“Of course it will,” said Mr. Donegal. “She was small like you—and also titian-haired. A Venetian blond, she called herself. It would be my honor to pass it on to you.”
He was importune, and I was afraid of seeming rude, so I took the dress, disappeared behind a rack of clothes, took off my chamois dress (corsage and all), and carefully raised the dusty, shimmering sheath above my head. So intent was I on not tearing the heirloom that I did not see (or hear) Mr. Donegal slither up beside me. Before I knew it, one of his hands was on my breast and the other was fondling my crotch. He swiftly insinuated one index finger under the fastening of my cream-colored lace teddy and ran it teasingly along my clit. I let out a little shriek, but was immobilized both by my raised arms and by my care for the dress.
“Please!” I said through the fragile fabric, but Mr. Donegal ignored me. He was pressing himself against me now, and I could feel his erection, curiously crooked like his son’s. I dropped the dress, a pile of dusty moonbeams, and darted behind another clothes rack, where I stood immobilized, waiting for Mr. Donegal to come claim me. Images of fox hunts came to mind, and I the terrified fox waiting for the dogs to scent my fear. Forty seconds went by, but Mr. Donegal did not come. My breath was jagged and rapid: a mixture of fear and—dare I say it?—sexual excitement. I waited shivering in my lace teddy until finally I realized that I was alone in the room.
Trembling, humiliated, I found my way back to my suede dress, put it on, collected myself, and went downstairs.
In the sitting room, I met with a Hogarthian tableau of the Donegal family chatting cozily around the fire as if nothing at all were the matter.
Mr. Donegal was fondling his mother’s dress, which he held on his lap like a household pet. It occurred to me that this whole family was quite mad—dangerously so—and that I should escape at once. Alas, I did not heed my instinct.