Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [39]
“Why? If drinking and drugging were still fun for you, why would you want to know? You didn’t want to know, in fact, or you would have asked.”
“How long have you been a member?”
“About a decade. I got into it in Paris, when I lived on the Boulevard Raspail. You remember, my orgy period in Paris? Ah, the sixties turning seventies . . . before the drugs turned on us.”
Emmie had lived in Paris from 1969 to 1979, a good time to live in Paris. She had written her first book there—a book about sexual liberation for women, which was, in fact, about her own liberation. In Paris she had belonged to an orgy set that included everyone who was anyone in the intellectual and film worlds, doing drugs and sex and rock and roll to a fare-thee-well. The perfect way for a convent girl to spend the seventies. Since I was living another life at the time—first with Thom, then with Elmore, then with Elmore and the twins—I saw her only on my infrequent trips to Paris. I never knew she’d been addicted to anything but sex and chocolate. (Her emergency supply ran to ten-inch Toblerones.) She certainly did not fit my—or anyone else’s—description of an alcoholic.
“So you got sober without telling me. Did you know I had a problem?”
“I knew you thought you could control everything in your life. Which, in itself, is a problem, since we can’t.”
“Do you think I’m an alcoholic?”
“What I think doesn’t matter. Do you think you are? This is one of the few great diseases that’s self-diagnosed—like love. It doesn’t matter what I—or anyone else—think. Maybe you’re just a garden-variety love addict and you just drink with men. I don’t know. I do know the Program saved my life.”
“Oh, come on, Emmie, that’s a cop-out.”
“No it’s not. The truth is that I never have seen you falling-down drunk, and the truth is that you stumble through your life reasonably enough, taking care of everyone—including me—but you seem not to be having much fun. Here you are with those beautiful twins, the meteoric career, all that intelligence and wit and vitality—and you’re ready to throw in the towel because of a very damaged young man.”
“A what?”
“A Dart.”
“But I love Dart. I’ve never felt—”
“I know how much you love Dart. How much do you love Leila?”
Stung by the question, I answer it.
“Not much.”
“Then something is drastically wrong. Because Leila is lovable.”
“Is she?” I ask, leaking tears. “Is she really?”
“Oh, darling, why on earth do you think I’ve been here all this time—because you’re not lovable? Even with all your craziness, what you call your mishegoss, you’re the best person I know. You give and give and give. To everyone. Except Leila. Now it’s her turn.”
“But am I an alcoholic?”
“I don’t know,” says Emmie. “Ask yourself, don’t ask me.”
We ramble through green Connecticut, buying things. Bunches of flowers. Tomatoes. Garlic. Pasta. Then we go back to my house and start cooking.
We make fresh tomato sauce for the pasta, and grill swordfish steaks and ears of corn. Puttering in the kitchen and at the outdoor grill, we are absurdly happy.
“At five o’clock,” Emmie says, “we’ll have muffins and tea with honey.”
“I’m going to get fat as a pig.”
“I doubt it,” says Emmie.
For an hour or so, sitting with Emmie and the dog in the early summer green of sweet Connecticut, I am at peace. After lunch, we lie on my hillside and watch the clouds go by, naming them according to the animals and birds they resemble. Something seems drastically wrong, missing.
“Dart—I wonder when I’ll hear from Dart.”
“Never, I hope. But I doubt he can stay away.”
“How can you say that?”
“Leila, you need Dart like a fish needs a bicycle. Dart needs you far more than you need him.”
“If he needs me so much, where is he?”
“Off provoking you. If you stopped being provoked, he’d be the one going crazy. It’s a dance you’re doing. You need to be on the hook, and he needs to hook you.”
“What about sex?”
“What about it?”
“I never had sex that good with anyone. The truth is, if I start feeling this good about myself, I won’t let Dart knock me around anymore, and if I don’t let Dart