Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [43]
What am I praying for? I think I’m praying for the return of my sane mind.
I am on my knees, immobilized in the moonlight, as he enters the house, using his key, storms into the bedroom, looking for me, and then storms out again, heading for my silo.
I am seized with panic—somehow convinced that if he sees the crystalline still life he will destroy it (so clear will it be to him that he has been replaced as my muse). I run after him, calling, “Dart, Dart,” catching up with him just before he enters my studio.
I embrace him, drag him out to the grassy slope again. There, under the mocking moon, we couple like witch and warlock, screaming and crying in the dewy grass, rolling over and over laughing like maniacs and even rolling down the hill to the border of my ha-ha. There we stop by the side of the ditch and fuck again, powered by the blue fullness of the moon.
“Baby, you’re wild—wild,” says Dart, who does not know that all my wildness was to keep him from my still life, or that in my screaming and coming, I hold back a little piece of my heart—a small sane sober corner that can never give itself away again.
I lead Dart to bed, where he collapses, spent, reaching his arms around me and sleeping on my breast like a baby. Immobilized by his need, I lie awake watching the pink light of dawn begin to rise behind my trees. On one side of my bedroom the moon sets: on the other side the sun rises. I lie in the middle—Isis with Horus in her arms, Astarte with Adonis, Rhea with the Zeus who is destined to dethrone her.
But can we ever dethrone the earth? The earth is there, whatever we do. We have but to take off our shoes and reassert the contact of our soles with the soil.
Dart groans and turns, letting go his hold, and suddenly I am free to breathe. I stretch out on my back, my mind racing. I know he will sleep for hours, know he has a small boy’s need for sleep, especially after sex.
I slip out of bed, pull on a sweat suit and slippers, and pad back out to the studio. Can my still life possibly be as good as I remember it?
The studio smells of turpentine, the piny, woodsy smell of earth. I switch on the light—and there, on the easel, is my glimmering testament to a new life.
“Thank you, Moon,” I say.
In a rage of excitement I wash my brushes, clean my palette, put a new canvas on the easel, and set the first painting aside to dry. I rearrange the crystalline elements of my still life and begin a second version of this albino study—this one much more fantastical and abstract, with the moon setting behind the dancing maenads and the eggs transformed into little whirling planets and the cow spraying milk through the starry universe.
I paint and paint—rapt, happy, imagining a whole series of paintings based on this crystalline theme, with each of these objects—moon, maenads, eggs, cow, milk—becoming an emblem of a new life for women, for children, for the planet. I will call it Albino Lives I, II, III, and so on to infinity, and I will even do large canvases of eggs, of maenads, of white roses—taking these same several elements and considering them from every vantage point, in all sizes.
I see a new show, a new period, a new way of mirroring my life. At 8:00 A.M. I am still painting like this—my mind galloping, my heart full—when Dart staggers in with a cup of coffee and says:
“What’s the matter, baby, don’t you like to sleep in my arms anymore?”
I turn and look at him, at the purplish lids, that tousled blond hair, that six feet two inches of macho masculinity—and I am slightly annoyed to be interrupted. I am also slightly scared.
“What do you think?” I say, pointing to my new canvas.
Dart staggers backward (is he somewhat stoned?).
“Do you really want to know, baby?”
“Yes,” I say, lying.
“Well,” he says. “You know I think you’re the greatest painter since Michelangelo, but I still remember the time when you slept all night in my arms and nothing could tear you away.” He pouts prettily, knowing I am stung with guilt—as if