Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [51]
“You don’t trust me!” Dart shouts, stomping off into the bedroom.
“How can I trust you when you leave for days and come back smelling of someone else’s perfume, with someone else’s lipstick on your shirt? How can I trust you when you buy me presents with my own money and expect me to thank you, when you rage and stomp about the house because I won’t be grateful for that sort of behavior? How can I trust you when you’re not trustworthy!”
“That’s it!” screams Dart. “The last straw! I can’t stay with a woman who can’t trust me—it’s too demeaning! I’m leaving!” and he throws the ring at me and leaves (taking my credit card with him). As if in the grip of some habit, I fall to the floor and weep, feeling my life utterly over. I listen as the motorcycle putters up the driveway and out of my life again.
Isadora: Couldn’t she weep in a chair for once?
Leila: Could you?
As I lie there on the floor, with my tears falling to the oaken floorboards, some glimmer of light begins to dawn, my sane mind is returning. I don’t have to live like this. I don’t have to have my self-esteem shattered every other day just to get skinless sex. Even the sex has become not what it once was. As I begin to see what Dart is doing with sex, it becomes less and less alluring. I see the game of it. And with vision comes freedom. I get up from the floor, dry my tears, and call Emmie—who is, mercifully, home.
“Dart’s gone, again.”
“Thank God,” says Emmie.
“And I’m almost glad.”
“Thank God for that too,” says Emmie.
“I almost feel exhilarated. I’m almost wishing he’ll never come back.”
“I’m going to remind you of that,” says Emmie, “when you least expect it.”
“I know.”
“Look—why don’t you drive into the city and be with me? The fact is, you’re not going to work. We could go to a meeting in New York or go see the tarot reader or just have dinner in the city. . . .”
“But what if Dart calls and I’m not here?”
“So let him call. . . . It will be good for him,” says Emmie. “Anyway, instead of worrying about Dart, you could be doing what’s best for Leila. Make yourself your first priority—you don’t have to be at the affect of someone else. Seize your life. Dart’s incidental—and boring. You give him all the power he has.”
Panic grips me at the thought of going into the city and leaving the telephone, that household god, unattended. I could go to my own loft in the city, but somehow I am afraid of what I’ll find there.
“Come on,” says Emmie. If you drive into the city, I’ll treat you to supper.”
“You’re on,” I say, feeling I am making the most courageous decision of my life.
I put on the engagement ring Dart bought me and say to myself: “Marry me!” It’s the one solution to my marital dilemma I’ve never tried.
It’s glorious midsummer in Connecticut, and I have taken possession of the car I bought for Dart. With its oxblood exterior, its white leather seats, its new sound system, and its rebuilt engine, it drives like a wet dream. But Dart has made a mess of the interior, as he makes a mess of everything. Broken tools on the floor, crushed Kleenex boxes, banana peels, peach pits. He treats the car the way his father treats the house on Rittenhouse Square: as a sort of elegant Dumpster. A rebuke to his woman’s money, because he didn’t earn it. His mess infuriates me, and the fury gives me the power to drive to New York. The gas is incidental.
I zoom down to the city with the Bessie Smith blaring. (I have two sets of the complete Bessie Smith—records for home, cassettes for the car.) I am singing along with “Kitchen Man,” one of her most evocative songs:
Mad about his turnip tops,
Love the way he warms my chops,
I cain’t live without my kitchen man. . . .
Driving, my head clears, and I start to think about my situation—honestly, I hope. I wanted the freedom to do my work, and it led me to this lonely pass. I left Thom to have babies with Elmore, and I left Elmore because eventually he sulked every time I put brush to canvas. I let Dart peel off because I wouldn’t do drugs with him anymore. He found others