Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [69]
The dog barks. An actual person is arriving.
For a few minutes, there is hushed anticipation. Then, the sound of boots on gravel. Then, a knock at the door. (The studio-silo has neither bell nor lock.) I run downstairs to open the door, and in walks Darth Vader, holding a rose.
He might as well be a Martian arriving from outer space, or some other species of Spielbergian alien heralded by bright light and bad television reception.
“Leila,” says Dart, “I had to kiss my lucky person before I left for L.A.”
I look at him—the bullshit smile, the sheepish expression, the sheer chutzpah of his coming back after the scene in the restaurant—and I am in a rage.
“I’m not the Blarney Stone,” I scream. “I’m a woman!”
“Leila, baby,” says Dart. “I’ve been asked to go to L.A. to audition for a movie about a young artist, and I had to kiss you before I left.”
Now, this could be true or not be true. This could be the sheerest invention on Dart’s part, or it could have some little grain of truth—like the bead the Japanese pearl fisherman slips into an oyster to con the mollusk into secreting its precious bodily radiance. With Dart you never know how much is pearl and how much plastic.
“How nice for you,” I say. “Stardom.”
“Baby, I’m sorry,” says Dart. “Maybe someday I’ll be fit to live with.” And he turns on his sheepish love-me smile.
“Get out of here,” I yell. “I’m not some amulet you touch for luck! I’m not your mother! I’m not your banker! Get out!”
He looks at me like a petulant child. (It’s at this point that my twins would stamp their ten-year-old feet and snarl, “Not fair.”)
“Baby, I tried,” says Dart. “I was a seed, and you were a whole forest. I couldn’t grow in your shadow.”
“Oh—it’s my fault, is it? My shadow was too big? I love being fucked over and then blamed for it too.” But the trouble is, I know there’s truth in what he says. His truth.
“You were always my artist,” says Dart, falling to his knees and throwing his arms around my thighs. He is crying real tears. They wet my jeans.
Torn between rage and despair, I struggle for a moment, wanting him and wanting to kill him. (It’s not unlike the feeling one often has with one’s kids—to kill or to cuddle, that is the question.)
I crumple to the floor, crying copious salty tears, and we hold each other, both weeping.
Time seems suspended as we rock in each other’s arms. I never knew there were so many tears! The whole sea seems to be feeding our tears. They are endless—a tidal wave of brine taking us back to some prenatal existence in which we hold each other like twins embracing in the amniotic sac.
He is me and I am him, the bond so deep and unbreakable it astounds me even now. The con man in me, the heartbreaker, the faker, the phony—all of these aspects of Leila/Louise Dart embodied, and I loved him as I loved my baby self, the little girl who never got enough love and would lie and cheat and charm for it, break hearts for it, die for it, cry for it. We hold each other for what seems like eons, geologic time, light-years. We cry together the way we used to fuck.
Then, wordlessly, we get up, separate, and Dart goes down the silo stairs again. I pick up my brush and paint a highlight on one maenad’s cheek. A tear. But only one. And Dart is gone.
Later I discover he’s taken some of his things. The white cowboy shirt, boots, hat, some jewelry. I don’t care. What interests me is that the house is locked and