Read Online Parachutes and Kisses by Erica Jong - Free Book Online Page B

always used to say: ‘Beware of any project requiring lawyers.’ He was not the sort to get into a lawsuit over it. He let it go and went on to the next work. But he was always terribly bitter about it. I think he stopped mentioning it because it pained him so. I thought it was his greatest painting, and so did he. If it could be seen and exhibited today, it would establish his reputation beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
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    On the way to the cemetery—Chloe and Isadora drove in her silver Mercedes with the Connecticut license plate that read QUIM —Isadora thought about her various promises to her grandfather. He had always wanted her to write his story, be his Boswell, tell it true. He had half expected that she would catalog his paintings, find him a major gallery, organize a retrospective of his work, write his biography, publish an art book of his work. And she had never done so—not for lack of wanting to, but because it seemed to her that all the family examples of profligacy with talent demanded her nurturing her own, even if it meant refusing to serve the patriarch.
    It would have been so much easier, in a way, to become the chronicler and cataloguer of her grandfather’s genius. Women are applauded for being helpmeets to the patriarchs, only denounced when they seek to trumpet their own talents. Isadora knew the joys of the good-girl role; she knew the pleasures of cataloguing, restoring, collecting anecdotes about the great man, effacing oneself in service to the Master.
    Think what flak she could have avoided by being her grandfather’s good granddaughter rather than the bad girl of American letters! Think of all the attacks she could have avoided, all the grief she would never have known, all the uncertainties she would have sidestepped, all the empty pages she would never have faced! And think of the garlands of praise she would have garnered, the pontifical pats on the back, the approving nods, the loving looks. No woman born in this world is immune to the pleasures of being good. We are born to goodness; it is our birthright. Only sheer grit and pigheaded obstinacy make us demand the right to be bad, for we know that only by being bad can we become ourselves—not daughters and granddaughters, but individuals and possibly artists. Being an artist demands a cut umbilicus (which often bleeds); being a daughter demands the cord intact (a bloodless but confining fate).
    Josh was first and foremost a son. That was why he had trouble being a husband. At some point, he would have to jump ship—the SS Patriarch, Isadora called it—and swim. Until he did that, he would never write all the beautiful books that were in him. Often Isadora wished that Josh’s father would die, just to release him before it was too late. But the old man hung on, unwittingly weakening his children with bribes of money and real estate, with the desperate delusion that Daddy never dies.
    They drove to a cemetery in the stony wastes of Queens. For one born in Manhattan, Queens means cemeteries or a flight abroad. Papa was going on his last flight now. The earth was cold and unforgiving. Isadora thought of her grandfather—even the ruin that was left of his body—spending his first night underground and she began to weep. Couldn’t he even take a blanket? She had the doubtless common fantasy of her grandfather discovering himself alive and pounding on the coffin lid for help. The gravesite’s finality never fails to elicit blocked tears. No wonder we weep as we shovel in our modest contributions of earth.
    The limousine bearing Jude and Nat, Aunt Gilda and cousin Abigail preceded them through the cemetery gates. Isadora was driving QUIM, headlights blazing. Josh had refused to go to the cemetery and had taken off for lunch with his mother and father instead. Isadora hadn’t objected. “Go on, darling,” she had said, not wanting to impose her grief on him. But on some