Parachutes and Kisses (12 page)

“How's your headache?” asks Roland, unlocking his two-room apartment, with its mingled smells of sinsemilla and mildew. Roland's apartment faces a court or a stone wall—she's not sure which, because he never opens the curtains—and it reminds Isadora of the Columbia apartment where she lost her virginity some twenty-two years ago. Oh, one of the joys of middle age is seeing everything come full circle! Here she is again in the old Columbia neighborhood to get laid. Nostalgia of the loins, perhaps (as Sartre called it), or is it rather
la nostalgie de
la
boue?

“The headache is fine,” says Isadora. “I'm
awful.”

“You
look
great,” says Roland.

“Oh, Roland—my fate is always to look great, strong, brave, and fearless when, in fact, I feel like shit.”

“Nonsense,” says he, “you're the healthiest person I know.”

“Which isn't saying much,” says Isadora.

She flops down on the couch, sheds her handwoven shawl—it's late October and not yet really cold—takes off her gold boots (‘tis the season of metallic shoes, bags, belts, even underwear, for god's sake) and puts her feet up on Roland's couch.

“Sorry to lay my headache on you,” she says.

“Lay
it on me? Isadora, I'm
honored
that you feel free enough to come here when you have a headache. I want to be some solace for you. I think that Josh Ace is the dumbest, meanest shit in America. You're the pearls, he's the swine.”

“That seems to be the common report,” says Isadora. “But I feel sorry for Josh. Think of how tough it must have been for him, being the salami in the sandwich—his father on one side, me on the other.”

“But he's treating you so
horribly,”
Roland says, “and I'd give anything to trade places with the guy.”

Isadora's headaches had begun on the very weekend it became abundantly clear that Josh was probably never coming back. Not only had he, seemingly, found another lady, but he withdrew totally from marital therapy with Isadora, saying that it was useless, no change was possible, the marriage was kaput, he wanted out. Up until then, she had nursed the hope that the whole split was merely a sabbatical—a sort of rabbit-running separation, after which the fates would reunite them, for they were fated, or so she believed.

The first two months of their separation, he shuttled back and forth, appearing at the house constantly, putting Mandy to bed, hanging around to check on whether or not Isadora was going out, being lured into her office for the occasional blow job, or quickie, and then leaving as if she were nothing but the most casual one-night stand. This pattern grew unbearable after a time. After their zipless encounters in her studio, Isadora, of course, wanted him to stay, and he was always going. It was better to break off relations entirely and ritualize their visitations more rigidly than keep enduring these constant comings together followed by wrenching partings. He told Isadora he was off sex, that his libido was gone, that there were no other ladies at this point. After a while, it emerged that he was lying—albeit to try to save her feelings. There was still the typist, and the mother of one of Mandy's three-year-old friends. (The number of divorced women in Connecticut requiring sexual services was endless, apparently.)

The headaches began innocently enough. Faced with the fact that Josh was through with marital therapy, that his weekends were filled with this mysterious other lady—Wendy or Wanda, Isadora wasn't sure which—that Mandy was coming home with reports of “Wendy's cookies,” and “Wanda's doggie,” and “Wendy's ice-skating lessons,” Isadora had a major recurrence of insomnia—the sort of insomnia she had suffered during the last year of their marriage—waking at four, never to be able to get back to sleep. She called Sylvia Sydenheim-Rabinowitz asking for an anodyne—and Sylvia, ever the purveyor of “scripts” (as her son calls them) gave her Dalmane. The Dalmane knocked her out, all right, but it must have also knocked out her ability to dream—REM sleep, as they call it—and so she would wake up every morning, more zonky and depressed than ever, her rage at Josh now having nowhere at all to go—since she could neither express it awake or asleep! ‘Twas then that the headaches began—began at first merely when she talked to him on the phone, and then proceeded to grip her whenever she had an orgasm. It was an almost Dantean punishment. No sooner would she be on the verge of an earth-shattering climax with Errol or Roland than she would develop blinding pain—a steel band around her forehead, a throbbing in her temples—that made her whole body tense with agony, threw her orgasm off, and left her teeth chattering with pain so intense she was sure it portended a brain tumor or an aneurysm.

It was then that she began her tour of doctors, her quest for the holy grail of Cure. Whereupon she discovered with a vengeance that she lived in a whole society of legal addicts. A neurologist friend put her on an antidepressant called Limbitrol, which not only didn't ease the headaches, but made her so uncoordinated she couldn't walk, drive, or pour juice, and left her mouth so dry she couldn't talk, let alone give head—her one creative solace, since she couldn't write. Five days later, feeling for all the world like a state-hospital patient, she tossed the Limbitrol in the garbage.

Next, her internist (a charming young man—also recently divorced) prescribed a different antidepressant—one called Norpramin—which she was to take with Librium, when needed. Roland, at that point, was her psychopharmacology expert, and he approved of neither prescription, although he took vast quantities of antidepressants and tranquilizers himself.

“When the headache strikes, I'd opt for a simple fifties remedy —like codeine or caffergot instead of these fancy seventies-style tricyclic antidepressants,” said Roland. “Drugs go in and out of fashion—just like hemlines. The old drugs of the fifties were perfectly okay.”

So Isadora threw out the Norpramin, saving the Librium for anxiety emergencies, and took caffergot or codeine when a headache came on, but neither seemed to work. She felt like a character in the seventh circle of Dante's
Inferno,
or like Prometheus, chained to a rock, doomed to have his heart eaten out at regular intervals. Josh brought on headaches; orgasms brought on headaches. The two things in life that had once given her the most joy now gave her incredible pain—pain that neither ice packs, nor tranquilizers, nor antidepressants could assuage. As for aspirin, it had long since become useless. And the drug called Midrin (Isadora thought these names of drugs terribly funny, really) did little or nothing at all. Percodan, Darvon, Elavil, Haldol, Mellaril, Paxi pam, Surmontil, Asendin, Tofranil, Talwin, Tylox,
bibbity, bobbity, boo.
Lobotriol, Perkupitrol, Nadanil, Highatril, Climaxine, Overcomitol, Hylox, Isadora countered. She could spend her sleepless nights making up names of drugs with the best of them, but still her headache did not abate. What a punishment for sexuality ! The obviousness of the symbolism was pathetic. Talk about pleasure inhibition, the dreaded anhedonia—Isadora (who, two weeks ago, had thought herself so liberated) was now a walking testament to self-inflicted pain. She had finally freed herself from guilt, it seemed, whereupon the Great Migraine in the Sky had come to claim her.

Only Valium worked, Valium and dope (preferably the Sonoma County stuff that Roland supplied). Moreover, Swedish massages were good—and Shiatsu—if only for a few hours. She was on the verge of trying acupuncture, T.M., levitation—even a trip to Sai Baba's ashram in Puttaparthi, India, to get some of his famed Vibhuthi ...

“Nonsense,” said Roland. “Take the Valium, if it works, and wait. You'll be fine in no time at all.”

Whereupon he laid upon her heaps of pills—yellow ones, green ones—and his own two trembling hands. He gave her odoriferous buds of gorgeous dope, freshly picked by hippies in the blessed counties of Sonoma and Humboldt.

The dope was rare. The hands she could teach not to tremble so much. But the Valium, she discovered, was available nearly
everywhere.
Every pharmacist was a legal dope vendor. Connecticut was full of druggists who'd refill you endlessly. And so was New York. The whole world was on Valium—the main drug in the Divorce Pharmacopoeia, it seemed—Valium, booze, coke, and dope. No, not quite true. Three-quarters of the world was on Valium, booze, coke, and dope—the other quarter was “at a meeting.” The number of friends she had who were “in the program” astounded her. A.A.-niks were everywhere. Sometimes she went to meetings herself just to be inspired—but alas, they did not cure her headaches.

 

“Do you want to do something sexual?” Roland asks, sitting across from the sprawling Isadora, rolling a joint, and producing little green shield-shaped pills.

“Roland, how about some soft lights, sweet music, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, you know?”

“I thought wine gave you a headache.”

“It does. God—don't be so literal.”

“I'm sorry,” Roland says, looking rebuked.

“Sure, we can do something sexual,” Isadora says languidly. “But first, you ought to get me in the mood.”

“Well, what would get you in the mood?”

Isadora laughs.

“Do you want me to make you a list on my
Things to Do
pad?”

“Really, Isadora,” he says stiffly, “I'm not nearly as
experienced
as you. I'm not good at the dressing and undressing, the soft lights, the sweet music ...”

“But you'd be irresistible if you'd only
learn
to be good at it. Isn't that why I'm here?”

“I don't know. What can I say? I've never gotten into that stuff.”

“So, get into it now.”

“First,
you
take a Valium and relax.”

Which Isadora does. She takes two, in fact. Then they smoke dope. That marvelous, odoriferous stuff from northern California, America's greatest contribution to agriculture (not to mention agribusiness) since the Big Boy tomato.

Isadora's temples are still throbbing. The back of her neck is still somewhat tense, but she's starting to unwind. As the resinous smoke enters her lungs, she becomes, predictably, amorous. This stuff
really
dissolves the superego—if she has any left. Once all superego, she is now, it appears endless id. Endless, meaningless id. What the fuck, she thinks, beckoning to Roland to come to her.

After she and Josh split, she had endured a period of such intense horniness that she found herself gazing at crotches in supermarkets, crotches at Connecticut tag sales, crotches at vegetable auctions at county fairs (now,
there's
a zucchini), crotches on airplanes. Once, early in the separation, she had necked throughout a transatlantic flight with a total stranger—a Swedish real-estate developer, who was a great kisser, but an equally great liar —and who turned out to be just another boring, mendacious married man. They took over the upstairs lounge of the SAS 747 and hugged and kissed from somewhere over Goose Bay to somewhere over Oslo—where he departed (deplaned, as they say, her phone number in his bulging pocket). In New York a month later, he proved an utter boob, so hopeless at dinner she never even groped him. The entire beguiling story of his life he'd told her on the plane proved a monstrous lie. He was married, with three kids —not the young
bon vivant
with a tragic history of an alcoholic teen-age ex-wife he'd presented himself to be. Isadora hardly cared that he was
married
(she wasn't looking for marriage, after all, but just diversion from her pain over Josh), but she did care that he had lied. She hated liars more than anything. She knew that sometimes one had to lie by omission to spare another human's feelings—but conscious, useless lies infuriated her. This Nordic fool had pretended to open up the entire story of his life there in the upper lounge of the 747, when, in truth, the whole spiel was bullshit—and not even amusing bullshit at that—but aimless bullshit, pillow talk that doesn't quite make it, like cowflop on a satin pillowcase.

“Are you relaxed?” Roland asks, getting up to put on a record. “Would early Beatles be appropriate?”

“Most appropriate,” Isadora says.

“Then you're getting relaxed?” he repeats.

“Mmm,” says Isadora.

“Shall we commence something erotic?”

Whereupon Isadora commences a fit of the giggles.

“Yes,” says Isadora between giggles, “let us commence something erotic.”

“A kiss?” asks Roland,

“Do it, Roland, don't say it.” Which he comes back to administer —inspecting her mouth with his tongue, like the sort of boy she and her friend Pia used to call a “tooth inspector” when they were in high school. (God—she had gone from drapeheads back to tooth inspectors in one short month!)

“Sweet kisses, soft kisses,” says Isadora, assuming her role as mother-teacher, Roland's perfect oedipal object—since his real mother is also a famous lady, a lady famous for being sexy.

Roland dutifully kisses her with attempted tenderness. He begins to fondle her nipples with soft little tweaks.

“Shall we remove our clothes?” he asks formally.

“Shall I reply by engraved reply card?” Isadora mocks him.

Roland is so busy concentrating, he doesn't even realize he's being mocked.

Isadora loves to tease him, for Roland is as humorless about sex as a stud dog. Sex is a serious business—no laughing matter. Roland goes about it like work, or college boards. It's a performance, and he, as the son of the chief auteur-director, had damn better perform well.

The first night they had been together (at the Carlyle, where Isadora was staying for a week of TV shows for the paperback edition of
Tintoretto's Daughter),
Roland had
not
performed well. He had kept losing his erection. This bothered him so much more than it bothered her that he kept badgering her to give him “another chance.” (It had amused her hugely that upon exiting the hotel that morning, she had seen none other eminence than Philip Roth sitting in the lobby, engrossed in the
New York Times.
It was all she could do to keep from telling him the story of last night's adventure. But she knew better. It was important not to confuse writers with their books. So she tiptoed past Philip, leaving his privacy inviolate.) As for Roland, she gave him another chance, and another, and another after that—whether out of kindness or horniness or revenge, she didn't quite know. She liked Roland's mind. She liked the fact that he was infatuated with her. And he was undeniably well hung. In the absence of “one true love,” those things would have to do.