Parachutes and Kisses (46 page)

As they drove slowly along the icy roads, Amanda chattered happily of one thing and another. Nurse Librium's departure seemed not to make much difference to her—unlike, say, the departure of Cicely aka The Naked Nanny. In general, it was the young nannies, the ones who related to Amanda as older sisters rather than grannies, who made the biggest impression. They fought with her like siblings at times; they made arbitrary rules—but they bonded to her most ferociously—and their departure left her bereft.

Isadora so wished she could make life perfect and stable for her daughter. She had some foolish fantasy of the perfect bourgeois life—the life she had so assiduously
avoided
for herself—a rose-covered cottage, Amanda playing on a swingset, and Mommy and Daddy within, being domestic. All the ideals she had pursued in her life as a writer—to live like a picaresque heroine—ran counter to the stability she wished for her daughter. She was tempted to say to her daughter what her mother had, in fact, said to her: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Be stable, though all I have taught you is instability. Be calm, though all I have taught you is frenzy.
Her mother had been similarly contradictory with her.
Go out and conquer the world of men,
she had said,
though I have not done so myself. Do as I say, not as I do.
Isadora's mother had once even gone so far as to say: If you become a famous writer, all else will follow—money, beautiful clothes, and the love of beautiful men. Well, Mother knew best, after all, didn't she? But like the Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”—fame, money, designer clothes and the love of beautiful men all had their own built-in problems and disappointments. Beautiful men, in particular, though they left you humming—at both ends.

Isadora's rump and cunt felt sore from last night's madness. But it was a sweet soreness, an eighteenth-century rake's soreness—without, however, the incipient fear of clap which so plagued those boozy buggers. Gadzooks!
Ought
she to worry about clap? Bean was certainly a rake, in the fine old John Cleland-Henry Fielding tradition. Or was it herpes you were supposed to worry about these days? Things had changed so drastically since her adolescence that she hardly knew
what
to worry about! In
her
adolescence in the fifties, pregnancy was the big worry, the big P. It was hard to lose yourself in sex when you were thinking that you might die on some abortionist's kitchen table in Jersey City (why were they always in
Jersey?)
just for enduring the fumbles and pokes of some pimply adolescent from Horace Mann (or Trinity or Collegiate). Then, in her twenties, the pill became the big P, so you didn't have to worry about the
other
big P anymore—until (just a scant two years later) it was proved that you better
start
worrying again, but this time about blood clots and embolisms. Pretty soon, society suffered a collective expulsion from Pill Paradise, and diaphragms and condoms returned—but by then venereal disease had become epidemic—and resistant to antibiotics. Just as everybody was absorbing the news of
that
—herpes hit the press, then AIDS—what would it be next?

Isadora and Amanda had reached the Blue Tree School, but the session was well in progress, so no children were to be seen (bundled like little Michelin men) outside. Isadora parked QUIM adjacent to a snowbank and trundled her daughter into school, walking down a corridor which celebrated Christmas in all Third World nations: Iranian New Year, Madagascan Twelfth Night, Chinese Candlemass, Maori Halloween, and the like. The Blue Tree School would celebrate
anything
as long as it wasn't Judeo-Christian!

Coming upon the three-year-old's room—called (without political connotation) “The Pink Room”—Isadora paused a moment to put her daughter's parka in a cubby (decorated with Amanda's adorable photographic visage, as well as with pictures of Mom and Dad). Amanda allowed her red rubber boots to be pulled off, and then she ran forward to greet her peers.

There they were—the knapsack children, the children of the two households, the children of the divorce Olympics.

Jeremy, Lauren, Moses, Elihu, Jennifer, Jennifer, Allison, Ali son, Alyson, Noah, Simon, Caleb, and Kimberley—they were called—and eight out of the fourteen (Amanda made fourteen) were from fractured families. (Isadora hated the term
broken homes
because actually the homes
increased
rather than diminished with divorce.)

Like true children of the late seventies, they were named after biblical patriarchs, paper products, Chaucerian heroines (the Wife of Bath, after all, yclept “Alisoun”), and English gentry (Jennifer and Amanda). Someday, Isadora thought, I will do a phenomenological essay on kids' names and how they betray the pretensions of their parent's generation. In Nazi Germany, for example, everyone called their kids old Teutonic names like Holgar, Heike, and Gudrun. The guilty post-Nazi generation named their kiddies Old Testament names like Rebecca and Rachel, Abraham and Isaac. Easy to account for
those
trends—but what of post-Vietnam America and its generation of little Noahs? Were we expecting a flood momentarily? And what of names like Kimberley and Stacy and Tracy? Nobody, thank heavens, ever named their kid Isadora —even when
Candida Confesses
rode the best-seller lists—though Candida did have a brief flurry of popularity in the midseventies.

Isadora waved good-bye to her knapsack child (who was already cuddling a rabbit named Peter—animal names had become oddly conservative in the seventies and eighties)—waved hello and good-bye to her teacher, Simba, aka Arnold Greenspan, and her other teacher, Karma, aka Diane Grossman. (Simba had shoulder-length hair and wore one emerald earring; and Karma lusted for him in vain. Well, it certainly was an adequate preparation for life in the postnuclear age that the kids were getting right here in Westport.) Then she found QUIM again (what about car names in the seventies and eighties?) and headed back home to Serpentine Hill Road (and street names?).

At home, the phone had already been ringing off the hook.

Bean had called a couple of times; Kevin, who was worried about last night, had also called. Mel Botkin's office had called; and Hope (who, in her usual psychic way, knew something was up) had also called. Renata was womanning the phones while Danae was moving in with bag and baggage, tape decks, gourmet cookware, and rubber checkbooks. She was singing as she moved her stuff (oh, why couldn't
Isadora
be as blithe a spirit as Danae?). Why? Because she was Jewish—that's why—and worrying ran in her blood. Danae was broke and happy. Danae wrote bad checks and cared not. If Danae were in hock to the IRS, she wouldn't lose a moment's sleep over it. The only time Isadora felt as carefree as Danae was when she was fucking—which maybe was why fucking was so important to her. It was her Valium, her dope, her addiction. It was her muscle relaxant, anxiety quasher, her poison and her antidote both.

“Who shall I get for you first?” Renata asked. “Hope? Bean? Mel's office? Kevin?”

“Get me Hope,” said Isadora. When in doubt, she called her mentor, her fairy godmother. Theirs was a friendship like no other—a friendship of souls, a friendship of the heart. The fact that Hope was twenty years older eliminated all stress and competition, and made their karmic connection absolutely pure. That they had been together for many lifetimes was clear every time they talked.

“So,” said Hope, “what's up? I've been thinking about you all night—couldn't sleep a wink.”

“I was up all night, too,” said Isadora, “but not sleeping.”

“So—who is he? Someone new or someone old?”

“This young actor who skidded off my icy driveway.”

Hope laughed her rich throaty laugh. “Well—that's one way to meet men—just build a steep driveway and wait for them to skid in.”

“I have to tell you all about it,” Isadora said. “It was absolutely incredible.”

“So tell me—when can I see your beautiful face?”

“I don't know,” said Isadora. “Yesterday all hell broke loose in my life. I had to fire Nurse Librium for telling Mandy hellfire stories. Then Mel Botkin announced to me I was in terrible tax trouble and a few hours later he dropped dead. After that this young actor skidded off my road.”

“Have you checked your horoscope for
today?”

“I don't even want to. Frankly, Hope, I don't know where to
begin.”

“Take a deep breath, and then gather information. Do nothing
yet.”

The oracle had spoken. Hope
was
Isadora's deep breath. She knew her friend's tendency to act, act, act rather than meditate. She knew that these problems needed a different approach and that the answer to them might not be immediately apparent.

“If I were you, I would start seeking counsel—see other business managers, talk to lawyers, but don't do anything drastic yet.”

Isadora knew that was good advice.

“Okay,” she said. “If I wind up in your neighborhood, I'll drop in—okay?”

“I'd love to see your beautiful face.” They hung up with many kisses.

While Renata and Isadora were setting up appointments with various counselors and advisers (including Lowell Strathmore) for the next couple of weeks, the private line rang again.

Isadora picked it up—out of force of habit.

It was Bean.

“Hello,” came his beautiful, resonant voice.

“How'd you get this number?”

“Off the telephone. I figured if your ‘main man' called on it, it must be the number.”

“You tricky bastard.”

“Not one of my more complex tricks.”

“Certainly not—I saw a few of those last night.”

“You ain't seen nothin' yet, lady. I
have
to see you again. How about tonight?”

Isadora's heart began to pound at the very thought—she, who was determined not to see him again.

“I can't. I have to go to New York and see millions of boring financial advisers. I have no idea when I'll be free.”

“Then call me when you are. I'll hang out in New York and wait for you.”

“I'm not sure I'll be free at all.”

“Then I'll come to Connecticut.”

“When?”

“Tonight, tomorrow night, the night after, the night after that. Just say the word. Lady—I
adore
you. I have to see you.”

Isadora's resolve weakened. She would have gladly canceled the day's activities and spent it with Bean—but simply
because
of that, she resisted.

“How about Friday night, in Connecticut?”

“That's three days off—an eternity!” Bean protested.

Isadora felt the same, but these uncontrollable feelings
had
to be controlled somehow.

“Look—” said Isadora, vainly trying to assert
some
control, “if I get free before that, I'll call you.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

And she took off for New York to start to gather information.

Driving down the highway, watching her windshield splatter over with slush, with snow, with muck from the roads, Isadora wondered what on earth a normal person (which she admittedly
wasn‘t—
but then, who was?) ought to be thinking at a time like this. Was she blessed or was she cursed? Where was
The Divorced Woman's Book of Etiquette
now that she needed it most? What ought a woman to do when, faced with overwhelming financial problems, she meets an astounding young man and wants nothing more than to fuck the days away with him?

Was this an etiquette problem for her imaginary book of etiquette, or did it fall, rather, into the province of one of her imaginary game shows? Isadora was forever making up the names of books she would never write, TV shows she would never produce. In moments of extreme crisis, a book title or television series title would come to her, as if that were the answer to her problems—and perhaps it
was.

Not long ago, while goofing around with a friend who was a TV talk-show host, she had come up with two crazy ideas for game shows. “Shiksamania” was the first. It was a highly competitive game show in which Jewish guys had to vie with each other in singing the praises of their resident
shiksas.
The show would have a split screen and on each side would sit
shiksa
and Jewish consort, the Jewish consorts both competing in describing their ladyloves' excellent
shiksa
-like qualities—ski-jump Draw-Me-girl noses, perfectly conical breasts, small waists, high, firm asses. The mirror image of this show would be called “Shaygets-o-Rama,” in which two Jewish girls would appear with their
shkotzim.
(Isadora, of course, would now be ready to open the season with Bean!)

The other fantasied show—which Isadora found strangely comforting while driving down the highway deeper and deeper into financial ruin—was called “People Are Desperate,” also a game show but one in which miserable people competed with each other for the dubious honor of being the most truly wretched. While they told their sad stories—of AIDS, of financial distress, of romantic losses—to the weeping studio audience, their misery would be measured on a huge Angstometer built into the set. The needle would have several settings: Miffed, Miserable, Wretched, Agonized, Grief-stricken—and only the most miserable of all the contestants would win.

Just thinking of the Angstometer, Isadora began to giggle. Where did she fit on the scale of misery? Did tax trouble qualify you for Grief-stricken? Not bloody likely. She had her health; her kid was alive and well; she had met a man who made her hum. So what if her next three unwritten books already belonged to Uncle Sam? Books were only lent, not
given
—like life. They came through you, not of you—like children. They were for the world, not their authors to enjoy and to profit by. What the fuck, Isadora thought, feeling undeniably cheerful. She had never felt
more
cheerful, in fact. Every time she thought of Bean, she wanted to sing.