Any Woman's Blues by Erica Jong Page B

self-portrait as my life ebbs away. Set the camera on time exposure, get in the tub, and . . . When they came for me, they’d find not only my dead body but a photographic record of the very act that had killed me. Talk about postmodernist images! Or I could puncture my veins and smear the fresh blood all over a canvas. Dart Gone, I’d call it. Or I could open the oven, turn on the gas, and do a Sylvia Plath. (But I have an electric oven!) Or wrap myself in Theda’s old mink coat (the one I’ve kept in the coat closet since my mother died), climb into the oxblood Mercedes called DART, and inhale the carbon monoxide fumes à la Anne Sexton (but the Mercedes is a convertible, so the carbon monoxide might escape!).
    As the wine wears off, I dose myself with Valium and aspirin. Then I scrounge around under the bed for the bag of dope I saw Dart rolling cigarettes from last night before he left. Goddamn it—he’s even taken the dope.
    “The bastard even took the dope!” I scream.
    Sighting a barely smokable roach under the bed, I flatten myself on the oaken floorboards to reach it, but it just eludes the tips of my raggedy fingernails. Finally I skewer it with my index finger and pull myself up. I begin searching for a match, ransacking the house from living room fireplace to kitchen wood stove. There’s no incendiary gear but me! I stomp about the house, cursing, unable to find a match, a lighter, anything—and the phone rings.
    Dart! Dart wants to come back. He loves me. He’s sorry. He’s been with some little bimbo, and he misses me terribly. He realizes my true worth. I race to the phone. Perhaps it’s the voice of my sane mind.
    “Ms. Sand?” An unfamiliar voice.
    “Yes?”
    “Ms. Sand, my name is Wesley Hunnicutt, and I represent the Paugussett Memorial Gardens of Paugussett, Connecticut—”
    “The what? ”
    “The Paugussett Memorial Gardens. We are contacting all the home owners in this county because we have a unique opportunity for the purchase of burial plots we’d like to make you aware of—”
    “The purchase of what? ”
    “Of burial plots for you and your nearest and dearest.”
    “Where did you get my name?”
    “As a home owner in the town of Roxbury, your name is available at the town hall. If you’ll give me a moment of your—”
    “A burial plot!”
    “Well, we like to think of it as an investment in your peace of mind, a slice of serenity.”
    I slam down the phone.
    And fall on the floor sobbing, my cheek to the warm wood of the floorboards where Dart and I have so often made love. Boner comes up and licks my face. I think of the hooded man in Amadeus who came to Mozart to commission his Requiem, predicting his death. That is what has just happened to me. Death has made an appointment. (And he didn’t say when he’d be back.)
    I bang my forehead on the floor like an autistic child. I bang until it’s bloody, feeling no pain. Finally the pain begins and with it some new twinge of consciousness. “God,” I say aloud, “I don’t want to die. I want my life back. Please, God, give me my life back.”
    I am still kneeling on the foyer floor, with my forehead caked with blood and the dog lying beside me, when, two hours later, Emmie opens the front door and walks in.
     
    Isadora: You certainly have made Leila a hopeless case. Everyone will think she’s me. Everyone will say I beat my head on the floor and did S&M and abased myself for some twerp. I was never that bad. Why are you making her so pathetic?
    Leila: Every woman has that potential.
    Isadora: Not me. Not you.
    Leila: Your memory is very selective. Haven’t you beat your head on the floor?
    Isadora: Never.
    Leila: And drunk yourself into oblivion?
    Isadora: Well—once or twice.
    Leila: And succumbed to drink, drugs, cock?
    Isadora: That word again. I never want you to use that word again.
    Leila: Prick? Shall I go on with my pricksongs?
    Isadora: Does what I say really matter? You are my creature, but like my