Fear of Fifty by Erica Jong

genuinely glad to be in a place she still identified as home.
    Chloe at once sprawled on the couch and turned on the TV, making it clear that she did not consider anything else her bailiwick. Just for fun, I asked her to get some prescriptions filled for Kitty and to help me clean up the kitchen. She resolutely refused. “We’re not supposed to do that,” she said. She was a babysitter—nothing more—though at rates that would make a babysitter blush. What would a Martian think if she came to earth and saw doddering old white women being “minded” by robust young black women who sat and watched TV—and the clock? What a curious way humans arrange their society! “Blow it all up and start again!” a compassionate goddess might say.
    Kitty wandered tentatively about, afraid to take off her coat. I sat her down, made her put on comfortable shoes—Chinese cloth slippers—and drink a cup of tea.
    Presently Maxine bustled in with Frank and his lover, Adrian, and two handsome hunks from the Hamptons.
    â€œHello, darling!” Maxine said to Kitty. “We have a van downstairs. We’re just going to take some paintings so we can have a show for you out there.” With that, the two Hamptons Hunks began carrying out canvases, portfolios, a life-size lion that had stood in Kitty’s loft as long as she had lived there. (Kitty is a Leo, so this roaring lion is her talisman.)
    â€œWhat are you doing ? ” she asked Maxine. “That’s my lion.”
    â€œNo, darling, it’s my lion,” Maxine said. “I bought it.”
    â€œYou did not,” said Kitty.
    â€œI did too.” Suddenly I remembered all the Sturm und Drang of a dozen years ago when Kitty and Maxine “broke up” and Maxine expelled Kitty from the two homes she had helped to build and renovate—one in Chelsea, one in Southampton—buying her this modest loft and pensioning her off.
    â€œDon’t take my lion!” Kitty said. “It’s all I have.”
    â€œI’m only keeping it safe for you, darling,” Maxine said, as the hunks carried out this last symbol of Kitty’s selfhood.
    Aghast at the blatantness of it all, I was shocked into silence.
    â€œI know you’re her heir, but I wish you’d stop acting like she’s already dead,” I wanted to say. Or, “For God’s sake—this can wait, can’t it?” And Maxine, who felt my disapproval, picked up a huge book of my grandfather’s pen-and-ink drawings and placed it in my trembling hands.
    â€œTake care of it,” she said, “keep it safe.” The book-bribe was filled with hallucinatory renderings of Papa’s Odessa childhood. More memories to people my autobiography. I took it.
    And the hunks carried out the lion.
    Maxine bustled around, bringing groceries, announcing to Kitty that she couldn’t stay because it was her birthday and she was being taken out to dinner.
    Frank, Adrian, and I were left looking after Kitty, who now also wanted to be “taken out to dinner.”
    â€œI’m buying dinner,” I said. “Where do you suggest?”
    We agreed on a nearby Chinese restaurant, and Frank and I began dressing Kitty for the outing.
    â€œYour hair’s a mess,” said Frank. “Let me color it for you tomorrow night, okay?” He lovingly brushed her hair, threaded the golden earrings he had made for her through the holes in her earlobes, helped her do her makeup. Meanwhile, I went through Kitty’s clothes, looking for something that wasn’t torn or soiled or tattered. I found a passable sweater and skirt, no bras at all, and no panties that weren’t soiled. I left her in her comfy Chinese slippers. The first thing that goes is grooming, I thought, then laundry, then life itself. But not soon enough. Life, alas, lingers in the absence of laundry as everything winds back to infancy at the end. We have no