Fear of Dying. Erica Jong

Fear of Dying - Erica  Jong


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      ALSO BY ERICA JONG

      FICTION

       Fear of Dying

       Sappho’s Leap

       Inventing Memory

       Any Woman’s Blues

       Shylock’s Daughter

       Parachutes & Kisses

       Fanny: Being the True History of the

       Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones

       How to Save Your Own Life

       Fear of Flying

      POETRY

       Love Comes First

       Becoming Light: New and Selected

       Ordinary Miracles

       At the Edge of the Body

       Loveroot

       Half-Lives

       Fruits & Vegetables

      OTHER WORKS

       A Letter to the President

       Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex

       Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life

       What Do Women Want? Bread Roses Sex Power

       Fear of Fifty: A Mid-Life Memoir

       The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller

       Megan’s Book of Divorce

       Megan’s Two Houses

       Witches

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      Published in Great Britain in 2015 by Canongate Books Ltd,

      14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

       www.canongate.tv

      This digital edition first published in 2015 by Canongate Books

      Copyright © 2015 by Erica Mann Jong

      The moral right of the author has been asserted

      This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

      First published in the United States in 2015 by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. www.stmartins.com

      ISBN 978 1 78211 743 8

      Export ISBN 978 1 78211 744 5

      eISBN 978 1 78211 746 9

      Designed by Kelly S. Too

      For my BFF, Gerri

      &

      L’Ultimo Marito, Ken

      Contents

       Part I Fall

       1 Happily Married Woman, or Is There Sex After Death?

       2 My Father (Boy Wanted)

       3 Wondermans Rampant

       4 Heartbeat

       PART II Winter

       5 Money Is the Root

       6 A Human Being

       7 Loving Mr. Bones

       8 Grief, Loss, Ex-wives, Dogs

       9 Age Rage

       10 Old Dogs

       11 More, More, More

       PART III Spring

       12 Grandmothering

       13 Wormhole

       14 A Language Beyond Language

       15 Tender the Dead

       PART IV Summer

       16 Bollywood in Goa

       Acknowledgments

       Days pass and the years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing; Let there be moments when Your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness, and exclaim in wonder, “How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it!”

      —Attributed to Mishkan Tefilah: A Reform Siddur

       PART I

       Fall

      1

       Happily Married Woman, or Is There Sex After Death?

      I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.

      —Mae West (stealing from Oscar Wilde)

      I used to love the power I had over men. Walking down the street, my mandolin-shaped ass swaying and swinging to their backward eyes. How strange that I only completely knew this power when it was gone—or transferred to my daughter, all male eyes on her nubile twentyish body, promising babies. I missed this power. It seemed that the things that had come to replace it—marriage, maternity, the wisdom of the mature woman (ugh, I hate that phrase)—weren’t worth the candle. Ah, the candle! Standing up. Burning for me. Full of sound and fury signifying everything. I know I should fade away like a good old girl and spare my daughter the embarrassments of my passions, but I can’t any more than I can conveniently die. Life is passion. But now I know what passion costs, so it’s hard to be quite so carefree anymore.

      But


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