Any Woman's Blues by Erica Jong

tearing the heirloom that I did not see (or hear) Mr. Donegal slither up beside me. Before I knew it, one of his hands was on my breast and the other was fondling my crotch. He swiftly insinuated one index finger under the fastening of my cream-colored lace teddy and ran it teasingly along my clit. I let out a little shriek, but was immobilized both by my raised arms and by my care for the dress.
    “Please!” I said through the fragile fabric, but Mr. Donegal ignored me. He was pressing himself against me now, and I could feel his erection, curiously crooked like his son’s. I dropped the dress, a pile of dusty moonbeams, and darted behind another clothes rack, where I stood immobilized, waiting for Mr. Donegal to come claim me. Images of fox hunts came to mind, and I the terrified fox waiting for the dogs to scent my fear. Forty seconds went by, but Mr. Donegal did not come. My breath was jagged and rapid: a mixture of fear and—dare I say it?—sexual excitement. I waited shivering in my lace teddy until finally I realized that I was alone in the room.
    Trembling, humiliated, I found my way back to my suede dress, put it on, collected myself, and went downstairs.
    In the sitting room, I met with a Hogarthian tableau of the Donegal family chatting cozily around the fire as if nothing at all were the matter.
    Mr. Donegal was fondling his mother’s dress, which he held on his lap like a household pet. It occurred to me that this whole family was quite mad—dangerously so—and that I should escape at once. Alas, I did not heed my instinct.
    As I descended into their midst, Mr. Donegal rose and handed me the glimmering dress.
    “A little memento of our meeting,” he said, meeting my gaze.
    “I couldn’t possibly . . .” I said.
    “Nonsense,” said Mr. Donegal. “You must. It suits you perfectly.”
    I took the dress, feeling I was dangerously out of my depth.
    On the long drive back to Roxbury from Philadelphia, Dart was desolate and not a little contrite.
    “I am mortified that he asked you for money,” Dart said.
    “Not to worry,” I said. “I see what you mean about him. He’s quite an act to follow.”
    “You don’t know the half of it,” said Dart. “First of all, he never fought in the Pacific theater—that’s a total fabrication. Furthermore, do you know he’s been to jail?”
    “It doesn’t surprise me,” I said. But after I heard Dart’s story of his father’s malfeasances (he embezzled money from a client and was disbarred), I did not have the heart to tell him what had happened in the attic. I almost wondered if it had happened—or if I had imagined it all, conjured it out of the dust and moonbeams.
    “I want to be a good man for you,” said Dart/Trick, tears running down his cheeks. “I don’t want to be like my father.” And I believe that was true in every respect. But between men and their fathers, intention is the last thing that matters.

3
    Strong Woman’s Blues
    No father to guide me,
no mother to care,
Must bear my troubles all alone.
Not even a brother to help me share,
This burden I must bear alone.
     
— Bessie Smith
     
     
    I wasn’t always the queen of SoHo and Litchfield County. I grew up poor, in Washington Heights, with a mother who had a habit of getting arrested in embarrassing places—the White House, the United Nations, the Russian consulate, demonstrations for the Rosenbergs—and a father who made silver jewelry on Eighth Street, was a beatnik and hippie before either of those terms was invented, and an alcoholic before anyone knew that drinking was more than good clean fun.
    I came, in short, from a “dysfunctional family”—to use the lingo so in vogue nowadays. (Sometimes I wonder if there is any other kind of family. Certainly no one I know comes from a functional family, whatever that anomaly may be.)
    My father had been a fixture in the Village and in Provincetown since the thirties: Dolph Zandberg, born 1900, died 1982—the year I met