Parachutes and Kisses by Erica Jong

promised I would.
    â€œ ‘I love you, Papa,’ I said.
    â€œ ‘I love you more,’ he said, competitive to the end.”
    That was Papa, Isadora thought—too competitive with his family, but not competitive enough with the world.
    â€œHis nurse, a lovely woman with the unforgettably ornithological name of Lola Falcon, took the phone then.
    â€œ ‘He’s agitated and he can’t rest. Tell him to rest.’ She put Papa back on the phone.
    â€œ ‘I have to make a living,’ he croaked in that fading voice that sounded like a toy whose battery is going dead. ‘I have to make a living.’ (I was reminded of how my grandmother used to say, ‘make a leeving’—her Russian accent much stronger than his). I spoke slowly and steadily, feeling in my heart that I had to give him permission to die.
    â€œ ‘Papa, I will make it now,’ I said. ‘I will make it. You can rest now.’
    â€œ ‘Take care of the baby,’ he said, trailing off to a groan.
    â€œHis nurse’s voice came back on the phone. ‘I think he’s dropped off now,’ she said.”
    Isadora‘a hands began to tremble fiercely reading this section of the memoir, because she knew, on some level, that her inheritance of the mantle of adulthood from Papa put her everlastingly beyond the reach of Josh’s love and Josh’s understanding. His particular tragedy was to be trapped in childhood by a father quite as patriarchal as her grandfather.
    â€œParadoxically, his obscurity made my fame possible, even compulsory. Not only was my first real poem about him, my first novel dedicated to him, but it was the seething sense of bitterness he had communicated about his own lack of recognition that spurred me on to write it. So what if the world’s applause meant nothing in the light of eternity; the lack of it could embitter the soul in the here and now, especially when you knew you had the goods. Papa’s example made me vow never to permit myself the luxury of being publicly unsung but self-bemoaned. For a person who lusts desperately after fame, the getting of it may lead to growth beyond it, but the neglected artist is trapped always (if he is ambitious) in a fury of denial.”
    She looked for a sign on Josh’s face, but none was forthcoming. His face wore an impassivity which might even have been boredom. He had never liked her grandfather much. He found Papa “depressing,” he said. Ah, who could disagree? Yet, depressing or not, we all have to make sense of our progenitors in order to grow beyond them.
    Isadora’s mother sat in the audience weeping. For a moment, mother and daughter locked eyebeams, then disconnected.
    Isadora had come to the age where she could acknowledge her mother. Since Mandy’s birth, she and her mother had reached a mellow truce. She knew that her mother had done nothing less than her best for her daughters—bad as that best may have sometimes seemed to Isadora. But what, after all, does a daughter know about her mother until she bears a daughter herself? Being a daughter is only half the equation; bearing one is the other.
    â€œI determined on fame at an early age, determined on it partly because of all the hugely talented people in my family who seemed determined upon self-sabotage. I saw that talent—even great talent —was not in itself enough. The world never wanted any new talent, however arresting; it had to be made to want it. It was not enough to prepare the feast; one must also create the appetite for it, cut the meat, pour the wine, butter the bread, and spoon-feed the guests.
    â€œMy grandfather’s colossal vanity (as well as, perhaps, his deep terror of success) precluded this. He expected to insult the world and have it love him. He expected to scatter his paintings to the four winds and have someone else catalog and preserve them. He did not know that even the calculated