Parachutes and Kisses by Erica Jong Page A

pranksterism of a Picasso or a Dali has its own particular methodical madness, that it seeks to titillate not alienate the public (or at least that private public which constitutes the art world), that it is playing a very special public-relations game—no less ambitious for being so outwardly hostile to fame.
    â€œYet when I think of Picasso’s children and their problems living with his legend, I know more than ever that the very obscurity of my grandfather made my free use of my gifts possible in a way it would not have been had he been a living legend.”
    Josh’s father was a living legend, Isadora thought, with a shiver. He, too, sat in the audience, uncomprehending. How could he be expected to acknowledge that his curious fame had stunted his children? If ever Isadora found that her fame hurt Mandy, what would she do? Unwish her books? Break her magic staff and burn her quills? It was a dilemma. Bad enough for mothers and daughters, but worse, far worse, for fathers and sons. Mandy would repudiate her mother someday; that much was sure. Isadora only prayed that when that day came, she would be strong enough to love her child unswervingly just the same. To let her go—and to be there when she wended her way back.
    â€œMy family had talent to burn; and they burned it. I was the only conservationist among them. They taught me—indirectly if not directly—that talent was not a thing to waste, that wasting it was to dishonor the gods who gave it, that wasting it was to dishonor the self.
    â€œThe night I learned of Papa’s death, I suddenly panicked about his obituary. What if there were no obituary in the New York Times?
    â€œ ‘People live and die, whether or not the Times records it,’ my sensible husband said.
    â€œBut I was obsessed with the lack of ‘hard’ information my grandfather had left. Art medals he had won, but lost them; clippings he had had, but lost; Who’s Who had listed him, but he gave away the copy; his paintings he had given away to any admirer who asked, not even keeping a slide or a list of owners.
    â€œThrough a series of frenetic telephone calls, the morning after his death, I was able to assemble some sketchy data, in which the Times city desk seemed to have little interest. Finally, no obituary appeared.”
    Isadora knew that really important people had their obits prepared years before their deaths and that they were updated regularly, like wills. Her journalist friends had told her how they reworked obits at the very first sign that some dignitary was checking into a hospital for what was purported to be “just a routine checkup.” Even in death, there was a pecking order. Even in death, the meek did not inherit.
    â€œBut my true obituary for him was a poem I wrote on his last birthday, the day before Christmas 1980. It was a day I spent away from him, unable even to pick up the phone and call his nurse. But all day, I carried him in my head and heart.
    â€œFinally, this poem emerged, as if from the depths of a dream. Initially the inspiration for it came aslant—as beginnings of poems often do. I was trying to write the first chapter of my new novel (which I had determined would be about him) but I found myself blocked, hopelessly fidgety and upset. I listened for the doorbell, my daughter, the postman—wishing for some interruption, some distraction, to kill the working day for me. My mind wandered. I opened a book of Neruda’s which lay on my desk.
    â€œ ‘Dream Horse’ was the title of the poem on the page it opened to. I read:
    â€œ ‘Unnecessary, seeing myself in mirrors
with a fondness for weeks, biographers,
papers.
I tear from my heart the captain of hell,
I establish clauses indefinitely sad.’
    â€œAnd then suddenly the scribbling fit overtook my right hand and I wrote, as if by dictation, this poem to Papa.”
    Isadora took in a great lungful of breath and chanted, as