by Alison Lurie
Now that Stevie was gone, nothing happened day after day except the interviews for her book; at least, nothing serious or interesting to think about. Sometimes Lorin Jones’s life seemed realer to her than her own.
If somebody else, anybody else, were living here, Polly thought, it wouldn’t be so bad. And, almost in the same moment, she thought of someone who needed a place to live: Jeanne. Early this summer Jeanne’s former apartment building had gone condo, and she’d had to move. At the moment she was camped out in a Queens sublet: two tiny low-ceilinged basement rooms whose honking radiators, flaking walls, and invasions of bugs she often mentioned with a sigh.
Jeanne kept looking at other apartments, but the housing shortage, even outside of Manhattan, was awful and getting worse: so far, anything she could afford on her tiny academic salary had been even more objectionable than where she was now.
Why shouldn’t Jeanne stay here while Stevie was away, at least until she found a place of her own? They would be company for each other, and it would save them both money — and without Polly’s child-support payments that would really make a difference. Besides, it made no sense for them to clean two apartments and cook two sets of solitary meals; that was pure waste of time, especially for Jeanne, who was a gourmet cook. It was a great idea, and there was no argument against it that Polly could think of, except — and here she scowled and let the frying pan she had been scouring slide back under the dishwater suds — what people might think.
Since Jim left, Polly hadn’t had any serious relationship; Stevie had been the only important person in her life. If Jeanne moved in with her now, some of her friends would assume that they were sexually involved, and that Polly had become a lesbian too — after all, she’d talked enough about how she might be through with men for good. She had even said sometimes that she wished she were gay, because lesbian couples seemed to behave more decently than heterosexual ones.
And what would they think in Colorado? It wouldn’t occur to Stevie to wonder if his mother was a lesbian, but it would probably occur to Jim, who knew Jeanne and didn’t care for her. Jim would confide his suspicions to his new wife, a woman Polly had never met but naturally detested. Yeah, maybe you’re right, this detestable woman would say. I wouldn’t be surprised; from what you tell me, Polly was always a man-hater.
Well, the hell with them all, Polly told herself, scrubbing the frying pan again with noisy vigor. She wasn’t going to begin arranging her life again in terms of Jim’s opinions, or anyone else’s.
PROFESSOR MARY ANN FENN,
University of Connecticut
It was such a long time ago. I’d almost forgotten about her, really. Then — it was an odd, odd experience, painful in a way. I was in New York for a professional meeting last winter, as I told you in my letter. And I went to that show of yours, “Three American Women.” I was busy, but I made a point of going, because I was interested. I believe that women artists have new things to say to all of us. Important things.
Well, I was walking around the galleries, and I got to Lorin Jones’s pictures. I thought they were attractive. Unusual. The colors were interesting, subtle. But I saw them as abstractions, and I’ve never cared much for abstract art.
Then I read the title of that picture: Princess Elinore of the White Meadows. Well, it gave me a shock. In elementary school, when I was eight or nine, I and my best friend made up fairy-tale identities for ourselves: I was Princess Miranda of the Larch Mountains, because I lived in Larchmont, and she was Princess Elinore of the White Meadows. I thought, could it be? I mean, either this Lorin Jones was my friend Lolly Zimmern, or it was a fantastic coincidence.
Well, I stepped back and looked at the picture for clues, and suddenly I saw that the pale green splotches of paint at the bottom could be meant for grass, and the sprinkling of white and yellow dots over them could be daisies. Then the bigger gray splotches higher up might be clouds. And the jumble of sticks and blots and veils of color in the middle was really a lot like the way a tree would look if you were up in it, and the wind was blowing hard. Or it could have been a fairytale castle. And that was right, because we used to climb trees and make believe they were castles.
Yes, or sometimes sailing ships. I’d forgotten about all that, but there in the gallery — it was like the uneven pavement in Proust, you know — it all came back to me, from — my lord, it must be fifty years ago. The hot nearly white summer sky, and how it felt to hold on to the rough speckled branches of the apple tree, and the little hard shiny green apples, like sourballs. And I remembered how the wind would toss us around, only we pretended it was ocean waves. And the clouds going by would be fish. All kinds of fish, whales, and schools of porpoises, and mackerel. Yes, especially mackerel, because there was a picture of a mackerel sky in our science book at school.
I had to be sure, so I practically ran downstairs — I didn’t even wait for the elevator — and bought a catalogue. And there it was: Lorin Jones, born in nineteen-twenty-six in White Plains, New York. It had to be her. Well, I thought that was wonderful, and I began to plan how I’d write her a note, and tell her I’d seen her pictures. I’d ask the Museum to forward it, and we’d meet again after fifty years.
Then I read on down the page: where Lolly had gone to school, and the shows she’d had, and I turned the page over, and read a list of the collections her work was in. And then I saw: Died in nineteen-sixty-nine, in Key West, Florida. I just started crying, right there in the lobby of the Museum. I had to go and sit down on the bench by the door. I was so upset that I hadn’t known what had happened to her, and I hadn’t ever tried to find her again. I hadn’t done anything.
Yes, we were best friends for a couple of years. But then in fifth grade Lolly’s parents suddenly took her out of West-wind School. She just disappeared one day.
I don’t know why. My mother said years afterward that something happened that fall at the Parents’ Day picnic, after we’d gone home. Something went wrong. She didn’t know what exactly, but she’d heard Lolly had been badly frightened by something. Or someone.
Some sexual thing, she implied. But I’m not sure that was it really. My mother liked to imagine almost everything as sexual.
Oh yes, everybody called her Lolly back then. That’s how I always think of her now. Lolly Zimmern, ten years old. She’s up in the apple tree, seeing everything you can see in that painting, pushing the branches apart and looking out between the leaves. With her dark wavy hair tangled and blowing, and her white thin face.
3
“COULD I HELP YOU?” A slight, colorless young man, who looked in need of help himself, drifted across the half-lit Apollo Gallery to where Polly Alter and her rubberized poncho stood dripping rain onto the polished parquet floor.
“I have an appointment with Jacky Herbert. At ten.” Polly checked her watch, holding out her wet wrist so that he could see, if he cared to look, that it was already five minutes past the hour.
“I’m sorry; I don’t think Mr. Herbert’s come in yet.”
“I suppose I’ll have to wait, then,” she said, not trying to disguise her annoyance. She turned her back on him and wandered toward the front of the gallery, where a sodden gray October light pressed against the streaming glass of the picture window, giving the scene outside the look of an aquarium. Swollen, bug-eyed metal fish crowded and honked for positions on Madison Avenue, and umbrellas bobbed and dodged like multicolored marine plants.
Polly was cross not only at Jacky Herbert but — and more seriously — at herself. After her uncomfortable and unfinished interview with Paolo Carducci, the owner of the Apollo Gallery, she had put off calling for another appointment. She might never interview Carducci again now, because he had had a stroke which had left him, according to report, half-paralyzed and almost speechless. With a frail man in his late seventies, she should have known better than to lose either her temper or a single day. She would have to make do now with Jacky, the acting director of the gallery, who had only begun to work there
just before Lorin Jones’s final show.
Becoming more and more bored and angry, she turned from the window to inspect an uninteresting collection of formalist still lifes. Outwardly the Apollo Gallery, once one of the most successful in New York, looked much as it did when Polly first visited it twenty years ago. It still kept its premises above an expensive antique shop in the East Seventies, and served coffee from its mammoth, convoluted espresso machine. But in the last two decades the gallery had gradually yielded its dominant position. More aggressive dealers had taken over entire floors of Fifty-seventh Street skyscrapers, or moved into Soho warehouses with enough wall and floor space to house the largest and most aggressive works. The Apollo continued to show what, comparatively, could almost be described as easel painting. It still represented many established artists, and had loyal and wealthy customers; but it was no longer on the cutting edge of American art.
“Polly!” Jacky Herbert called. He circled the reception desk and moved toward her with his characteristic tiptoe gait, which gave the effect of speed without its usual results. “So lovely to see you.” Jacky was, as always, elegantly dressed: his suit and shirt and tie, in shades of glossy pale gray, fit as smoothly as sealskin. Also, he looked quite dry; either he had been here all along, or he had taken a taxi to the gallery instead of standing in the downpour waiting for a bus like Polly. “How have you been?” He bent and rubbed a soft shaved cheek smelling of lime toilet water against hers, and made goldfish kissing sounds in the air.
“Fine, thanks.” Polly did not make a kissing sound; she despised this mode of greeting; besides, Jacky had made her wait nearly fifteen minutes for no good reason. “How about you?”
“Oh, getting along.” Jacky gestured dismissively. He was a bulky man with grayed yellow hair, plump white ringed hands, shrewd flat gray eyes, and the handsome ruined profile of a Roman empress. In his youth he was said to have been a great beauty. Gossip attributed his remarkable collection of modern art to his early powers of seduction, and perhaps even of barter. Whatever the truth of this story, Jacky now lived an almost blameless life with a retired concert pianist named Tommy.
“And how is Mr. Carducci doing?”
Jacky made a tsk sound and shook his head slowly.
“Do they think he’s going to recover?”
“The doctor won’t say.” Jacky’s large pale face quivered. “I expect he doesn’t know himself. But I have to admit Paolo looked rather dreadful when I saw him day before yesterday.”
“That’s too bad,” Polly said, without feeling.
“We can always hope, that’s what I tell myself. Well now.” He forced a smile. “How about a tiny cup of coffee?”
“Okay. That’d be nice.”
“Marvelous,” Jacky said sadly, meaninglessly. He waved one flipper for her to follow him into the back room.
“Here, let me,” he added as Polly began to struggle out of her poncho. “Goodness, it’s absolutely sopping.” He gave the rectangle of rubberized canvas a shake that seemed to express disapproval of more than its condition. “Now I’m going to hang this up right by the radiator, so it’ll be lovely and dry when you leave. And why don’t you give me that wet scarf, too?”
“Okay; thanks.” She handed over a sodden red-and-black rag; Jacky hung it carefully, yet with an indefinable air of distaste, over a collating frame.
“Now shall we go into my office, where we won’t be disturbed?... Good. Alan!” he called to the colorless young man. “Two cups of espresso, please. And no calls, please, for the next hour, unless it’s a serious buyer.
“So, how is it going?” he said, shutting the door and pulling forward an Eames chair for Polly. He leaned toward her over the desk, smiling with his large white perfectly capped teeth.
“Oh, pretty well.” Polly didn’t smile; Jacky’s fussy concern for her comfort, as if she were a possible client, hadn’t mollified her, but made her more suspicious. What was he going to try to sell her?
“I’m so pleased. You know, Paolo said before his stroke — Well, I think he was surprised, rather, that you hadn’t come to see him again. He wondered if you were making any progress. And he said that perhaps we should try to interest some writer with more experience.” Jacky flapped his hands deprecatingly. “But I said no, it has to be someone who hasn’t got so many other interests. Someone who can take the time to interview everyone: go to Wellfleet to see Garrett and down to the Keys to talk to that awful Hugh Cameron. And I’m convinced it should be a woman, too. Polly is the right person. That’s what I told him.” Jacky smiled. “Oh, that’s lovely, Alan.” He took the “tiny cup of coffee,” which in his big pale hand looked literally tiny.
“Well, thanks,” Polly said grudgingly. Why was Jacky telling her this? To flatter her and convince her that he was on her side? To make her feel nervous and dependent on him? Or both?
“Sugar?”
“Yes, please.” Polly held out her cup, then lifted the steaming espresso to her mouth and swallowed uneasily. Since Jacky Herbert was a man, she automatically distrusted him. He was also, of course, an art dealer, and — like most museum people — she was professionally suspicious of dealers. She knew that Jacky was currently engaged in gathering as many Lorin Jones canvases as he could find, with a view to selling them at large prices when Polly’s book appeared — indeed, he made no secret of this.
On the other hand Jacky (unlike Paolo Carducci) had always been lavish with praise of Jones’s work. More than once he had castigated himself in Polly’s hearing for not doing anything sooner about her paintings.
Also, like many people in the New York art world, Jacky was gay, and Polly didn’t usually distrust gay men. It was clear that some of them, like Jacky, would have preferred to have been born women if they’d been given the choice. Besides, she sympathized with them because, like her, they were so often attracted to the wrong type of guy.
“You’ve been interviewing Lennie Zimmern, I hear,” Jacky remarked after his assistant had left. “Hard work, I should imagine.” He made a wry face.
“Well; yes, rather. He doesn’t approve of personal biography.”
“He wouldn’t.” Jacky giggled. “Wouldn’t want his own written, I’d imagine. And whom else have you seen? Did you talk to what’s-her-name, Marcia, the father’s widow?”
“I saw her briefly. I didn’t learn a hell of a lot, though. You know Lorin Jones never lived with her, and they obviously weren’t close. I’m not sure I’ll bother to see her again.”
“I think you might, you know.” Jacky leaned forward.
“I don’t know. A friend of mine who works for Time says you should always go back for a second interview if you can. And bring a present, so they’ll feel obligated.”
“That sounds like good advice,” Jacky agreed. “I expect Marcia could tell you a lot, if she wanted to.”
“Maybe. There was something I meant to ask you about her, anyhow. Why aren’t there any of Lorin Jones’s pictures in her apartment? I mean, I already knew she didn’t have any, because we asked at the time of the show; but don’t you think that’s a little odd?”
“I don’t know that I do,” Jacky said. “I remember Marcia telling me that after her husband died Lorin came over and packed up all the paintings she had stored there, and shipped them down to Florida. Except of course Who Is Coming?”
“Yes, I remember.” Lorin Jones’s paintings tended to have mysterious, equivocal titles; one of Polly’s most difficult tasks would be to discover their meanings, if any.
“Of course that’s in the Palca Collection now; Paolo sold it for Marcia after Dan Zimmern died. It was Lorin’s wedding present to them, you know.”
“She never told me that.” The truth and nothing but the truth, Polly thought, but not the whole truth. “I’m surprised she wanted to sell it, considering.”
“I expect she had to. I doubt that her husband left her anything to speak of. Money never stuck to his fingers, from what I’ve heard.”
“I wish I
could have met Lorin Jones’s father. You knew him, didn’t you?” Polly bent to open her wet briefcase and take out her tape recorder. “Hang on a minute while I start this thing, if you don’t mind.”
Jacky visibly hesitated, then smiled rapidly. “No, go ahead. You’ve already promised to let me edit the transcript, remember? In writing.” He giggled to take the edge off this caution. “If I’m indiscreet I can cut it out later, right?”
“Yeah, right,” Polly agreed.
“Well, let’s see then; what were you asking? Dan Zimmern. I met him three or four times, that’s all, when Lorin had her last show here in sixty-four. He was at the opening, shaking everyone’s hand as if he were the artist himself, very proud. And then he came back afterward several times. He’d always bring friends, and talk up Lorin’s work; what a famous painter she was going to be. He’d tell them they should buy one of her pictures, as an investment. I think a couple of people actually did. But he never stayed long. One minute he’d be all over the place, the next thing you knew he was gone.”
Yes, Polly thought; but at least he was there. Carl Alter had never made it to her first and only one-woman show, in Rochester during her senior year of college. “What was he like?”
“Oh, a big, good-looking old fellow; full of life. Smart too, probably, but he didn’t know beans about art. A macho type. He was on his third wife, and well over seventy, but still looking around, eyeing the girls at the opening.”
“Really.” Carl Alter too was on his third wife, his daughter thought.
