by Alison Lurie
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it on purpose.” Jeanne’s manner was affable. “Accidentally-on-purpose, at least. I mean, heavens, it was in plain sight on the counter. Nobody could have missed it, not even a man, unless they’d wanted to.”
“Well, Stevie could. And hell, I know he’s growing up. But that’s why it happened; he’s growing so fast now he’s gotten clumsy. He doesn’t know how large he is, so he bangs into things, knocks things over. Most adolescent boys are that way.”
“Yes, that’s the usual excuse, isn’t it?” Suddenly Jeanne’s tone had become bitter and uneven. “That’s the way it is in this world: men are taught as children that once they start getting larger and stronger they can smash up things and people carelessly. They can go on doing it all their lives, really, and they’ll be excused and forgiven; they won’t have to pay. It’s the women who will always pay, in the end. The way my mother did.”
“I didn’t mean —”
“But you see, you didn’t say, ‘All adolescents smash things up.’ Nobody ever says that. Girls are growing fast too at that age, but nobody makes those excuses for them. If they break something they’re punished. They have to learn to control themselves and respect other people’s property. Isn’t that true, now?” She folded her round, rosy arms against a lavender jacquard sweater.
“Well, yes, I suppose. But I think you’re being unfair to Stevie,” Polly said stubbornly. “And he felt it too. He thinks you don’t like him, you know. And maybe he’s right.”
Jeanne got up and came over to her; she crouched down by the desk until her face was on a level with Polly’s. “Don’t say that,” she said; her voice was soft, trembly. “I love Stevie, because he’s your child. It’s just that I worry about what’s happening to him, what happens to all males in this society. I mean, look at him now. He’s lived with you all his life; then he goes to stay with his father for a couple of months, and he comes back completely changed.”
“I don’t think he’s changed all that much. Underneath —”
“Of course, the process isn’t complete yet. He’s only fourteen. I know it’s hard.” She put one hand on Polly’s arm and gazed at her with round pale eyes in which tears seemed to brim. “I’m very sorry for you — for both of you. But you mustn’t think I dislike him. Please.”
Jeanne’s voice was gentler than ever, her posture suppliant, yet Polly felt as if her friend’s hand were a heavy weight pressing on her. “All right, I don’t,” she finally had to say.
MRS. MARCIA ZIMMERN,
widow of Lorin Jones’s father
Aw no, I’m glad you came round again, and not just ’cause of the cookies from Fraser-Morris, either. It was sweet of you to remember. I adore them, but it’s hard for me to get across the park in this wet weather, with my bad leg. Take a couple yourself, come on.
Don’t be silly, you don’t need to lose any weight.
That’s right. And how about a little drink to go with it? I always think you need a pickup, a heavy wet day like this, when it starts to get dark so early. Gin and orange is what I usually have...
Oh yeah, I’ve been thinking about Laurie, trying to remember for your book. One thing that came to me was, how she used to love artichokes. It was kind of a joke around here, that if they were in the stores I had to have them when she came to dinner. And I had to make real hollandaise sauce, she didn’t like the kind in a bottle.
Nah, I don’t care for them myself; they don’t agree with my stomach, too acid. But Laurie just loved them. She’d always eat hers slow, while the rest of us were waiting to get on with the meal, and she’d arrange the leaves on her plate in different kinds of artistic patterns, like a fan or a water lily. Or like a fish, sometimes, with scales, you know.
No, nothing new came to me about her paintings.
Oh yeah, sure, she gave us a picture when we got married. And I sold it after Dan was gone, Mr. Herbert’s right.
No ma’am, it wasn’t that at all. I decided I didn’t want it, that’s why.
Don’t apologize: anybody might think it was for the money. And I won’t deny it was a relief to have a little extra cash at the time. Did you know, after a death they freeze all your bank accounts?
Yeah, the joint ones too, that’s the worst. I tell all my married friends: it don’t matter how much you love your husband, get yourself a separate account...
But listen, I don’t want you to write in your book that Dan didn’t provide for me properly. I’ve got no complaints. We enjoyed it while we could, that was his philosophy. We had great times together: we went to Europe and Mexico and Israel and South America. I rode on a camel in Egypt and I saw the river covered with white long-legged birds thick as Jones Beach on Labor Day. Live in the present; I believe that. I had a wonderful life with Dan, I don’t regret anything.
No, the reason I sold that painting of Laurie’s was, I didn’t care for it.
Well, I can’t say exactly why. It just wasn’t the kind of thing I like. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, I love modern art. You see those prints over the sideboard?
Yeah, and did you know, when Henry Matisse made them, he had got such bad arthritis he couldn’t paint, but he didn’t give up, he went right on cutting out pieces of colored paper, I admire that.
Then of course there’s the Chagall etching in the hall that I showed you last time. It’s very valuable, my son says. But I’d never sell that picture; it always reminds me of my grandmother from Poland, my father’s mother. The stories she told. It makes me weepy when I think how she never got to come to America till her eyes were fogged up with cataracts and she was too old to see anything...
What I didn’t like about Laurie’s painting? Well, the colors, for one thing. I never liked that kind of colors, those dreary browns and grays and misty violets. But what really bothered me, if you want to know, was — can I sweeten your drink?
Have another cookie, anyhow ...
Yeah, okay, Laurie’s painting. Who Is Coming? she called it. Well you’ve seen the picture, you remember how there’s all these wispy bug kind of things floating in it? And then there’s a much bigger one, sort of coming down out of the air on the left-hand side, a moth it could be. Or a woman in a lavender chiffon nightgown, maybe, very thin, with wispy pale brown hair, or it could be feelers, what d’you call them?
Antennae, yeah, that’s it.
Okay, maybe it’s an “abstraction,” but that’s how it always looked to me. And I figure Laurie meant it that way too. Who Is Coming? Well, it wasn’t Laurie, because her hair was long and dark, nearly black, and it sure as hell wasn’t me. So who was it that was coming?
I’ll tell you who: it was Laurie’s mother, Celia. And that’s why she gave it to us, because she wanted Dan to be reminded all the time of his dead wife, and she wanted me to be reminded, too. Haunted, you could say. She wanted me to have to look at Celia every damn time I walked into this room.
Nuh-uh, I certainly didn’t say anything to Dan. If he didn’t get the idea himself, I wasn’t going to put it into his head. What I did was, I suggested we should move the painting into the study. I told Dan I thought it was lovely, but it didn’t match my color scheme: the gold carpet and upholstery and these red and blue accents that I chose to harmonize with my Matisse prints, they wiped Laurie’s picture right out, I said.
Nah, I didn’t get anywhere. Dan thought it’d hurt Laurie’s feelings if we even just moved her painting from over the fireplace, where she’d hung it, into the corner there. But he loved me, he wanted me to be happy, so he offered to have the whole room redecorated to harmonize with Laurie’s picture.
God, no. That was all I needed, to have my beautiful apartment done over in Celia Zimmern’s favorite sad wishy-washy colors.
There was nothing I could do about it. I just made up my mind not to see the picture. I trained myself not to look in that direction, and most of the time I didn’t, for sixteen years.
Yeah, that’s why I got rid of it, soon as I decently
could after Dan was gone. Rod, that’s my son, he said to me the other day, “You should of held on to that picture, Ma, I bet it’s worth a lot now.” But I don’t have any regrets. I wasn’t going to have that dead-moth woman coming in over my mantel a day longer than I could help.
Maybe. My sister said, if you want to look at it from a religious point of view, Celia’s won: she’s got him back now. Not that I believe any of that stuff. Anyways, if there is an afterlife, there’s so many females fighting over Dan that a sad little bug like her wouldn’t have a chance.
Don’t get me wrong, I never had anything against Celia Zimmern. She was a nice enough woman, from what I hear; I only met her once. And everybody knows she was smart. She was a real highbrow, reading heavy books all the time. I think she made Dan feel kind of a clod, not that she probably meant to. But she was awfully kind of dim and washed out and ineffective. She sure wasn’t the right woman for him.
Pretty, yeah, I’ll give you pretty, but in marriage pretty isn’t everything. I’ll tell you what my mother said. She said, “What for did Dan want to marry a shiksa in the first place? You know what you get with a shiksa? Wonderbread. No taste, no nourishment.” And then Celia was sick so often, those last couple years, she wasn’t much use to anyone.
Oh, yeah, of course he was fond of her. When she was sick he got her the best doctors, he did all anybody could do. But every time he had to go to the hospital to see her it just about broke him up. He always said to me, “Marcia, when I go, I want to go fast.” After his heart attack, the doctor told him, take it easy, Mr. Zimmern, no exertion, no alcohol, no tobacco, no steak eggs butter, I don’t know what all, a nap every day, you could live for years. He tried it for a week, maybe two, then he said the hell with it. He said he might as well be dead already as live like that.
Yeah. He was gone in six months. But I figure it was what he wanted. He couldn’t have stood to waste away slow like Celia did.
No, I didn’t dislike her. I was sorry for her, really. It was her daughter I couldn’t stand.
Well, for instance. Most normal kids would be happy if their father found someone he could make a good life with, instead of moping around alone the rest of his days in that big sad empty White Plains house. Dan’s son, Lennie, he was always decent to me, not that we had much in common, but he used to come to dinner sometimes, and bring a bottle of wine, and we’d have a good laugh. ... But Laurie — or “Lorin” like you keep saying — and that’s another thing, that fancy name she picked out for herself. Affected, I always thought. Dan never could get used to it, he went on calling her Laurie, so I did the same. But I know she resented it. When she phoned it’d always be “This is Lorin here,” and I’d say, “Just a moment, Laurie, I’ll get your father.” Here, let’s have a little more gin. Come on, what’s the harm? We’re both grown women.
How did she treat me? Well, she hated me from the word go, really, that’s what I always felt. For one thing, she thought I was too young —
I was about forty, and Dan was going on sixty-five, but so what? He had more energy and nerve than most men half his age. If he came into a room, it was like a two-hundred-watt bulb went on, right up to the end. When he was in the hospital, dying, even then, he was so ... excuse me.
I didn’t mean to get weepy. It’s just that — I mean, I loved my first husband, he was a nice boy, but he didn’t know from nothing compared to Dan. Dan was the best thing that ever happened to me. You know, a widow with two kids, she doesn’t get many offers, not that kind anyhow. Sure, a lot of men were willing to take me out, give me a good time. But marriage, forget it. When Dan asked me I didn’t stop to think, how soon will I be a widow again? You’ve got to bet on your instincts, isn’t that right?
Anyhow, that’s what I always say. But Laurie couldn’t see it. She thought I was marrying him for his money, probably, not that he had all that much. And besides that, she thought I wasn’t educated enough. And then it was her opinion that we didn’t wait long enough after her mother was gone, and she blamed me for that.
Well, it was nearly seven months, most people would have said that was enough, specially since Celia had been in and out of the hospital for so long. But not Laurie. ... Besides, if you want to know the truth, she thought he was too chummy with me before Celia died.
Okay, suppose it was true? Dan was a healthy, good-looking man, and Celia hadn’t been a real wife to him for a long time, if you know what I mean. But his daughter couldn’t accept the facts of life. She was jealous, like a spoiled little girl. Only she wasn’t a kid anymore; she was nearly thirty. She was awful to me.
She treated me like a wicked stepmother, that’s what I always thought, as if I was persecuting her or something.
It wasn’t anything definite she did. But for instance, if you want to know, most of the time she wouldn’t even speak to me, not really. Okay, she was shy, but so what? After you know somebody a few years, you should get over shyness. But it was always the same: every time we saw her, almost every remark she addressed to her father. It was like I wasn’t in the room, only now and then she’d give me this sneaky Cinderella look.
No, Dan couldn’t see it. He was such a sweet guy, he always believed the best of anyone close to him, you know, and she was his baby daughter.
Oh, she knew what she was doing. Yeah, she knew, all right. I’m sorry to have to say this to you, seeing as how you’ve got to write a whole book about her, but Laurie Zimmern wasn’t a nice person.
10
A COLD DULL DAY in early December; an opening at the Museum. Polly was there, huddled on a sticky black leather bench in a back hallway near the telephone booth. She appeared to be waiting to make a call, but in fact she was hiding out.
She should never have come here, she thought; she should have gone straight home after her appointment at the endodontist’s. But she hadn’t wanted to admit that besides hurting her and frightening her and insulting her and giving her a first-class headache, Dr. Bebb had ruined her whole afternoon. It was bad enough that he had insisted on calling her “Paula” and told her that she probably ground her teeth at night, but he had also had the nerve to compare his work to hers.
“Marge Dunn tells me you’re an author,” Dr. Bebb had remarked as she lay tilted back nearly ninety degrees in his padded vinyl chair, staring up at a fizzing fluorescent light fixture and at his monstrously enlarged pale fat fingers, bulbous nose, and thick spectacles.
“Weh, noh exac-uh,” she replied, gagging as he began to pack her jaw with lumps of cotton.
“But you’re doing research for a book, right?”
“Euh,” Polly agreed, feeling betrayed by Marge, her regular dentist — who seldom hurt her even a little, and then always with advance warning and most apologetically.
“A novel, is it?”
“Euh-euh.”
“Nonfiction,” Dr. Bebb deduced, his pale enlarged face stretching even farther in a self-congratulatory smile.
“Euh.”
“Hard work?” He blew an airgun into Polly’s mouth. “Kinda like being a detective, I bet.”
What was this, an interrogation? Polly thought. She declined to make a noise for either yes or no.
“I said, kinda like detective work, your research, is it?” Dr. Bebb repeated, pausing with the electric drill in his fat hand.
“Euh,” Polly agreed, realizing that the sooner she answered, the sooner all this would be over.
Dr. Bebb smiled his fat smile. “Hold real still now,” he ordered, and lowered the drill. A loud, unpleasant vibration filled Polly’s head, and a jarring, buzzing pressure.
“Rinse, please,” he said finally. “You know, Paula, I sometimes think what I do here is kinda like investigative research,” he added, poking fat sausage fingers and a steel probe into her mouth. “Following a tooth to its roots. You never can tell ahead of time what direction a root will take, did you know that?” He moved the probe, producing a twang of high-level pain.
“Euh!”
“Sorry,
” Dr. Bebb said unfeelingly. “So I figure we have something in common, right?” He paused again, instrument in hand, but Polly refused even to mumble a reply. We have nothing in common, you fat bastard, she thought.
Oh yes you do, a voice in her head replied. Haven’t you been probing for the diseased roots of Lorin Jones’s life? And aren’t you planning to fill them up with cement and cover the whole thing with a shiny white deceptive surface?
She should never have gone to Dr. Bebb, Polly thought as she sat by the phone booth. Or rather, she should have walked out five minutes after they met, because she knew by then what he was like. You might think that in a city the size of New York there would be a competent female endodontist, but Marge knew of none. She always sent her patients to Dr. Bebb. “He’s a good man,” she had insisted. “Howie” — her husband, a dental surgeon — “thinks the world of him.”
Well, maybe he’d fooled Marge and her husband, but he didn’t fool Polly. His specialty wasn’t ordinary repair work, but a combination of the murderous and the mortuary. She had recognized him as a natural enemy at once, but her natural animal reaction to threat — fight or flight — had been blocked by reluctance to appear cowardly and neurotic, and by Marge’s remark that if Polly didn’t have root canal work soon she would lose two upper molars, and eventually the ones below as well. So instead of hitting Dr. Bebb with her Peruvian tote bag, or climbing out of the dental chair and fleeing his office, she had stayed and let him kill her tooth and embalm it with cement, and give her a splitting headache.
But then, almost everything that had happened in the last week or so had given her a headache. The first one, minor but nagging, began on the Monday after Thanksgiving during Polly’s interview with Lorin Jones’s stepmother, who had portrayed Lorin as self-centered and spiteful. She had also related a story that, if repeated in the biography, would do Lorin’s reputation nothing but harm. Polly would just have to forget it, as she would have to forget a lot of the other stuff she’d heard lately; lies, all of it, probably.
