The Truth About Lorin Jones (6 page)

For years Polly thought she had learned everything she needed to know from her mother’s mistakes. So, even though what she wanted in high school was to be a painter, she took care to finish college and then take a degree in art history: she wasn’t going to end up a glorified secretary like Bea. And when she began to go out with boys, she was careful not to catch a baby.

But, having forgotten her painful early attachment, Polly was condemned to repeat it. Over and over again she became involved with unreliable men. Usually they were Jewish, and often they had something to do with art or literature, like Carl Alter. Or, of course, like Leonard Zimmern.

At home everything was as she had left it that morning: bed unmade, dishes in the sink, yesterday’s
Times
on the sitting-room floor, and a general look of dust and emptiness.

The apartment was also empty in more than the psychological sense; and this was Polly’s own fault, the result of one of her fits of bad temper. During that awful spring a year ago Jim had asked if it would be okay for him to ship his desk to Colorado, and Polly had shouted that as far as she was concerned he could have anything in the place he wanted. Jim must have known she’d spoken rashly, but he had taken her at her word. Saying that he hoped she would soon follow, he decamped to Denver with nearly half their furniture, plus one of the two signed Rauschenberg lithographs and the little Frankenthaler that had been their wedding present to each other. After he had gone, the apartment looked like someone who had been in an accident: its walls were scarred with lines of dust where bookcases and bureaus had stood, and by tender pale rectangles with a blackened nail hole in the center of each, like skin where bandages have been ripped off over a half-healed puncture wound.

Even now, the rooms were half bare, Polly had read recently that after a divorce the man’s standard of living goes up by an average of seventy percent, while the woman’s is reduced by half. It hadn’t been that drastic for her; but even with Stevie’s child support she hadn’t been able to replace most of the kidnapped objects, and she’d let the housekeeper go this summer when she left her job. As long as she had Stevie, she didn’t really care about the stuff, but now —

“I want my pictures and furniture back,” she cried aloud. “I want my son back, damn it.”

Talking to herself. Well, they said that was what happened when you lived alone: you became eccentric. Polly had also noticed that her mood swings were wider: she was up one day, down the next, as if she were on a roller coaster, with the same sense of giddiness and danger.

Stevie had been gone only two weeks, but already she was miserably sick of living alone. And this was just the start. For the next three months she would be wandering in a funk around this big empty apartment without even the Museum to go to. Nothing moved here now unless she moved it; nobody spoke unless Polly spoke to herself, or turned on the radio to fill the rooms with the lively voices of totally deaf people. When she talked back to them, even shouted at some idiotic adman or cheered some commentator on “All Things Considered,” they didn’t answer; it was as if she didn’t exist. Of course, Polly wasn’t crazy: she knew they couldn’t hear her, but all the same it gave her a bad, slightly insane feeling, as if she had disappeared.

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.

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.

“C
OULD 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?”