Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

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.