Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

Apart from recommending this awful flight, Garrett Jones had done nothing in the years Polly had known him to earn her distrust. At the time of “Three American Women” he was, she had to admit, unfailingly courteous and cooperative. He had sent several of his former wife’s paintings to the Museum, and provided information on the whereabouts of others; in a few crucial cases he had persuaded reluctant collectors to lend items for the show. Later on he wrote a brief, graceful appreciation of Lorin’s work for the catalogue. This essay, however, did not mention that Garrett and his wife had ever been divorced or even separated. “I don’t think that’s really relevant,” he had explained smoothly when Polly queried the matter on his proofs.

When Polly told Jones she was thinking of writing a book about Lorin he was graciously enthusiastic. He recommended her for the fellowship, and offered to supply photographs, letters, and the names and addresses of people she might like to interview. Now he and his present wife had invited her to visit them in Wellfleet before they closed the house for the winter and returned to New York, so that Polly could see where Lorin Jones had once lived and worked.

But in spite of Garrett Jones’s cooperation and good manners, Polly didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. Which, since he was a tall, heavy, elderly man who must have weighed at least sixty pounds more than she, was not very far. Probably, Polly thought, she couldn’t even push him any great distance. But she was going to have to push him, psychologically at least.

She didn’t kid herself: the next twenty-four hours were going to be a battle. Probably Garrett Jones would do all he could to present himself in the most favorable light possible, and to conceal any evidence of the damage he had done to Lorin and of how unhappy she must have been in Wellfleet. Polly had to prevent him getting away with this — to cut through his sophisticated platitudes. The patience and tact Jeanne had always recommended would only go so far. Judging by what had happened when she had lunch with Jones in New York, they would only result in his telling her a lot of innocuous anecdotes with an air of courteous self-satisfaction. Eventually she’d have to push and shove, to confront him directly.

There was no point in trying to be too nice, either, because when Polly’s book came out, in about eighteen months, Garrett Jones would stop speaking to her anyhow. If she was really lucky he might be dead by then, seeing that he was seventy-three now. Otherwise she would be in trouble, because though Jones didn’t have as much power in the art world as he once had, he was still formidable. If he wanted to, he could probably do her serious professional harm. But that was a risk Polly’d decided she had to take.

Swerving sickeningly, the toy plane bounced down onto the end of Cape Cod and stuttered to a stop between stands of dusty-looking scrub oaks. In Central Park October still blazed with color: here the landscape was stripped and ashy, ready for winter.

Shaky, half-nauseated, but relieved to be alive, Polly climbed out into a strong crosswind and gulped cold salty air. As she lugged her duffel bag toward the toy terminal, she thought at first that Garrett Jones hadn’t come to meet her. Then she recognized him, disguised as an old sea captain in jeans and windbreaker and visored cap.

“Hello there, Polly! Grand to see you!” he shouted as she got within range. Before she could recoil he had put both hands on her shoulders and kissed her wetly on the cheek. Furious, she raised the arm that gripped her canvas bag and wiped her face with the back of her wrist.

“Is this all your equipment?”

“This is it.”

“Traveling light, eh? I admire that in a woman. Here, let me.” Not waiting for a reply, Garrett Jones wrenched her bag out of her hand and, in spite of his years, started toward the parking lot with a lively, almost rolling seaman’s gait.

“Well, and how have you been?” he called jovially, turning a bronzed, weather-beaten countenance toward Polly as she scrambled to catch up.

“Fine, thanks.”

“Did you have a comfortable flight?” He grinned, to her mind evilly.

“Fine, thanks,” repeated Polly, determined not to show any weakness or fear. She felt caught off-balance, like some Amazon commander who has entered the field well prepared for war on land and is suddenly obliged to fight a naval battle. Until this afternoon she had never seen Garrett Jones in anything but a business suit; she had thought of him as an essentially urban, indoor type, someone who would be ill at ease in the country — to her advantage. In manner he had always been rather formal, addressing her as Miss Alter. Now he was affecting to be another person with another, more intimate, relationship to her. No doubt he was doing this to unsettle and confuse her.

With a grin, or possibly a grimace, Garrett Jones slung Polly’s small but heavy bag into the back of an ancient green Volvo wagon, slammed the tailgate, and went around to unlock the passenger door. Polly detested having doors opened for her. She believed that the gesture, harmless as it seemed, was hostile: it was meant silently to establish that she was weaker than Garrett Jones and to put her under an obligation to him. But she suppressed her protest — it was bad tactics to start hostilities too soon.

“So what would you like to do first?” Jones asked as he climbed in beside her. “I wish I could take you out for a sail, it’s a hell of a fine day for it, but my boat’s already in dock for the winter. I could try to borrow one from our neighbors, if you’d like.”

Polly scowled. To go sailing with Garrett Jones in this windy, stormy weather would just give him a chance to finish what Cape Air had begun: that was, to make her sick and helpless; maybe even to nearly drown her. “Oh no thanks, Mr. Jones, don’t bother.”

“Garrett, please.” He put his hand on Polly’s arm and smiled into her eyes in a false fatherly way. “And I hope I may call you Polly.”

“All right,” she said ungraciously, thinking that this was the sort of question it was almost impossible to answer in the negative.

“Grand. Well, if you don’t fancy sailing, the other notion I had was, I might drive around a little, show you some of the locations between here and Wellfleet that Laura used in her paintings.”

“Yes, I’d like that,” Polly said.

“Right, then.” Garrett gunned the engine and pulled out onto the road, swinging the wheel around as if he were navigating a sailing ship, and headed up into the dunes at top speed. Polly wondered if he was trying to terrify her with his driving, but since he too was at risk she decided not to worry about it.

“Now.” He stopped the Volvo at the top of a grassy rise. “Here’s where Laura made the sketches for Deposition. About the same time of year as this, it must have been. Like to get out, probably you could see it better.”

“Okay.”

Garrett Jones started around to open the door for Polly; but she wasn’t having any more of that, thanks, and by the time he got there she had scrambled out and slammed it behind her. Score one for me, she thought. She leaned against the side of the car with the low sun and the hard wind in her face, squinting at the sweep of sandy hills, the twisted beach pines like giant bonsai, the flattened silvery crescent of ocean. It was clearer to her than ever that Deposition — the largest of the three abstracts Garrett Jones had lent to the Museum show — was in fact a landscape.

Lorin Jones stood here painting this scene, she thought. At this time of year, maybe even this same hour of the afternoon, with the light coming low and from the left. I stand in her footsteps, am joined to her now by space and time. And also separated from her forever. A wave of loss and longing drowned Polly, as if the sea, the scrub, and the sand were dissolving and blowing over her in a fine haze of damp, gritty tears.