Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

“Why surprised?”

“Well, Laura was so slight, so shy, so ethereal-looking. Not at all what I would have expected from her work. It was amazing to me that such a quiet, beautiful girl could paint like that.”

Yes, Polly thought. Because you expect gifted women to be noisy, ugly Amazons. “And then you began seeing each other?”

“No. Not then. School ended, and she went home. But I have to admit I thought about her all that summer. In the fall, we met again at the faculty show and talked a little, and then Laura came to my office to look at a book on iconography that wasn’t in the library. I realized then that she wasn’t just very talented, she was intelligent and articulate — once you could hear what she said in that whispery little voice. And those are qualities you don’t always find in gifted artists. As you must have discovered.” Garrett grinned.

“I know what you mean,” said Polly, who had had her troubles with stupid silent artists: last year there had been a male sculptor whose “statement” for the catalogue was almost illiterate.

“And at the same time, you see, she seemed — how shall I put it? — lost in this world. She was a virgin, of course. But beyond that, she was the sort of girl — well, you’d almost be afraid to let her cross the street, she was so dreamy, so innocent, so vulnerable. So aware of her natural surroundings as a painter, and so oblivious to them in every other way. More Meursault?”

“Not just yet, thanks,” Polly said. Garrett’s tongue seemed to be loosening; maybe it was to her advantage that he should drink most of the wine. “So you thought of marrying her already,” she murmured.

“Not then, no. I didn’t even realize at first that we were falling in love.” He paused, turning the glass in his heavy red hand.

“You didn’t know at first,” she prompted.

“No.” There was another and even longer pause, broken only by the thin whirring sound of the tape recorder. She tried again:

“But then —”

Garrett remained silent, gazing past Polly. You loved Lorin too, she thought with a reluctant sympathy, and you lost her.

Yes, she added to herself, hardening her heart, and how did you lose her? “Still, eventually you knew you were in love, and then you decided to get married,” she suggested.

“No.” With an appearance of effort, Garrett turned his gaze back toward Polly. “I didn’t think that far ahead. We were just consumed by it, consuming each other — I don’t think young people feel that strongly now.”

Young people? Polly thought. Yes, Lorin was young; but you were thirty-five.

“These yuppies one sees everywhere today, they’re so rational and calculating. They don’t love impulsively, romantically, without thinking of tomorrow.”

“No,” Polly agreed, wondering if in Garrett Jones’s mind she was a rational, calculating yuppie.

“But that’s how it was with us. It wasn’t till late in the spring that it occurred to me that Laura would graduate soon and I might never see her again.”

“Mm.”

“It was after a lecture on French cathedrals. One of those freak warm nights you sometimes get in May, with sudden thunderstorms, and we all had to make a dash for it to get to the building where the reception was. Most of us had raincoats or umbrellas, but when Laura arrived she was sopping wet and barefoot, carrying her sandals, in trailing damp gauzy clothes that stuck to her body.

“I tried to get her to go back to her room and change; so did several other people. She was shivering with cold, but she refused. She claimed she’d dry off soon, but naturally she didn’t. Finally she was persuaded to leave. I can still see how she looked walking away across the wet grass, through the oblongs of light from the windows. So slight and pale, with her long dark hair dripping down her back like some kind of exotic weed. There was something elfin and unworldly about her, almost not human.” Garrett stared past Polly, into the past.

Yes, she thought, the scene vivid in her mind. Then, with a little shock: he feels what I feel; we are longing for the same person.

“What was I saying?” Garrett asked finally.

“You realized you might not see Lorin again,” Polly prompted.

“That’s right. I’d never said anything about the future, you know, and neither had she. But I knew she was planning to go to New York to study that fall. And that troubled me, too: the idea of Laura alone in the city, in the zoo the Art Students League was back then. She wouldn’t have enough time to paint, either; her father was willing to pay her tuition for a year, but he thought she should get a part-time job to help cover her living expenses. And I knew how easily she could be exploited by people in New York — By dealers. And by men too. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“So you decided to marry her,” Polly said.

Garrett shook his head. “I decided to ask her to marry me; I had no idea she’d agree. Almost no hope. She seemed so young, so beautiful, so gifted and free —”

Again Polly felt an unwanted rush of sympathy. She beat it back down, focusing on the word free, recalling the facts of the case.

“I see.” She took a breath, determined to have the truth out of him. “But you were married already, weren’t you?” she added, watching Garrett’s face.

“Er, yes.” He blinked his bloodshot blue eyes in their net of creases. “Yes, I was, as a matter of fact. And does that shock you?”

“No, not much,” Polly admitted, forced onto the defensive.

“Times have changed.” Garrett sighed. “You young people, nothing much shocks you, right?”

“Well, not that sort of thing,” Polly said, unwilling to be classed either as Puritanical or as totally immoral.

“People were shocked then. Very. Some of them wanted to have me fired.” Garrett sighed again, then shook his head. “But that’s all ancient history. You probably weren’t even born then.” He smiled kindly but a little condescendingly at Polly.

“Besides, you know,” he continued, “my marriage was really over by then.” He leaned forward across the table, gazing at her persuasively. “It was one of those impulsive, misguided wartime things. We’d hardly known each other, but I was about to go overseas with the navy —”

“Mh,” Polly muttered. Impulsive; misguided. That’s what my father probably said, she thought, when people asked why he left my mother.

“It was a mistake from the start. We weren’t ever any good for each other. Except physically.” His voice sank to a reminiscent murmur on the last words. Probably the tape would not pick them up, but Polly heard them.

“With Laura it was so different,” Garrett resumed, clearing his throat. “The more I saw of her, the deeper in love we were. And then she needed me, not like Roz. I knew I could protect her, help her. She was so obviously gifted, and I had friends in New York, dealers and museum people, who would look at her work seriously if I asked them to. I knew she wouldn’t ever show it to them herself. She was terrified of strangers, you know.”

“Mm,” Polly admitted.

“So I knew that without me she wouldn’t have a chance. She might never be recognized as a painter — you know what the scene is in Manhattan — or at least, not for years. The problem was, my job was in Vermont, and Laura needed to study in New York: she’d already learned all she could at Bennington. I didn’t know what to do.” Garrett shook his head; the swatch of thick gray-white hair flopped into his eyes, just as in the old photographs.

“So then —”

“So then I was offered a place as regular art critic on a New York paper. It seemed like fate. ... Oh, thank you.” The waiter had returned with their dinner: Polly turned off her tape recorder and moved it from the table to her lap.