Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

“Ah. The lobster is excellent,” Garrett announced presently. “Let me give you a taste.”

“All right,” she agreed. “And maybe you’d like some of my cod.”

“Thank you.”

Polly transferred a hunk of fish and some wedges of tomato and pepper to Garrett’s plate, and looked up to see him poking a fork dripping with pink meat and melted butter at her face, as if she were a small child. There was a struggle between indignation and guile, which the latter won: she didn’t want to antagonize her subject yet.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

“Very nice,” agreed Polly, who had swallowed the lobster with some difficulty.

“Do have some more.”

“No, thank you. ... You knew Lorin Jones’s father,” she remarked, trying for a casual tone while discreetly turning her machine on again. “What was he like?”

“Dan Zimmern? He was a tough old dog.” Garrett Jones grinned and mashed sour cream and chives into his baked potato. Either because he no longer knew he was being taped, or because the wine had gone to his head, his manner had loosened considerably. “Wore out three wives. When I met him he was nearly sixty, but he was still damned handsome, almost like an old-time movie star. He was a charmer. Even the last few weeks of his life, when he was in the hospital most of the time, he fluttered the nurses’ hearts.”

“Is that so.” My father could end up like that, Polly thought. Though he didn’t look like a film star, and wasn’t conventionally handsome, you could call him a charmer. She felt another surge of empathy with Lorin Jones.

“Of course he was a complete philistine where contemporary art was concerned,” Garrett continued between bites. “Didn’t understand in the least what his daughter was up to. Though once she started to have some success he became very proud, went to all her shows.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that.”

“Dan wasn’t dumb, though. I remember something he said to me once. Or quoted, maybe: ‘In the absence of happiness, pleasure and power are the best the world has to offer.’ ”

“Pleasure and power?”

“In that order.” Garrett laughed. “And it was clear he had an appetite for both. All you had to do was watch him eat, or hear him talk about his job. ... When I first met him I thought he was a coarse cynical old, uh, fellow.” Garrett swallowed; had he been going to say “Jew”? “I was sorry for Laura, having a father like that.”

“How did they get on together?”

“Pretty well, considering. Dan was a warm-hearted guy; he really cared a lot for Laura, though he had no idea what went on in her head. I think she loved him too, in her way. And after a while, I began to appreciate him myself. I’m sorry now I never got to know him better.”

Because you’ve grown to be like him, Polly thought, watching Garrett crack open a lobster claw and spear the meat into his handsome, ruddy old face. Once you were young and in love, but now you prefer power and pleasure. You’ve worn out two, maybe three wives.

“Have some more wine.”

“Oh no thanks.”

“Come on. You might as well, it’ll go to waste otherwise. I’ve got to quit drinking now, because I’m driving home.”

“Well. All right.” Polly allowed Garrett to fill her glass.

“Not a bad Meursault. I remember the first time I tasted this wine, in France; in nineteen-thirty-seven it must have been, when I went to see the cave paintings in Lascaux with ...

Before she could stop him, he was off on another round of name-dropping anecdote. She reached under her napkin and turned off the tape recorder.

6

GARRETT JONES CONTINUED TALKING through the rest of dinner and on the drive home — and was, Polly had to admit sometimes interesting or amusing. She herself said almost nothing; the unwelcome feeling had come over her that she was not behaving very well. Of course, under his courtly manner Garrett was an old-fashioned male chauvinist, who had probably made Lorin Jones’s life unhappy in many ways. But he had given up a good deal of his valuable — and, at his age, limited — time to Polly and her project; he had bought her an expensive seafood dinner, and answered all her questions. Worse still, he appeared to like and trust her.

“So what?” said the impatient voice of Jeanne in her head. “All’s fair in war, remember?”

Polly tried to remember this, but it wasn’t easy. As they turned into the driveway she had a strong stupid impulse to warn Garrett, to confess that she intended to betray and expose him as soon as she discovered anything to betray or expose.

But maybe there wasn’t anything much to discover, and so it would be all right, she thought as they entered the house. “Nonsense,” said Jeanne’s voice. “All he’s given you so far is a lot of self-serving lies about how much he loved Lorin and helped her career. For Christ’s sake, don’t let him snow you. Just keep smiling, push him a little harder, and you’ll get what you came for.”

Well, maybe, Polly said silently to Jeanne; except now his wife will be listening. You mustn’t expect too much.

But as it turned out, Abigail wouldn’t be listening. “I guess your wife’s gone to bed already,” Polly remarked as Garrett switched on a green-shaded tole lamp in the sitting room.

“My wife?” For a moment Garrett, who had been describing Venice in the 1950s, seemed not to know which wife she was referring to. “Oh, Abigail. Oh no, she’s in New York. She had some crisis about an article, didn’t I tell you?”

“You mentioned it, but I thought —”

For the first time, it occurred to Polly that she was alone at night in the middle of nowhere with an old man she had thought of for months as an enemy. On the other hand, what harm could Garrett do her?

“She was sorry she couldn’t be here, but I assured her we’d manage. I can cook breakfast, at least.” Garrett gave a forced-sounding laugh. “Well, make yourself comfortable while I light the fire.” He moved an overpolished brass screen aside, stooped heavily before the hearth, and struck a match on the bricks.

“There we are,” he murmured with satisfaction as the pale flames rolled up. “And how about a little Courvoisier?”

“Well... all right.”

“To your book,” Garrett proposed presently, leaning toward Polly from the other end of the fat chintz-covered sofa to clink balloon glasses.

“Thank you.” Unused to brandy, she gulped; the fumes swirled up her nose, prompting a half-suppressed sneeze. “Could I ask you a few more questions?”

“Of course, anything you like. But no tape recorders, please. They always remind me of Watergate.” He laughed and leaned back; broad, ruddy-complexioned, confident.

And so they should, maybe, Polly thought. “All right.” She took out a notebook, then set her open bag down behind the arm of the sofa, and turned on the machine inside, feeling guilty but determined. I have to do this, she excused herself silently; I have to be accurate.

“When I had lunch with you and your wife in New York, you said that Lorin’s parents weren’t much alike,” she began, opening the notebook and trying to read her list of questions in the fluttering firelight.

“That’s putting it mildly.” Garrett laughed again. “I’ve sometimes wondered if that was why Lorin was so high-strung. It’s always been my theory, you know, that when parents are very different temperamentally their children are in trouble, because they’re composed of discordant elements. There’s a kind of genetic static produced.”

“It could be.” Is that what happened with me? Polly wondered: half conscientious practical mother, half erratic emotional father? “And how did Lorin’s parents get on together?”