Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

“Why not write my life?” Jeanne had joked last week, not for the first time. “Historically and sociologically speaking it’s just as significant as Lorin Jones’s. And you’d have a lot easier time collecting the data.” She laughed a little bitterly, perhaps with reference to the many times she had gone over the sad history of her affair with Betsy.

“That’s true, for sure,” Polly had said, also laughing. But she knew Jeanne wasn’t wholly kidding: like most of the people Polly had been interviewing, she really wanted Polly to pay attention to her and write about her instead of about Lorin Jones. Again, a sense of blocked communication and restless impatience washed over her.

Now, though, standing before the newly framed picture, Polly felt almost hopeful. The fireplace was cold and bare; it hadn’t worked since they’d moved in. But even in the gray indirect light that was all this room ever got, Lorin’s painting flickered and flamed rusty gold, fumous ochre, and steely blue. The flecks of color that suggested falling and swirling leaves seemed to tremble and flutter; those that suggested ripples on the surface of water shook and quivered. The canvas was alive with the dissolution and transformation of autumn, and with Lorin Jones’s passionate love of paint and of the natural world. Yes, Polly thought. This was the real thing: a work of genius. But what did it reveal about the woman who had created it?

She gazed until her eyes watered and the colors swam; until she felt herself standing in a storm of paint, no closer to an answer. Finally, dizzied, she turned away. She set Jeanne’s begonias on a windowsill and carried the candlesticks into the kitchen.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” she cried as she looked around. When she’d left that morning the room had been clean; now there were dirty dishes in the sink and crumbs on the table; the milk, eggs, bread, and jam had been left out, and the saucer of margarine was a viscid yellow pool with a dead fly in it. Before her quarrel with Betsy, Jeanne wouldn’t have left even an empty cup on the table; but depression had turned her slothful and scattered. “We broke up, that’s the phrase I use when people ask me,” she had said the other day. “But you know, for me it’s literal; I still feel as if I’d been smashed into pieces.” Polly’s anxiety about her book, meanwhile, had made her hyperactive, and impatient; no wonder they weren’t getting on as well as before.

Of course part of the trouble was sex. Since she returned from Wellfleet she and Jeanne had tried three times more to love and comfort each other, and it hadn’t quite worked. Polly felt loved but not satisfied, and Jeanne, it was clear, hadn’t really been comforted.

What Jeanne liked, it had turned out — or at least what she seemed to want and need now — was to kiss and cuddle and gently caress, to drift warmly and slowly toward and then away from a state of arousal without orgasm. No, she didn’t miss it, she had told Polly. The idea of a violent spasm rather revolted her, as a matter of fact; she’d often thought that it was mostly something men, with their more brutish and animal sexuality, had recently tried to foist on women. After all, for centuries nobody had ever talked about a female climax.

The trouble was, it wasn’t like that for Polly. At the beginning of each encounter she sighed and marveled at Jeanne’s silky rose-flushed skin, at her delicate, subtle strokes and fluttering, nibbling kisses. “Oh, that’s so lovely,” she would murmur, returning them with interest. “It’s you that’s lovely,” Jeanne would whisper, raising her pale loose curls from Polly’s thigh. But later on, when Polly started to really let go: to shout, to grip, to pant and thrash about, Jeanne would become still and draw back, looking at her friend with embarrassed concern, as if she were having some kind of fit.

For Jeanne too, it was clear, their encounters were not really satisfactory. There is a folk belief that men are melancholy after coitus; Polly hadn’t usually found this true; but Jeanne was always a little sad and silent afterward, though she tried to hide it. Polly would say, “Are you all right?” and Jeanne would answer, “Sure, I’m fine.” She was thinking about Betsy again, Polly suspected; but when asked about this Jeanne denied it.

The worst thing really, Polly thought, was that communication between them had begun to break down. For years, when they were just intimate friends, she and Jeanne had been able to tell each other everything. Now that they were intimate in another sense, they’d started concealing their thoughts and feelings from each other. Polly couldn’t tell anybody what was on her mind; she couldn’t even confide in her best friend, because Jeanne was her best friend, and if she knew how lonely and frustrated Polly sometimes felt after they had made love she would be hurt and miserable.

What Polly hoped was that once Jeanne had got over that stupid Betsy — who definitely didn’t deserve her — she would become more active and enthusiastic in bed, and happier afterward; not to mention more use around the house. If she didn’t, Polly didn’t know how long she could stand it.

Jeanne could have picked up before she left for the university, she growled to herself as she stood in the kitchen revolving these uncomfortable ideas. She knows how I hate mess. But if I mention it she’ll be cross and hurt. She’ll claim that she overslept and was late for work, or that she was restless and had an awful night — though she was snoring like a big tabby cat when I left.

But these thoughts were petty, unworthy of a true friend, let alone a lover. Polly shoved them aside. She cleaned up the kitchen — it only took a few minutes, after all — and dumped an ashtray full of Jeanne’s cigarette butts into the trash. Jeanne was supposed to be quitting smoking again, or at least cutting down, but as usual she was cheating. Finally she carried Jeanne’s scuffed ballet slippers back down the hall.

As she entered what had been Stevie’s room, Polly remembered with a flutter of joy that she would be seeing her son in less than a week. She was flying to Rochester next Wednesday, and Stevie would get in from Denver soon after. They’d have Thanksgiving at her mother’s as usual, and then fly back to New York together on Friday.

Jeanne would be away then: she was spending the weekend with Ida and Cathy, who were making Thanksgiving dinner for a dozen women. She had invited Polly to join them, but even if Polly hadn’t been going to her mother’s she would have hesitated. She ought not to hesitate; she ought to get used to, even welcome, the company of other gay women. The trouble was that though she liked most of Jeanne’s friends, Ida and Cathy always made her uncomfortable. Whenever she went there she felt that they (especially Ida) were watching her for signs of prejudice and wrong thinking.

Before Jeanne left, though, Polly had to have a serious conversation with her. Right now, Stevie’s room was full of Jeanne’s clothes, her books, her posters, her tapes and cassette player; her typewriter and her students’ papers covered Stevie’s desk. Sometime in the next week all this stuff had to be moved out. Polly could wait and hope that Jeanne would find the energy to take care of it; but probably in the end she’d have to do the job herself.

“Hi.” Slowly, Jeanne shut the apartment door behind her and put on the bolt and chain, something Polly usually forgot, and Jeanne mentioned. But now she said nothing; silently, Polly resolved not to say anything about the mess in the kitchen.

“Hi there.”

“How’s everything?” Jeanne set down a bag of groceries on the sofa and dropped beside them with the same sort of inert gravity.

“Not too bad.” Polly turned around from the desk and raised her eyes to the mantelpiece, but Jeanne did not follow her gaze. “I brought Lorin’s painting home today.”