Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

“Well, what did you expect?” His voice bubbled with suppressed mirth. “You don’t imagine Grace wants to go down in history as someone an artist couldn’t stand to have owning one of her paintings? You didn’t contradict her, I hope.”

“Well, no. But I’m certainly not going to publish her version.”

“That’s too bad.” Jacky giggled outright. “You could do yourself some good that way, you know. Grace would be very very grateful; and one thing you have to say for the Skellys, they pay their debts.”

“But her story’s a complete fabrication. You told me so yourself.”

“So what? Nobody else is going to know that. And besides, who can be sure my story was true either? I’d certainly deny it if anyone asked me.” He giggled again, puffing his cheeks up with air and shaking his head solemnly. Then his expression changed. “I hope you’re not for a single moment considering publishing what I told you,” he added in an offhand manner, gazing away from Polly.

“Why not?” she asked. She wasn’t fooled by the tone; she knew that Jacky always seemed most lively and intense when he was relaying unimportant gossip; when he adopted a careless, uninterested style he was deadly serious.

“Surely you’re joking.” Jacky almost yawned, but he also turned and looked hard at her.

“Why should I be joking?”

“Because if you did print what I told you, darling,” he drawled, “the Skellys would never buy another picture from me, or lend any thing to the Museum as long as you worked here; and Bill would probably sue you for libel.”

“You really think he’d do that?”

“I’d say it was a very very strong possibility. And it wouldn’t be the first time; you remember that Art Today case. Of course it was settled out of court finally. Ten thousand and costs to the plaintiff. In nineteen-seventy-two dollars.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair. Don’t be naive, Polly.” Jacky sighed. “But let’s talk about something pleasanter. I understand you hit it off very very well with Kenneth Foster.”

“Yes, he was quite helpful. He told me a lot about Lorin’s early work, and what she was like in college. He admires her as a painter; well of course you know that. But he didn’t care much for her as a person, apparently. He preferred Garrett.” Polly kept her voice neutral, though what she had thought during the interview was: A thirty-five-year-old professor seduces a twenty-year-old student, and leaves his wife for her, and Kenneth Foster blames the student; that’s really taking male bonding pretty far.

“Ah.” Jacky did not comment further.

“One thing he said that amazed me was that he had married Garrett’s first wife after the divorce. And now they’re all good friends, he claims. I found that hard to believe.”

“Oh yes. It’s quite true.”

“Most people I’ve spoken to don’t even know Garrett had a first wife.”

“Yes, well.” Jacky made his fishy moue. “I’m not surprised he didn’t mention it. Garrett prefers to forget whatever doesn’t fit his image, don’t we all. If someone does happen to hear about that marriage, his line is that it was just one of those brief impulsive wartime things. But in fact he and Roz were together for six, seven years.”

“What’s she really like, Mrs. Foster? I only met her once, at some opening.”

“Oh, quite nice. Of course she’s had rather a hard life; she’s not kept her looks too well.”

“Was she pretty once?” Polly asked this doubtfully; she remembered Roz Foster as overweight and raddled-looking.

“Oh, very. I think painters’ wives always are, don’t you? At least to start with. Yards of red hair, and a lovely creamy skin. Garrett always went for the beauties too, even though he wasn’t a painter. He thought he deserved them. The way Paolo put it once, Garrett thought he was God’s gift to women, and he wanted to play Santa Claus.” Jacky giggled.

Polly laughed too, but uneasily; it crossed her headache to wonder if Garrett Jones had given Jacky or someone Jacky knew a skewed version of her visit to Wellfleet.

“Lorin wasn’t the first student Garrett had fooled around with, of course,” Jacky went on. “But she was the first one he really fell for, and he got careless.”

“And so his first wife found out?”

“Eventually. And Roz was miserable. She really loved him, from what I hear. She couldn’t eat or sleep, she started to drink too much, smashed up the car, threatened to kill herself. Garrett was at his wit’s end; he was seriously scared. He didn’t want a suicide on his conscience; who would?”

“So then?”

“Well. What finally happened was that Kenneth Foster took Roz off his hands, so he could marry Lorin, and Garrett made Kenneth famous. He’s like the Skellys: he pays his debts.” Jacky giggled.

“You really mean —” Polly looked at the art dealer with something between doubt and disgust.

“Please, don’t get me wrong.” Jacky waved his flippers. “I’m not trying to say that Foster isn’t a marvelous painter. But without Garrett he might not have the sort of international reputation, or command the prices, that he does now. And has for years, of course. Anyhow, that’s all ancient history. And really the marriage has been surprisingly successful. There was a sticky patch at one time, but Roz has been in AA for twenty years now, and they’re a very very devoted couple today.” Jacky blew out a sigh. “None of your concern, thank heavens. I mean,” he drawled, “nothing you’d ever want to put in your book.”

“No,” she agreed.

“That’s just as well. Anyhow, you must be nearly ready to start writing now.”

“Yes; pretty soon,” Polly said. “I have an interview upstate to do first, and then I’m going down to Key West to look for Hugh Cameron.”

“You think he’s still there?”

“I know he’s there. At least he was three months ago. He hasn’t answered my last letter, but it hasn’t been returned either, so I figure he’s still around.” Polly didn’t mention that Hugh Cameron’s only response so far had been one line scrawled in felt-tipped pen across the bottom of her original inquiry: Sorry — haven’t time to answer your questions. “Anyhow, I want to see the place, look at the house where Lorin lived, try to talk to people who might have known her.”

“Ah. Of course.” Jacky took a gulp of the smoky gallery air and let it out with a slow wheeze. “You know, while you’re down there —” he added in a studiedly lazy voice that at once alerted Polly.

“Yes?”

“You might poke about a bit; see if you can spot any more paintings.”

“Oh, I will.”

“It would be especially nice if you turned up one or two of the late graffiti ones. There’s a lot of interest in those, you know.”

“I know,” Polly agreed. Lorin Jones’s final Key West paintings were remarkable for their inclusion of words or sometimes whole phrases in the manner of Dine or Kitaj. The two that had been included in “Three American Women” had attracted much attention.

“If you manage to get into Cameron’s place you might see something,” Jacky suggested.

“Well, I’ll look. But didn’t Lennie take everything away after Lorin died?”

“Ye-es. Supposedly. But it wasn’t all that much, if you think about it. I’ve asked myself sometimes, why do we have so few Joneses between sixty-four and sixty-nine? Far far fewer, for example, than in the previous five years. And then there are the two large canvases that didn’t sell at her last show. They seem to have vanished completely. Of course it’s always possible that she destroyed them afterward, or painted them over.”

“But you think Cameron might still have them.”