Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

“So what’re you going to do now?” Lee asked, pouring oil into the machine and muting its tone to a rumbling whir.

“I d’know. Maybe I’ll go look at some more galleries.”

“You might as well. There’s not much chance of a swim today, for sure.” Lee turned off the blender; the spatter of the rain continued, heavier and more insistent. “I’m sorry about the weather, honey,” she said. “But you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The lesson for today, Polly thought, as she tramped through a dense foggy downpour that afternoon toward the current Revivals Construction project. Last night’s lowering clouds had sunk even farther over the island, drenching the loose-leaved unnatural trees, the peeling white-frame houses, and the potholed streets. Expect trouble, don’t trust anyone — that was the lesson.

Though it looked finished behind its eight-foot board fence, the house Mac and his crew were remodeling was only a shell. Within, it had been gutted down to the beams and siding; its roof joists were exposed, and its interior walls were mere scaffoldings of two-by-fours snaked with electric cables. The whole back side of the house was gone, covered now only by a sheet of dirty translucent plastic down which the greasy rain slid, giving the skeleton rooms the air of a stage set under construction. A table saw and a jumble of tools and boards sulked under other plastic covers, and a leak over the front door dripped sourly into an orange paint bucket.

“Sorry this place is such a mess,” Mac said, spreading Polly’s dripping poncho over a stack of boards, above which a bare, lit bulb hung from the end of a cord looped around a roof beam. “I’d like to take you out somewhere, but I’m still waiting for a call from the supplier. I sent the other guys home; there’s nothing more they can do until we get a delivery of sheetrock. Here, sit down.” He pulled a paint-spattered folding chair toward her. “Like some coffee?”

“All right,” Polly said; trying to speak neutrally, She had resolved not to lose her cool or waste time in recriminations.

“So how’s everything going?” Mac crouched on the floor to spoon coffee into a battered percolator.

“All right,” she repeated.

“Still angry, huh?” he said, glancing at her over his shoulder.

“And why shouldn’t I be?” Polly asked, striving to keep her voice light. “After all those lies.”

“I could give you a couple of reasons.” Mac stood up; he looked at her knowingly, sensually. Then, registering her lack of response, he stopped smiling. “What the hell,” he said. “I came clean, didn’t I? And talk about lies, you’ve probably heard some whoppers about me from Garrett Jones and those other New York types.”

“I’ve heard about you, yes,” she replied, setting her jaw.

“From Jones?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“And you assume he always tells the truth, huh.” He grinned.

“It wasn’t only him.” Polly glanced at Mac/Hugh, noting with misery that he was still smiling, that he was still infuriatingly good-looking.

“Okay, who else?”

“Well. Mr. Herbert, at the gallery. He told me a few things, too.”

“Great. A cuckold and a ponce.” Mac rummaged among some hardware on a trestle table and came up with a bag of sugar and a carton of half-and-half. “That’s what an art dealer is, you know. When a guy like that watches a painter at work, he doesn’t see something beautiful being created. What he sees is shit flowing out of the end of her brush and turning into money.”

“That’s not fair,” Polly exclaimed. “I know Jacky Herbert — and Mr. Carducci, too — they honestly admired Lorin Jones’s work.”

“Sure they did.” Mac sat down cowboy-style on a battered bentwood chair. “As long as she could keep it coming, and they could skim their thirty percent.”

“That’s not —” Polly began, and stopped. Why should she defend Jacky or Paolo? She didn’t owe them, or any man, anything. Besides, that wasn’t what she should be doing here; she should be listening, collecting data. “So what’s your version?”

“You really want to know?” Mac tipped his chair away and gave her a hard look over the curved back.

“Yes, of course.”

“All right.” He lowered the chair. “I’ll tell you anything you like. Might as well set the record straight.”

“Okay,” Polly said. “Thanks,” she added ungraciously.

“Right.” The percolator had stopped bubbling; Mac squatted beside it. “Milk and sugar?”

“Just milk, please.”

“So what would you like to know?” he asked, handing her a chipped mug mockingly stenciled in red: KEY WEST—I WENT ALL THE WAY.

“Oh, anything. Everything,” Polly said, forcing a casual, friendly tone and cursing herself for not bringing her tape recorder; she was really fucked up today.

“I suppose Garrett’s story is that I moved in on Lorin, his sweet innocent little genius, and lured her away from him.”

“Something like that, yes,” she agreed.

“I bet he didn’t tell you that while she was living alone for months at a time in that freezing-cold farmhouse in Wellfleet, he was chasing around the country, sleeping with any broad who would have him.” Mac checked Polly’s expression and added, “I’m not inventing that. Everybody in the Arts Center knew it. When he was in P’town he was always trying to put the make on the female Fine Arts fellows.”

“Yeah?” Polly asked, expressing in her tone a doubt she didn’t feel.

“Yeah. He had a standard MO. He’d tell the woman how sensitive and sympathetic she was, and then he’d say how much he could do for her career, if he felt like it. You don’t believe me, you can ask anyone who was around then.”

“Okay, maybe I will,” she said coolly, thinking that Garrett hadn’t changed his approach in twenty years. “You knew him yourself?”

“Oh, sure. He was at half our parties and art openings, bragging about all the famous painters he’d met and the important pictures he owned.”

“Mm,” Polly murmured. Mac was telling the truth, she thought; it was the Garrett Jones she knew, seen through dark glasses.

“He talked a lot about Lorin too. He used to lay it on everybody what a great artist his wife was.”

“I think he loved her, you know,” she protested.

“If you want to call that love.” Mac made a face. “I could tell right away he didn’t have any real feeling for her; she was just part of his collection.”

“And did Lorin Jones know about her husband’s affairs?”

“Well, I think she had an idea. But that wasn’t the main problem. What really drove her crazy was the way he interfered with her work.”

“How do you mean?” Polly set her coffee cup on a roll of roofing paper and leaned forward.

“Garrett had all these theories, see. He was always making comments on Lorin’s paintings and telling her what other artists they reminded him of and how they fit into the developing contemporary tradition. He wanted to look at what she’d done every day. It got so heavy Lorin couldn’t stand being with him in New York, and she spent as much time as she could on the Cape. But of course Garrett came up to Wellfleet now and then, and whenever he was there he kept after her. She had to lock herself in her studio sometimes, she told me, to stop his voice going on and on. And even then he’d come and rattle the handle and talk through the door at her, y’know?”

“I can imagine.” But Polly didn’t need to imagine; she had a vivid memory of Garrett’s rattling the door of Lorin’s studio. “So when you turned up, she was about ready to leave him.”

“Yeah, I guess so. She wanted to get off the Cape too; she’d decided that landscape was about used up for her. I used to kid her afterward that she only came away with me so she could see Nebraska. Something I’d said once about the light out where I come from had gotten her interested. Well, I was on my way there, and I had a van big enough to haul her equipment. It was fate.” He laughed, not easily.