Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

“So when you left the Cape you went to Nebraska.”

“Right. We took it slowly, camping out and sleeping in the van. It was a pretty good time. But then when we got there the place didn’t work for her. Something about the colors was wrong. ... Anyhow, after a few weeks we packed up again and drove back through Canada to the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where I had a summer residency. But Lorin didn’t like that landscape either.”

“Why not?” Polly asked. Spoiled, restless, picky, she thought.

“I don’t know exactly. She said the White Mountains were too green. But anyhow, that fall we went west again, to Iowa City; I’d got a writing fellowship there for the year.”

“You had a fellowship in Provincetown, and then at the MacDowell Colony, and then at Iowa?”

“Uh-huh.” Mac half grinned. “I was hot back then.”

“And how did Lorin like Iowa?”

“Not too well.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t so bad for a while, but then the winter came, and she caught bronchitis and couldn’t shake it. And the art faculty drove her up the wall.”

“Really.”

“See, they were uneasy with her because she was a New York painter, and most of them were still into regionalism. But we got through the winter. Then a couple we’d met at MacDowell who had a house down on Seminary Street lent it to us for the off-season, so we came to Key West. And Lorin really dug it, even though it was summer, when it can get pretty damn hot here.”

“She didn’t mind the heat?”

“Not all that much. Up north she used to get sick a lot. And she was always cold in the winter, maybe because she was so thin. In bed in Iowa City her feet were like two beautiful icicles.” He laughed.

“You were a lot younger than she was,” Polly said, looking at Mac. He must have been beautiful then, she thought. Hell, he was beautiful now.

“Yes. Eleven years. But I never thought of her as an older woman, you know. Now with Varnie Freeplatzer, my friend up on Sugarloaf Key, the age difference is definitely part of the relationship. For her JFK and Martin Luther King and Woodstock are just a chapter in a history text, know what I mean?”

“Mm.” Polly nodded. “But it was different with Lorin?”

“Oh, yeah. I never felt she was any age really, or knew what age other people were. Maybe that’s why she made the mistake of marrying a pompous old fart like Garrett Jones.” He grinned.

“You’re awfully down on Garrett,” Polly said, feeling her own favorable opinion of him leaking away fast. “But you know, everybody says he was good to Lorin. And very generous.”

“Sure, as long as she belonged to him. Afterward — well, he made damn certain she didn’t get a dime in the divorce settlement.”

“She didn’t get anything?” Garrett lied to me, she thought, at least by omission.

“No. It didn’t even occur to her that she might ask for alimony until her father suggested it.”

“Dan Zimmern suggested that?”

“Right. He wanted her to hire a lawyer and sue, cite Garrett for adultery if he got nasty. But Lorin wouldn’t even discuss the possibility.”

“Really,” Polly said. “But she already had the money from their Cape Cod account, didn’t she?” she added, remembering.

“Yeah. Five thousand dollars. Of course, that was more back then; but it didn’t last forever. And then she sold some work from her show the next year, her last show.”

“And then what happened? Why did she stop exhibiting?

Mac paused, looking away and then back at Polly. “You’ve got to understand, Lorin wasn’t like other people,” he said finally. “She had a real close relationship to her paintings; she didn’t want to be separated from them. And it got stronger as time went on. She thought of them as part of her; her children, maybe.”

“Her children?”

“Yeah. What I think is, a woman usually has this maternal instinct, and if she doesn’t have kids it can settle on anything. And then she can’t let go. With one of my aunts, it’s her furniture: she’s nearly ninety, but she’s still polishing and dusting, you know?”

“Mm.”

“Well, Lorin was like that. Whenever she had to part with a picture it made her really miserable. Most of the time I knew her she was in mourning for the paintings she’d sold when she was younger. It seemed crazy to me at first, but it’s logical really. If you’re a writer you can keep your work forever; all you need is a copy machine. But suppose you could only make one example of a poem or a story, and if you wanted to eat you’d have to sell it to some rich bastard and maybe never see it again. Shit, it’d be like death, right?”

“Right,” Polly agreed.

“After I thought of that, I could understand how she felt. ... Excuse me.” At the other end of the house, where a khaki sleeping bag was laid on the floor, a phone had begun to ring.

As Mac crouched beside it, swearing into the receiver, Polly opened her canvas tote and scribbled on the back of a deposit slip: “Nebraska — May 63 — wrong colors. MacDowell — summer — too green. Iowa 63-4.”

“Sorry,” he said, as she put it away. “That asshole still can’t confirm delivery. I’ve got to hang around here awhile longer.”

“That’s okay.” Silently, Polly thanked the unknown asshole, whose delay would allow her further questions and — yes, all right — more time with Mac.

“Like some more coffee?”

“No, thanks.” Polly drank the last lukewarm inch, then leaned to set it on the roll of tarpaper. Probably thinking she was handing the cup to him, Mac also reached out; their hands collided, and an invisible charge passed between them. Oh God, I still want him, she thought.

“Tell me about those two paintings you still have,” she said, her voice uneven.

“Tell you what about them?” Mac asked, also unevenly.

“Well, for instance, how you happened to keep them. We all thought they were lost, you know. Lennie said he’d taken everything of Lorin’s away with him.”

“Yes; but those pictures weren’t Lorin’s. She gave them to me.” Mac met Polly’s stare; in this light, his eyes were more green than blue.

“But you never said you had the paintings. If I’d known, I could have borrowed them for the show.”

“Maybe. Only I didn’t feel like lending them.”

“That’s pretty selfish,” Polly said, losing her cool. “I mean,” she explained, “when you think how many people would really like to see —”

“Sure, they might. But the way I figured it, if I shipped those canvases to New York, I’d probably never get them back. A couple of years before she died, Lorin sent the Apollo Gallery two watercolors she didn’t care about anymore. When they were sold she didn’t get a cent; her dealer said she still owed him money.”

“I see.” And that’s something Jacky didn’t tell me, Polly thought. “So what did Lorin live on after she stopped selling paintings?”

Mac grinned. “She lived on me, mostly.” He checked Polly’s expression, shrugged. “It was what she was used to, see, having a man support her. That was what men did, in her experience. First her father, and then Garrett, and then she assumed it was my turn. She never worked a day in her life at anything but her art.”

A parasite, an exploiter of men, Polly thought. “And you accepted that,” she said.

“Sure; I went along with it at the time. I was just a kid; and I was in love. And I already had some idea how good Lorin’s work was. I figured that once her money ran out she’d sell some more pictures; I hadn’t realized yet how she felt about that.”

“I suppose it was fair,” Polly said. “You lived on her, and then she lived on you.”