Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

Sorry, and also perhaps vengeful in their turn. Polly’s biography would be bad-mouthed by Garrett Jones and Jacky Herbert and all their friends and supporters; it would be badly reviewed in the establishment press, and its sales would be poor; she’d have to expect that. There would be repercussions when she went back to work at the Museum: cold looks, cold words, the chilly withdrawal of her superiors. Gradually, a strong snowy wind like the one now outside this building would cut Polly off from the New York art world; it would blow her even further into a wholly female and largely lesbian society.

But though she might suffer professionally and financially, she would be supported and encouraged by others like herself. The feminist press would treat her work seriously. Ida and Cathy and the rest of Jeanne’s friends would accept and trust her, as one who had finally — though none too soon — spoken out against the patriarchal system.

Polly gazed at the stained wall opposite, and saw herself as if in a film of the future, in Ida’s living room. She was sitting cross-legged in a circle of women at one of the study-group meetings she had up to now declined to attend. Her hair was chopped short, and she was wearing worn, woolly dark clothes and a serious, determined expression. Next to her on the lumpy braided rug made by a women’s commune in Vermont were Jeanne and Betsy. On the other side, holding her hand in a warm possessive grip, was another vague sympathetic female presence: Polly’s future lover, whoever she might turn out to be. (“I’m sure you’ll find someone nice soon,” Jeanne had said the other day, unconsciously echoing Polly’s mother.)

But why was this vision so flat and colorless? Maybe just because of the grayed winter light, and the stained plaster on which the scene was projected. Or maybe she was still rundown; she surely shouldn’t be depressed by a future in which she would be accepted, loved, and surrounded by intelligent, affectionate women who admired what she had done.

“Sorry about this place,” Leonard Zimmern said twenty minutes later, sliding a plastic tray the color of curdled mushroom soup onto a table in a kosher cafeteria. “The thing is, it’s the only restaurant near my office that’s not choked with tinsel and artificial holly this time of year.” He gave Polly a narrow glance and added: “I’m not going all Orthodox suddenly, don’t get any ideas. But the older I get, the more all this Christmas crap irritates me. Hope you don’t mind.”

“No, it’s okay,” Polly said, setting her coffee and bagel with cream cheese on the damp tabletop.

Lennie sat, and stirred his coffee. “So, you went to Key West and found Hugh Cameron,” he remarked.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“And I hear that’s not all you found.” Lennie smiled. “Jacky Herbert tells me you saw two of Laura’s paintings there. Including the big one from her last show that he thought was lost.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Cameron has them.”

“Really.”

Polly gave Lennie a look of ill-suppressed irritation. It was just like him not to show any surprise at her discovery — let alone enthusiasm or gratitude.

“I understand Herbert would like to get those paintings back for his exhibition.” He smiled narrowly and raised heavy black eyebrows threaded with gray.

“Mh.” Polly did not smile. The discovery of Lorin’s lost canvases was her greatest achievement so far; she wanted them in the new show, so that everyone could see and admire them; she wanted them photographed for her book. Yes, fine. But after that what would happen? Jacky wouldn’t give them back to Mac if he could help it; they would be sold to collectors who’d never known Lorin. But, as Jeanne had said, that was none of her business.

“Herbert suggested that we should all go together to his lawyer,” Lennie said. “He wants to send Cameron a letter demanding that he ship us the paintings, unless he can produce written proof that he owns them.”

“Mh,” Polly agreed uneasily. She knew all this; only yesterday Jacky had urged her to persuade Lennie to take such action as soon as possible.

“So you think that’s what we should do?”

“I suppose so,” she said, trying to speak positively, reminding herself that legally the paintings belonged to Lennie; that their recovery would be morally justified and professionally advantageous to her.

“I don’t care all that much for the idea of a lawsuit, you know. I always think of Bleak House.”

“Mmh.” Polly had never read Bleak House but was damned if she was going to admit it. Of course Lennie would go to a lawyer in the end, she told herself; he wouldn’t want to let two paintings worth at least twenty thousand each get away. But first, just for the fun of it, he was going to give her a hard time. He was teasing her now, as he had teased his sister years before. “Excuse me, I forgot the milk.”

The trouble is, she told herself as she picked her way between the crowded tables, I don’t like the idea of a lawsuit either. I don’t want to help take those paintings away from Mac. It’s against my own interests and maybe even illegal, she thought, holding her mug under the metal spigot, but I don’t want to be part of that.

“Hey, watch it,” a voice next to her cautioned. Polly looked down; her mug had overflowed and a puddle of milk was slopped around it.

“Sorry.” But Mac said Lorin had given him the paintings, she thought, releasing the lever. And even if she didn’t, they mean something to him; doesn’t that give him a sort of right to them?

“About those two canvases,” she said to Lennie, setting down her mug, now mostly lukewarm milk. “The problem is, they actually belong to Hugh Cameron.”

“Really?” This time he raised only one of his theatrical eyebrows.

“Your sister gave them to him, you see.”

“Yes? And what’s the proof of that?” he asked skeptically and hatefully.

Polly clenched her jaw. “It’s written on the back of both of the canvases,” she heard herself lie. “ ‘For Hugh with love from Lorin.’ I hadn’t seen it when I phoned Jacky,” she improvised.

“Really,” Lennie said for the third time, now with a descending intonation, drawing his eyebrows together. “I wonder who wrote it.”

“That’s why Cameron didn’t mention them to you when you were there, I guess,” she plunged on, appalled at what she had done, but trying to speak casually.

“It could have been.” Lennie shrugged. “It could have been anything. He was half out of his wits at the time, in my estimation.” He rotated his coffee mug. “Well. I can’t say I’m totally unhappy about it. I have enough trouble with the paintings of Lorin’s I’ve got now: the insurance and storage fees are ridiculous. And then, ever since that damned show of yours, some museum or other is always after me to lend them something.” He laughed slightly. “I’m certainly not going to get embroiled in a legal squabble. Let Cameron keep those paintings if he wants to.”

Well, you’ve done it now, Polly thought, shocked at herself. “I thought you didn’t like Hugh Cameron,” she said at random, recalling that Lennie had earlier described him — it was in her notes — as “a typical faux-naïf clinging to the role of artist and the role of child long after that was even faintly plausible.”

“I’m in no hurry to spend time with him, let’s put it that way. But I’ve no quarrel with Cameron; he put up with my sister a lot longer than most people would have, and he didn’t cheat on her the way Garrett did, as far as I know.”

“You’ve heard about that?” Polly asked.

“Uh-huh.” Lennie shrugged. “Most people who knew them have, I imagine.”