Alison Lurie: The Truth About Lorin Jones

“Garrett was in love with her, though,” Polly said. “I think he still is, in a way.”

“Yes,” Lennie said savagely. “Lolly had that effect on men. From her earliest years.” He took an angry bite of sandwich that left yellow shreds hanging from his mustache and made him look suddenly carnivorous.

“Lolly; that was your sister’s nickname as a child.”

“Mm-hm.” He sucked in the rags of fried egg and wiped his mouth neatly; his expression was in neutral again.

“Do you happen to know how she got it?”

“I’m not sure, really. Probably it was short for what my father used to call her when she was a baby: Lollypop.” He took a sip of coffee. “So what else did you learn from Hugh Cameron?”

Polly glanced rapidly at Lennie, then away. Ridiculous to imagine that he knew what had happened in Key West. It was only his suspicious, probing professorial manner, developed no doubt over decades of intimidating students, that had caused her sensation of panic, her visible flush. She counterattacked:

“I learned several things you didn’t tell me. Or maybe you didn’t know them.”

“Really. Such as?”

“I found out how Lorin died, for instance.”

Lennie made no comment; he sat with the coarse white mug halfway to his thin, finely cut lips, waiting.

“She got a chill from swimming in the ocean for too long, when the water was still cold. And then she didn’t go to the doctor until it was too late.”

“Yes. Cameron told me that,” Lennie said on a harsh, falling note. “I wasn’t too surprised,” he added.

“You weren’t surprised by what?”

“The whole thing. Lorin was always attracted by water. And she was strange about doctors and hospitals, even as a kid. She didn’t like to have anyone poking about in her body. Or her mind, if it comes to that.”

“Who does?” Polly asked, wondering if Lennie was getting at her and her project, suggesting that Lorin would have disliked it. “But of course she was very sensitive.”

“Yes. Oversensitive, some might say.” Lennie gave a narrow smile. “And also I think she was rather interested in death.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well.” Lennie hesitated, maybe wishing he had not spoken, then continued. “By that time, you know, the few people she’d ever really felt safe with were dead. Her grandmother, and both her parents, and the maid they’d had all her life. Laura said to my ex-wife once that of course you never really trusted anybody you met after you were about ten — as if that were a quite natural human phenomenon.”

“That’s really sad,” Polly exclaimed, wondering at the same time if Lorin had been right.

“And then, the last time I saw her, when she came to New York after my father died, Laura told me this dream she’d had about him.” He paused.

“Yes?” Polly prompted.

“She said she dreamed that her father and Celia and all her other dead friends and relatives were standing at the far end of school playground that was half-covered in fog, calling to her. They were calling: ‘Rover, Red Rover, I charge you to come over.’ ”

“Ehh.” Polly sucked in her breath. He means, he’s suggesting that Lorin’s death was a kind of suicide, she thought. Not just the result of exhaustion, confusion, neglect, and self-neglect. “Hugh Cameron claimed that, those last few years, she was pretty heavily into drugs,” she said finally. “Speed mostly. But I don’t know if I believe —” She stopped, seeing Lennie's face twitch, his head jerk sideways, as if some invisible person had given him a stinging slap.

“You never heard that,” she said.

“I — No. But let’s say I had my suspicions.” He put down his cup.

“So you think it could be true.” And if it is, she thought, Mac wasn’t lying.

Lennie hesitated. “I think it’s a possibility. The last time we met I definitely had the idea she was on something.”

“But if it’s so, maybe that was why —” Polly said. “I mean, if her mind was confused — she needn’t have wanted to die. And nobody really cared, nobody tried to help her. It was such a waste!” she cried out suddenly, causing other people in the cafeteria to look around.

“Yes, you could say that.” He nodded.

“With all her talent —” Polly tried to control her voice. “Such a damn stupid waste. It makes me so angry, that’s all.”

“Yes. Me too.” Lennie sighed heavily. “But then, we’re both angry people.” He smiled intimately at Polly.

It’s true, she thought, meeting his sharp direct gaze. And probably it goes back to childhood, the way most things do. Both of us stepchildren, with younger siblings everyone preferred to us. My father ran out on me and started another family; so did yours. It’s you I’m like, not Lorin. For a moment she looked at Lennie not as an opponent and a research problem, but as an ally, a possible friend. No. She mustn’t fall into that trap again.

“I suppose that’s a matter of opinion,” she said irrelevantly.

Lennie’s expression changed. “Like everything else,” he said. He leaned back and resumed his normal expression, a slight ironic smile. “Well. And are you going to reveal in your biography that my sister took drugs?”

“I don’t know,” Polly admitted, suddenly weary. Jeanne’s idea was that if Hugh Cameron hadn’t simply invented Lorin’s drug habit, he had probably been responsible for it. But could he have lied so coolly, and in such circumstances? Unbidden, a picture came into Polly’s head, of an empty half-finished house in Key West; of Mac’s face as he leaned toward her in the hot shadowy light. She blinked furiously, blinking it away.

“I told you you might find out too much,” Lennie said, looking at her. “That’s the problem with any book, of course. Your kind and mine anyhow. The less you know, the easier it is to write.”

He waited a moment; then, receiving no reply, pushed his cup away and crumpled his paper napkin. “Well, I guess I should be getting back to my office. But I tell you what, why don’t you come with me?”

“Well —” Polly hesitated.

“If she’s around, I’ll have my scatty little secretary make you a decent cup of coffee. I can see you didn’t care for what they brew here.” He gestured at the mug of dirty-looking lukewarm milk.

But the chauvinist remark had roused her to consciousness. “Thanks; but I can’t,” she said flatly. “I’ve got too many errands.”

On a soggy, snowy afternoon a few days later, Polly unlocked the door of her apartment and slogged in, heavy-booted and laden with parcels. “Hi!” she called.

“Hello there,” Jeanne answered from the sofa, which she had as usual converted into a kind of nest lined with pillows and magazines and student papers; with her pink cable-knit cardigan, her needlepoint and colored wools, her filter-tip cigarettes, and her favorite china ashtray in the shape of a scalloped heart.

“Hey, welcome home!” It was Betsy’s voice, childishly high and eager, but at first Polly couldn’t see where it was coming from. Then she realized that Jeanne’s girlfriend was lying on the carpet by the sofa in a yoga position. Her ass was propped on her hands; her long legs, in lavender sweat pants, were flopped back over her head, so that she looked up at Polly from between thin freckled ankles and white knobby feet.

“How’s everything?” Polly dropped her packages and bent over the sofa; but Jeanne, unexpectedly, did not turn her cheek for the usual kiss, or raise her eyes from a line of tiny zigzag stitches in bright green wool.

“All right,” she said in a manner that instantly informed Polly it wasn’t.

“So what happened about the apartment on Twenty-third Street?”