Alison Lurie: The Truth About Lorin Jones

Maybe what Lennie had said back in September was right, she thought. Maybe I should just talk about the paintings, instead of trying to write the biography of somebody I don’t begin to understand; somebody who probably wouldn’t have liked me or wanted me — or anyone — to write about her. If the grief and guilt I felt that last day in Key West was real, that’s what I’d do. It would be a lot easier besides, and Lennie would thank me. But then all these notes; all these wasted months — Polly groaned aloud.

If only Jeanne were here, she thought, forgetting all that had gone wrong between them, remembering only her friend’s intelligence, warmth, and sympathy. Remembering how, long before Jeanne moved into the apartment, back when she had lived three blocks away, they could call each other anytime. I need to talk to you, Polly would say. I’m in a total funk. ... Oh, my dear, Jeanne would murmur. I’m so sorry. Tell me about it.

Jeanne was up in Vermont now, but Polly could still talk to her on the phone; Ida would have the number. She shoved back her chair and went into the kitchen.

“No, she’s not in town,” Ida said in charged, emotional tones. “She’s in Vermont with Betsy. ... I don’t know when they’ll be back. They’re with friends.” Her pronunciation of the last word suggested that Polly was not in this category.

“Can you give me the number there, please?”

“No,” Ida said; it sounded as if she were breathing hard into the phone. “I don’t think I can.”

Polly suppressed an impulse to swear. “Jeanne promised she’d call when she got there, you see, but she hasn’t,” she explained.

“No. I shouldn’t expect she would.”

“Why not, for God’s sake?” Her voice rose.

“Jesus. If you don’t know that,” Ida said, with a slight but marked pause on the pronoun.

Polly gave a loud, angry, uneven sigh. “Well, when you speak to her, tell her I’d like to hear from her.”

“Oh, you would.” Now Ida’s voice began to shake. “There are a lot of people who genuinely care for Jeanne, in case you didn’t realize that,” she said. “People who respect her emotional commitments, her privacy, her personal integrity —”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No. You wouldn’t, would you?” Ida’s tone had become so sneering that Polly lost her cool.

“Oh, go to hell, you old bitch,” she cried, and hung up.

Feeling even worse than before, she began to wander through the apartment, dim now in the fading winter light. There was nothing to see; only, out of one window after another, the backs of other apartment buildings, blurred by the drizzle of snow that had been falling all afternoon. From her bedroom, though, if she stood close to the cold glass and looked sideways, a narrow vertical strip of Ninety-second Street was visible. Everything in this elongated rectangle was black or gritty gray, like an early twentieth-century Ashcan School etching: a lamppost, a couple of snow-whitened cars, an attenuated Peggy Bacon cat, two figures walking hunched together against the wind. It was as false and limited a version of Ninety-second Street, Polly thought, as each of those transcripts on her desk was of Lorin Jones’s life. But it was all she could see, just as to her informants their reports were the whole truth.

Every one of those people expected her to reproduce their narrow vertical view of Lorin Jones. And what’s more, if she didn’t, they would be angry with her. Whatever she wrote, she would satisfy some of them and enrage others.

Suppose, just for the sake of argument, she were to write the biography of Lorin Jones that Jacky and Garrett expected, in which Lorin would appear as an eccentric, neurotic genius, and they as generous and wise and tolerant. They would be pleased, and reward her; they would see to it that her book was well and prominently reviewed — Jacky had already hinted as much. If she put her career first, this was the choice she would make.

And suppose too, just for the sake of argument, that she were to accept Garrett’s job offer. Since she’d told him she was a lesbian, he probably wouldn’t bother her with any more sexual advances; at least he wouldn’t come on to her overtly. And as his protégée she would have many privileges. She would meet the most important artists and collectors; she would be invited to review for newspapers and magazines.

And let’s not forget the money. If she were working for Garrett, Polly would be able to take taxis when the weather was lousy or the buses crowded; she would never have to descend into the dirty, threatening catacombs of the subway. She would travel business class on planes and visit museums in distant cities, and maybe even abroad. She would see the Prado, the Musée d’Orsay, the Hermitage, the Uffizi; famous private collections here and in Europe would be open to her.

She might as well cultivate her professional connections, Polly thought, because it was clear now that after what had happened Jeanne’s friends would reject her. In fact, judging from that phone call, they already had. Even if she could write the book she had first planned, Ida would not forgive her. Feminist reviewers might praise and admire her, but she would never again be invited to Ida and Cathy’s study group; though she might one day sit on the floor of some other apartment in some other circle of women, with one hand in that of a shadowy lover.

But maybe she wouldn’t care; maybe she wouldn’t write that book anyhow, but one that would please Jacky and Garrett, and become a success.

Against the screen of grainy, drifting snow, Polly saw herself in this alternative future, at a party in an East Side townhouse. She was elegantly dressed in black, and carefully made up; her hair was professionally styled and smoothly blown dry (in this incarnation she would be able to shop at Bendel’s instead of Macy’s, and go to the beauty salon once a week). The people at the party gazed at her with interest; not only because she seemed so cool and confident, but because she was a figure of growing importance and power in the New York world of museums and galleries and artists and dealers and critics. Other expensive-looking men and women stood around her, some of them recognizably famous. Maybe she was involved with one of them, though not seriously. If her career really took off, probably she wouldn’t have the time or energy for a serious relationship: she would either be celibate or have brief affairs with men or women whom she didn’t like or trust very much; who didn’t much like or trust her.

Maybe that was why the face of the central figure in this scene showed no joy or ease: her expression was wary, calculating, and self-conscious. She looked like someone Polly wouldn’t want to meet, let alone become.

The idea that she was about to choose, not only a version of Lorin Jones’s past, but her own unattractive future, made Polly giddy, as if she were standing on the top of a steep hill instead of looking out of an apartment window in a snowstorm. And what made it worse was the blurry knowledge that, once she had chosen, she would forget that there had ever been a choice. From the crossroads at the crest of the hill you can see in every direction; but after you start down one of the paths the view narrows, and other landscapes vanish.

The Polly in the circle of women and the Polly at the party in the townhouse would forget that there had been any alternatives. They would believe that they had taken the only possible route. The book they had written, the life they had chosen, the person they had become, would seem inevitable; as inevitable, say, as her separation from Jim.

But how inevitable had even that been? Suppose she had agreed to go to Denver; probably she would soon have convinced herself — or rather, she would have become the person who believed — that keeping the family together was more important than anything else. She would have gone on loving Jim and believing that he was decent and trustworthy. Maybe she would have found another job in Colorado, or begun to paint in a different way that had nothing to do with Lorin Jones, and she would have taken that for granted too.