Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

Now, soon, the biography of Lorin Jones she would write, the life she would choose, would seem the only possible one. She would become an angry, depressed lesbian feminist or a selfish, successful career woman. And Lorin Jones would be established in the public mind as an innocent victim or as a neurotic, unfaithful, ungrateful genius; but it would all be lies.

What she’d really like to do, Polly thought, resting her elbows on the crossbar of the window and watching the flakes of snow, like fine gritty ash, whirl and eddy and descend between the walls, was to write a book that would tell the whole confusing contradictory truth. She’d like to put in all the different stories she’d collected, and — as her father used to say — let the devil take the hindmost.

Yes, but who would be the hindmost? Polly Alter would be that; her biography would be called unfocused and inconsistent, and would enrage everyone who was important to her.

The heavy, damp depression that had been hanging above her head all day descended on Polly like a dirty, sopping-wet blanket. She wished to God she had never heard of Lorin Jones, who was responsible for everything that had gone wrong in her life over the last year, right down to what had happened with Mac.

It’s too late to brood about that, she told herself. You’d better make up your mind and get started on whichever goddamn book it’s going to be; the grant money will run out by May. But she felt too sodden and sluggish to move. Outside the window, the ash fell.

After what could have been one minute or twenty, the buzzer from the downstairs door sounded. Slowly, Polly moved away from the window and the darkening, sliding snow. Jeanne, she thought foolishly; and then, more reasonably, that Stevie must have forgotten his keys. But it was only Federal Express announcing a delivery. “I’ll come down,” she called into the intercom, thankful for any distraction.

The package turned out to be bulky and, she was surprised to see as she carried it back up in the elevator, from her father. It must be a present for Stevie. Not the check Carl Alter had said he would send, but almost on time for once in a lifetime. But when she opened the box on the kitchen table, the first thing that fell out was an envelope with her son’s name on it. Both a check and a gift, then: extravagant and unnecessary. As usual the wrapping paper was far too childish for Stevie; it was also inappropriate for a boy: cutesy little girls carrying miniature Christmas trees, for shit’s sake.

She looked at the card, which had a bird on it, a white peace pigeon — no, a dove, probably; religiously inappropriate, too. “Happy New Year to Polly.”

For God’s sake, she thought; it must be twenty years since her father had sent her anything. She pulled the paper apart and drew out a box marked — holy cow! — ETCH A SKETCH. The same damn Etch A Sketch she had longed for when she was eight years old, that her father had so often promised and never brought her. Polly began to laugh; then, surprising herself, to cry.

Weeping foolishly, she took her father’s check into Stevie’s room, so that he’d find it there when he came home for supper. The sight of his books and posters, now restored to the shelves and walls, restored Polly slightly. Whatever happened to her, Stevie was back in New York.

Yes, but what would he find here? she thought, looking up at an old wildlife poster that hadn’t yet been replaced with something more contemporary, maybe because it hung high in a corner. It was a blown-up color photo of a raccoon that Polly had bought many years ago because of the animal’s resemblance to Stevie as he had been at four or five: the round dark eyes set in a ring of almost transparent darker skin, the pointed face and clever, inquiring expression. He still looked like that, a little.

The junior high school Stevie was about to return to was, according to report, worse than ever this year. Both his best friends had now left it: one for Ethical Culture and the other for Exeter. But Polly couldn’t afford to send Stevie to private school; he would have to stay where he was, in crowded, boring classes, a raccoon child threatened or attacked by teenage pit bulls. After a while, and not such a long while either, he might want to go back to the wilderness, to Denver; to Jim’s so-called normal American family, which would soon be even more “normal.”

But suppose she were to write the book Garrett wanted, Polly thought, and become his assistant. Then she could afford to send Stevie to a private school, and soon he would be one of those sophisticated preppie kids you see around Manhattan. With an elegant mother who wasn’t home very much, because in her new super-career Polly would often be out of town or at parties and openings. She would have to hire a housekeeper, so that when Stevie came home from his snobby school there would be someone here to make his supper.

These visions, and the idea that she now had to choose between not only her own two unattractive futures, but also Stevie’s, terrified and enraged Polly. In spite of the warmth of the apartment she was overcome with a kind of feverish shiver, as if she were coming down with the flu.

But was there any other alternative? As she stared up at the poster, its background altered in her imagination. The leaves of the tree became larger and shinier; brilliant tropical flowers appeared among them. The raccoon turned into Stevie at his present age; but barefoot, tanned, and dressed in a pair of cut-offs and a T-shirt, straddling the branch. Below him, on the deck of a house in Key West, Polly herself (equally tanned) sat at a picnic table typing. She wore her old jeans and a faded shirt; her hair was tied back with a piece of red yarn, and she was smiling. It was the real story that she was typing, the whole truth about Lorin Jones, with all the contradictions left in. While she watched, Mac came out of the house, carrying two cans of beer.

That can’t happen, Polly thought, it would be crazy, you know you can’t trust him. It would be crazy to trust somebody like Mac when every man she’d ever known, beginning with her father, had hurt her and abandoned her.

But Carl Alter had said that she’d abandoned him, that she hadn’t wanted to see him. He really believed that. Jim probably believed that too. For them she was like Lorin, a damaging, rejecting woman. And now it was Mac who thought she didn’t want to see him again, because she had more or less told him so. He hadn’t called in over a week. Maybe he had given up on her.

The way my father gave up on me, Polly thought.

The interviews are finished now; I could go to Key West. I could take a chance, I could do it, she thought, taking in a breath and holding it. But it wouldn’t be easy. She sighed, imagining all the anger and trouble she would bring on herself: the scenes, the explanations, the packing; trying to rent the apartment (Jeanne and Betsy would want it, but could they afford it?), telling Jim and her mother and the people at the Museum and everyone else she knew. All of them would think Polly had freaked out. Leaving a promising career, running off to Florida just like Lorin Jones, and with the same man — wasn’t that really kind of weird and sick? everyone would say. She starts writing about Jones, and ends up living Jones’s life, for God’s sake! They wouldn’t expect it to work out, and maybe they would be right.

But if she didn’t try it, how could she ever be sure?

“And when you finish your book, what then?” her friends would ask.

Well, she would say, I’ll just have to see. Maybe Stevie and I will come back to New York. Or maybe we’ll stay in Key West for a while, living on the rent of this apartment and Stevie’s child support. Maybe I’ll get a job in a local gallery or something.