by Alison Lurie
“Well... all right.”
“To your book,” Garrett proposed presently, leaning toward Polly from the other end of the fat chintz-covered sofa to clink balloon glasses.
“Thank you.” Unused to brandy, she gulped; the fumes swirled up her nose, prompting a half-suppressed sneeze. “Could I ask you a few more questions?”
“Of course, anything you like. But no tape recorders, please. They always remind me of Watergate.” He laughed and leaned back; broad, ruddy-complexioned, confident.
And so they should, maybe, Polly thought. “All right.” She took out a notebook, then set her open bag down behind the arm of the sofa, and turned on the machine inside, feeling guilty but determined. I have to do this, she excused herself silently; I have to be accurate.
“When I had lunch with you and your wife in New York, you said that Lorin’s parents weren’t much alike,” she began, opening the notebook and trying to read her list of questions in the fluttering firelight.
“That’s putting it mildly.” Garrett laughed again. “I’ve sometimes wondered if that was why Lorin was so high-strung. It’s always been my theory, you know, that when parents are very different temperamentally their children are in trouble, because they’re composed of discordant elements. There’s a kind of genetic static produced.”
“It could be.” Is that what happened with me? Polly wondered: half conscientious practical mother, half erratic emotional father? “And how did Lorin’s parents get on together?”
“Oh, well enough, I think. Celia was devoted to her husband. And Dan loved her, in his own way. He never really appreciated what he had, though. Didn’t really see much difference between Celia and that noisy peroxide blonde he married after she died, with her fake Matisse prints, you know, what’s-her-name.”
“Marcia.”
“That’s right. You’ve met her?”
“I interviewed her.”
“Well, then you know.” Garrett grinned confidentially.
“You didn’t care for Marcia Zimmern?”
“Christ, no!” The brandy was beginning to loosen his tongue. “Did you?”
“Not very much,” Polly admitted, similarly affected.
“I couldn’t stand the woman. And of course it was far worse for Laura. She never got over her father’s marrying someone like that less than a year after Celia died. Never forgave him, really.”
And why should she? Polly thought. “Tell me, though. In what way was Celia Zimmern unlike her husband?”
“In every way. They were completely different types. For one thing, I don’t think Celia gave a damn for either pleasure or power. Couldn’t focus on them; that wasn’t where her interests lay.” Garrett considered, rotating his glass. “What mattered to her was her family, Laura and Dan. And after that art, books, music, nature.”
“Mm.”
“I’m sure it was from Celia that Laura got her sensitivity to the natural world. And her love of paintings — Celia started taking her to galleries and museums almost as soon as she could walk. Her shyness, too; but in Laura it was exaggerated, into an almost pathological fear of unfamiliar people and situations.”
“Pathological?” Polly frowned.
“Well, yes. I think it was. It was almost impossible, for instance, to persuade Laura to meet people in the art world who could help her. I kept explaining that once someone came to know her and like her, they’d be more apt to look at her paintings seriously. She’d always say, ‘What if they get to know me and hate me?’ ”
“I see,” said Polly, though to her this seemed a sensible question.
“I just couldn’t convince her, no matter how important the occasion.” Garrett shook his head. “Shy and stubborn: it was an exhausting combination. The stubbornness she got from her father, along with his energy; her mother was always gentle and yielding. And Laura had his looks, of course. Celia was pretty too — beautiful, but in a much more subtle way. You didn’t notice at first how lovely she was. Some people never realized it.”
“I know, I’ve seen pictures,” said Polly, not wanting to be classed with these ignorant people.
“She was a wonderful woman.” Garrett sighed. “Y’know, I was out there with Laura one day, the spring after we were married, and Celia was showing me around the garden. She was a very gifted gardener. Not professionally, of course, like Abigail: the place was always untidy, in process, and she didn’t go in for nursery plants, except for roses.”
“Roses,” Polly repeated.
“Yes; Celia had wonderful old roses. Some varieties I’ve never seen before or since. But mainly she liked wildflowers. She used to go out into the woods and fields with a basket and dig up clumps of weeds. Her beds were full of trillium and wild hyacinth and narcissus and different sorts of long grasses.”
“Mm.”
“Well, you know, I looked at her, that damp spring day, as she knelt there with the trowel in her hand, transplanting a clump of white violets, and the idea came to me that it was Celia I should have married, not Laura. She was only six or seven years older than me — if she’d been a few years younger she would have been perfect. She had a first-rate mind, but she wasn’t pushy or argumentative like most educated women.”
“Really,” said Polly, wondering if this classic antifeminist statement was being taped. “So you think Celia would have suited you better than her daughter.”
“In many ways, yes. For one thing, she was a genuine intellectual. She could talk intelligently about anything: art, aesthetics, psychology, philosophy, literature ... Compared to her, Laura was only a beautiful, willful child.” Garrett shook his head slowly. “But of course one always falls most passionately in love with children — or with the child in the other person. Isn’t that so?”
“I guess it can happen,” said Polly, who had never had this experience. She dropped her hand over the arm of the sofa to make sure her bag was open and the tape recorder exposed. “And did you ever tell Celia Zimmern how you felt about her?”
“No; how could I? But I think she knew. I’m sure she could sense that there was a sympathy between us. There’s a kind of vibration one feels sometimes in the presence of a really sensitive woman. I’ve experienced it often. In Paris, just after the war ...
Before Polly could head him off, Garrett sailed into another sea of anecdote, this time romantic rather than professional in nature. Now, however, he didn’t drop names, but rather held them just out of reach (“A very beautiful woman, and a gifted poetess — you’ve read her work, I’m sure, she’s in all the anthologies...,” etc.). As he reminisced, leaning back easily into the flowered cushions, with his fire-sparked brandy glass in one hand and the other arm resting along the top of the sofa, the creases in his face were softened by the rosy light and his blunt, handsome features warmed and enlivened. For the first time he strongly resembled his old photographs.
“You’ve had a lot of experiences,” Polly said when Garrett paused to refill their glasses, hoping to change the subject. “But I wanted to ask —”
“Yes, it’s been a fascinating life,” he interrupted. “I’ve thought sometimes of writing my memoirs. I certainly have enough material. My publisher’s suggested it, too.” He gave a sigh. “But I don’t know. It means so damned much work, going through all my old letters and papers, writing to people I’ve lost track of completely, getting all the names and dates and places right.”
He sighed again, then grinned at Polly, his pale blue eyes sparkling. “Of course, if I could find an assistant — a collaborator, I should say. Somebody who knew the art world, and had a gift for research. That might help get me started, don’t you think?”
“Sure, why not?”
“It would have to be someone young and energetic, of course. Someone like you —” Garrett leaned over and put his strong knobbed hand on Polly’s, patting it in a fatherly manner. “I think we could work together, y’know? Believe there’s a sympathy between us already. A natural understanding.”
“Than
k you,” Polly said, smiling nervously; more than ever, she felt herself to be in bad faith.
“So how about it?” Garrett asked. “Like to help me?”
“It’d be an interesting project,” she temporized, wondering if he could be serious. “But when I finish my book next year I’ve got to go back to work, or I’ll starve.” She gave an awkward light laugh and eased her hand from under Garrett’s.
“Don’t worry about that,” he assured her; his hand now rested on Polly’s tan cord slacks. “If I agreed to take on the project I’d get a fairly decent advance from my publisher. And I don’t see why we couldn’t manage a nice little grant for you.” He gave her thigh a friendly squeeze. “I say ‘little,’ but it’d be a good deal more than you earn now, I can assure you.
“The Museum would never hold my job for me that long,” Polly said, moving her leg away, but unobtrusively. It was late at night, and Garrett was half-addled; she didn’t feel all that sober herself.
“Sure they would; I’d see to it. You know your boss is a good friend of mine.” He grinned again, then stooped to poke up the fire, stirring smoke into the room. “Think about it, all right?”
“All right,” Polly agreed, wondering if she should. A year — two years, it might well be — working for and with Garrett Jones, what would that be like? A week ago, even a few hours ago, she wouldn’t have considered it. But now the idea seemed vaguely possible. She no longer feared or distrusted Garrett — she almost liked him. And after all, he had known everyone in the art world for the last fifty years; his book could be really interesting.
“Good.” He smiled and closed his eyes.
Polly yawned, realizing how tired she was, then gathered her resources; she mustn’t let Garrett fall asleep yet. “Tell me a little more about the time you and Lorin spent here,” she said. “Were you usually in Wellfleet all summer?”
Garrett opened his eyes and shook his head as if to clear it: his gray forelock flopped. “Aw, no. Not me. I was reviewing regularly for the paper then. Had to be in New York for openings right through June. And even when there wasn’t anything on in town there’d be shows in other parts of the country. I was on a train or a plane half the time.”
“So Lorin was here more than you were?”
“Oh, yes. Much more. You see, already back then she was turning against New York, all that scene. Even before I had the house insulated and the furnace put in, she started coming up in May and staying on later and later into October. It was crazy, because it can get damn cold this time of year. The wind used to really howl through the walls.”
“How did she manage, then?”
“Wasn’t easy. She’d try to keep warm by turning on the kitchen stove and painting in there, or dragging an old electric heater around from room to room after her. You should’ve seen my electric bills. And even then, she sometimes had to wear gloves to work.”
“Really.” Polly saw it in her mind: the bare trees tossing outside the studio window; Lorin in paint-spattered jeans and sweater and black leather gloves, standing between her easel and the dull orange glow of an old-fashioned coil heater.
“Then, once we had the furnace, she started coming up here all year round.”
“For weekends, you mean?”
“More than that. Weeks at a time. Didn’t matter what was going on in New York, after a while. Some friend could be having an opening, or I might have bought tickets for a play, but Laura would just take off. Eventually she got to dislike the city so much she spent most of the year here.”
“All by herself?”
“Well, yes. Usually. Of course I came up when I could ... Garrett blinked, whether from guilt or grief or mere sleepiness Polly could not guess. “I didn’t come as often as l should’ve. I know that now.” He nodded his large, handsome old head slowly. “But it was an awful long trip when you couldn’t afford the plane, and I had so damn much traveling to do already.”
“Lorin didn’t go with you on your trips?”
“Not after the first year or so. There were a couple of disastrous times... I would’ve liked to have her along, though; it was lonely for me on the road.”
“It must have been lonely for her here, too,” Polly said, struggling with another impulse toward sympathy.
“She didn’t seem to feel it. People didn’t mean that much to Laura, you know. ... Even I didn’t mean all that much to her, as it turned out.” His voice had become shaky.
“How do you know that?”
“A man always knows, if he’s not a fool. And so does a woman, I think.” Garrett gave Polly a meaningful look. “Right?”
“I suppose so,” Polly admitted. I was a fool then, she thought, taking another gulp of brandy. Both of us were fools, trusting people to whom in the end we didn’t mean all that much. “Still, she married you,” she said, trying to console him. “She must have cared once.”
“Oh, I admit that.” His smile was wry. “But if she’d continued to care, she would’ve stayed in New York with me. Isn’t that right?”
“I suppose so.” Polly remembered her husband’s betrayal and felt another rush of sympathy for Garrett. “But did you ever say you needed her — did you tell her that?”
“Hell, sure I did. I explained to Laura a hundred times that I had to be in the city for my job, and I wanted her with me. It was like talking to a blank canvas. Sometimes she seemed to be listening, but she didn’t really hear.”
Exactly, Polly thought, recalling scenes from her own past.
“So do you think it was a mistake, your marriage?” she asked.
Garrett did not answer at once; he gave a long, heavy sigh and refilled his glass. “Sometimes I think both my first two marriages were mistakes,” he said at last. “I couldn’t make either of my wives happy, and they couldn’t make me happy. They couldn’t give me what I needed.”
“And what was that?” Polly asked. “I mean, for instance.”
“Well. For instance, I wanted children very much. But my first wife couldn’t have a baby, and Laura wouldn’t.”
“She didn’t want children?”
“No. I think she was afraid of it, the whole process, you know.” Garrett shook his head slowly. “Now I’m what our pediatrician calls an elderly father.” He smiled wryly. “But as far as I’m concerned, that’s better than never being a father at all, you know? People without kids, they don’t really care what happens to the world after they’re gone, unless they’re saints. They’re only interested in their own lives, isn’t that right?”
“I know what you mean,” Polly said.
“Of course you understand; you have children.” Garrett swayed toward Polly and put his hand on hers again. This time she did not remove it.
“I have a son,” she said, wondering where Stevie was at this moment and what he was doing.
“Yes, you told me.” Garrett gazed past Polly’s shoulder into the dim cream-flowered wallpaper. Then, slowly, he turned to her again, first smiling, then staring. “You know something,” he said suddenly in a different, stronger voice. “You kind of remind me of her. Laura.”
“Really?” Polly gasped as if the smoldering logs had exploded into a burning blaze of fireworks.
“I don’t know why.” He shook his head. “You don’t look much like her. There’s something, though. Maybe it’s the voice.”
“You think I sound like her?” Polly said, listening to the words as they issued from her lips in Lorin’s ghostly tones. She had never heard Lorin speak, and never would; as far as she knew, Lorin’s voice was never recorded.
“Mm, yes, a little.”
Polly stared at Lorin Jones’s husband. Suppose it was true — who had a better right to say so? And after all, hadn’t Polly suspected this all along? Hadn’t she noted the overlapping of their lives, marveled that both were only children, and Jewish; that they shared a county, a city, a profession? And even, almost, a name; Polly remembered her shiver of recognition when she heard that in childhood Lorin was known as Lolly.
Here, in Lorin’s old haunts, they had drawn even closer together. All day she had walked in Lorin’s footsteps; and sometimes, surely, Lorin’s ghost had walked beside her.
“This was her home; this was the place she loved,” Polly announced, sure of it now.
“That’s right.” Garrett sighed. “That’s why, when I realized she was determined to spend most of the year here, I began doing everything I could to find a teaching job nearby, so I could be with her more of the time.”
“But you didn’t find one.”
“No; I found one, eventually. Only it was too late. I came dashing up here to tell her about it, she was gone. Hadn’t even left me a note.”
“That’s hard,” Polly exclaimed.
“It about killed me, at the time. If you want to know.” Garrett nodded slowly twice. “You see, I’d had no idea. ... Laura’d never complained, never said anything. Only, more and more, she started avoiding me. And she wouldn’t talk to me about her work any longer. I guess I should have known; but she was always such a solitary person, and it came on so gradually. That last year or so —” He stared into the middle distance. “I knew she’d hit some kind of a serious block, but she wouldn’t let me help her, or make any suggestions about her painting. Finally, she wouldn’t even show me what she was working on. After dinner she’d go up to her studio and shut herself in. If I knocked on the door she wouldn’t answer. Sometimes she’d stay in there for hours, till it was past midnight or later, and I gave up waiting for her and went to bed.”
“I’m sorry,” Polly said; yet she seemed to know intuitively why Lorin Jones had wanted to escape from Garrett and his intrusive sympathy. Over the centuries, always, the artist has had to flee the critic. And yet, how awful for both of them! She imagined the long silent evenings in this house; Lorin shut in her studio, staring at an empty canvas; Garrett pacing the other rooms.
“I never thought... I should have given her more space, maybe. Or I should’ve tried harder to talk to her. Christ knows she was unhappy. Must have been. She must have hated her life here. Hated me too, probably till she died.”