by Alison Lurie
Polly’s second and worse headache dated from the following day, when Betsy had moved into the apartment. It was great to have Jeanne in good spirits again, overflowing with affection, and turning out a remarkably inventive series of casseroles and fancy pastries.
Polly ought to be grateful to Betsy for having caused this transformation, but instead she was already sick of her. Unlike Jeanne, who taught full-time and had constant meetings of her department and a range of other scholarly and feminist associations and committees, Betsy was free most of the day. She had to be at the college only two mornings a week; otherwise she was always at home, and always occupying the bathroom: taking long strawberry and apricot bubble baths that left fuzzy red or orange rings in the tub, washing her clothes, or shampooing her fine crimped strawberry-blonde hair, which when wet took on the color of damp sawdust. The rest of the time she was wired up to a Walkman and soft-rock or romantic-classical tapes. Often, presumably unconsciously, she would hum or sing aloud in accompaniment to them. “Yeh-yeh, a-yeh yeh,” Polly could hear her warbling tunelessly as she highlighted in yellow Magic Marker the books and articles recommended by Jeanne, or wrote in her journal or ironed a blouse. Not until late in the afternoon, when Jeanne came home, did Betsy unplug herself.
Also, unlike Polly and Jeanne, Betsy was congenitally untidy. As she wandered about the apartment she left a trail of objects: shoes, sweaters, handbag, comb, bobby pins, coffee cups, spectacles (her pale blue eyes were nearsighted), magazines, and loose pages of the newspaper. As a result, she was always drifting (or, without her glasses, stumbling) from room to room looking for whatever she’d mislaid. “Darling, you’ve simply got to pick up as you go, so you won’t keep losing things,” Jeanne often said to her; but she spoke as one might to a spoiled yet beloved child.
Sensing that she was unwelcome, Betsy had tried hard to win Polly’s favor. For instance, she constantly offered to make lunch for her. Her specialty was tiny tasteless low-calorie open sandwiches: slices of avocado and pimiento arranged around a quartered hard-boiled egg on triangles of toast; or mashed water-pack tuna garnished with olives and watercress on Ry-Krisp. If she had depended on Betsy to feed her, Polly would have starved.
Betsy also volunteered to wash Polly’s sheets and towels in the basement laundry room, and to go to the grocery and the dry cleaner’s; she never left the apartment without asking if there was “something, anything” she could do. “Yeah, sure,” Polly often felt like saying. “You could move out.”
Polly knew she was making Betsy feel unwanted, and that she was probably doing it out of jealousy, because she missed having Jeanne to herself. She even missed sleeping with her; not only or perhaps even mainly in the sexual sense, but in every other sense.
It had been awfully pleasant to share her bed with Jeanne. She didn’t churn about the way Jim used to do, roiling up the bedclothes and protruding his hard elbows and knees into Polly’s territory. Everything about her was soft, easy, enfolding. After the light was out they would lie warmly and loosely together, sorting out the news of the day. And if Polly woke with a start later on, her heart pounding, her muscles tensed — as she sometimes did — she had only to turn toward her friend. Without rousing, Jeanne would put out her arms and gather Polly to her, drawing her gently down into a slower rhythm of breath, into a deeper and sweeter sleep.
But now all this was over. It was Betsy who shared the warmth and softness and intimacy; Betsy who monopolized Jeanne’s attention and sympathy — which she needed because, Jeanne said, she was so young and helpless.
And so demanding. In the evenings, after Betsy had done the dishes (not very well most of the time), she would come to sit by Jeanne on the sofa and give her a greedy, childish hug. After it, she would never quite let go. Instead, as they chatted, she would continue to lean against Jeanne and squeeze her hand or her arm. At intervals she would rub up against her like an overgrown puppy, and kiss and caress her, not minding that Polly was in the room; maybe even enjoying it.
What Polly should do, of course, was to find someone she could kiss and caress; but the more time passed the less likely that seemed. She was finished with men, and the women she’d met through Jeanne either weren’t available or didn’t attract her. Maybe, Polly thought miserably, she would never make love to anyone again. For the rest of her life, nobody but dentists and gynecologists would ever touch the inside of her mouth or of anything else of hers. Instead of having sexual experiences, she would lie helpless in medical offices, with her feet in metal stirrups or a paper bib tied around her neck.
Polly sighed, almost groaned. As soon as she could gather her strength she was going to shove her way back through the mob in the gallery, which ought to be thinning out soon. She was going to go home, take a lot of Actifed, and climb into her bed. Or rather, she thought with irritation, into Stevie’s bed, because hers was now in Stevie’s room with Jeanne and Betsy.
In a couple of weeks, of course, Jeanne and Betsy would be gone and Stevie would be home. Home for good, she wanted to say; but even that wasn’t certain now. Last night while she was on the phone to him in Denver, he had mentioned that his father thought it might be a smart idea for him to stay on in Colorado through next June, so he wouldn’t have to switch schools in the middle of the year. “And how do you feel about that?” Polly had asked, making a serious effort not to scream.
“I d’know,” Stevie said in a polite fade-away voice.
“Well, think about it, okay?” she shouted into the receiver.
“Okay,” Stevie had replied, sounding thousands of miles off; as he was.
“Let me talk to your father, please,” Polly said, the horseflies of rage already beginning to swarm and seethe in her head; and when Jim came on the phone she could not prevent herself from shouting at him. As usual, he remained disgustingly reasonable and calm. Yes, he had mentioned the possibility, he admitted. But he thought that they should let Stevie decide for himself; that would be the best and fairest thing. The best, maybe, Polly thought furiously; but how could it be the fairest, when Jim was there on the spot, always ready with his sensible arguments, his expensive bribes, his — in her mother’s phrase — “normal family life.”
Right now, maybe, Stevie was deciding to stay in Denver forever, and she was hiding in a museum hallway with a bad headache and an incipient throbbing pain in her jaw.
Almost as soon as she had arrived she’d realized that she never should have come. She’d thought it might distract her and cheer her up to see old friends; instead, it had made her feel worse. Everyone she knew seemed overdressed, slightly unreal, and peculiarly solicitous; they asked how she was with an air of expecting bad news. Also, as she might have foreseen, many of them wanted to know how her biography of Lorin Jones was coming along. “Oh, all right, thanks,” she had to lie over and over again.
Then she ran into an old acquaintance who’d heard that Polly was on leave and assumed she was “getting back to” her painting. “Oh no, I gave all that up years ago,” Polly had to say. “I’m doing a book on ... et cetera.
“You’ve given up painting? Oh, dear. But why?”
Polly hadn’t tried to explain it. Instead, she had excused herself to go and hide in the washroom, like some embarrassed teenager.
There, in front of the sinks, she had a lowering but enlightening vision. She glanced into the mirror and realized that the novocaine Dr. Bebb had shot into her jaw had not only left half her face numb, it had paralyzed the muscles on one side, giving her a look of lopsided frozen misery. No wonder so many of her friends had inquired about her health and spirits. She had no way of knowing how long the paralysis would last; but there wasn’t any point in waiting around to find out. As soon as the crowd diminished a bit she’d take off.
From where she sat now Polly could see a section of the main exhibition area, a lofty, smoky, spotlit space crowded with multicolored bodies and objects. Again, as at the Apollo Gallery two months ago, she felt as if she were gazing into an aquarium: th
is time a huge one packed with marine life, with every sort of fish and crustacean and aquatic plant: a crowd of fluttering, many-hued fins and fronds, glittering scales, and waving claws and feelers — everything covered with a smoky froth of stale bubbles. None of these creatures were looking at the pictures and sculpture; rather, they were crawling and swimming around them like crabs and fish circulating unaware among rare corals and sunken treasure.
“Darling.” Jacky Herbert was swimming toward her now, his considerable stomach straining a shiny pale gray satin waistcoat quilted in scales. “I was so hoping I’d see you here.”
“Hi there.”
“How are you?” Jacky bent down to goggle at her. “Heavens, what’s happened to your face?”
“I’ve just been to the dentist. Root canal work.”
“Ooh, horrid. I had that last year, I know exactly how hateful it is. You poor thing.” He subsided onto the bench beside her. “But I’m going to cheer you up. I have such marvelous news: I’ve discovered two new little Jones watercolors we didn’t even know existed.”
“Oh, great.” Polly tried to sound enthusiastic, wondering why she had to try. Maybe she was going into a clinical depression.
“You must come down to the Apollo very very soon, so I can show you the photos. I’m sure you’ll want slides. They’re from about fifty-seven, fifty-eight, my favorite period almost. Though I do adore those strange late paintings too; if only there were more of them! ... How is the book coming, anyhow?”
“Oh, all right.”
“I hear you saw Grace Skelly.” Jacky sucked air like a fish.
“Yeah. She told me how close she and Lorin Jones were, and how awfully happy Lorin was that the Skellys had bought Birth, Copulation, and Death.”
“Well, what did you expect?” His voice bubbled with suppressed mirth. “You don’t imagine Grace wants to go down in history as someone an artist couldn’t stand to have owning one of her paintings? You didn’t contradict her, I hope.”
“Well, no. But I’m certainly not going to publish her version.”
“That’s too bad.” Jacky giggled outright. “You could do yourself some good that way, you know. Grace would be very very grateful; and one thing you have to say for the Skellys, they pay their debts.”
“But her story’s a complete fabrication. You told me so yourself.”
“So what? Nobody else is going to know that. And besides, who can be sure my story was true either? I’d certainly deny it if anyone asked me.” He giggled again, puffing his cheeks up with air and shaking his head solemnly. Then his expression changed. “I hope you’re not for a single moment considering publishing what I told you,” he added in an offhand manner, gazing away from Polly.
“Why not?” she asked. She wasn’t fooled by the tone; she knew that Jacky always seemed most lively and intense when he was relaying unimportant gossip; when he adopted a careless, uninterested style he was deadly serious.
“Surely you’re joking.” Jacky almost yawned, but he also turned and looked hard at her.
“Why should I be joking?”
“Because if you did print what I told you, darling,” he drawled, “the Skellys would never buy another picture from me, or lend any thing to the Museum as long as you worked here; and Bill would probably sue you for libel.”
“You really think he’d do that?”
“I’d say it was a very very strong possibility. And it wouldn’t be the first time; you remember that Art Today case. Of course it was settled out of court finally. Ten thousand and costs to the plaintiff. In nineteen-seventy-two dollars.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair. Don’t be naive, Polly.” Jacky sighed. “But let’s talk about something pleasanter. I understand you hit it off very very well with Kenneth Foster.”
“Yes, he was quite helpful. He told me a lot about Lorin’s early work, and what she was like in college. He admires her as a painter; well of course you know that. But he didn’t care much for her as a person, apparently. He preferred Garrett.” Polly kept her voice neutral, though what she had thought during the interview was: A thirty-five-year-old professor seduces a twenty-year-old student, and leaves his wife for her, and Kenneth Foster blames the student; that’s really taking male bonding pretty far.
“Ah.” Jacky did not comment further.
“One thing he said that amazed me was that he had married Garrett’s first wife after the divorce. And now they’re all good friends, he claims. I found that hard to believe.”
“Oh yes. It’s quite true.”
“Most people I’ve spoken to don’t even know Garrett had a first wife.”
“Yes, well.” Jacky made his fishy moue. “I’m not surprised he didn’t mention it. Garrett prefers to forget whatever doesn’t fit his image, don’t we all. If someone does happen to hear about that marriage, his line is that it was just one of those brief impulsive wartime things. But in fact he and Roz were together for six, seven years.”
“What’s she really like, Mrs. Foster? I only met her once, at some opening.”
“Oh, quite nice. Of course she’s had rather a hard life; she’s not kept her looks too well.”
“Was she pretty once?” Polly asked this doubtfully; she remembered Roz Foster as overweight and raddled-looking.
“Oh, very. I think painters’ wives always are, don’t you? At least to start with. Yards of red hair, and a lovely creamy skin. Garrett always went for the beauties too, even though he wasn’t a painter. He thought he deserved them. The way Paolo put it once, Garrett thought he was God’s gift to women, and he wanted to play Santa Claus.” Jacky giggled.
Polly laughed too, but uneasily; it crossed her headache to wonder if Garrett Jones had given Jacky or someone Jacky knew a skewed version of her visit to Wellfleet.
“Lorin wasn’t the first student Garrett had fooled around with, of course,” Jacky went on. “But she was the first one he really fell for, and he got careless.”
“And so his first wife found out?”
“Eventually. And Roz was miserable. She really loved him, from what I hear. She couldn’t eat or sleep, she started to drink too much, smashed up the car, threatened to kill herself. Garrett was at his wit’s end; he was seriously scared. He didn’t want a suicide on his conscience; who would?”
“So then?”
“Well. What finally happened was that Kenneth Foster took Roz off his hands, so he could marry Lorin, and Garrett made Kenneth famous. He’s like the Skellys: he pays his debts.” Jacky giggled.
“You really mean —” Polly looked at the art dealer with something between doubt and disgust.
“Please, don’t get me wrong.” Jacky waved his flippers. “I’m not trying to say that Foster isn’t a marvelous painter. But without Garrett he might not have the sort of international reputation, or command the prices, that he does now. And has for years, of course. Anyhow, that’s all ancient history. And really the marriage has been surprisingly successful. There was a sticky patch at one time, but Roz has been in AA for twenty years now, and they’re a very very devoted couple today.” Jacky blew out a sigh. “None of your concern, thank heavens. I mean,” he drawled, “nothing you’d ever want to put in your book.”
“No,” she agreed.
“That’s just as well. Anyhow, you must be nearly ready to start writing now.”
“Yes; pretty soon,” Polly said. “I have an interview upstate to do first, and then I’m going down to Key West to look for Hugh Cameron.”
“You think he’s still there?”
“I know he’s there. At least he was three months ago. He hasn’t answered my last letter, but it hasn’t been returned either, so I figure he’s still around.” Polly didn’t mention that Hugh Cameron’s only response so far had been one line scrawled in felt-tipped pen across the bottom of her original inquiry: Sorry —haven’t time to answer your questions. “Anyhow, I want to see the place, look at the house where Lorin lived, try to talk to people who mig
ht have known her.”
“Ah. Of course.” Jacky took a gulp of the smoky gallery air and let it out with a slow wheeze. “You know, while you’re down there —” he added in a studiedly lazy voice that at once alerted Polly.
“Yes?”
“You might poke about a bit; see if you can spot any more paintings.”
“Oh, I will.”
“It would be especially nice if you turned up one or two of the late graffiti ones. There’s a lot of interest in those, you know.”
“I know,” Polly agreed. Lorin Jones’s final Key West paintings were remarkable for their inclusion of words or sometimes whole phrases in the manner of Dine or Kitaj. The two that had been included in “Three American Women” had attracted much attention.
“If you manage to get into Cameron’s place you might see something,” Jacky suggested.
“Well, I’ll look. But didn’t Lennie take everything away after Lorin died?”
“Ye-es. Supposedly. But it wasn’t all that much, if you think about it. I’ve asked myself sometimes, why do we have so few Joneses between sixty-four and sixty-nine? Far far fewer, for example, than in the previous five years. And then there are the two large canvases that didn’t sell at her last show. They seem to have vanished completely. Of course it’s always possible that she destroyed them afterward, or painted them over.”
“But you think Cameron might still have them.”
“I’ve always thought it was very very likely. From what I’ve heard, it would be like him to have forgotten to give Lennie one or two things. Perhaps out of carelessness, perhaps out of sentimentality. Or perhaps just out of natural orneriness; who can say?”
“Maybe it was greed,” Polly suggested. “He could have wanted the money.”
“No.” Jacky shook his large head slowly. “Not that, probably, because the paintings weren’t worth much at the time. And then maybe Lennie didn’t look too hard either. Nobody’s going to knock himself out over pictures that’d sell for maybe a few hundred, even if you could find a buyer. Which you most likely couldn’t, back then.”