by Alison Lurie
“Sure they did.” Mac sat down cowboy-style on a battered bentwood chair. “As long as she could keep it coming, and they could skim their thirty percent.”
“That’s not —” Polly began, and stopped. Why should she defend Jacky or Paolo? She didn’t owe them, or any man, anything. Besides, that wasn’t what she should be doing here; she should be listening, collecting data. “So what’s your version?”
“You really want to know?” Mac tipped his chair away and gave her a hard look over the curved back.
“Yes, of course.”
“All right.” He lowered the chair. “I’ll tell you anything you like. Might as well set the record straight.”
“Okay,” Polly said. “Thanks,” she added ungraciously.
“Right.” The percolator had stopped bubbling; Mac squatted beside it. “Milk and sugar?”
“Just milk, please.”
“So what would you like to know?” he asked, handing her a chipped mug mockingly stenciled in red: KEY WEST—I WENT ALL THE WAY.
“Oh, anything. Everything,” Polly said, forcing a casual, friendly tone and cursing herself for not bringing her tape recorder; she was really fucked up today.
“I suppose Garrett’s story is that I moved in on Lorin, his sweet innocent little genius, and lured her away from him.”
“Something like that, yes,” she agreed.
“I bet he didn’t tell you that while she was living alone for months at a time in that freezing-cold farmhouse in Wellfleet, he was chasing around the country, sleeping with any broad who would have him.” Mac checked Polly’s expression and added, “I’m not inventing that. Everybody in the Arts Center knew it. When he was in P’town he was always trying to put the make on the female Fine Arts fellows.”
“Yeah?” Polly asked, expressing in her tone a doubt she didn’t feel.
“Yeah. He had a standard MO. He’d tell the woman how sensitive and sympathetic she was, and then he’d say how much he could do for her career, if he felt like it. You don’t believe me, you can ask anyone who was around then.”
“Okay, maybe I will,” she said coolly, thinking that Garrett hadn’t changed his approach in twenty years. “You knew him yourself?”
“Oh, sure. He was at half our parties and art openings, bragging about all the famous painters he’d met and the important pictures he owned.”
“Mm,” Polly murmured. Mac was telling the truth, she thought; it was the Garrett Jones she knew, seen through dark glasses.
“He talked a lot about Lorin too. He used to lay it on everybody what a great artist his wife was.”
“I think he loved her, you know,” she protested.
“If you want to call that love.” Mac made a face. “I could tell right away he didn’t have any real feeling for her; she was just part of his collection.”
“And did Lorin Jones know about her husband’s affairs?”
“Well, I think she had an idea. But that wasn’t the main problem. What really drove her crazy was the way he interfered with her work.”
“How do you mean?” Polly set her coffee cup on a roll of roofing paper and leaned forward.
“Garrett had all these theories, see. He was always making comments on Lorin’s paintings and telling her what other artists they reminded him of and how they fit into the developing contemporary tradition. He wanted to look at what she’d done every day. It got so heavy Lorin couldn’t stand being with him in New York, and she spent as much time as she could on the Cape. But of course Garrett came up to Wellfleet now and then, and whenever he was there he kept after her. She had to lock herself in her studio sometimes, she told me, to stop his voice going on and on. And even then he’d come and rattle the handle and talk through the door at her, y’know?”
“I can imagine.” But Polly didn’t need to imagine; she had a vivid memory of Garrett’s rattling the door of Lorin’s studio. “So when you turned up, she was about ready to leave him.”
“Yeah, I guess so. She wanted to get off the Cape too; she’d decided that landscape was about used up for her. I used to kid her afterward that she only came away with me so she could see Nebraska. Something I’d said once about the light out where I come from had gotten her interested. Well, I was on my way there, and I had a van big enough to haul her equipment. It was fate.” He laughed, not easily.
“So when you left the Cape you went to Nebraska.”
“Right. We took it slowly, camping out and sleeping in the van. It was a pretty good time. But then when we got there the place didn’t work for her. Something about the colors was wrong. ... Anyhow, after a few weeks we packed up again and drove back through Canada to the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where I had a summer residency. But Lorin didn’t like that landscape either.”
“Why not?” Polly asked. Spoiled, restless, picky, she thought.
“I don’t know exactly. She said the White Mountains were too green. But anyhow, that fall we went west again, to Iowa City; I’d got a writing fellowship there for the year.”
“You had a fellowship in Provincetown, and then at the MacDowell Colony, and then at Iowa?”
“Uh-huh.” Mac half grinned. “I was hot back then.”
“And how did Lorin like Iowa?”
“Not too well.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t so bad for a while, but then the winter came, and she caught bronchitis and couldn’t shake it. And the art faculty drove her up the wall.”
“Really.”
“See, they were uneasy with her because she was a New York painter, and most of them were still into regionalism. But we got through the winter. Then a couple we’d met at MacDowell who had a house down on Seminary Street lent it to us for the off-season, so we came to Key West. And Lorin really dug it, even though it was summer, when it can get pretty damn hot here.”
“She didn’t mind the heat?”
“Not all that much. Up north she used to get sick a lot. And she was always cold in the winter, maybe because she was so thin. In bed in Iowa City her feet were like two beautiful icicles.” He laughed.
“You were a lot younger than she was,” Polly said, looking at Mac. He must have been beautiful then, she thought. Hell, he was beautiful now.
“Yes. Eleven years. But I never thought of her as an older woman, you know. Now with Varnie Freeplatzer, my friend up on Sugarloaf Key, the age difference is definitely part of the relationship. For her JFK and Martin Luther King and Woodstock are just a chapter in a history text, know what I mean?”
“Mm.” Polly nodded. “But it was different with Lorin?”
“Oh, yeah. I never felt she was any age really, or knew what age other people were. Maybe that’s why she made the mistake of marrying a pompous old fart like Garrett Jones.” He grinned.
“You’re awfully down on Garrett,” Polly said, feeling her own favorable opinion of him leaking away fast. “But you know, everybody says he was good to Lorin. And very generous.”
“Sure, as long as she belonged to him. Afterward — well, he made damn certain she didn’t get a dime in the divorce settlement.”
“She didn’t get anything?” Garrett lied to me, she thought, at least by omission.
“No. It didn’t even occur to her that she might ask for alimony until her father suggested it.”
“Dan Zimmern suggested that?”
“Right. He wanted her to hire a lawyer and sue, cite Garrett for adultery if he got nasty. But Lorin wouldn’t even discuss the possibility.”
“Really,” Polly said. “But she already had the money from their Cape Cod account, didn’t she?” she added, remembering.
“Yeah. Five thousand dollars. Of course, that was more back then; but it didn’t last forever. And then she sold some work from her show the next year, her last show.”
“And then what happened? Why did she stop exhibiting?
Mac paused, looking away and then back at Polly. “You’ve got to understand, Lorin wasn’t like other people,” he said finally. “She had a real
close relationship to her paintings; she didn’t want to be separated from them. And it got stronger as time went on. She thought of them as part of her; her children, maybe.”
“Her children?”
“Yeah. What I think is, a woman usually has this maternal instinct, and if she doesn’t have kids it can settle on anything. And then she can’t let go. With one of my aunts, it’s her furniture: she’s nearly ninety, but she’s still polishing and dusting, you know?”
“Mm.”
“Well, Lorin was like that. Whenever she had to part with a picture it made her really miserable. Most of the time I knew her she was in mourning for the paintings she’d sold when she was younger. It seemed crazy to me at first, but it’s logical really. If you’re a writer you can keep your work forever; all you need is a copy machine. But suppose you could only make one example of a poem or a story, and if you wanted to eat you’d have to sell it to some rich bastard and maybe never see it again. Shit, it’d be like death, right?”
“Right,” Polly agreed.
“After I thought of that, I could understand how she felt. ... Excuse me.” At the other end of the house, where a khaki sleeping bag was laid on the floor, a phone had begun to ring.
As Mac crouched beside it, swearing into the receiver, Polly opened her canvas tote and scribbled on the back of a deposit slip: “Nebraska — May 63 — wrong colors. MacDowell — summer — too green. Iowa 63-4.”
“Sorry,” he said, as she put it away. “That asshole still can’t confirm delivery. I’ve got to hang around here awhile longer.”
“That’s okay.” Silently, Polly thanked the unknown asshole, whose delay would allow her further questions and — yes, all right — more time with Mac.
“Like some more coffee?”
“No, thanks.” Polly drank the last lukewarm inch, then leaned to set it on the roll of tarpaper. Probably thinking she was handing the cup to him, Mac also reached out; their hands collided, and an invisible charge passed between them. Oh God, I still want him, she thought.
“Tell me about those two paintings you still have,” she said, her voice uneven.
“Tell you what about them?” Mac asked, also unevenly.
“Well, for instance, how you happened to keep them. We all thought they were lost, you know. Lennie said he’d taken everything of Lorin’s away with him.”
“Yes; but those pictures weren’t Lorin’s. She gave them to me.” Mac met Polly’s stare; in this light, his eyes were more green than blue.
“But you never said you had the paintings. If I’d known, I could have borrowed them for the show.”
“Maybe. Only I didn’t feel like lending them.”
“That’s pretty selfish,” Polly said, losing her cool. “I mean,” she explained, “when you think how many people would really like to see —”
“Sure, they might. But the way I figured it, if I shipped those canvases to New York, I’d probably never get them back. A couple of years before she died, Lorin sent the Apollo Gallery two watercolors she didn’t care about anymore. When they were sold she didn’t get a cent; her dealer said she still owed him money.”
“I see.” And that’s something Jacky didn’t tell me, Polly thought. “So what did Lorin live on after she stopped selling paintings?”
Mac grinned. “She lived on me, mostly.” He checked Polly’s expression, shrugged. “It was what she was used to, see, having a man support her. That was what men did, in her experience. First her father, and then Garrett, and then she assumed it was my turn. She never worked a day in her life at anything but her art.”
A parasite, an exploiter of men, Polly thought. “And you accepted that,” she said.
“Sure; I went along with it at the time. I was just a kid; and I was in love. And I already had some idea how good Lorin’s work was. I figured that once her money ran out she’d sell some more pictures; I hadn’t realized yet how she felt about that.”
“I suppose it was fair,” Polly said. “You lived on her, and then she lived on you.”
“The hell I did!” Mac said, angry for the first time since Polly had met him. “I didn’t take Lorin’s money; I wasn’t brought up like that. I got a job here as a gardener, and I started applying to colleges for teaching gigs.”
“And Lorin? What did she do?” Polly asked, suppressing an impulse to apologize.
“She stayed home and painted.” Mac shrugged.
She painted, while you dug and weeded, and I typed catalogues, Polly thought, her sympathy veering further around toward Mac. “And how long did that go on?”
“I don’t know. Six months, nine months. Then I landed a job up in northern New York State as a visiting lecturer.”
“And did Lorin go with you?”
“No. She figured it was too much trouble to move all her equipment back and forth, and it was only for eight months anyhow.” Mac shook his head slowly. “But it was a bad eight months for me.”
Selfish and cold and inconsiderate, Polly thought. It was going to be really easy to write a negative account of Lorin Jones’s life; much easier than writing a positive one.
“So then you came back to Key West and worked as a gardener again?”
“Yes; and anything else that came along. Carpentry, roofing, repairs, painting houses.”
“And you didn’t mind that,” Polly said, trying not to make it a question.
“It was okay. The trouble was, I didn’t get much writing done. A lot of days I was just too wiped out after work; especially in the summers.” Mac grinned, narrowing his green eyes.
“I see.” Lorin ruined your life as an artist, just as she ruined mine, Polly thought. But wasn’t Mac leaving something out? “I expect Lorin did the cooking and cleaning though, didn’t she?” she added, trying to keep her tone neutral. “Or don’t you consider that work?”
“Don’t give me that feminist glare.” Mac grinned. “Sure, it’s work. Hard work. I should know, because Lorin wouldn’t cook or clean. I found that out as soon as we got to Iowa. She claimed she didn’t know how, and somehow she couldn’t learn. Of course she was brought up with live-in help, and Garrett always had a daily cleaning lady for her. When she was alone on the Cape she just piled the dishes in the sink and waited for the woman to come. She ate crazy things anyhow, mostly fruit and yogurt and soup and crackers. If I wanted a real meal I had to cook it myself. I tried to make her do the dishes sometimes, but it wasn’t any use. She’d forget, or else she’d leave food burned on the pans or break something, you know?” Mac laughed.
“Mm.” Polly had heard of this ploy; according to feminist rhetoric, it was known as “klutzing out,” and was always employed by men.
“See, what you have to understand is, the only thing that really counted for Lorin was her painting. Nothing else had any importance for her.”
“You make her sound rather selfish,” Polly said, trying it out.
“Selfish, I d’know.” Mac shook his head. “She was always handing out money to beggars and street performers. And she’d give you her last scoop of raspberry sherbet if you looked at it hopefully.” He smiled, gazing past Polly. “But she was the most self-centered person I’ve ever known.”
“Self-centered?”
“Mmh. You didn’t notice it at first, because Lorin didn’t give a damn about money or possessions or being the center of attention. All she wanted was to be left alone to paint. But if anyone got in the way of that, it was too bad for them.”
Yes, that sounds right, Polly thought. “But it must have been different with you, because she was in love,” she suggested.
“I was in love with her. I never said she was in love with me.” Mac shook his head slowly, as if disagreeing with some invisible person.
“You really think Lorin didn’t love you?” Polly asked, surprised.
“Not the way I loved her. But it wasn’t personal exactly. She just couldn’t care much for anybody or anything, not compared with her paintings. Not even sex.”
“Sh
e didn’t like making love?” Polly said, suppressing even with you.
Mac looked past her, through the scaffolding of what might one day be a bedroom. “Oh, she liked it all right sometimes. But it was a private thing with her. She never said anything, she just kind of went away into another world. I’m not complaining, though at the time —” He frowned. “I never knew how lucky I was till I had to cope with my wife, and her Guide to Married Love and Four Stages of Arousal.” He laughed crossly. “I never had to ask Lorin afterward if it had been all right for her. The only trouble was, when she was really into painting she just tuned out.”
“You mean she tuned out sex.”
“Yes, that too. For days sometimes. I used to get mad and swear that the next time she felt like it I’d say too bad, nothing doing, I was working on a poem.”
“And did you, ever?”
“Well, I tried it a couple times. But Lorin always got around me. She was so beautiful, for one thing. Her eyes and her mouth and her hands and all that long glossy dark-brown hair, that always looked a little wet even when it wasn’t. She could charm the seabirds from the air and the tuna out of the Gulf. And by God, she knew it.”
Lorin Jones hurt you worse than she hurt me, Polly thought, looking at the strong jutting lines of Mac’s averted profile, the cropped curl of piebald hair behind his ear. Never mind. I’ll fix you, she told Lorin in her head. I’ll tell everyone how you lived off men, how you sacrificed people to your ambition. They’ll hear of your selfishness, your slyness, your spitefulness.
“You think she turned on her charm deliberately,” she suggested.
“Yes. With me she did, anyhow. Lorin wanted to be sure of me, see; she wanted to be certain I’d always be there, in case she needed something. Once that was settled, she’d leave, without going out of the house, if you know what I mean.”
“Mm.” You’re still angry at her, Polly thought. And no wonder. “How come you never got married?” she added.
“I don’t know. I guess partly it was because Garrett dragged his feet so long over the divorce. When it finally came through, though, I asked her to marry me.