by Alison Lurie
“I’m sorry,” Polly said finally. “I didn’t mean — I just meant — I’m upset, that’s all.”
“That’s all right,” Jeanne murmured, looking up with a wan expression. “I know it’s an emotional issue for you.”
“Yeah,” Polly agreed.
“Kiss and make up?” Jeanne suggested, smiling.
“All right,” Polly said.
Jeanne wiped her hands on her apron, crossed the kitchen, and gave Polly a warm hug. “That’s better,” she said, laughing a little. “Isn’t it?”
“Much better,” she said, returning the embrace.
“Me, too,” Betsy demanded, dropping the potato she was peeling and clumping over to them. Polly pulled back; no way was she going to get into a three-way hug with Betsy.
“And think over what I’ve said, won’t you please?” Jeanne added over Betsy’s shoulder. “I’m sure Stevie wouldn’t mind switching rooms, even if you do.”
“Okay,” Polly agreed sulkily.
A bright, diffuse smile broke over her friend’s face. Polly smiled back, but as Jeanne returned to her cooking and she to her desk, her mind was troubled. Am I really being selfish? she thought. Or is it Jeanne who’s selfish? And not only selfish, but devious and insincere.
She scowled at her typewriter. To suspect another woman — especially Jeanne — of the faults that men had attributed to the sex for centuries was awful; blatantly reactionary. But the idea was there in her head, refusing to leave. She thought that Jeanne wasn’t always frank and direct; that in fact Jeanne sometimes treated her the way women were traditionally supposed to treat men: with charm and flattery and guile. The way she had once advised Polly to treat the men she was going to interview for her book.
She turned and regarded her friend, whose soft ponytail of hair and ruffled calico apron seemed almost a deliberate parody of the female role. How deft and delicate her gestures were as she stirred the thickening sauce, how pretty her small plump hands with their carefully manicured shell-pink nails!
And now it occurred to Polly that the scene in the apartment was like a caricature of a traditional marriage. She was the cross husband, in worn jeans and baggy sweater, owner of the home and its main economic support, working late. The tactful, charming, manipulative wife, in a flowered apron, was making supper, and the spoiled stepdaughter was pretending to help.
Jeanne cares more about Betsy than she does about me, Polly said to herself with an empty, sinking feeling. And she doesn’t love Stevie at all. Her sensible arguments and her teary concern were a sham; what she really wants is for me to shove him out of their way into the maid’s room, or move there myself. Well, fuck it. I’m not going to.
16
ON A DULL CLOUDY winter day, Polly Alter was trudging down Central Park West from her apartment to Jacky Herbert’s. Though it was only four in the afternoon, she was exhausted. Yesterday Stevie had come home, and Jeanne and Betsy had moved out, but at a heavy cost.
It had been a week of scenes and silences, of hysterical accusations and failed compromises. Polly had eventually told Jeanne that she could stay on in the spare room for as long as she liked. But when Betsy heard about this she went into a whiny, jealous panic. Polly was trying to separate them, she cried; she had no place to go — she couldn’t possibly stay at Ida’s by herself — Jeanne didn’t love her anymore — nobody wanted her — she would be so lonely and miserable she’d have to go back to her husband. After twenty-four hours of these desperate, contradictory claims, Jeanne capitulated. But Polly stood firm, determined that whether Jeanne stayed or not, Betsy should go.
In the next few days the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat finally went for each other, both saying things of the sort you can’t forget afterward. Polly lost her cool and told Jeanne that Betsy was totally childish and manipulative and always weaseled out of paying for the groceries and left her hair combings in the sink. Jeanne said that Polly was insensitive and selfish and cut things out of the Times before anyone else had a chance to read it.
At one point they almost came to blows. Polly walked into Stevie’s bedroom and saw her paperback thesaurus lying on top of a suitcase. She picked it up, exclaiming, “Hey! This is mine, not yours.”
But Jeanne, unabashed, tried to snatch the book back, ripping its cover half off in the process. “Why are you always so petty? You might let us have this, at least,” she mewed, as if Polly had denuded her and Betsy of all other possessions. “I’m leaving you every one of my houseplants.”
“I don’t want your damned plants,” Polly barked, not letting go of the thesaurus. “You can take the whole lot.”
“You know you can’t move plants in this freezing weather.” Jeanne almost spat. “But you’d like to kill them, I suppose. Anyhow, we need this book.”
“I don’t know what you need it for,” Polly growled, hanging on. “You and Betsy never use it except to cheat on the Times acrostic.”
“We do not.” Jeanne was still pulling on the thesaurus; suddenly she looked as if she were about to cry.
“All right,” Polly said, ashamed of herself. “Take it then, what do I care.” She let go so abruptly that Jeanne fell over backward.
“Aow!”
“Sorry,” Polly muttered.
Jeanne knelt on the floor, holding the torn book to her robin’s-egg-blue cashmere bosom. “Oh, this is awful,” she wailed. “How can we be fighting like this?” She held out her arms, and Polly, beginning to cry herself, fell into them.
“If it weren’t for the damned housing shortage, we wouldn’t be,” Polly said. And for a moment, as they hugged each other, weeping and laughing, all was forgiven.
“Oh, Polly. I do love you, you know,” Jeanne cried.
“I love you too,” she gasped, kissing her friend’s soft wet cheek. “I’m going to miss you awfully.”
“Me too. I mean — you know what I mean.” Jeanne gave a sobbing laugh. “But Betsy needs me so terribly.”
I need you too, Polly thought, but she didn’t say this, because she knew it was no use. The moment passed, and Jeanne went on packing.
But the Jeanne who had left yesterday didn’t seem the same person she had known and loved. Polly looked at her as they all rode down together in the elevator, surrounded by suitcases and boxes and shopping bags (one of which later turned out to have contained, as if to demonstrate how stubbornly greedy and childish Betsy was, Polly’s thesaurus). For a moment she saw, not her dearest and best friend, but an unfamiliar pretty, plump, frilly blonde woman, nobody she knew. She helped this woman load the taxi that was taking her and her lover to Ida’s, and they parted with a long close hug and fervent pledges to keep in touch. But somehow, maybe because Betsy was standing there watching and scowling, it didn’t seem real. Maybe it would never be real between them again.
Well, I’ve won anyhow; I’ve got Betsy out of my apartment, Polly thought as the yellow taxi drove away down Central Park West under a cold cloudy sky, becoming smaller and then indistinguishable from other taxis. But as she rode the elevator back upstairs alone, she didn’t feel as if she had won anything; she felt deserted, diminished, damaged.
That stupid poem was right, she thought. In the end the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat had not only eaten each other up in the erotic sense, they had almost destroyed and annihilated each other. Maybe they had been, after all, too different in tastes, opinions, and temperament: irreconcilable entities, like cat and dog.
Polly’s project had been another casualty of the battle. Without Jeanne’s sympathetic encouragement and Jeanne’s conviction that she was on the right track, she faltered on the march. The campaign to portray Lorin Jones as an innocent heroine grew harder every day; the stacks of notes in the folder marked DOUBTFUL — NOT TO BE USED grew thicker. Polly no longer felt even for a moment that she knew her subject intimately, let alone that they were profoundly alike. Instead, she had begun to think that her original idea had been a delusion — worse, a projection.
It wasn’t Lorin Jo
nes whose life had been ruined by men. Her father had loved her and been proud of her; Jacky and Paolo had supported and promoted her until she became impossible to work with; Garrett, after over twenty years, was still obsessed with her; and Mac too had loved her passionately, even though she didn’t love him. Lorin hadn’t been deserted and damaged by men, as Polly had; she had deserted and damaged them.
But if this were true, to write the book Polly had planned would be to force Lorin Jones’s life into the mold of her own. Not only would it be professionally disastrous, it would be false to the truth.
“Most understanding of you to come round,” Jacky Herbert wheezed, holding out a plump white hand to Polly, then subsiding again onto his rouge-and-beige striped Empire sofa. He reclined there like an overweight seal in an Edwardian paisley dressing-gown, against a heap of Art Nouveau appliqué pillows. The entire apartment, or at least the part of it Polly had seen, was an eclectic and rather cluttered mix of all that had been most elegantly mannered in a century of interior decoration. The tide of furniture and objects, however, ended halfway up the graceful, high-ceilinged rooms: above were bare off-white walls hung with Jacky’s celebrated collection of contemporary art.
“I see you’re admiring our new side table.” Jacky nodded toward a scalloped contraption erupting at the joints into swags of sticky gold seaweed. “Don’t blame me, my dear; it’s all Tommy’s doing. He insists I need to come home to this cozy scene to recover from the artistic austerity of the Apollo Gallery.” He waved his plump white hand in a gesture that caricatured the costume and attitude he had assumed for Polly’s visit — or perhaps always assumed when he was ill — and broke into another series of coughs and wheezes.
“Sorry. I assure you I’m no longer contagious. And I’m positively going back to work Monday. I must, that’s all there is to it. I mean, here it is the height of the Christmas season, credit cards boring a hole in everyone’s wallets, and that ninny Alan’s in charge of the gallery. A sweet boy of course, but he wouldn’t know a serious collector if one came up and bit him.” Jacky giggled. “Well, let’s hear your report, and then Tommy will bring us tea.”
“You won’t think it’s very good news, I’m afraid,” she said.
“No?”
“I told Lennie Zimmern I’d found the Key West paintings.” Polly took a breath; she wasn’t going to repeat her lie about the inscriptions on the back unless she had to. “But he doesn’t really want to do anything about them. He says he already has too much of Lorin’s work to look after.”
“Oh, dear,” Jacky wheezed, with a noise like steam escaping from a leaky kettle. “Well, that does rather throw a monkey wrench into our plans. What is a monkey wrench, by the way? Do they sell them at the hardware store?”
“I don’t think so,” Polly said. “At least, I’ve never seen one.”
“Pity about that. There are times when it would be nice to have something of the sort handy.” He sighed, wheezed.
“So you’re not going to try and get the canvases back?” Polly asked, trying to speak neutrally.
“Uh-uh.” Jacky coughed. “I mean, after all, Zimmern’s the legal owner. If he doesn’t want to start proceedings, there’s not much the gallery can do.” He glanced at Polly and misread her expression. “It’s a disappointment for you, I know. But really we already have quite enough work lined up for the show, and Garrett’s promised to lend us anything we like from his own collection. ... That reminds me. He told me the other day that you may be collaborating with him on his memoirs.”
“Well, I won’t.” Polly spoke with heat. “He suggested it when I was in Wellfleet; but I said I wasn’t interested.”
“That’s too bad,” Jacky wheezed. “You know, you could do a lot worse, my dear. Of course Garrett is rather an old windbag, but he knows absolutely everyone, and he can get his hands on all sorts of funding. I’m sure you’d be paid very very well. I wouldn’t be too quick to turn his offer down, if I were you,” he added, in the negligent manner he reserved for his most serious remarks.
“I’ve promised to go back to the Museum as soon as the book is finished, anyhow,” Polly said, fighting the impulse to tell Jacky of the other offer Garrett Jones had made her. It would explain her refusal, certainly; but the whole story — very likely in an embellished version — would be all over New York in a matter of days.
“Oh, nonsense, darling. They can get on without you for a bit longer, I’m sure. And I expect Garrett could fix whatever leave or part-time deal you wanted in a jiffy. Why don’t you let me tell him you’re considering it, at least?”
“Well. Okay,” Polly said, thinking that it might be politic to stay in Garrett’s good graces until the book was finished.
“No need to make waves unless one has to,” Jacky remarked, appearing to read her mind. “Besides, we all know nobody gets ahead in this business without either money or connections. Preferably both.”
“I suppose not,” she admitted.
“Paolo said that to me the very very first week I came to work for him. Of course I thought it dreadfully crass; but alas, he was quite right.”
“How is Paolo, by the way?” Polly asked.
Jacky shook his head, bringing on another attack of coughing. “Not too well, I’m afraid. It’s beginning to look as if he won’t be coming back to the gallery.”
“So you’ll be taking over for good?”
“Well, yes; I think so. Paolo’s wife wants me to. I told her I’d like that, but I felt that there really had to be some drastic changes. Frankly, just between us, the Apollo hasn’t taken advantage of recent developments as it should have done.”
“Mm?”
“You know, there are a lot of exciting new artists coming along. And new collectors. For them Lorin Jones is almost an old master. Since you’re such a feminist, perhaps I should say old mistress. But somehow that doesn’t sound right, does it?” Jacky giggled, wheezed.
“Anyhow,” he continued when he had caught his breath, “I’d really like the Apollo to take a few more risks. I even considered whether we should move downtown; but I decided against it. Most serious buyers, you know, especially the foreigners, don’t really enjoy the trip to Soho. Even in a limo there’s all that awful midtown traffic to fight your way through, and the streets are dirty and full of spaced-out types. So by the time they get there they’re already unhappy and impatient, and in no mood to make a commitment. Much better to bring the work uptown.” He smiled.
“And you’ve discovered some new artists.”
“Oh yes. For instance, there’s this very very interesting woman from California called Ceci O’Connor who does pieces that rather remind me of Islamic wall decorations. The ones with all those bits of mirror embedded in plaster to form abstract or floral designs, you know?”
“Mm.”
“Well, she’s brought that basic idea up to date. I think she’s going to be a great success. The work is very strong, and really beautiful. And then it’s also metaphorically rather brilliant: the painter orders the world, and the viewer projects himself — or herself, darling, don’t get cross — into this new vision. You must come round and see her slides as soon as you have a free moment. How is the book coming, by the way?”
“Oh, all right, I guess.” Polly tried to summon enthusiasm, but failed.
“I know how it is,” Jacky said sympathetically. “It’s always the hardest part, the first draft. If you’d like me to look at the manuscript anytime, you know, I’d be glad to.”
“Thank you,” Polly said, thinking that if Jacky saw the book she was trying to write he would never ask her to tea again.
“I mean that. I’d really be happy to do anything I can. ... Oh, Tommy. That looks delicious. Shall I pour?”
In her empty apartment on the day after Christmas, Polly Alter sat moping in front of a work table covered with stacks of notes, transcripts of interviews, filing folders, three-by-five cards, and magazines and catalogues with markers in them. Stevie was off playing Chr
istmas video games with a friend, and she should use the free time to work, but her book was now totally blocked. Whenever she looked through her papers, trying to get a perspective on the project, she became confused and depressed; she felt her subject splitting into multiple, discontinuous identities.
There was the shy little girl Lolly Zimmern; the flaky college freshman Laurie; the bohemian art student; the ambitious, calculating young professional that Kenneth Foster had taught; and the neurotic, unworldly artist that Jacky knew. There was the poetic lost child Laura whom Garrett Jones had married, and the obsessed genius who had died in Key West. According to her niece, Lorin was generous and sensitive; her stepmother remembered her as selfish and spiteful.
And what’s more, it was clear by now that none of the people Polly had interviewed were lying, not wholly anyhow: everyone had told her the truth as he or she knew or imagined it. All they agreed on was that Lorin was beautiful and gifted (the two things I’m not, Polly thought sourly). Otherwise, everyone seemed to have known a different Lorin Jones; and most of them also had different versions of the other people in Lorin’s life. As Lennie Zimmern had warned Polly, she had found out too much. How the hell was she ever going to make sense of it all?
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.