The Truth About Lorin Jones

7

AT FIRST POLLY THOUGHT she was having a nightmare. There was a heavy weight on her, a smothering heat and constriction.

“Wha! Help!” she choked out, and half woke in the half-dark to an unfamiliar room where someone much larger than Jeanne was lying on top of her, nuzzling at her neck.

“Darling. Don’ be afraid.” The weight and the moist searching kisses, smelling of drink, continued. It was, it must be, Garrett Jones.

“No! Get the hell off me!” she shouted, shoving the resistant bulk aside with all her strength. She struggled upright, fumbling for the mock-kerosene lamp, then finding it and switching it on.

“Polly, my sweet.” It was Garrett; he was sitting heavily on the double bed beside her. He had changed his clothes again and was wearing white silk pajamas and a red damask robe with satin lapels, like someone in a thirties comedy of high life.

“Please; go away.”

“I startled you, little one; f’give me.” He reached to pat her arm, but missed. “Were you ’sleep already? I’m sorry I took so long to come to you; must’ve dozed off.”

“Wha’d’you mean? I didn’t —”

“You look so lovely, all warm and tousled.” Garrett swayed toward Polly, feeling for her breast with one heavy red hand. She batted it away and slid to the other side of the mattress.

“What a charming costume. Always have thought men’s pajamas were awfully sexy on a girl.”

“Listen, Garrett, goddamn it,” Polly was almost shouting again. “I don’t want to make out with you.”

“I thought you ’ere waiting for me.” Now his tone was hurt and aggrieved. “I thought, surely —”

“Well, I wasn’t.” Reminding herself that her host was drunk, Polly tried to speak quietly and with authority. “Please, get out of my room now, okay?”

“What’s the matter, darling? You were so sweet all evening.” He smiled boozily and began to edge across the rumpled sheets and ruffled eyelet pillows toward her. “Be a little kind to me now.”

Taking advantage of his slowness, Polly scrambled out of the bed on the far side. She circled a chintz-cushioned rocker, banging her toe; dashed out across the hall, and into the opposite room.

“My dear girl, what’s the matter? Where are you?”

Polly did not answer. Breathing hard in the dark, she slammed the door and fumbled for, found, and shot the bolt.

“Polly, my dear.”

She patted the wallpaper, feeling unsuccessfully for a light switch. On the other side of the wall she could hear Garrett shuffling about in the hall, banging doors open.

“Polly, darling. Where are you?”

“Go back to bed!” she called.

“Darling, please.” Garrett was outside her door now, rattling its handle. Polly moved over the cold floorboards in the dark, knocking against what sounded like a standing lamp. She groped about, clutched its cold twisted metal stem, righted it, and turned it on. The room that once had been Lorin’s studio glowed into view.

“Please! Let me in.”

What the hell was she supposed to do now? Polly thought. She sat down on a quilted bedspread patterned with Western ranch brands, then got up again and pulled the spread back. The bed was unmade, but there were several blankets. She could spend the rest of the night here if she had to.

“Polly?”

Don’t answer, Polly told herself. She crawled into Garrett’s son’s bed on top of the mattress pad.

“Polly, dear!” The door rattled violently.

She dragged the blankets and spread up over herself, blurring Garrett’s cries.

“Lolly!”

Polly raised her head. Had she really heard that?

“Darling, please!” He was almost sobbing.

I’ll never get back to sleep now, she thought. Maybe I should let him in. Maybe it would prove to him that Lorin had forgiven him, because he thinks I’m her. She pushed back the blankets and half sat up.

“Lorin?” she whispered. “Is that what you want?” She shoved the covers aside and stood on the flat braided coils of the bedside rug.

“Darling! Just wanna kiss you goo’night.”

Polly took a step forward, and felt the chill of the polished floorboards under her bare feet. But I’m not your darling, she thought. I’m not Lorin: for one thing, she loved you, and I don’t. She got back into bed again; dragged up the covers.

“Please, dearest. Lemme in.”

I’m sorry, Polly said in her mind, not to Garrett but to his wife’s ghost. I can’t do it. Do you understand? But there was no answer. She was alone in the dark in a house on Cape Cod, and a drunken randy old man was trying to get into her room and her bed.

“Hello in there ... hello?” he cried finally and feebly. There was a silence; then the sound of steps going away. A heavy confused noise, as if Garrett had stumbled and half fallen. A door closing; silence.

Well, Jeanne warned me, Polly thought, turning over under the scratchy blankets. She remembered her friend’s body, so light and soft and fresh, comparing it to Garrett Jones’s coarse, inert bulk. I didn’t listen to her, she thought, and now look what’s happened. Among other things, I’ve probably made a permanent enemy; men don’t like to be turned down sexually.

“Lorin, help me,” she whispered. “You got me into this.”

But the wind outside, that was once so clearly Lorin’s breath, had subsided. This room, where she had spent so many long hours, felt cold, dark, and empty of her spirit.

“Lorin?”

Though there was no further sign, Polly lay awake for a long time, listening.

“Oh, good morning.” Garrett Jones hardly glanced around from the stove; his tone was constrained, unfriendly. In the hard morning light both he and his expensive country clothes looked older and more worn.

“G’morning,” Polly answered warily.

“Sleep well?” He did not quite look at her.

“Yes, thanks,” she lied.

“Coffee?”

“Yes, thanks.” Polly sat down, wishing she could leave at once. Probably Garrett was wishing the same thing; but there was no plane out of Provincetown until her noon flight.

As Garrett put a mug of coffee and a plate of dry, burned-looking toast before her, they exchanged an uneasy glance.

“Sorry about last night,” he said, stiffly and not very apologetically. “Seems like we both had too much to drink, got our signals crossed.”

“That’s okay,” Polly mumbled. In the glare of day, it was all too clear that Garrett had never shared her exalted view of last night’s events; he had no idea that she had been acting as Lorin’s proxy, loving and pardoning him — or not pardoning him — in Lorin’s name.

“I could’ve sworn you were giving me the go-ahead.”

“Well, I wasn’t.” She took a gulp of lukewarm, bitter coffee.

“Or maybe you changed your mind.”

“No, I never —” Polly’s voice faded; not only did she not want to discuss it, she felt partly to blame for what had happened.

“I think you changed your mind.” Her discomfort seemed to encourage Garrett; he gave her a narrow smile. “What happened? Tell me, I’m interested. Was it my age?”

“No, uh,” she stuttered, taken aback.

“Maybe you think I can’t please a woman anymore, but you’re wrong, you know. I’m still competent.”

“I didn’t —” Polly flushed. “I just don’t want to get involved with you, that’s all.”

“Well, you were certainly giving off different signals last evening.” He laughed in a meaning way.

“I was not.” Polly felt herself becoming furious as well as nervous and guilty. “I suppose you think any woman you take out to dinner wants to go to bed with you.”

“No-o.” But Garrett half smiled; it was clear that he did think this.

“Anyhow, you’re married.”

“Oh well, yes.” He dismissed this smoothly, waving a piece of unburned toast smoothed with marmalade. “I’m married. And Abigail’s a wonderful woman, of course. Very beautiful.” He looked hard at Polly, clearly communicating the idea that she was not beautiful. “And tremendously steady and kind.” This, too, was said pointedly.

“I’m sure she is,” Polly agreed coolly, trying to control her hurt and fury.

“I have to admit it, though, she’s not exciting; not like Laura. Never was, really.” Garrett’s tone was almost confidential now, though not pleasant. “And now. ... Well, Abby’s fifty-three this year. And you know, with most women, after fifty there’s not much juice in them. They kind of dry up, like grapes left on the vine.” He grinned and shook his heavy, handsome head, as if both enjoying and deploring the sexual double standard. “How old are you, Polly, by the way?”

“I’m thirty-nine, if it’s any of your business,” Polly said furiously.

“Really? I thought you were younger.” It was clear that this was not a compliment. More likely, Garrett was excusing himself for having put so much effort into trying to seduce her. He gave her a hard, cool glance, and added, “I should’ve known. Young women today, they don’t make a fuss about a man’s being married, in my experience. They’re free romantic spirits; they make love to anyone they fancy.” He smiled in a reminiscent way. “And any time.”

“Well, I don’t,” Polly said with force.

“No, quite.” Now his look conveyed that she was middle-aged and inhibited; perhaps also that she didn’t get that many opportunities.

“As a matter of fact, if you want to know, I’m a lesbian,” Polly said, speaking these words aloud for the first time in her life.

“Really?” Garrett blinked.

“That’s right.”

“Ah.” He smiled broadly, easily, for the first time that morning. “Well. Excuse me. If I’d known —” He sat down at the highly polished Early American table opposite her. “You should have told me that last night, really,” he added pleasantly, leaning forward. “Now, shouldn’t you?”

“I suppose so,” Polly admitted.

“I realize it’s not the easiest thing to say.” Garrett’s whole manner had changed; it was open and friendly. “But it would have avoided a lot of trouble. I wouldn’t have made a fool of myself, or given you such a fright.” He laughed. “And, by the way, I want to assure you of my discretion. I won’t say anything to anyone.”

“That’s all right. I mean, thanks,” Polly added grudgingly, wondering whether she should believe him. But what difference did it make anyhow? She was a lesbian, since the night before last.

“That’s not much of a breakfast,” Garrett remarked, looking at her plate, on which the burned toast remained. “Let me make you some bacon and eggs.”

“Uh —”

“Come on.” He smiled. It was clear that his self-esteem and goodwill had been completely restored.

“No thanks.” Polly still felt cross and embarrassed. She cast around in her mind for something hurtful to say that would not be discounted as coming from a lesbian.

“Well, then, if you’ve finished breakfast,” Garrett interrupted her search, “I’d like to take you out to the barn, show you some of Laura’s work that’s still here.”

“I — all right,” Polly agreed, shelving her impulse in the service of a higher good.

“Now I don’t want you to get too excited,” Garrett cautioned over his shoulder as Polly followed him along a path beaten through long faded grass that matched his gray-blond hair. “Laura took almost all her finished work with her when she ran out on me. She couldn’t bear to be separated from any of it, maybe you’ve heard that.”

“Yes, I have.”

“I think myself it was because she remained a child in so many ways. Her paintings were, what do the psychologists call it, a kind of security blanket for her. Well, here we are.” Garrett shoved open the weather-beaten sliding door of the barn. He had resumed his windbreaker and peaked captain’s cap, and his aspect was again nautical and jaunty. “I keep Laura’s drawings in this old fridge. You should get yourself one, y’know. It’s as good as a safe if there’s a fire.”

From the rusted chrome shelves of the refrigerator Garrett removed a worn black portfolio tied with tapes and two manila folders. “Here, you can see.” He opened one of the folders and began to turn over sheets of paper. “It’s mostly just notes, unfinished sketches, that sort of thing. Just what Laura left behind when —”

He did not finish the sentence, but Polly was not listening anyhow. Her attention was fixed on the drawings: some of them quick sketches, others detailed impressions of a shed, a skeleton leaf, a sleeping cat. They were executed in pencil and pen, a few lit with white or brown chalk, others with streaks of blue or sea-green wash. Realistic as most of them were, there was an oddness, a characteristic attenuation Polly recognized instantly.

“I tell you what,” Garrett said. “Let’s take everything into the house where it’s warm.”

“Okay, sure.” Polly had not noticed the temperature; now she realized that a damp, freezing wind was blowing through the barn.

How can this be happening? she thought as she followed Lorin’s husband back through the long beaten-down grass. How can I deserve it, when I didn’t do what Lorin wanted last night? But maybe she had done exactly what Lorin had wanted, or at least what she had done: shut her husband out of her room, out of her life.

Inside, Garrett Jones cleared the dining-room table of its brass candlesticks and careful display of waxy-looking autumn fruit, and reopened the folders. There was more there than Polly had ever imagined or hoped for — not only drawings, but notes, bills, postcard reproductions of paintings —

“Oh, wow,” she exclaimed as he leafed through the contents. “I didn’t know you had all this stuff. You never said — nobody told me —”

“No one was interested, really. Not till you appeared.” Garrett smiled and turned over a half sheet of paper, across which was scrawled a shopping list in Lorin’s faint, spiky hand:

zinc white

toothpaste

grapefruit juice

narcissus bulbs

“You kept everything,” she murmured.

“I wrote and offered to send it all on to Laura, once she was settled,” Garrett defended himself, though Polly hadn’t meant it that way. “She never answered my letters. Or the lawyer’s. I used to wonder sometimes if that fellow tore them up.”

“Fellow?”

“That bastard Cameron. You’ve heard of him, I imagine.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Met him?”

“Not yet. I’m hoping to interview him when I go down to Key West next month, though.”

“Yes? Well, good luck.” Garrett’s tone implied that she would need it.

“Tell me about him,” Polly said, shifting her attention with difficulty from the drawings.

“About Hugh Cameron?” He almost sneered the name. “Well, I only met him a couple of times, and I didn’t pay him much attention. I didn’t imagine that he’d ever be of any importance to me, naturally.” Garrett shook his head. “He was just one of the usual crowd of rather scruffy young people at the Provincetown Arts Center that year. He wasn’t even a painter; he was a poet. Or rather, he called himself a poet, because he’d had a few nothing poems in the kind of magazines nobody reads.”

“I see.” Polly made a mental note to look up these poems.

“The truth was, he had the artist’s temperament without any talent to speak of. That’s not uncommon, you know. And all right, it’s a tragedy. But if you find yourself in that position, you’ve got to cut your losses, the way I did. If you don’t, pretty soon you’re just a pathetic phony.”

Polly looked at Garrett. You wanted to be a painter yourself once too, she thought.

“Anyhow.” Garrett cleared his throat. “The Arts Center not only houses would-be artists and writers during the off-season, they have readings, mount exhibitions. I was a member of their board at the time, and when I was on the Cape Laura and I usually went to their openings. That was how we met Hugh Cameron, sometime in October, as near as I can remember.”

“I see. And then?”

“And then nothing, as far as I was concerned.” Garrett shrugged. “I saw him again at another opening in April; I remember because Laura was talking to him for a while, I couldn’t imagine why. By then his time in Provincetown was almost up. They throw the fellows out on May first, you see, and rent the studios to tourists. He had no job, no money, no place to go from there.

“The way I read it, sometime that spring he probably took a hard look at Laura. He already knew she was a successful painter, and he guessed she had a little money — more than a little by his standards, probably, because from the start I let Laura put everything she made from her painting into her own bank account. She didn’t use it except to buy art supplies; I gave her an allowance for her clothes and housekeeping, and I paid for everything else.

“So I figure Cameron decided it’d be convenient for him to fall in love with Laura, and feed her a lot of hogwash about the integrity of the artist, and the destructiveness of the critic, and the need for truly sensitive people to abandon the conventional world and live for each other and their art. He tried to justify himself with that kind of talk afterward, to anyone who would listen.

“If he’d been a painter Laura would have seen through him in ten minutes. Hell, her mother, Celia, if she’d been alive, she would have seen through him in five, because she knew something about poetry. And so did Laura’s brother, Lennie — he could spot a loser like Hugh at twenty paces.”

“So she left here with him at the end of April?”

“Yes. On May Day.” Garrett smiled wryly. “Cameron made a lot of that later, apparently. It was the sort of cheap symbolism he liked.”

“And you had no idea this was going to happen.”

“Not a clue. As I said, Lorin didn’t leave a note, so at first I wasn’t concerned. I was driving down from Providence, and I hadn’t said exactly when I’d be coming. When she wasn’t here, I figured she’d gone out sketching, or maybe even up to Boston overnight on the ferry; she did that sometimes. I searched all around the place, and walked down to the inlet, because she used to go there a lot to paint. After it got dark I phoned some of our friends, but nobody’d seen her or knew anything. Then I looked in the closet, and most of her clothes seemed to be there, so I started to think about car crashes, and the weirdos who could be lurking about on the beaches or in the pine woods.”

Over twenty years later, Polly heard in Garrett’s voice an echo of the panic of that evening. “So what did you do?”

“Well, I was kind of wandering around the house, calling up different people and pretending to them that nothing was wrong. I went into Lorin’s studio to look for a phone number. Before I hadn’t noticed anything out of the way, but now I realized that most of her equipment was gone.”

“You knew then that she’d left you?”

“No, not really. It could have just been a painting excursion. I knew the next day. I discovered then that she’d cleared out not only her own bank account, but also the joint account we kept here. Nearly six thousand dollars, it was, because I’d just put the money in for a new roof.”

“Oh, hell,” Polly murmured, wondering how she would ever justify this.

“I don’t want you to blame Laura too much,” Garrett said, registering her tone. “I figure it was probably Cameron’s idea. Laura didn’t have any understanding of money, or any sense about it. She would have lived by barter if she could have.”

“So you knew, or at least you suspected, that Lorin had gone off with Cameron,” she suggested.

“Christ, no. He didn’t even cross my mind.”

“Then you had no idea he’d fallen in love with her,” Polly said, putting it this way in an attempt at tact.

“No. If you want to call it that. All I know is, he had a Scotsman’s instinct for where the money was. As long as Laura had funds he stuck to her like rubber cement. When the cash was used up, and her paintings weren’t selling anymore, he just peeled off.”

“Yes, I heard — I mean, Jacky Herbert said Cameron wasn’t around when Lorin was dying.”

“No. He was up in Maine. The goddamn creep.” Garrett’s voice roughened. “Let’s forget about him; it’s all ancient history now. Here. Take a look at this.” He pulled the old black portfolio toward him and, with some difficulty, untied its frayed and faded tapes.

Inside there were only a few sheets of paper: three or four large drawings with pencil notations about color, evidently preliminary sketches for paintings. Underneath them, covered with a sheet of creased tissue that Garrett lifted off carefully, was a big gouache of what might have been an explosion of fireworks, or a lake in the woods in autumn, the whole scene speckled and shimmering with red and orange and gold, almost pointillist.

“Oh!” Polly cried. “I’ve never seen — I didn’t know —”

“It’s not finished, of course.”

“Really?” It was true, there was a large irregular white area in one lower corner, streaked with a vague wash of ochre; but patches of nearly blank canvas were not uncommon in Jones’s work.

“Well. Maybe it’s finished, in a way. Maybe that’s how Laura wanted it.”

“It’s beautiful.” She stared for a long moment at the painting; and then up at Garrett accusingly. “You never mentioned — This could have been in the show.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But — Well, I suppose I didn’t want it there. That little pond — You can see it’s a pond?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s over in the woods in Truro. Laura and I used to go there sometimes together, the first autumn we were here. I don’t like to look at it much now.”

“I see.” It’s where they made love, Polly thought. This brilliant storm of light and color was the memorial of, the transubstantiation of, an erotic encounter.

She stared at Garrett, but his face was averted toward the window. “You could sell it,” she suggested, feeling as she spoke that this was crass. “I’m sure the Apollo Gallery —”

“I don’t want to sell this picture, damn it.” Garrett’s tone was rough. “I tell you what,” he added more gently. “Why don’t you take it?”

“Me?” Polly’s voice rose.

“Yes, you.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I mean, for God’s sake. It’s too valuable.”

“I don’t need money,” Garrett said almost angrily. “I’d like you to have it. That is, if I could be sure you wouldn’t hang it anywhere I’d ever have to see it again, or sell it to some damned collector or museum, at least until I’m gone. I don’t want to come across it unexpectedly somewhere, you know what I mean?”

“Yes; I understand.”

“Good.” Garrett cleared his throat. “Now, about this other material. I expect you’d like to have copies of some of the drawings.”

“I’d like a copy of everything, really,” Polly said eagerly. “Of course, I’ll pay —”

“Don’t worry about it. There’s a fairly good Xerox place in P’town. I can go there after I take you to the plane. Or, if we left a little early” (he checked his watch) “they might be able to copy the stuff before your flight.”

“That’d be fantastic,” Polly said. It came into her mind that Garrett was being generous and helpful. “You know, I’m amazed that you would go to all this trouble for my book. I mean, I really appreciate it.”

“Thank you.” Garrett smiled. “But why should you be amazed?”

“I just meant — uh, well, I meant,” Polly stuttered. “Some men might bear a grudge, I mean about last night.”

“That’d be foolish, considering the circumstances.” Garrett laughed. “Actually, you know,” he added very casually, “sometimes women who love other women are surprised to find they can also enjoy men — or rather, they can enjoy a man who understands what they prefer physically.” He gave her what was surely a meaning look. “I remember when I was living in the Village, back in the thirties —”

“I’m not like that,” Polly interrupted. She had heard before of men who prided themselves on their ability to, as they put it, “convert” homosexual women.

“Ah. Pity.” Garrett smiled briefly, and pulled Lorin’s gouache toward him along the table. Carefully, he lowered the protective covering over it.

The proposed gift was a bribe, Polly thought. I have just refused the implied bargain, and so it’s been withdrawn. She felt angry but relieved, for now Garrett was no longer decent and generous. He was exposed instead as a dirty old man who wanted to buy sex with his dead wife’s painting — even worse, with a painting of the place where he and she had once made love. Crass, horrible, disgusting.

Yet as the colors dimmed under the worn tissue, Polly felt a stabbing pang of loss. She thought that she would probably never in her life see this picture again, and almost wished that she had accepted Garrett’s implied bargain.

“Well, maybe we should pack up,” he said with a wheeze. He moved the drawings onto the table, lifted the shrouded painting, and replaced it in the old black portfolio. Slowly he retied the tapes; then he held the portfolio out toward Polly. “Right. Here you are.”

Startled, she took a step back. “I can’t,” she exclaimed, abashed by her own thoughts. “I don’t deserve —”

“Of course you do.” Garrett grinned at her. “You don’t know how glad I am that someone’s finally writing the truth about Laura. And how especially glad I am that it’s someone like you.” He looked at Polly with an expression at first warmly friendly, then uncertain. “Or maybe you don’t really care for this picture.”

“Oh, no!” she cried. “It’s wonderful.”

“Well, then.”

Still Polly hesitated. But a soft reverberation in her ear, Lorin Jones’s voice, or her own voice — and, after all, hadn’t Garrett said they were the same? — seemed to whisper: Take it; I want you to have it. Slowly, she held out her arms.