The Truth About Lorin Jones

10

A COLD DULL DAY in early December; an opening at the Museum. Polly was there, huddled on a sticky black leather bench in a back hallway near the telephone booth. She appeared to be waiting to make a call, but in fact she was hiding out.

She should never have come here, she thought; she should have gone straight home after her appointment at the endodontist’s. But she hadn’t wanted to admit that besides hurting her and frightening her and insulting her and giving her a first-class headache, Dr. Bebb had ruined her whole afternoon. It was bad enough that he had insisted on calling her “Paula” and told her that she probably ground her teeth at night, but he had also had the nerve to compare his work to hers.

“Marge Dunn tells me you’re an author,” Dr. Bebb had remarked as she lay tilted back nearly ninety degrees in his padded vinyl chair, staring up at a fizzing fluorescent light fixture and at his monstrously enlarged pale fat fingers, bulbous nose, and thick spectacles.

“Weh, noh exac-uh,” she replied, gagging as he began to pack her jaw with lumps of cotton.

“But you’re doing research for a book, right?”

“Euh,” Polly agreed, feeling betrayed by Marge, her regular dentist — who seldom hurt her even a little, and then always with advance warning and most apologetically.

“A novel, is it?”

“Euh-euh.”

“Nonfiction,” Dr. Bebb deduced, his pale enlarged face stretching even farther in a self-congratulatory smile.

“Euh.”

“Hard work?” He blew an airgun into Polly’s mouth. “Kinda like being a detective, I bet.”

What was this, an interrogation? Polly thought. She declined to make a noise for either yes or no.

“I said, kinda like detective work, your research, is it?” Dr. Bebb repeated, pausing with the electric drill in his fat hand.

“Euh,” Polly agreed, realizing that the sooner she answered, the sooner all this would be over.

Dr. Bebb smiled his fat smile. “Hold real still now,” he ordered, and lowered the drill. A loud, unpleasant vibration filled Polly’s head, and a jarring, buzzing pressure.

“Rinse, please,” he said finally. “You know, Paula, I sometimes think what I do here is kinda like investigative research,” he added, poking fat sausage fingers and a steel probe into her mouth. “Following a tooth to its roots. You never can tell ahead of time what direction a root will take, did you know that?” He moved the probe, producing a twang of high-level pain.

“Euh!”

“Sorry,” Dr. Bebb said unfeelingly. “So I figure we have something in common, right?” He paused again, instrument in hand, but Polly refused even to mumble a reply. We have nothing in common, you fat bastard, she thought.

Oh yes you do, a voice in her head replied. Haven’t you been probing for the diseased roots of Lorin Jones’s life? And aren’t you planning to fill them up with cement and cover the whole thing with a shiny white deceptive surface?

She should never have gone to Dr. Bebb, Polly thought as she sat by the phone booth. Or rather, she should have walked out five minutes after they met, because she knew by then what he was like. You might think that in a city the size of New York there would be a competent female endodontist, but Marge knew of none. She always sent her patients to Dr. Bebb. “He’s a good man,” she had insisted. “Howie” — her husband, a dental surgeon — “thinks the world of him.”

Well, maybe he’d fooled Marge and her husband, but he didn’t fool Polly. His specialty wasn’t ordinary repair work, but a combination of the murderous and the mortuary. She had recognized him as a natural enemy at once, but her natural animal reaction to threat — fight or flight — had been blocked by reluctance to appear cowardly and neurotic, and by Marge’s remark that if Polly didn’t have root canal work soon she would lose two upper molars, and eventually the ones below as well. So instead of hitting Dr. Bebb with her Peruvian tote bag, or climbing out of the dental chair and fleeing his office, she had stayed and let him kill her tooth and embalm it with cement, and give her a splitting headache.

But then, almost everything that had happened in the last week or so had given her a headache. The first one, minor but nagging, began on the Monday after Thanksgiving during Polly’s interview with Lorin Jones’s stepmother, who had portrayed Lorin as self-centered and spiteful. She had also related a story that, if repeated in the biography, would do Lorin’s reputation nothing but harm. Polly would just have to forget it, as she would have to forget a lot of the other stuff she’d heard lately; lies, all of it, probably.

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: this 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 might 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.”

“No,” Polly agreed.

“But now everybody wants a Lorin Jones; they’re worth twenty, twenty-five thousand, and rising fast. It’s a whole different kettle of fish. If you own one you’ve got to think about insurance, burglar alarms, restorers, the lot. You sell it, you can buy a year’s worth of dope, a sports car, a trip to Spain, whatever an individual of Cameron’s type wants.”

“You think Cameron might have some pictures he’d like to sell now?”

“It’s a possibility. Of course it’d be rather a dilemma for him. Legally he doesn’t own anything of Lorin’s, because they were never married and she died without a will. Everything belongs to Lennie. So if Cameron wanted to sell anything he’d have to do it under the table.”

“That wouldn’t be so easy,” Polly protested. Most collectors she knew of bought art partly for the pleasure of showing it off, and partly as an investment. They hated a dubious title: it meant lying to people who came to the house; and could be really embarrassing if they decided to sell the painting later or give it to a museum for a tax write-off. The first question then would certainly be, What was the provenance?

“No. If Cameron means to sell he’s got to find someone who wants a cut-rate Jones and is willing to keep it permanently under wraps. And I don’t think he — or anyone, probably — could do that. For that kind of deal you have to have a really important work on offer — a Johns or a Rothko or something of the sort. But that’s where you might have an advantage.”

“Me?” Polly frowned; her headache felt worse.

“You, darling.” Jacky yawned. “I couldn’t approach Cameron, because I’m known to be a reputable dealer. But you could hint to him that you might be interested in buying a Lorin Jones, if he happened to have one lying around.”

“No thanks.” Polly spoke with force and ill-suppressed indignation. “I’m not interested in getting mixed up in that kind of deal. Anyhow, I haven’t got the money.”

“Of course not,” Jacky said smoothly; he leaned over and patted her arm. “But it would be a good way of finding out if Cameron does have anything, wouldn’t it?” He smiled fishily. “And maybe getting it back.”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t know —”

“You see, if you found one of Lorin’s paintings in Cameron’s possession, Lennie and I could go to my lawyer, and find out what could be done. Possibly just threatening him with a lawsuit would be enough.”

“Suppose it wasn’t?”

“Well, we could actually sue. And then there’s always the police. I imagine he wouldn’t want that.” Jacky giggled. “Anyhow, if you should run into anything, I’d be grateful if you’d let me know as soon as possible. You can phone the gallery collect any time. Leave a message on the machine if I’m not there. ... Oh, Doris, darling! Marvelous to see you. Looking so very very well!”

Jacky rose to his feet and kissed the smoky air beside the cheek of one of Polly’s former colleagues. She excused herself from their conversation as soon as possible and went into the telephone booth, now fortunately empty.

To give verisimilitude to her excuse, she lifted the receiver and called her own number. The blurred but unpleasant underwater buzz of the dial tone filled her ear, and then an empty ringing; Jeanne and Betsy, she knew, were out. As she listened she gazed through the greeny-brown tinted glass, picking out Jacky and her other acquaintances among the swarming, swimming crowd in the gallery. It looked even worse to her now; a tank of lies, deals, subterfuges, and deceits; of slippery aquatic creatures, of things drowned and rotting.

She stared at the strips and shapes of brilliant color floating above the crowd; works of talent, even perhaps of genius. What were they doing here, sunk halfway into this slimy aquarium? she thought. And what was she doing here?

But then, that’s what Lorin Jones must have asked herself. The New York art world Polly saw now was the one Lorin must have seen: a vision of an underwater hell that drove her first to Wellfleet and then even farther, to Key West. Leaving a trail that Polly must, whatever she felt about it, follow.

The apartment was empty when Polly got back. On the kitchen counter was a note from Jeanne suggesting that she join them at a dish-to-pass Affirmative Action benefit in the Village, and instructions on warming up the supper she’d left in case Polly didn’t feel up to another party.

Wearily, gratefully, she turned on the oven and began to open her mail, which consisted entirely of bills and circulars. There was also a large, badly wrapped parcel for Stevie, sent by her father from San Diego; HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM GRANDDAD was scrawled in red felt-tipped marker above the address, and HANDLE WITH GREAT CARE PLEASE, FRIENDS below it. In spite of this appeal, or maybe because of it, the package had come apart at one end, exposing part of an inner wrapping paper printed with pink and yellow teddy bears.

Polly scowled as she looked at it, then sighed. This parcel was in every way typical of Carl Alter. The soiled and refolded brown paper, the coarse hairy tightly knotted string, the incongruous inner wrapping, the appeal to the kindness of strangers, the public expression of private sentiments; and most of all the fact that it was five weeks late. When she was a child, her father’s gifts always arrived after the occasion or never, and it was the same now with his grandson.

And what the hell was she going to do with the thing? It was too late to mail it to Denver; it would have to wait till Stevie got home. And meanwhile she would have to write her father and explain what had happened. Or maybe it would be quicker to call; she hadn’t spoken to him in a couple of months anyhow. Not that they ever had much to say to each other. Polly didn’t care what articles he had published lately in California Living and the local newspaper or how his high blood pressure and his current wife’s orchids were doing; he didn’t care what was happening to her, he never had. But every few months they went through the motions.

So, after she had eaten Jeanne’s veal-and-mushroom casserole (first-rate, as usual) and homemade noodles and green beans, and washed up, and made herself a cup of coffee, Polly dialed San Diego.

“Yeah,” her father said after they had exchanged the usual superficial news. “I know when Stevie’s birthday is, sure I do.” (Uh-huh, Polly thought.) “I just wasn’t able to find the kind of binoculars I wanted to send him right away, see.”

“Binoculars,” she repeated, thinking that considering the way the package looked they were probably broken; and then that as usual her father’s present was not only late but inappropriate. There was no use for binoculars in New York except to spy into neighbors’ windows, and she certainly didn’t want Stevie to start that. Yes, but in Colorado they’d be welcome, she remembered miserably. “I tell you what,” she said. “I’ll put on a new card, and give them to him at Christmas.”

“Nah, nah,” Carl Alter objected. Polly could see him shaking his head once or twice fast, the way he did. “I don’t want Stevie to have to wait any longer. You give them to him now, okay?”

“I can’t do that,” Polly said with irritation. “He’s in Denver now.”

“In Denver? Oh, yeah. Right.”

“He’s been there since September,” Polly said, positive that her father hadn’t bothered to listen to her before, or more likely hadn’t bothered to remember. She would have thought he was losing his memory, except that he’d always been like that.

“Well. You must miss him.”

“Very much,” Polly said crossly.

“He’s coming home for Christmas, though, hum?”

“Yeah. But I don’t know, he may go back to Colorado again for the spring term.”

“Ah. Well, that’s too bad,” Carl Alter said without concern or emphasis. “But you can visit him, that’ll make it all right.”

What a stupid, callous thing to say, Polly thought, feeling the familiar angry buzz in her chest. She should fly to Denver, stay in a motel, and have a couple of restaurant meals with Stevie, and that would make it “all right.”

“That’s what you ought to do,” her father continued. “Go to Colorado and visit him. Yep. You do that.”

“Oh, is that so!” Polly cried, losing her temper. “Well, I’m surprised you should say that, considering you practically never visited me after I moved to Rochester.”

There was a moment of silence on the cross-country phone line. “That was different,” Carl Alter said finally. “You never wanted to see me.”

“I did, too,” Polly insisted; she was damned if she was going to let him get away with this.

“Aw, come on. Back in Mamaroneck, whenever I came to take you out for the day, you used to have a tantrum. Your mother told me so. She practically had to force you to come with me.”

“But that wasn’t — I didn’t —” Polly stuttered furiously, and fell silent, not trusting herself to speak without swearing.

“Never mind, Polly-O. I understand how it was. But you and Stevie, that’s different. Right?”

“I guess so,” Polly said flatly. Goddamn it, of course it was different. She loved Stevie; until this fall they hadn’t ever been separated. But what was the use of saying this to someone like Carl Alter? What was the use of shouting at him?

“So if he’s in Denver, you go see him, okay?”

“Okay,” Polly said flatly.

“And I tell you what else you do. You find out what Stevie wants for Christmas, and I’ll send it to him.”

“I don’t see the point of that,” Polly said, again fighting for control. “You won’t remember anyhow.”

“I will so; I promise. What the hell —”

“It’ll be the same as it was with me,” Polly cried furiously. “You were always promising! Two years running, you promised to buy me an Etch A Sketch.”

“An Etch A Sketch?” Carl Alter repeated at the other end of the United States.

“It was a kind of screen with dials, you could draw pictures with it, and I kept asking you — Oh, never mind,” she added, ashamed now of her outburst. “I’ll ask Stevie what he wants, but you know it’s probably too late for the Christmas mails already.”

“I tell you what. Maybe I’ll send him a check, he can pick out something himself.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Polly said wearily, thinking that of course it would never happen; less angry now with her father — because what was the use? — than she was with herself for having blown up at him after all these years. “You do that,” she added.