The Truth About Lorin Jones

15

IN THE ILL-LIT, HIGH-CEILINGED hall of a university building, Polly sat on a wooden bench waiting for Leonard Zimmern to join her for lunch. Shufflings and murmurs reached her from the classrooms opposite, and a gust of chill snowy air slapped her face every time the outside doors swung open to admit students in the uncouth dress and weary, wretched expressions characteristic of exam period.

Polly also felt weary and wretched. She hadn’t even started her holiday shopping, and she had another dentist appointment this afternoon with awful Dr. Bebb. Stevie was coming home soon, which was something to look forward to; but according to Jim he was probably going back to Denver for the rest of the school year.

At least she could congratulate herself on having gotten out of Key West in time. It had been a near thing, though. After she changed her ticket, Polly had all but forgotten her project and given herself wholly up to Mac and to pleasure. They had jogged in a drifting fog by the ocean at dawn, swum in the rose-stained waves at sunset, and made love on the sand (romantically but rather grittily) by starlight. They had gone dancing again, bought palm-leaf hats at a flea market, and watched the shrimp boats unload.

They hadn’t been out to the reef, because the sea was still too high; but they’d gone fishing with a friend of Mac’s and brought home a six-pound kingfish that Lee had stuffed and baked for them and two of her guests. For three days Polly had hardly thought of her book, and the only work she had done was to help Mac and his crew tape and spackle sheetrock.

It still scared her to think how close she had come to really caring about Mac — no, she corrected herself, Hugh Cameron — and accepting his version of Lorin Jones. Because of course his story was just as partial and biased a view of Lorin’s life as Jacky’s or Garrett’s. Maybe more so. The trouble was, as Jeanne said, that though she knew all her informants were untrustworthy, whenever she got too close to one of them her vision blurred, and he turned into a sympathetic person; in Mac’s case, to worse than that.

But as Jeanne had pointed out, she had to look at the situation objectively. “Polly, dear. You may have had an exciting time in Florida, well, why not? But you know it would really be a mistake to take it seriously. This is somebody who deceived you, by his own admission; who was cheating on the woman he lives with; and who’s more or less stolen two very valuable paintings. I’m not blaming you. I know all too well how crazy I get sometimes myself when I’m in an erotic blur, so that I simply won’t let myself see what’s quite plain to everyone around me.”

It was plain to Jeanne, for instance, that Polly had been in a vulnerable condition the whole time she was in Key West: confused and credulous — almost as if she’d been under a voodoo spell of the sort that Ron and Phil had warned her about. Once home, though, she had more or less fallen apart.

It was Jeanne who had put her back together; Jeanne had been wonderful. She had sympathized, understood, and vigorously denied that Polly was in any way responsible for what had happened in Key West. It was clear to Jeanne that her friend had been lured into Hugh Cameron’s house, and then practically raped, when she was ill and miserable and exhausted — after all, hadn’t she come home with a streaming cold and a temperature of over a hundred? Hadn’t she had to be put straight to bed, and nursed back to physical and emotional health by her devoted Calico Cat?

What had happened in Key West was also partly, Jeanne had suggested, a side effect of Polly’s long concentration on Lorin Jones: of first a conscious and later and more darkly a subconscious identification with her subject. Finally she had even begun to have Lorin’s experiences: she had been exploited by Lorin’s dealers, for instance. (Jacky, as Jeanne had pointed out, hadn’t offered to go to Key West himself, or contribute to her plane fare, though when the paintings she’d found were retrieved and sold he would get a large commission.) She had been pawed and condescended to by Garrett Jones; she had been deceived and seduced by Mac/Hugh.

And even after Mac/Hugh had, as he put it, “come clean,” he was still dirty, still lying, Jeanne was sure of that. The story about Lorin Jones being addicted to speed, for instance, sounded to her like a parcel of lies; why, even Lorin’s own sister-in-law had never heard anything of the kind. It was clear to Jeanne that Cameron was a dishonest, dangerous person: superficially charming and clever maybe, but warped. Maybe even a borderline psychopath, she had suggested yesterday. “Gee, yeah, that could be,” agreed Betsy, who had been present at these discussions more often than Polly would have liked.

“Oh, come on,” Polly had protested. “He wasn’t that bad, you know.” But at this Betsy and Jeanne had regarded her with identical looks of anxious indulgence, like nurses in a convalescent hospital. Still a little infection there, I’m afraid, these looks said; and they were right.

Of course if Polly were to accept their view of Mac — of Hugh Cameron, rather — it would make her task much easier. She could go back to her original vision of Lorin Jones as a woman of genius damaged and finally destroyed by men and the male establishment; she could set aside all that didn’t belong in that story. Then her biography, as she had first planned, would be a well-documented assault on the art establishment. It would also be her revenge on the men who had injured not only Lorin but Polly herself — liars, exploiters, seducers. “They’ll be sorry when your book comes out,” Jeanne had said the other day, smiling her pussycat smile.

Sorry, and also perhaps vengeful in their turn. Polly’s biography would be bad-mouthed by Garrett Jones and Jacky Herbert and all their friends and supporters; it would be badly reviewed in the establishment press, and its sales would be poor; she’d have to expect that. There would be repercussions when she went back to work at the Museum: cold looks, cold words, the chilly withdrawal of her superiors. Gradually, a strong snowy wind like the one now outside this building would cut Polly off from the New York art world; it would blow her even further into a wholly female and largely lesbian society.

But though she might suffer professionally and financially, she would be supported and encouraged by others like herself. The feminist press would treat her work seriously. Ida and Cathy and the rest of Jeanne’s friends would accept and trust her, as one who had finally — though none too soon — spoken out against the patriarchal system.

Polly gazed at the stained wall opposite, and saw herself as if in a film of the future, in Ida’s living room. She was sitting cross-legged in a circle of women at one of the study-group meetings she had up to now declined to attend. Her hair was chopped short, and she was wearing worn, woolly dark clothes and a serious, determined expression. Next to her on the lumpy braided rug made by a women’s commune in Vermont were Jeanne and Betsy. On the other side, holding her hand in a warm possessive grip, was another vague sympathetic female presence: Polly’s future lover, whoever she might turn out to be. (“I’m sure you’ll find someone nice soon,” Jeanne had said the other day, unconsciously echoing Polly’s mother.)

But why was this vision so flat and colorless? Maybe just because of the grayed winter light, and the stained plaster on which the scene was projected. Or maybe she was still rundown; she surely shouldn’t be depressed by a future in which she would be accepted, loved, and surrounded by intelligent, affectionate women who admired what she had done.

“Sorry about this place,” Leonard Zimmern said twenty minutes later, sliding a plastic tray the color of curdled mushroom soup onto a table in a kosher cafeteria. “The thing is, it’s the only restaurant near my office that’s not choked with tinsel and artificial holly this time of year.” He gave Polly a narrow glance and added: “I’m not going all Orthodox suddenly, don’t get any ideas. But the older I get, the more all this Christmas crap irritates me. Hope you don’t mind.”

“No, it’s okay,” Polly said, setting her coffee and bagel with cream cheese on the damp tabletop.

Lennie sat, and stirred his coffee. “So, you went to Key West and found Hugh Cameron,” he remarked.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“And I hear that’s not all you found.” Lennie smiled. “Jacky Herbert tells me you saw two of Laura’s paintings there. Including the big one from her last show that he thought was lost.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Cameron has them.”

“Really.”

Polly gave Lennie a look of ill-suppressed irritation. It was just like him not to show any surprise at her discovery — let alone enthusiasm or gratitude.

“I understand Herbert would like to get those paintings back for his exhibition.” He smiled narrowly and raised heavy black eyebrows threaded with gray.

“Mh.” Polly did not smile. The discovery of Lorin’s lost canvases was her greatest achievement so far; she wanted them in the new show, so that everyone could see and admire them; she wanted them photographed for her book. Yes, fine. But after that what would happen? Jacky wouldn’t give them back to Mac if he could help it; they would be sold to collectors who’d never known Lorin. But, as Jeanne had said, that was none of her business.

“Herbert suggested that we should all go together to his lawyer,” Lennie said. “He wants to send Cameron a letter demanding that he ship us the paintings, unless he can produce written proof that he owns them.”

“Mh,” Polly agreed uneasily. She knew all this; only yesterday Jacky had urged her to persuade Lennie to take such action as soon as possible.

“So you think that’s what we should do?”

“I suppose so,” she said, trying to speak positively, reminding herself that legally the paintings belonged to Lennie; that their recovery would be morally justified and professionally advantageous to her.

“I don’t care all that much for the idea of a lawsuit, you know. I always think of Bleak House.”

“Mmh.” Polly had never read Bleak House but was damned if she was going to admit it. Of course Lennie would go to a lawyer in the end, she told herself; he wouldn’t want to let two paintings worth at least twenty thousand each get away. But first, just for the fun of it, he was going to give her a hard time. He was teasing her now, as he had teased his sister years before. “Excuse me, I forgot the milk.”

The trouble is, she told herself as she picked her way between the crowded tables, I don’t like the idea of a lawsuit either. I don’t want to help take those paintings away from Mac. It’s against my own interests and maybe even illegal, she thought, holding her mug under the metal spigot, but I don’t want to be part of that.

“Hey, watch it,” a voice next to her cautioned. Polly looked down; her mug had overflowed and a puddle of milk was slopped around it.

“Sorry.” But Mac said Lorin had given him the paintings, she thought, releasing the lever. And even if she didn’t, they mean something to him; doesn’t that give him a sort of right to them?

“About those two canvases,” she said to Lennie, setting down her mug, now mostly lukewarm milk. “The problem is, they actually belong to Hugh Cameron.”

“Really?” This time he raised only one of his theatrical eyebrows.

“Your sister gave them to him, you see.”

“Yes? And what’s the proof of that?” he asked skeptically and hatefully.

Polly clenched her jaw. “It’s written on the back of both of the canvases,” she heard herself lie. “ ‘For Hugh with love from Lorin.’ I hadn’t seen it when I phoned Jacky,” she improvised.

“Really,” Lennie said for the third time, now with a descending intonation, drawing his eyebrows together. “I wonder who wrote it.”

“That’s why Cameron didn’t mention them to you when you were there, I guess,” she plunged on, appalled at what she had done, but trying to speak casually.

“It could have been.” Lennie shrugged. “It could have been anything. He was half out of his wits at the time, in my estimation.” He rotated his coffee mug. “Well. I can’t say I’m totally unhappy about it. I have enough trouble with the paintings of Lorin’s I’ve got now: the insurance and storage fees are ridiculous. And then, ever since that damned show of yours, some museum or other is always after me to lend them something.” He laughed slightly. “I’m certainly not going to get embroiled in a legal squabble. Let Cameron keep those paintings if he wants to.”

Well, you’ve done it now, Polly thought, shocked at herself. “I thought you didn’t like Hugh Cameron,” she said at random, recalling that Lennie had earlier described him — it was in her notes — as “a typical faux-naïf clinging to the role of artist and the role of child long after that was even faintly plausible.”

“I’m in no hurry to spend time with him, let’s put it that way. But I’ve no quarrel with Cameron; he put up with my sister a lot longer than most people would have, and he didn’t cheat on her the way Garrett did, as far as I know.”

“You’ve heard about that?” Polly asked.

“Uh-huh.” Lennie shrugged. “Most people who knew them have, I imagine.”

“Garrett was in love with her, though,” Polly said. “I think he still is, in a way.”

“Yes,” Lennie said savagely. “Lolly had that effect on men. From her earliest years.” He took an angry bite of sandwich that left yellow shreds hanging from his mustache and made him look suddenly carnivorous.

“Lolly; that was your sister’s nickname as a child.”

“Mm-hm.” He sucked in the rags of fried egg and wiped his mouth neatly; his expression was in neutral again.

“Do you happen to know how she got it?”

“I’m not sure, really. Probably it was short for what my father used to call her when she was a baby: Lollypop.” He took a sip of coffee. “So what else did you learn from Hugh Cameron?”

Polly glanced rapidly at Lennie, then away. Ridiculous to imagine that he knew what had happened in Key West. It was only his suspicious, probing professorial manner, developed no doubt over decades of intimidating students, that had caused her sensation of panic, her visible flush. She counterattacked:

“I learned several things you didn’t tell me. Or maybe you didn’t know them.”

“Really. Such as?”

“I found out how Lorin died, for instance.”

Lennie made no comment; he sat with the coarse white mug halfway to his thin, finely cut lips, waiting.

“She got a chill from swimming in the ocean for too long, when the water was still cold. And then she didn’t go to the doctor until it was too late.”

“Yes. Cameron told me that,” Lennie said on a harsh, falling note. “I wasn’t too surprised,” he added.

“You weren’t surprised by what?”

“The whole thing. Lorin was always attracted by water. And she was strange about doctors and hospitals, even as a kid. She didn’t like to have anyone poking about in her body. Or her mind, if it comes to that.”

“Who does?” Polly asked, wondering if Lennie was getting at her and her project, suggesting that Lorin would have disliked it. “But of course she was very sensitive.”

“Yes. Oversensitive, some might say.” Lennie gave a narrow smile. “And also I think she was rather interested in death.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well.” Lennie hesitated, maybe wishing he had not spoken, then continued. “By that time, you know, the few people she’d ever really felt safe with were dead. Her grandmother, and both her parents, and the maid they’d had all her life. Laura said to my ex-wife once that of course you never really trusted anybody you met after you were about ten — as if that were a quite natural human phenomenon.”

“That’s really sad,” Polly exclaimed, wondering at the same time if Lorin had been right.

“And then, the last time I saw her, when she came to New York after my father died, Laura told me this dream she’d had about him.” He paused.

“Yes?” Polly prompted.

“She said she dreamed that her father and Celia and all her other dead friends and relatives were standing at the far end of school playground that was half-covered in fog, calling to her. They were calling: ‘Rover, Red Rover, I charge you to come over.’ ”

“Ehh.” Polly sucked in her breath. He means, he’s suggesting that Lorin’s death was a kind of suicide, she thought. Not just the result of exhaustion, confusion, neglect, and self-neglect. “Hugh Cameron claimed that, those last few years, she was pretty heavily into drugs,” she said finally. “Speed mostly. But I don’t know if I believe —” She stopped, seeing Lennie's face twitch, his head jerk sideways, as if some invisible person had given him a stinging slap.

“You never heard that,” she said.

“I — No. But let’s say I had my suspicions.” He put down his cup.

“So you think it could be true.” And if it is, she thought, Mac wasn’t lying.

Lennie hesitated. “I think it’s a possibility. The last time we met I definitely had the idea she was on something.”

“But if it’s so, maybe that was why —” Polly said. “I mean, if her mind was confused — she needn’t have wanted to die. And nobody really cared, nobody tried to help her. It was such a waste!” she cried out suddenly, causing other people in the cafeteria to look around.

“Yes, you could say that.” He nodded.

“With all her talent —” Polly tried to control her voice. “Such a damn stupid waste. It makes me so angry, that’s all.”

“Yes. Me too.” Lennie sighed heavily. “But then, we’re both angry people.” He smiled intimately at Polly.

It’s true, she thought, meeting his sharp direct gaze. And probably it goes back to childhood, the way most things do. Both of us stepchildren, with younger siblings everyone preferred to us. My father ran out on me and started another family; so did yours. It’s you I’m like, not Lorin. For a moment she looked at Lennie not as an opponent and a research problem, but as an ally, a possible friend. No. She mustn’t fall into that trap again.

“I suppose that’s a matter of opinion,” she said irrelevantly.

Lennie’s expression changed. “Like everything else,” he said. He leaned back and resumed his normal expression, a slight ironic smile. “Well. And are you going to reveal in your biography that my sister took drugs?”

“I don’t know,” Polly admitted, suddenly weary. Jeanne’s idea was that if Hugh Cameron hadn’t simply invented Lorin’s drug habit, he had probably been responsible for it. But could he have lied so coolly, and in such circumstances? Unbidden, a picture came into Polly’s head, of an empty half-finished house in Key West; of Mac’s face as he leaned toward her in the hot shadowy light. She blinked furiously, blinking it away.

“I told you you might find out too much,” Lennie said, looking at her. “That’s the problem with any book, of course. Your kind and mine anyhow. The less you know, the easier it is to write.”

He waited a moment; then, receiving no reply, pushed his cup away and crumpled his paper napkin. “Well, I guess I should be getting back to my office. But I tell you what, why don’t you come with me?”

“Well —” Polly hesitated.

“If she’s around, I’ll have my scatty little secretary make you a decent cup of coffee. I can see you didn’t care for what they brew here.” He gestured at the mug of dirty-looking lukewarm milk.

But the chauvinist remark had roused her to consciousness. “Thanks; but I can’t,” she said flatly. “I’ve got too many errands.”

On a soggy, snowy afternoon a few days later, Polly unlocked the door of her apartment and slogged in, heavy-booted and laden with parcels. “Hi!” she called.

“Hello there,” Jeanne answered from the sofa, which she had as usual converted into a kind of nest lined with pillows and magazines and student papers; with her pink cable-knit cardigan, her needlepoint and colored wools, her filter-tip cigarettes, and her favorite china ashtray in the shape of a scalloped heart.

“Hey, welcome home!” It was Betsy’s voice, childishly high and eager, but at first Polly couldn’t see where it was coming from. Then she realized that Jeanne’s girlfriend was lying on the carpet by the sofa in a yoga position. Her ass was propped on her hands; her long legs, in lavender sweat pants, were flopped back over her head, so that she looked up at Polly from between thin freckled ankles and white knobby feet.

“How’s everything?” Polly dropped her packages and bent over the sofa; but Jeanne, unexpectedly, did not turn her cheek for the usual kiss, or raise her eyes from a line of tiny zigzag stitches in bright green wool.

“All right,” she said in a manner that instantly informed Polly it wasn’t.

“So what happened about the apartment on Twenty-third Street?”

“We didn’t get it,” Betsy volunteered upside down.

“Oh, hell. That’s too bad,” Polly said, thinking that this must be their fifth or sixth housing fiasco since she’d returned from Key West. Either the places Jeanne and Betsy heard of turned out to be impossible, or they were no longer available. As might have been expected, Betsy’s abusive husband had refused to move out of the apartment in Brooklyn Heights. He wouldn’t even talk to Betsy’s lawyer; his position now was that she was having an emotional crisis and ought to see a therapist, recover, and return to him.

The trouble was, Stevie was coming home next week. Jeanne and Betsy would be away then: they were spending the holidays in a women’s commune in Vermont. But if they hadn’t found another place yet, where would they live when they got back?

If Stevie stayed in Denver, which looked more and more miserably likely, they would probably expect to go on living here. Polly wouldn’t have any reason to turn them out, though she would have liked to.

Or rather, she would have liked to turn Betsy out. Now that her classes were over, Betsy was around all the time. She seemed to take up more and more room in the apartment, and get younger and more helpless every day; look at her now, rolling around on the carpet like an overgrown child.

“There were... a couple ... of calls ... for you,” Betsy volunteered, breathing noisily between words in a yogic way and pointing her long white bony feet at the ceiling as if the calls had come from there.

“Yes. Garrett Jones phoned,” Jeanne remarked tightly, pulling a length of green tapestry wool through the canvas. “He said to tell you he’s sending those photographs you wanted.”

“Oh, good.” Polly unfastened her duffel coat. Obviously her friend was not only disappointed about the apartment on Twenty-third Street, but seriously miffed about something; what?

“And you had another call from that man in Key West,” Jeanne added, in a tone that answered the question.

“Yes?” Something inside Polly’s chest rose in a kind of excited hiccup, but she swallowed it down. It was over between her and Mac — it was only her weakness, her vanity that twitched to this news, that wanted to hear him say, one more time, So when are you coming back to Key West? (“You let me know before Christmas, and I’ll tell Tony not to rent my house in January after these tenants leave,” he had added when they last spoke.)

“It was about ten minutes ago,” Betsy offered helpfully, moving her legs in a scissors pattern.

Damn, Polly thought. “And what did he say?”

“I d’know,” Betsy said, breathing and scissoring. “Jeanne talked to him.”

“He left a message, would you phone him again tonight after eight. Again.” Jeanne underlined the word with her voice.

“For God’s sake,” Polly exclaimed. “You don’t need to look at me like that. I only called him once.” And only because I had to let him know what I’d told Lennie about the paintings, she added to herself — not aloud, for Jeanne knew nothing of this rash lie.

“I think you should call him again,” Jeanne said. “I think you should ask him to please stop phoning here, because you’re not interested in speaking to him.”

“I can’t do that. He might have remembered something useful to tell me; he might even have changed his mind about lending those canvases for the show.”

“If that’s really so, he can always write a letter,” Betsy said. “You could tell him that.”

“I suppose I could,” Polly conceded, looking at Betsy, who was now awkwardly pedaling an imaginary bicycle upside down. If it were a real one and right-side up, she would fall off and hurt herself.

“I wish you would,” Jeanne said. “You know it really upsets me, having to speak to someone like that. Someone who took advantage of you that way, when you were so vulnerable.”

“I know.”

“I should think it would be even more unpleasant for you.”

Not wanting to lie, Polly made no comment.

“Anyhow, let’s forget about that creep for a while,” Jeanne said in a different, warmer voice. “Come and show us what you found at Macy’s.” She shifted her papers to the coffee table to make room, and patted the sofa beside her, ready now to hear of Polly’s struggle with the grizzling gray weather and the jammed stores and buses, and to give her an affectionate hug.

“Just a second; I’ve got to stop in the bathroom.”

Polly headed down the hall; but on reaching her destination, instead of lifting the lid of the toilet, she sat down on it and began, very slowly, to pull off her boots.

Yes, it ought to be unpleasant for her to speak to Mac, she thought. She ought to want to put all that behind her. But she still couldn’t forget the way he looked, the way his body had felt, the way he had moved, the flat cubist breadth of his chest, his long hard legs, his long square-tipped fingers. Worst of all, she kept thinking of his cock: its length, its strawberry-vanilla hue, its slight upward curve.

After two weeks, she ought to be getting over this. She was getting over it, really; in a few months she might forget the whole thing, as she had said to Jeanne only yesterday. “Of course you will,” Jeanne had agreed. “Probably even sooner.”

But not everyone they knew was of the same opinion. Ida and Cathy, for instance, thought differently. When Jeanne told them about Polly’s adventures in Key West they hadn’t been encouraging. Not knowing that she was being overheard, Ida had said she wasn’t convinced it had been a temporary aberration, a last bout of fever. “Polly hasn’t got it out of her system, dear, and she’s not going to get it out of her system,” Ida had pronounced. “It is her system.” And Cathy had remarked that the sad truth was, you could never really depend on a bisexual.

Ida and Cathy were wrong, Polly told herself, lifting the lid of the toilet, for which Jeanne had recently bought a dusty-pink plush cover, and sitting down again. All she needed was a little more time; and maybe a new emotional interest. She stood up, washed her hands, picked up her salt-and slush-stained boots, and started back down the hall. On her way the phone began to ring. With her heart leaping about annoyingly, she answered it in the bedroom.

“Mom? It’s Stevie.”

“Oh, honey, hello!” Polly’s voice eased half an octave. “How are you? Is everything all right?”

“Sure, it’s fine. I just wanted to tell you, I’m coming back a day sooner than Dad wrote you. On the twenty-second. Is that okay?”

“Of course it’s okay. It’s great.” Polly laughed.

“And listen, Mom.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m going to be bringing a lot of stuff. Well, see, all my stuff.”

“You mean, you’ve decided, you don’t want to go back to Denver after Christmas vacation?” Polly gasped.

“No. I mean, yeah. I want to stay home.”

Home; the word repeated itself in Polly’s head like a muffled triumphant drumroll through the rest of the conversation, which was concerned with flight numbers, arrival times, and contingency plans.

“That was Stevie,” she cried, running into the sitting room.

“Oh?”

“He’s coming home a day early.”

“Ah.” It was clear that for Jeanne the time of Stevie’s arrival was a matter of indifference.

“And he’s not going back to Denver!”

“Not going back?” Jeanne stuck her tapestry needle into the center of a Victorian rose, and sat forward. “Well,” she said. “You must be awfully pleased.”

“You must be awfully pleased about Stevie,” Jeanne repeated an hour later, as she beat lemon juice and egg yolk together for a hollandaise sauce while Betsy, who usually served as her kitchen maid, peeled potatoes.

“Yes, I really am,” Polly answered. “But I know you’re not,” she added.

“Don’t talk that way,” Jeanne said, her voice rising to a soft quaver. “I’m very happy for you.”

“Sure, but I meant — I realize it’s going to be inconvenient for you and Betsy, having to move out so soon, I mean. And I’m really sorry. But what else can I do?”

A rhetorical question; however, Jeanne answered it. “Well.” She paused to add a lump of butter. “I thought maybe we could stay on for a while anyhow. Until we find something else, of course.”

“But there’s no place for you to sleep,” Polly protested. With a sinking sensation she imagined Jeanne and Betsy camped out in the sitting room: Jeanne on the sofa, and Betsy humped untidily on an air mattress alongside.

“There’s plenty of space in this apartment really, you know.” Jeanne smiled persuasively. “If Stevie moved into the spare room we’d all be perfectly comfortable.”

“I can’t turn Stevie out of his own room,” Polly protested.

“But it would only be for a little while,” Betsy whined. “And it wouldn’t be any trouble, really, Polly. We’d move all his posters and stuff, of course. And all our things are there already, and our bed.”

My bed, Polly thought. She imagined trying to explain to Stevie that Jeanne and Betsy had taken over his room. Then, for the first time, she imagined trying to explain to him why they were sleeping together in a double bed. “No, I can’t do it,” she stated.

“Jeanne said you wouldn’t agree,” Betsy remarked dole fully. “But listen; there was another idea that occurred to me.”

What had occurred to Betsy, it turned out, was that Stevie should be sent away again almost as soon as he got home. It was the logical solution really, she said, because the New York public high schools were so awful, while the private ones were expensive and snobbish. Besides, the city was a dangerous place for teenagers in a whole lot of ways.

What would be best for Stevie, Betsy thought, would be a nice liberal boarding school with high academic standards, somewhere in the real country — say some place like Putney in Vermont, where Betsy had gone herself. There was sometimes room at midterm for new students, and Stevie would probably adore Vermont. After Colorado he’d want to hike and camp out and ski. Betsy thought it was a great idea.

“Well, I think it’s a terrible idea,” Polly said, trying to remain calm. “Stevie’s just been away from me for four months; I’m not going to send him off again, even if I could afford it, which I can’t.” She looked toward Jeanne for support, but Jeanne only went on stirring the hollandaise.

“My mother was exactly like you,” Betsy said in her whining, stubborn way, starting to scrape at another potato. “She didn’t want me to go away to school. But I had a really great time at Putney. I think maybe you’re putting your own needs ahead of Stevie’s, and besides —”

“I am not —” Polly began, seething.

“— besides, it could even be emotionally damaging if you insist on keeping him too close to you; that’s what Jeanne and I think.”

“I don’t see why it should do Stevie any damage to be close to me,” Polly said, feeling angry and betrayed. “He’s been close to me for fourteen years.” Ignoring Betsy, she stared at Jeanne. “Is that really what you think?”

“No, of course not.” Jeanne moved the double boiler off the burner and turned around, wiping her hands on her flowered apron. “Betsy’s got it quite wrong,” she said in an easy, soothing voice. “Of course it won’t hurt Stevie to stay here, because you’re not a neurotic, anxious mother like hers.” She smiled at them both. “Stevie doesn’t need to get away from you, I told her so already. And naturally you want to keep him with you as long as you can.”

“Right,” Polly said with satisfaction, and gave Betsy a scornful look. You see, you stupid preppie, she thought.

“I know you love Stevie and want what’s best for him; and so do I,” Jeanne went on, smiling fondly. “But I don’t see why you can’t ask him to move into the spare room, just for a little while. And really I don’t imagine it would make all that much difference to him. He might even prefer it, because he’d have his own bathroom.”

“But —” Polly began, choking up again. The spare bathroom had been designed for a maid back when maids would put up with anything: it was cramped, unheated, and disagreeable, with cheap rusted fixtures. The truncated and stained tub, with its cargo of discarded canvases, hadn’t been used since Polly moved in fourteen years ago. “I think he’d hate it,” she said, trying hard to speak evenly. “Having your own room is important for a kid; much more than for someone like you or me.”

“You may have a point,” Jeanne conceded. “Well, maybe we should move into your room instead. It’s not as big as Stevie’s, but it’s large enough for two people.”

“I didn’t meant to suggest —” Was Jeanne really proposing to turn her out of her own room? Polly looked at her friend as she stood by the stove. Everything about her was familiar, from her soft pale curls, caught back for cooking with a bit of rose-colored ribbon, to her scuffed black ballet slippers; but Polly felt as if she had never seen her before. “Anyhow, there’s not enough space in this apartment for four people,” she said. “It’s too crowded already with three.”

“It is kind of small —” Betsy began, but neither of them paid any attention to her.

“Now Polly, really,” Jeanne murmured, smiling. “You mustn’t exaggerate. This apartment is twice as big as the house I grew up in, and there were four of us there. I think you’re being just a little bit selfish, you know.”

“Well, I think you’re being a little bit selfish,” Polly said, beginning to lose control.

“I only suggested —” Jeanne began, but Polly rushed on:

“— And if you want to know, I don’t think you want what’s best for Stevie at all. I think you want what’s best for Jeanne and Betsy.”

“Oh, Polly!” her friend said in a soft shaky overdramatic voice. “Don’t talk that way!”

But the storm of flies had boiled up into Polly’s head. “Don’t tell me how to talk, okay?” she shouted.

Jeanne flinched as if she had been struck, but did not reply. She bent over the stove, her pink lips trembling, her eyes blinking with unshed tears, while Betsy stared at Polly accusingly.

“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.