The Truth About Lorin Jones (26 page)

“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.”