The Truth About Lorin Jones (12 page)

They about knocked me over. I knew then she was way ahead of me.

I don’t know if Laura had other friends near her own age. I never met any. The important artists of her generation, people like Rauschenberg and Johns and Rivers and Frankenthaler, I don’t think she saw anything of them. What she met in New York was the middle-aged established painters, and then the dealers, the collectors, the critics. And the hangers-on, the creepos. At least, that’s the idea I got from her.

Yes, I tried inviting her to have lunch with some of us after class a couple of times, but it didn’t work out. Laura kind of froze up, and my friends thought she was snooty. The thing is, she was serious about painting, and she was really good, but none of them wanted to admit it. All they could see was that she was married to Garrett Jones, and he was promoting her. Afterward they said things like “Sure, I could show at the Apollo too, if I was sleeping with him.”

Not really. I only met him once, at a happening. You remember happenings?

This one was in a swimming pool at a New York health club. It was a good location for something like that, a big empty underground space, all Art Deco tiles and weird acoustics. There was a mixed audience: students, artists, musicians, and some collectors and café society types, because word was starting to get around. I was there with a couple of people from school, sitting on the tiles at the edge of the pool and waiting for things to start, and I saw Laura come in with this middle-aged man, that I knew had to be her husband. Anyhow, my friends recognized him. Laura stopped in front of us, and said hello, and sort of introduced us. She was got up like I’d never seen her before, very glamorous, in a long black skirt and an antique fringed silk shawl and silver chandelier earrings.

I was kind of nervous. I mean, Garrett Jones was incredibly powerful in the art world then, and I knew that to my friends he was the uptown establishment: the enemy, you know. And besides he was old enough to be my father.

Well, they just said hello, mostly, and went on past us and sat in some folding chairs that were reserved for important people, I guess. And the happening started. While it was going on I looked over a couple of times to see how they were liking it. Laura seemed interested, I saw her smiling, but it was obvious that her husband was disgusted. And then in the middle of everything, when they brought in buckets of fish and started throwing them at the audience and splashing us with water, Garrett Jones walked out, sort of pulling Laura behind him.

I guess I felt bad that she went along with him. I kind of looked up to her, and I wanted her to stand up for herself, you know? The next time we met, I didn’t know what to say to her about it, so I didn’t say anything, and neither did she.

Well, not much. After that we sort of drifted apart. For one thing, Laura was in New York less and less. Garrett Jones kept dragging her off to Cape Cod, and she’d be gone for months. We used to mail each other postcards, mostly of pictures we liked. And when I got married she sent me this drawing I showed you, of me being carried away over New York by a big bird. Because of Dave’s last name, you know.

I wrote to her when our first child was born, but I didn’t hear anything back. Then much later I found out she’d died down there in Florida, at about the same time. She probably never even got my letter.

I was really broken up, even though I hadn’t seen her for years. Every time I thought about her I started crying. Well, I was expecting again; I think that always makes you emotional. When the baby came and it was a girl we called it Laura, sort of after her. I always liked the name anyhow.

No. I wish we could afford one, but her prices are so high now, and with four kids to put through college...

What I think is, marrying Garrett Jones, it didn’t do Laura’s painting any good in the long run. It cut her off from the artists she should have known, and made them, well, kind of despise her. This was when pop art was coming in, and he was really stupid about it, he called it vulgar and self-serving. He couldn’t see beyond his own heroes, people like Rothko and Motherwell and Kline. Of course later on he went for color-field and hard-edge abstraction in a big way, but by that time Laura and he were separated.

The thing is, if it hadn’t been for Jones, Laura’s painting might have developed differently, been more contemporary. He kind of surrounded her and cut her off. She was really good, but her work was completely out of the mainstream, almost irrelevant to what was happening here in New York in the sixties.

Yes, I guess I do hold it against him. Even now.

W
ITH AN UNEASY LURCH
and dip of its wings, the commuter plane swerved south toward Provincetown over a flat ocean like oily crumpled metal. Polly, who was one of only three passengers, caught her breath hard. Maybe we’re going to crash, she thought. I’ll never write my book, or see Stevie again, or Jeanne. It didn’t seem possible: only a few hours ago, in her traveling clothes, she had sat on the bed in which her friend — her lover? — lay asleep in a swirl of blankets and sheets and pink ruffled and flowered flannel nightgown, like a warm, untidy rose.

“I’m leaving for the airport now,” Polly told her softly, hoping she would wake.

“Mm?” Jeanne opened one pale-lashed hazel eye.

“I’m going to Wellfleet to see Garrett Jones.”

“Oh, right.”

“So long then.” Polly bent over Jeanne, who turned her head and gave her a soft sleepy kiss.

“Come home soon,” she murmured.

Come home to what? Polly wondered now. Had Jeanne’s kiss been romantic or only friendly? Was the odd, awkward, lovely thing that had happened last night the beginning of something serious, or was it just an incident? Polly didn’t know, and if she died now, she never would know.

Again the tiny plane hiccupped, tilted sharply, and righted itself. Polly could feel the contents of her stomach (weak sugary iced coffee and a soggy airport-cafeteria cheese sandwich) rise and contemplate departing by the nearest exit. She imagined being sick in the middle of the air; then as the toy plane listed sideways again she imagined herself drowning, trapped inside its tinny body — or would she die of the impact first, even over water? Fear and hatred of Garrett Jones made her clench her hands on her seatbelt. What the hell did he mean, telling her that Cape Air was perfectly safe? Probably he wanted her to arrive in Provincetown in a state of nervous confusion, so she wouldn’t ever really get it together to question him. Or maybe he hoped she’d crash on the way to Provincetown, and never arrive at all. She should have followed her original plan: rented a car and driven down from Boston. That would have taken longer and cost more, but when she got to Wellfleet she would have been well and alive.

Apart from recommending this awful flight, Garrett Jones had done nothing in the years Polly had known him to earn her distrust. At the time of “Three American Women” he was, she had to admit, unfailingly courteous and cooperative. He had sent several of his former wife’s paintings to the Museum, and provided information on the whereabouts of others; in a few crucial cases he had persuaded reluctant collectors to lend items for the show. Later on he wrote a brief, graceful appreciation of Lorin’s work for the catalogue. This essay, however, did not mention that Garrett and his wife had ever been divorced or even separated. “I don’t think that’s really relevant,” he had explained smoothly when Polly queried the matter on his proofs.

When Polly told Jones she was thinking of writing a book about Lorin he was graciously enthusiastic. He recommended her for the fellowship, and offered to supply photographs, letters, and the names and addresses of people she might like to interview. Now he and his present wife had invited her to visit them in Wellfleet before they closed the house for the winter and returned to New York, so that Polly could see where Lorin Jones had once lived and worked.

But in spite of Garrett Jones’s cooperation and good manners, Polly didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. Which, since he was a tall, heavy, elderly man who must have weighed at least sixty pounds more than she, was not very far. Probably, Polly thought, she couldn’t even push him any great distance. But she was going to have to push him, psychologically at least.

She didn’t kid herself: the next twenty-four hours were going to be a battle. Probably Garrett Jones would do all he could to present himself in the most favorable light possible, and to conceal any evidence of the damage he had done to Lorin and of how unhappy she must have been in Wellfleet. Polly had to prevent him getting away with this — to cut through his sophisticated platitudes. The patience and tact Jeanne had always recommended would only go so far. Judging by what had happened when she had lunch with Jones in New York, they would only result in his telling her a lot of innocuous anecdotes with an air of courteous self-satisfaction. Eventually she’d have to push and shove, to confront him directly.

There was no point in trying to be too nice, either, because when Polly’s book came out, in about eighteen months, Garrett Jones would stop speaking to her anyhow. If she was really lucky he might be dead by then, seeing that he was seventy-three now. Otherwise she would be in trouble, because though Jones didn’t have as much power in the art world as he once had, he was still formidable. If he wanted to, he could probably do her serious professional harm. But that was a risk Polly’d decided she had to take.

Swerving sickeningly, the toy plane bounced down onto the end of Cape Cod and stuttered to a stop between stands of dusty-looking scrub oaks. In Central Park October still blazed with color: here the landscape was stripped and ashy, ready for winter.

Shaky, half-nauseated, but relieved to be alive, Polly climbed out into a strong crosswind and gulped cold salty air. As she lugged her duffel bag toward the toy terminal, she thought at first that Garrett Jones hadn’t come to meet her. Then she recognized him, disguised as an old sea captain in jeans and windbreaker and visored cap.

“Hello there, Polly! Grand to see you!” he shouted as she got within range. Before she could recoil he had put both hands on her shoulders and kissed her wetly on the cheek. Furious, she raised the arm that gripped her canvas bag and wiped her face with the back of her wrist.

“Is this all your equipment?”

“This is it.”

“Traveling light, eh? I admire that in a woman. Here, let me.” Not waiting for a reply, Garrett Jones wrenched her bag out of her hand and, in spite of his years, started toward the parking lot with a lively, almost rolling seaman’s gait.

“Well, and how have you been?” he called jovially, turning a bronzed, weather-beaten countenance toward Polly as she scrambled to catch up.

“Fine, thanks.”

“Did you have a comfortable flight?” He grinned, to her mind evilly.

“Fine, thanks,” repeated Polly, determined not to show any weakness or fear. She felt caught off-balance, like some Amazon commander who has entered the field well prepared for war on land and is suddenly obliged to fight a naval battle. Until this afternoon she had never seen Garrett Jones in anything but a business suit; she had thought of him as an essentially urban, indoor type, someone who would be ill at ease in the country — to her advantage. In manner he had always been rather formal, addressing her as Miss Alter. Now he was affecting to be another person with another, more intimate, relationship to her. No doubt he was doing this to unsettle and confuse her.

With a grin, or possibly a grimace, Garrett Jones slung Polly’s small but heavy bag into the back of an ancient green Volvo wagon, slammed the tailgate, and went around to unlock the passenger door. Polly detested having doors opened for her. She believed that the gesture, harmless as it seemed, was hostile: it was meant silently to establish that she was weaker than Garrett Jones and to put her under an obligation to him. But she suppressed her protest — it was bad tactics to start hostilities too soon.

“So what would you like to do first?” Jones asked as he climbed in beside her. “I wish I could take you out for a sail, it’s a hell of a fine day for it, but my boat’s already in dock for the winter. I could try to borrow one from our neighbors, if you’d like.”

Polly scowled. To go sailing with Garrett Jones in this windy, stormy weather would just give him a chance to finish what Cape Air had begun: that was, to make her sick and helpless; maybe even to nearly drown her. “Oh no thanks, Mr. Jones, don’t bother.”

“Garrett, please.” He put his hand on Polly’s arm and smiled into her eyes in a false fatherly way. “And I hope I may call you Polly.”

“All right,” she said ungraciously, thinking that this was the sort of question it was almost impossible to answer in the negative.

“Grand. Well, if you don’t fancy sailing, the other notion I had was, I might drive around a little, show you some of the locations between here and Wellfleet that Laura used in her paintings.”

“Yes, I’d like that,” Polly said.

“Right, then.” Garrett gunned the engine and pulled out onto the road, swinging the wheel around as if he were navigating a sailing ship, and headed up into the dunes at top speed. Polly wondered if he was trying to terrify her with his driving, but since he too was at risk she decided not to worry about it.

“Now.” He stopped the Volvo at the top of a grassy rise. “Here’s where Laura made the sketches for
Deposition.
About the same time of year as this, it must have been. Like to get out, probably you could see it better.”

“Okay.”

Garrett Jones started around to open the door for Polly; but she wasn’t having any more of that, thanks, and by the time he got there she had scrambled out and slammed it behind her. Score one for me, she thought. She leaned against the side of the car with the low sun and the hard wind in her face, squinting at the sweep of sandy hills, the twisted beach pines like giant bonsai, the flattened silvery crescent of ocean. It was clearer to her than ever that
Deposition
— the largest of the three abstracts Garrett Jones had lent to the Museum show — was in fact a landscape.