The Truth About Lorin Jones (16 page)

“And what was that?” Polly asked. “I mean, for instance.”

“Well. For instance, I wanted children very much. But my first wife couldn’t have a baby, and Laura wouldn’t.”

“She didn’t want children?”

“No. I think she was afraid of it, the whole process, you know.” Garrett shook his head slowly. “Now I’m what our pediatrician calls an elderly father.” He smiled wryly. “But as far as I’m concerned, that’s better than never being a father at all, you know? People without kids, they don’t really care what happens to the world after they’re gone, unless they’re saints. They’re only interested in their own lives, isn’t that right?”

“I know what you mean,” Polly said.

“Of course you understand; you have children.” Garrett swayed toward Polly and put his hand on hers again. This time she did not remove it.

“I have a son,” she said, wondering where Stevie was at this moment and what he was doing.

“Yes, you told me.” Garrett gazed past Polly’s shoulder into the dim cream-flowered wallpaper. Then, slowly, he turned to her again, first smiling, then staring. “You know something,” he said suddenly in a different, stronger voice. “You kind of remind me of her. Laura.”

“Really?” Polly gasped as if the smoldering logs had exploded into a burning blaze of fireworks.

“I don’t know why.” He shook his head. “You don’t look much like her. There’s something, though. Maybe it’s the voice.”

“You think I sound like her?” Polly said, listening to the words as they issued from her lips in Lorin’s ghostly tones. She had never heard Lorin speak, and never would; as far as she knew, Lorin’s voice was never recorded.

“Mm, yes, a little.”

Polly stared at Lorin Jones’s husband. Suppose it was true — who had a better right to say so? And after all, hadn’t Polly suspected this all along? Hadn’t she noted the overlapping of their lives, marveled that both were only children, and Jewish; that they shared a county, a city, a profession? And even, almost, a name; Polly remembered her shiver of recognition when she heard that in childhood Lorin was known as Lolly.

Here, in Lorin’s old haunts, they had drawn even closer together. All day she had walked in Lorin’s footsteps; and sometimes, surely, Lorin’s ghost had walked beside her.

“This was her home; this was the place she loved,” Polly announced, sure of it now.

“That’s right.” Garrett sighed. “That’s why, when I realized she was determined to spend most of the year here, I began doing everything I could to find a teaching job nearby, so I could be with her more of the time.”

“But you didn’t find one.”

“No; I found one, eventually. Only it was too late. I came dashing up here to tell her about it, she was gone. Hadn’t even left me a note.”

“That’s hard,” Polly exclaimed.

“It about killed me, at the time. If you want to know.” Garrett nodded slowly twice. “You see, I’d had no idea. ... Laura’d never complained, never said anything. Only, more and more, she started avoiding me. And she wouldn’t talk to me about her work any longer. I guess I should have known; but she was always such a solitary person, and it came on so gradually. That last year or so —” He stared into the middle distance. “I knew she’d hit some kind of a serious block, but she wouldn’t let me help her, or make any suggestions about her painting. Finally, she wouldn’t even show me what she was working on. After dinner she’d go up to her studio and shut herself in. If I knocked on the door she wouldn’t answer. Sometimes she’d stay in there for hours, till it was past midnight or later, and I gave up waiting for her and went to bed.”

“I’m sorry,” Polly said; yet she seemed to know intuitively why Lorin Jones had wanted to escape from Garrett and his intrusive sympathy. Over the centuries, always, the artist has had to flee the critic. And yet, how awful for both of them! She imagined the long silent evenings in this house; Lorin shut in her studio, staring at an empty canvas; Garrett pacing the other rooms.

“I never thought... I should have given her more space, maybe. Or I should’ve tried harder to talk to her. Christ knows she was unhappy. Must have been. She must have hated her life here. Hated me too, probably till she died.”

No, that didn’t sound right, Polly thought. “Not necessarily,” she said, forgetting the rule that an interviewer must not offer contrary opinions.

“You think not?” Garrett stared at her tipsily, as if she knew the answer.

“Did she ever say she hated you?”

Garrett shook his head. “Just said, when I finally had a letter from her — wasn’t a letter, really: only a couple of lines on half a piece of drawing-paper — just said, she had to go away. Said she was sorry.”

“She didn’t hate you,” Polly declared, transported, possessed. She didn’t need to ask any more questions; she knew everything about Lorin Jones: how long and in what distress she had stared at that piece of drawing-paper; how hard it had been for her to write those few words.

And she knew, too, how Lorin must have felt the day she left Wellfleet forever. She raised her eyes and imagined looking around this room for the last time, unable to speak all her regret, all her resolve. Then, struck by his silence, she glanced back at Garrett. His eyes were closed again; his broad chest under the checked shirt rose and fell in a slow rhythm.

“Well, guess I’d better be going to bed,” she said, reaching over the arm of the sofa to turn off her tape recorder. “It’s been a long day.”

Garrett’s pale blue eyes blinked open. “Tired, are you, child?”

“Mm. Rather.” Polly began to get up; a wave of dizziness came over her. The brandy, she thought, sitting down again on the edge of the sofa.

“Wait a sec. Don’t go yet. I want to say —” Garrett put his hand on hers again in what no longer seemed a paternal manner. “Having you here, talking to you. It means a lot to me.” His voice was thick with emotion.

“I’m glad I could come,” she replied almost at random, listening still to her own — or Lorin’s? — voice.

“Y’know I can’t speak to Abigail about Laura. She still gets jealous.”

“Mm.” Well, she might, Polly thought. Abigail is just an ordinary woman, and Lorin was unique, beautiful, a genius —

“Having you here — it’s as if she’d come back to me in a way, y’know?”

“I know,” Polly said, feeling the blaze of consciousness again.

“You’re a good girl. Do a good book, I bet.” Garrett squeezed her hand again. “Give me a goodnight kiss.”

She hesitated. But after all, why not? “All right.” She aimed for the red, mottled surface of his cheek, but Garrett turned his head at the last moment and landed a warm and definitely sensual smack directly on her mouth, at the same time pulling her against him.

For a moment Polly let it happen; she felt and gave warmth and pleasure. It had been over a year since she’d given any man more than a peck on the cheek. Then, recollecting who and where she was, she pushed Garrett away and stood up fast; the room spun.

“Aw. Don’t go yet.”

“Got to,” Polly insisted through a dizzy blur. “I’m really tired. Uh, well, thanks for everything. See you later.”

“Pleasant dreams,” Garrett called, raising himself with an attempt at courtesy, then falling back among the cushions. He gave her a woozy wave and smile, and closed his eyes.

Polly listened as she made ready for bed, but there was no sound from below. Probably Garrett Jones had passed out on the sofa. She felt drunk and confused, angry at herself, angry at and sorry for him. She remembered Jeanne’s warnings, her own cautions to herself. For Christ’s sake, she was here as a researcher, she was supposed to be cool, impartial, detached. To sympathize with Garrett, to see him as in some ways a tragic figure, that was forgivable. But to kiss him was muddling, unprofessional, unseemly.

Brushing her teeth over the bathroom sink, where Lorin Jones must so many times have stood to brush her own teeth, Polly emitted a cross, confused gargling sound, and spat.

Never mind,
Lorin said suddenly in her head.
It was I who kissed him, not you.

Yes, Polly thought. That’s how it was. She lifted her eyes to the mirror, and saw there a kind of double image. In the dim backlight she seemed paler, her hair darker, her eyes enlarged and shadowed, as if Lorin’s last photo had been superimposed on the reflection of her face.

You’re drunk, she told herself. It’s only because you’re wearing a dark sweater, and haven’t had your hair cut since August. She snapped on the fluorescent tube above the glass; the resemblance vanished. Again she was stocky, round-faced, short-haired. But it had been there, for a moment.

As Polly climbed dizzily into bed, she realized that her distrust and fear of Garrett Jones were gone. She felt instead only what Lorin’s ghost must feel: pity and affection for her handsome, self-centered, insensitive husband, now a famous elderly man who — too late — blamed himself bitterly and longed for his child bride. Yes; but now, through Polly’s intercession, Garrett knew that Lorin had cared for him; she had kissed and forgiven him.

“Is that right?” she asked aloud in the dark. “Is that what you wanted?”

There was no answer. But as she sank into an alcoholic drowse, Polly’s final sensation was that Lorin approved and was there; that the whisper of the bare trees outside the window was her whisper, the cold breath of the wind against the clapboards her breath.

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

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

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

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

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

“Please; go away.”

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

“Wha’d’you mean? I didn’t —”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Polly, my dear.”

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

“Polly, darling. Where are you?”

“Go back to bed!” she called.

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

“Please! Let me in.”

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

“Polly?”

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

“Polly, dear!” The door rattled violently.

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

“Lolly!”

Polly raised her head. Had she really heard that?

“Darling, please!” He was almost sobbing.

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

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

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

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

“Please, dearest. Lemme in.”

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

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

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