“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?”