The Truth About Lorin Jones

The Truth About Lorin Jones Read Free Page B

Book: The Truth About Lorin Jones Read Free
Author: Alison Lurie
Tags: General Fiction
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—”
    “Listen.” Unable to stop herself, Polly interrupted the story, though the sale catalogue in which this picture appeared was already at the printers. “Excuse my asking, but why are you selling this painting, if you like it so much? ... I mean,” she went on when Jim didn’t answer, “couldn’t you work something out with your grandmother? For instance, maybe you could have it appraised, and then buy it from her gradually.”
    “I guess I could. But the thing is, I don’t figure I have a right to a picture like this. It ought to be in a museum or somewhere it could be appreciated properly. I don’t really know anything about paintings.”
    “Says who?” Polly asked, turning around from the shipwreck to confront Jim.
    “I don’t know. I guess it was my mother who pointed it out first. ‘Jim’s a scientist,’ she always said. ‘He has no feeling for the arts.’ ”
    “Oh, bullshit. Listen, it’s not like that. There isn’t any race of special privileged people who deserve to own paintings because they’re so damned sensitive and aware. You like this picture, you should hang on to it.”
    Jim Meyer, typically, gave no sign that her argument had convinced him; but the following day, to the great irritation of Polly’s boss, he withdrew three of his grandmother’s pictures from the sale. He also invited Polly to dinner to thank her; and that was how the whole thing started.
    All Polly’s feminist friends liked Jim because he was so agreeable and good-looking and well informed, so obviously crazy about her, so respectful of her work. When she admitted that back in high school and college she’d wanted to be a painter herself, he was impressed and enthusiastic. It was a goddamn shame that she’d never had the time to go on with it, he said.
    For the first time in nearly twenty years, as Polly had later explained to her therapist, she felt really happy and secure. Jim appeared to be all any liberated woman could want. He read the books and articles Polly lent him, and agreed with their conclusions; he supported the hiring and promotion of women at his lab. He tried unfamiliar dishes, and went with her to look at the work of new artists.
    In return Polly made an effort not to shock Jim’s colleagues and family with her language, or lose her temper. In fact, Jim was so patient with her outbursts that she gradually gave them up. Yelling at him was like punching the tan beanbag chair in their bedroom; he didn’t argue or answer back, only sagged and looked deflated.
    There was only one problem: though she loved and trusted Jim, he didn’t always turn her on. His gentle and affectionate lovemaking was sometimes almost on the verge of boring her.
    For years, Polly tried with some success not to notice this. She blamed herself for still being susceptible to a stupid false adolescent idea of the desirable male — the Gothic myth of the Dark Stranger: reckless, willful, undependable. In the daylight hours she mocked this myth, deploring those of her friends who seemed to have bought into it. But sometimes late at night, as she lay in bed beside Jim Meyer and listened to his regular, almost apologetic snoring, the phantasm returned, and carried her into hot, windy, luridly lit regions whose existence her husband did not suspect.
    Jim was completely faithful — unlike Polly, who twice when her husband was away at conferences let the hot winds blow her into bed with the wrong sort of man. After these episodes she was furious with herself and nervously guilty. She longed to be exposed and forgiven; but she had the good sense to realize that confession would hurt Jim far more than it would help her.
    Though Polly went on working at the auction house after the wedding, with Jim’s encouragement she had begun to hope that she was an artist after all. Four months before Stevie was born she quit her job and tried to start painting. She cleared most of the boxes out of the narrow little room with the north

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