The Truth About Lorin Jones Read Online Free Page A

galleries and collectors were.
    While she still thought the matter was under discussion, Jim came home one afternoon and announced a unilateral decision.
    “I can’t stall them anymore, Polly,” he explained, sitting down suddenly in the hall in a narrow-backed, hard Art Deco chair that nobody ever sat in. “I heard today that if I don’t take the Denver job they’re going to offer it to Frank Abalone. And hell, he’d really mess it up. He’s got a name in some circles, but essentially he’s a fraud, only nobody can prove it. Nobody even dares to try, after the way he ruined that lab assistant in L.A. I told you about that, you remember?”
    “I remember,” Polly said, standing in the kitchen door with a head of half-washed escarole in one hand. “But hell, it’s not your responsibility, you know, what happens in some lab in Denver.”
    “Yes it is, though,” Jim said. “It’s my profession.” He swallowed, looked at the new beige twist carpeting for a bit, then up again. “Anyhow, I told Ben I was going to take the job.”
    “You told him you were leaving, just like that?” Polly stared at her husband and the chair that nobody ever sat on and thought: It was a sign; I should have known.
    “I had to, Polly. They’ll have to start looking for someone to replace me as soon as possible.”
    “I can’t believe it.” Polly’s voice rose; she had an impulse to throw the wet soppy head of lettuce at her wet soppy husband’s head. “Oh, shit. I thought you understood how I felt — Goddamn it, you said — I thought you’d do anything for me.”
    “I would, honestly,” Jim insisted. “Anything but this.”
    The next few weeks were horrible. Slowly but relentlessly, like a dirty oil stain seeping through the back of a badly prepared canvas, the apartment on Central Park West became fouled and darkened with distrust. Polly and Jim began to have long, increasingly exhausting conversations after they were in bed, lying side by side for hours but hardly touching. Finally, at two or three A.M., they would make love in a weary, desperate way. Afterward she would lie as still as possible, not moving, with the sleepy, blurred thought that as long as she held Jim within her body, he couldn’t leave her.
    It was at this point that Polly began seeing a therapist. She didn’t know yet that her marriage was breaking up; all she knew was that she and Jim had argued about his going to Denver until both of them were worn out, and now she was angry all the time and Jim was more and more silent and withdrawn. She knew they had to talk to someone else, to ventilate their feelings; that was why she made the appointment for them with Elsa.
    The trouble was that when air got into their feelings it turned into a cyclone and blew them apart. Jim was revealed to Polly as a pathetic, selfish windbag, with a mind so closed that he wouldn’t even go back to Elsa after their first three visits; he claimed she wasn’t on his side. But Polly hung in there, and Elsa supported her through the worst months of her life.
    Gradually she began to see how she had been deceived. Underneath his friendly, compliant manner, her husband was another MCP like all the rest. Worse, in fact, because at least the others were up front about it. With Jim there were never any remarks about women being weak-minded or unreasonable, there was no bluster or shouting. He was what an article she read later called a “passive-aggressive” male: a twentieth-century husband with the emotional tactics of a Victorian wife. He did exactly what he wanted, and made Polly look terrible at the same time.
    Jim wouldn’t, he simply wouldn’t fight. When she shouted and started throwing things he remained infuriatingly sad and silent. He almost never raised his voice, even, so everyone thought of him as terribly good and patient and mature. It was Polly who seemed to be in the wrong, who seemed selfish and childish and unreasonable. It was Polly whom Stevie blamed