Read Online The Truth About Lorin Jones by Alison Lurie - Free Book Online Page B

refused to show here, wasn’t it?”
    “Please!” Jacky’s voice rose at least an octave. “It wasn’t me, I was a mere underling back then. ... But you mustn’t blame Paolo either, dear.”
    “No?” Polly asked, trying not to sound skeptical, but failing.
    “Really. You mustn’t put it into your book that the Apollo behaved badly to Lorin Jones, because it simply isn’t so. Paolo carried her for years when she wasn’t earning anything to speak of.”
    Polly said nothing. I’ll put into my book what I goddamn want to put in, she thought.
    “I guess I’d better tell you how it all was, so you’ll understand. Off the record, of course.” Jacky glanced at her tape machine.
    “All right,” Polly agreed, affecting not to notice the direction of his gaze.
    “I’ve never said anything about this to anyone before, by the way.”
    “Mm.” I’ll bet, she thought, for Jacky was known to some people in the New York art world as The American Broadcasting Company.
    “You’ve got to realize. Paolo did everything he reasonably could for Lorin, because he recognized from the start that she had real talent. But the trouble that girl gave him!” Jacky shook his large Roman head slowly.
    “How do you mean, trouble?”
    “Well.” He lowered his voice, but at the same time, fortunately, leaned forward, ensuring that the sound level on the tape would be preserved. “Between us, Lorin Jones was very very difficult to deal with.”
    “Oh?”
    “Terribly hard even to talk to, for one thing.”
    “She was extremely shy,” Polly protested. “Everyone knows that.”
    “Oh, granted. But you see, it was almost impossible to negotiate with her. Sometimes she wouldn’t answer Paolo’s letters for literally weeks. Or at all. In the end, he usually had to appeal to Garrett, and then Garrett would have to manage everything.”
    “So you didn’t see much of her here,” Polly prompted.
    “Not usually. Most young artists, you know how it is, they like to drop in every so often, or phone, just to remind you that they exist and are hoping for a sale. But not Lorin, ever, Paolo said. And she detested talking on the telephone. I had to call her once about something, and she whispered so low I could hardly hear her.”
    You call that “difficult,” Polly thought crossly, but did not say. She was beginning to realize that Paolo’s illness might be to her advantage; that she might learn from Jacky what she would never have learned from his boss.
    “But then, when she had a show, it was another story entirely. You absolutely couldn’t keep her out of the gallery. She had opinions about everything: what the announcement should look like, how the pictures should be hung, who should be invited to the opening.”
    And why the hell not, Polly thought. “Really.” In spite of her effort, her tone was chilly.
    “Let me assure you, no one values the artist’s prerogatives more than Paolo does,” Jacky hastened to say. “Still, there are limits. And Lorin caused him endless trouble, even the very very first time she was included in a group exhibition here. Most people her age would have been wild with joy to have two paintings in a gallery like this. But there was no sign of gratitude from Lorin, Paolo said. Or ingratitude either, one has to admit; she hardly spoke to him when she was here. All the complaints came through her husband. ‘My wife doesn’t think this painting really looks right next to hers’ — that sort of thing.”
    “And would Paolo move the other painting, then?”
    “Well, yes — very possibly. Of course, Garrett Jones was a very very important critic; maybe the most important back then. Naturally Paolo didn’t want to quarrel with him. They were friends, professionally speaking — still are, of course. You know how it is. But just between us, the Joneses drove him quite to distraction. ‘All right, she paints not badly,’ he’d say to me. ‘But there are other good young artists who don’t