For years Polly thought she had learned everything she needed to know from her mother’s mistakes. So, even though what she wanted in high school was to be a painter, she took care to finish college and then take a degree in art history: she wasn’t going to end up a glorified secretary like Bea. And when she began to go out with boys, she was careful not to catch a baby.
But, having forgotten her painful early attachment, Polly was condemned to repeat it. Over and over again she became involved with unreliable men. Usually they were Jewish, and often they had something to do with art or literature, like Carl Alter. Or, of course, like Leonard Zimmern.
At home everything was as she had left it that morning: bed unmade, dishes in the sink, yesterday’s Times on the sitting-room floor, and a general look of dust and emptiness.
The apartment was also empty in more than the psychological sense; and this was Polly’s own fault, the result of one of her fits of bad temper. During that awful spring a year ago Jim had asked if it would be okay for him to ship his desk to Colorado, and Polly had shouted that as far as she was concerned he could have anything in the place he wanted. Jim must have known she’d spoken rashly, but he had taken her at her word. Saying that he hoped she would soon follow, he decamped to Denver with nearly half their furniture, plus one of the two signed Rauschenberg lithographs and the little Frankenthaler that had been their wedding present to each other. After he had gone, the apartment looked like someone who had been in an accident: its walls were scarred with lines of dust where bookcases and bureaus had stood, and by tender pale rectangles with a blackened nail hole in the center of each, like skin where bandages have been ripped off over a half-healed puncture wound.
Even now, the rooms were half bare, Polly had read recently that after a divorce the man’s standard of living goes up by an average of seventy percent, while the woman’s is reduced by half. It hadn’t been that drastic for her; but even with Stevie’s child support she hadn’t been able to replace most of the kidnapped objects, and she’d let the housekeeper go this summer when she left her job. As long as she had Stevie, she didn’t really care about the stuff, but now —
“I want my pictures and furniture back,” she cried aloud. “I want my son back, damn it.”
Talking to herself. Well, they said that was what happened when you lived alone: you became eccentric. Polly had also noticed that her mood swings were wider: she was up one day, down the next, as if she were on a roller coaster, with the same sense of giddiness and danger.
Stevie had been gone only two weeks, but already she was miserably sick of living alone. And this was just the start. For the next three months she would be wandering in a funk around this big empty apartment without even the Museum to go to. Nothing moved here now unless she moved it; nobody spoke unless Polly spoke to herself, or turned on the radio to fill the rooms with the lively voices of totally deaf people. When she talked back to them, even shouted at some idiotic adman or cheered some commentator on “All Things Considered,” they didn’t answer; it was as if she didn’t exist. Of course, Polly wasn’t crazy: she knew they couldn’t hear her, but all the same it gave her a bad, slightly insane feeling, as if she had disappeared.
Now that Stevie was gone, nothing happened day after day except the interviews for her book; at least, nothing serious or interesting to think about. Sometimes Lorin Jones’s life seemed realer to her than her own.
If somebody else, anybody else, were living here, Polly thought, it wouldn’t be so bad. And, almost in the same moment, she thought of someone who needed a place to live: Jeanne. Early this summer Jeanne’s former apartment building had gone condo, and she’d had to move. At the moment she was camped out in a Queens sublet: two tiny low-ceilinged basement rooms whose honking radiators, flaking walls, and invasions of bugs she often mentioned with a sigh.
Jeanne kept looking at other apartments, but the housing shortage, even outside of Manhattan, was awful and getting worse: so far, anything she could afford on her tiny academic salary had been even more objectionable than where she was now.
Why shouldn’t Jeanne stay here while Stevie was away, at least until she found a place of her own? They would be company for each other, and it would save them both money — and without Polly’s child-support payments that would really make a difference. Besides, it made no sense for them to clean two apartments and cook two sets of solitary meals; that was pure waste of time, especially for Jeanne, who was a gourmet cook. It was a great idea, and there was no argument against it that Polly could think of, except — and here she scowled and let the frying pan she had been scouring slide back under the dishwater suds — what people might think.
Since Jim left, Polly hadn’t had any serious relationship; Stevie had been the only important person in her life. If Jeanne moved in with her now, some of her friends would assume that they were sexually involved, and that Polly had become a lesbian too — after all, she’d talked enough about how she might be through with men for good. She had even said sometimes that she wished she were gay, because lesbian couples seemed to behave more decently than heterosexual ones.
And what would they think in Colorado? It wouldn’t occur to Stevie to wonder if his mother was a lesbian, but it would probably occur to Jim, who knew Jeanne and didn’t care for her. Jim would confide his suspicions to his new wife, a woman Polly had never met but naturally detested. Yeah, maybe you’re right, this detestable woman would say. I wouldn’t be surprised; from what you tell me, Polly was always a man-hater.
Well, the hell with them all, Polly told herself, scrubbing the frying pan again with noisy vigor. She wasn’t going to begin arranging her life again in terms of Jim’s opinions, or anyone else’s.
PROFESSOR MARY ANN FENN,
University of Connecticut
It was such a long time ago. I’d almost forgotten about her, really. Then — it was an odd, odd experience, painful in a way. I was in New York for a professional meeting last winter, as I told you in my letter. And I went to that show of yours, “Three American Women.” I was busy, but I made a point of going, because I was interested. I believe that women artists have new things to say to all of us. Important things.
Well, I was walking around the galleries, and I got to Lorin Jones’s pictures. I thought they were attractive. Unusual. The colors were interesting, subtle. But I saw them as abstractions, and I’ve never cared much for abstract art.
Then I read the title of that picture: Princess Elinore of the White Meadows. Well, it gave me a shock. In elementary school, when I was eight or nine, I and my best friend made up fairy-tale identities for ourselves: I was Princess Miranda of the Larch Mountains, because I lived in Larchmont, and she was Princess Elinore of the White Meadows. I thought, could it be? I mean, either this Lorin Jones was my friend Lolly Zimmern, or it was a fantastic coincidence.
Well, I stepped back and looked at the picture for clues, and suddenly I saw that the pale green splotches of paint at the bottom could be meant for grass, and the sprinkling of white and yellow dots over them could be daisies. Then the bigger gray splotches higher up might be clouds. And the jumble of sticks and blots and veils of color in the middle was really a lot like the way a tree would look if you were up in it, and the wind was blowing hard. Or it could have been a fairytale castle. And that was right, because we used to climb trees and make believe they were castles.