As the bus crossed the wet park at Eighty-sixth Street, Polly had a vision. She saw, as Lorin Jones must have seen, a collection of dark air-conditioned vaults, storerooms, attics, and basements all over the Northeast. In each, one or more of Jones’s paintings was imprisoned, shut away from light and air and from anyone who might admire and love it. She saw Lorin Jones, a slight pale figure in black, pounding on the doors of these temperature and humidity-controlled dungeons, begging for the release of her imprisoned work. Against her, holding the doors shut, were ranged a mass of dealers, curators, collectors, and critics; in Polly’s mind they took on the evil, grinning faces of grotesques from an Ensor painting.
This vision upset Polly, almost made her sick to her stomach — or maybe that was just the jolting of the bus. She mustn’t be unreasonable, she told herself; mustn’t become paranoid. That was what her colleagues at work would say; that’s what she would have said herself a few weeks ago.
But were her colleagues right, or was it that, away from her job, and from the deals and arrangements and assumptions of the New York art world, she was beginning to see it clearly for the first time?
That was what Jeanne, with her suspicion of all established “patriarchal” institutions, would probably have said. Jeanne took it for granted that these institutions were corrupt and to be avoided, though it was sometimes necessary to work with them until alternative decentralized, egalitarian, woman-centered structures had been established. Every second Tuesday evening she and some of her friends met in an apartment on First Avenue to discuss this and other political issues; as yet, Polly hadn’t joined them, though she had been invited.
Jeanne had moved into Stevie’s room three weeks ago, bringing with her a quantity of possessions surprising for someone who had lived in so many different cities and apartments. Polly had had to stack most of Stevie’s things in the spare room. But apart from this it had been a joy having her here. Jeanne was easygoing, well organized, sympathetic, and fair-minded; she was a lively conversationalist and an inspired cook. When Polly was alone she mostly opened frozen so-called gourmet dinners that, like airplane food, looked all right but tasted like reconstituted mashed potatoes, and she was always out of clean towels or butter or light bulbs, having to run down to the laundry room or out to the supermarket at awkward times.
Jeanne saw to it that they never needed anything; she brought flowers and books and chocolates into the house; she set her flourishing houseplants on the windowsills and added her large collection of classical tapes to Polly’s. If Polly wanted to work, Jeanne was quiet and unobtrusive; but she was always ready to go shopping or to a film or a gallery after work and on weekends, when her girlfriend’s suspicious, abusive husband was home.
Polly and Jeanne were so much together that Jeanne’s friend Ida had recently nicknamed them the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat, after the characters in Eugene Field’s poem for children.
The gingham dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat...
The reference was also to their taste in clothes: Polly wore a lot of checks and plaids, while Jeanne favored delicate, old-fashioned prints. When Polly looked the poem up she discovered that the characters fought like cats and dogs, and for a few days she worried about this, wondering if Ida had intuited some potential conflict. But so far she and Jeanne had never even disagreed seriously.
Polly’s worry about What People Would Think had also faded. All Jeanne’s friends knew she was in love with a woman in Brooklyn Heights, and Polly had taken care to tell Jim the same. His reaction had been, as usual, muted and neutraclass="underline" “Oh, mmh.”
The only problem with having Jeanne in the apartment was her girlfriend, Betsy. Polly didn’t exactly dislike Betsy, but on the other hand she had nothing much to say to her. She was a bony, heavily freckled young woman (twenty-seven) with flyaway strawberry blonde hair and a hesitant, nervous manner. She was, Polly supposed, vaguely pretty; tall and leggy, with a miniature beaked nose like a little white parrot, and a swollen pink mouth that was always slightly open, as if she had started to speak and then stopped herself; something she often did. Her favorite painter was Salvador Dali, and she didn’t see the point of abstract art: the colors were kind of nice sometimes, she admitted, but it wasn’t awfully interesting or complex really, was it?
Because of Betsy’s husband’s growing suspicions (he had found an unequivocally affectionate but unsigned note from Jeanne, and thought his wife was seeing another man), she and Jeanne had begun meeting in Manhattan. Usually they came to the apartment during the day when Polly was out; but last night Betsy had stayed over for the first time, telling her husband the literal but deceptive truth: that she was spending the night with a girlfriend. (“Oh yes, Betsy’s here,” Polly had had to tell him when he phoned to check up. “Sure, just a moment, I’ll call her.”)
Of course Polly wanted Jeanne to be happy, but it had made her uncomfortable that Jeanne and Betsy were being happy in Stevie’s room and in Stevie’s bunk bed. Most of the time she managed not to imagine what they did together. Probably not much, she thought usually: there was something silly and pointless about the idea of two soft female bodies rubbing up against each other. But last night, though she tried not to, she couldn’t help listening and wondering what exactly Jeanne and Betsy were doing and whether they were doing it in the upper bunk or the lower one. In the lower bed there would be the problem of whoever was on top hitting her head — but maybe women only lay side by side, because otherwise how. ... Up above, there would be the danger of falling out. She lay awake for some time waiting for a thud, a scream, a thump.
On the whole Polly hoped they had used the upper bed, where nobody ever slept except now and then one of Stevie’s pals. That was stupid, because what difference could it make to Stevie, who would never know that Betsy had been here, anyway? Probably, Polly realized unwillingly, she was envious, because it had been over a year since she’d made love to anyone except, without much enthusiasm, herself.
When Polly got home from her interview with Jacky Herbert she was even wetter than she had been at the gallery, and chilled through. Jeanne took one look at her friend and insisted on her taking a hot shower at once.
“Well. All right,” Polly said. It was so long since anyone had been there to meet her and show any sort of solicitude that she still received it almost ungraciously.
“And I’ll make you a nice cup of cocoa.”
“You don’t have to do that.” Polly struggled out of her poncho.
“I know I don’t have to.” Jeanne smiled. “But I want to.” She headed for the kitchen.
“Has Betsy gone?” Polly called, pulling off her sopping loafers.
“Mm.” Jeanne gave a long breathy sigh. “I’ll tell you about it after you’re warmed up.”
“Not too sweet for you, is it?” Jeanne asked half an hour later.
“No, just right.” Polly sighed with satisfaction. She had finished her shower and now sat in old jeans and a favorite lumberjack shirt at the kitchen table, drinking cocoa spiced with cinnamon and topped with cream, and eating Jeanne’s homemade Scottish shortbread. “So is everything going well with Betsy?”
“I guess so.” Jeanne sighed again. “She says she’s going to tell her husband this week that we’re in love.”
“Oh, that’s good.” Jeanne did not reply. “Isn’t it?”