Truth About Lorin Jones by Alison Lurie

Author:Alison Lurie [Lurie, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7122-3
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-10-13T00:13:00+00:00

MRS. MARCIA ZIMMERN,

widow of Lorin Jones’s father

Aw no, I’m glad you came round again, and not just ’cause of the cookies from Fraser-Morris, either. It was sweet of you to remember. I adore them, but it’s hard for me to get across the park in this wet weather, with my bad leg. Take a couple yourself, come on.

Don’t be silly, you don’t need to lose any weight.

That’s right. And how about a little drink to go with it? I always think you need a pickup, a heavy wet day like this, when it starts to get dark so early. Gin and orange is what I usually have...

Oh yeah, I’ve been thinking about Laurie, trying to remember for your book. One thing that came to me was, how she used to love artichokes. It was kind of a joke around here, that if they were in the stores I had to have them when she came to dinner. And I had to make real hollandaise sauce, she didn’t like the kind in a bottle.

Nah, I don’t care for them myself; they don’t agree with my stomach, too acid. But Laurie just loved them. She’d always eat hers slow, while the rest of us were waiting to get on with the meal, and she’d arrange the leaves on her plate in different kinds of artistic patterns, like a fan or a water lily. Or like a fish, sometimes, with scales, you know.

No, nothing new came to me about her paintings.

Oh yeah, sure, she gave us a picture when we got married. And I sold it after Dan was gone, Mr. Herbert’s right.

No ma’am, it wasn’t that at all. I decided I didn’t want it, that’s why.

Don’t apologize: anybody might think it was for the money. And I won’t deny it was a relief to have a little extra cash at the time. Did you know, after a death they freeze all your bank accounts?

Yeah, the joint ones too, that’s the worst. I tell all my married friends: it don’t matter how much you love your husband, get yourself a separate account...

But listen, I don’t want you to write in your book that Dan didn’t provide for me properly. I’ve got no complaints. We enjoyed it while we could, that was his philosophy. We had great times together: we went to Europe and Mexico and Israel and South America. I rode on a camel in Egypt and I saw the river covered with white long-legged birds thick as Jones Beach on Labor Day. Live in the present; I believe that. I had a wonderful life with Dan, I don’t regret anything.

No, the reason I sold that painting of Laurie’s was, I didn’t care for it.

Well, I can’t say exactly why. It just wasn’t the kind of thing I like. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, I love modern art. You see those prints over the sideboard?

Yeah, and did you know, when Henry Matisse made them, he had got such bad

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