Allan Durst Junior

Allan Durst Junior is a figure from Maddie Schwartz's past who haunts the margins of her story in Laura Lippman's Lady in the Lake. He is introduced as the high school boyfriend whom Maddie broke up with two weeks before prom, a detail she is careful to distinguish from being stood up. The breakup was not a casual teenage whim: when they first started dating, the name Durst had sounded Jewish enough to placate her mother, but Mrs. Morgenstern was not fooled once she saw him, declaring, "That's not someone to be serious about." Maddie did not argue, because she was already becoming serious about someone else, someone even less likely to win her mother's approval. Allan Durst Junior thus enters the story as a rejected suitor, a name that Maddie's mother had warned her against, and a relationship that ended before it could become anything more.

Identity and Background

Allan Durst Junior is defined in the novel primarily through his family and his profession. His father, Allan Durst Sr., is a painter who later creates a portrait of Maddie, an object that becomes significant in her later life. Allan Junior himself is described as a copywriter, an adman, a detail that Wallace Wright, a dinner party guest, mentions years later when reflecting on Maddie's life choices. Wallace's comment—"Imagine if you had ended up with that fellow. Durst, that was it. He's a copywriter. An adman."—reveals that Allan has achieved a respectable middle-class career in advertising. When Maddie claims she hasn't seen Allan since high school, which is true, she then says she knows about his job from The Park School alumni bulletin, which is not true. This small lie, told to Wallace and the dinner party guests, suggests that Maddie has been keeping track of Allan's life, even as she pretends indifference. The detail that Allan attended The Park School, a private school, and later Yale, places him in a social class that Maddie, as a young woman from a more modest background, would have found attractive and aspirational.

The New York Reunion

The most significant scene involving Allan Durst Junior occurs when Maddie, now married to Milton Schwartz and desperate for a child, takes a bus to New York, telling Milton she is going on a B'nai B'rith trip to see Carousel and staying at a midtown hotel with Eleanor Rosengren. The lie is elaborate, and Maddie knows the whole edifice would crumble if Milton ever thought to speak to Eleanor or her husband, but she also knows by then that he will not—he is simply not interested in her day-to-day life. She stands outside the address she has for Allan in April, while it is snowing, carrying a book as if that would provide an adequate excuse for standing on a snowy New York corner. When Allan finally comes out, hatless, he looks his age, which is forty-four. He had always looked his age, actually—it was just that Maddie could not see it when she was seventeen. He is still attractive, though; she had not been wrong about that.

Maddie plants herself in his path, ready to exclaim how small the world is, but the moment her eyes meet his, she cannot pretend. She begins to cry, and not in a pretty way. Without a word, Allan takes her by the elbow and leads her to his apartment. He fixes her a strong drink, puts together a late lunch for her out of things in the icebox, and makes small talk. Maddie attempts to explain about the painting—Allan Durst Sr.'s portrait of her—trying to recover her pride by claiming she had been contacted by the gallery owner, who was nervous about whether he had the right to sell it. Allan's patient support of her subterfuge makes her feel worse in a way. He tells her that his wife is in Mexico, because she had decided she could not paint in New York in the cold-weather months, and that Allan Junior, his son, is at college—Yale, of course. Allan had gone to Yale too, and had mentioned it often. He looks at, but does not comment upon, the gold band on her hand, and muses, "My son is still a boy. And yet you, the same age, are every inch a woman."

Relationships and Conflict

Allan Durst Junior's relationship with Maddie is defined by what it was not. He was the boyfriend her mother warned her against, the man she left for someone even less acceptable, and the life she did not choose. When Wallace Wright brings him up at the dinner party, Maddie lies about knowing his job from the alumni bulletin, a lie that reveals her continued, if suppressed, interest in his fate. The New York reunion is the emotional climax of their relationship: Maddie's tears, her failed subterfuge about the painting, and Allan's patient, kind support all underscore the gulf between the life she might have had with him and the life she actually has. Allan's kindness is almost worse than cruelty would have been, because it forces Maddie to confront the fact that she gave up a man who would have treated her gently for a man who does not even notice her day-to-day existence. The scene is also notable for what Allan does not do: he does not comment on her wedding ring, he does not ask about her marriage, and he does not take advantage of her vulnerability. He simply feeds her, gives her a drink, and lets her cry.

Change and Ending

Allan Durst Junior does not appear again in the novel after the New York scene. His function is to serve as a counterfactual, a reminder of the road not taken. Maddie's encounter with him in New York is a turning point in her emotional arc: it is the moment she fully realizes the cost of her choices, and it precedes her decision to leave Milton and reinvent herself. Allan himself remains static—a kind, patient, successful man who has moved on, married, and fathered a son at Yale. He is not a character who changes; he is a character who represents stability and kindness, the life Maddie could have had if she had not been so determined to trade up. His final significance is in what he reveals about Maddie: her capacity for self-deception, her longing for a different life, and her inability to fully escape the past. Allan Durst Junior is the man she almost chose, and his brief reappearance in her life is a mirror held up to her own choices, showing her the gentleness she gave up and the hardness she has cultivated in its place.