The Summer Invitation Read online

  Clover shrugged her shoulders and added, “And you know something? She was right. The rest did just fall into place.”

  I think the point of this conversation was lost on Valentine, but it made quite an impression on me. Back home, I’d often felt overscheduled what with homework, Girls Chorus, sleepovers, and so on, and I loved the idea of a whole, empty summer stretching before me. When I was little, Mom called me her “little dreamer” because I was quite happy to be left alone with my dolls and make up stories and do as I pleased. Whereas Valentine was always springing up with her red curls and demanding to “do” something.

  Now in New York it was no different. Here is what Val said about Clover, muttering under her breath: “Some chaperone.”

  “I like her,” I said. “I think she’s lovely.”

  “Lovely.” Val imitated my voice, and I couldn’t help but notice how young she made me sound. “You’d think a chaperone could get something going for us, instead of being at her studio all day. Why—I’m bored. I’ve never been so bored in all my life!”

  The way Valentine said the word bored, curling her lips, was almost convincing, but only almost. I knew she was just trying to get a reaction out of me.

  “You know something else?” she went on. “She never takes us anywhere new, do you notice that? Everywhere we go has been around for, like, ever and ever.” She groaned.

  “Well—she learned everything she knows from Aunt Theo…”

  “Who’s an old lady. That’s what I’m saying! When we get back home, I want to be able to tell my friends we did things that were cool.” For a second, Val’s face went very dark and serious, just for effect. Then it brightened right up again. “Let’s—go to Rockefeller Center!” she said. “Come on, let’s go right now.”

  “No thanks, Val.”

  “But, Franny, I’m bored, I’m so bored I could—”

  “I know, but Rockefeller Center’s just not my thing,” I said. I liked how disdainful it sounded. Just not my thing.

  “Oh please,” said Valentine. “Don’t forget, Franny, you’re younger than me.”

  So while Valentine was off swanning about Rockefeller Center, I stayed home and did something I had been meaning to do ever since we got to New York, which was read Theo’s novel, Made in Paris. I went and lay on my twin bed and read the whole thing in one afternoon.

  Here is what I could make of it.

  There’s this heroine, Angelica Randall, not to be called under any circumstances Angie. She’s from this big family in Boston that has its own island, called Cranberry Cliff, somewhere around the Cape Cod area. Angelica’s brothers and sisters and cousins are always off playing tennis and drinking gin and tonics. Or sometimes they drink martinis.

  Angelica goes to this stuffy all-girls school, called Winters, with an old-maid headmistress, Miss Shattuck, who doesn’t approve when Angelica refuses to play volleyball and tries to get other girls to refuse too. You’re warned, Angelica, Miss Shattuck tells her. Then Angelica invites an eighteen-year-old sailor, Tony, to a school dance. (She doesn’t call it a “prom.”) So then Miss Shattuck expels her from Winters, which is a big disgrace because the women in her family have gone to Winters forever. Her father sends her to a boarding school in Virginia, which she says is “a very boring, very green state where all the girls are just crazy about horses. I am not crazy about horses.”

  I guess getting expelled from Winters wasn’t too terrible, because she gets into Radcliffe anyway. And that’s where she starts having a ton of boyfriends. But a lot of Harvard guys are boring, and good, she says, for only one thing. But then things get serious with a dark-eyed poet named Clay Claverly, whose last name is the name of a building at Harvard, so “even Mummy and Daddy will approve of him.” Angelica steals his black turtlenecks and wears them around campus with her plaid skirts, and she and Clay are always smoking and kissing in public, at a hangout called the Blue Parrot.

  But then Angelica gets pregnant. I was thinking they’d get married they were so in love, but you don’t have a novel unless something goes wrong. So before you know it they’ve fallen out of love, and Angelica doesn’t want to have a baby anyway. She gets a procedure, which of course is an abortion.

  Then she goes to Paris.

  One day, she’s just sitting in a café when a man asks her if she’s ever done any modeling. She says no, but she’s up for anything. And she is: she goes to a wild party at a chateau in the countryside. She cross-dresses: “Turns out I look just dashing in a tux.” But then one day when the chestnut trees are shedding and winter is coming, she gets a letter from her father’s lawyer saying: Come back to Boston or I won’t give you any more money.

  You don’t know, when the book ends, whether Angelica will go back to Boston or stay in Paris or what. You just know that she’s had all these experiences and lived, the way Val said we were going to “live” this summer in New York.

  When Val got home, I gave her the novel, figuring she’d want to read it. But Val only rolled her eyes and said: “But, Franny, you just told me most of the plot yourself! And anyway—I don’t know, Aunt Theodora is so old!” She glanced at the photograph of her on the cover, wearing those long lilac gloves. She read aloud from the back flap: “‘Theodora Bell is a Radcliffe graduate and former model. Made in Paris is her first novel.’ Hmm. Do you think she was ever really young?”

  “Well of course, Val!” I exclaimed. “Just look at the picture.”

  “Well. Put it another way. Do you think we’ll ever be really old?”

  That evening, Clover took us to dinner at the cute little Italian restaurant down the street, and I asked her something I had been wondering about more and more: “What is Aunt Theo doing in Germany?”

  Clover usually answers things quickly, but this time she didn’t.

  “I don’t think,” said Clover, “that she would think that was a very polite question for you to ask.”

  We went back to eating our spaghetti carbonara. That’s spaghetti with eggs and bacon, and is that combination ever delicious. Then Clover said to the waiter, “Please, another glass of wine,” and we were left wondering just what it might be that she was trying to hide.

  6

  Nudes

  Sometimes we liked to go and have picnics right across the street in Washington Square Park. That was Clover’s suggestion, and she made a special point of getting some of our favorite foods—after asking us to list them—so that we could pack the picnic ourselves and not spend money on going out to lunch every single day. Also, Val and I liked playing around in the kitchen every once in a while. What we did is: spread ricotta and figs and some honey on brown bread. If we had any figs left over after we made our sandwiches, we took those to nibble on; you can never have too many figs. Then, we packed those tiny brown bottles of Italian soda called Sanpellegrino Chinotto, more bitter than American soft drinks and absolutely delicious. Back home Mom and Dad didn’t like us to have any soda, even if it’s Italian. But we talked Clover into getting us a pack of it anyway. After all, it wouldn’t be a summer away from home if we weren’t allowed to get away with at least a little something that we wouldn’t ordinarily.

  One day we were in the park eating our picnic when I asked Val: “Aren’t you ever going to read Aunt Theo’s novel?”

  “Hmm, probably not,” she said.

  “But aren’t you even curious?”

  Val appeared to consider this, selecting a fig.

  “These aren’t quite ripe yet, I don’t think. It’s still too early in the summer.” Then: “Curious, curious? Am I even curious? I guess I’d have to say: not really, Franny.”

  “But I am.”

  “Well, you always were more of a reader than me, Mom says.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “It’s like ever since I read Aunt Theo’s novel I’m under this spell. It’s like I’m living in my head not right here”—I tapped the grass where we were sitting—“not right here in New York City with you, but somewhere else, somewhere you couldn�
�t even point to on a map, not even if you tried. It’s like I’m living in a dorm room at Radcliffe in the 1960s, say, or a café in Paris…”

  “Weird,” was all that Valentine said.

  “I know, right?”

  “Totally!” We giggled.

  “Aren’t you even curious to meet Aunt Theo when she comes in August, though?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure, I want to see what the big deal is. Also, we’re having a party. There might be cute boys there.”

  “Um, I think there will be more like older men.”

  “I’m curious about them too, actually.”

  “Valentine.”

  “So what?”

  “You’re boy-crazy!”

  “I’m seventeen,” said Val, as if that explained everything, and who knows? Maybe it did.

  Later on that same night, I heard Clover crying. I don’t think she knew I saw her, but I did. I tiptoed upstairs to ask her a question and I was standing in the entryway just behind the salmon-colored velvet curtain when I heard the sound of tears, not tiny trickle-trickle tears but rough, broken-sounding ones. So then I turned and went back downstairs.

  I told Valentine about it, but she didn’t seem too upset. She was lounging on the bed in her underwear and eating a nectarine, her long copper curls falling peek-a-boo style over half of her face.

  She shrugged and said, “Maybe she just has her period.”

  “Val!”

  That’s the kind of thing boys are supposed to say, not your older sister.

  “Well, I feel like hell when I have mine. Ugh, none of my jeans fit me, and all I want to do is eat chocolate bad. Nutella! That’s what I crave. Nutella.”

  The truth was, I had to admit that she had a point. I’d just gotten my period last year and I absolutely hated it. But I didn’t want to discuss it with her, or with anyone else for that matter.

  So I said: “I don’t think so. I think there’s something a little sad about Clover, don’t you? As if—as if life hadn’t worked out the way she’d hoped.”

  “Who does it work out for?” said Valentine, lazing around and, at this moment, absolutely gorgeous.

  Sometimes I wished Valentine wasn’t quite so comfortable in her underwear. Back in San Francisco, we both went to bed in old T-shirts and pajama bottoms, and when we were getting undressed we’d be pretty modest. We’d make a point of turning around when we had our tops off, or we’d hold our T-shirts up to our boobs so no one could see. I still did that. It was only polite. But Val, well, it’s like this summer she gets in and she can’t get undressed fast enough. I know that it’s hotter here, but still. The way Valentine peels off her clothing, it’s like she’s all damp and bursting. And then when she has to get dressed again to go outside, she acts annoyed about it, like putting on clothes is this big personal inconvenience.

  “Maybe it’s because she’s not married.”

  “Who?”

  “Clover, silly.”

  “Oh.”

  “Wouldn’t you want to be married if you were that old?”

  “You were the one who said twenty-eight’s not that old.”

  “Not to be married it is.”

  “But Mom didn’t get married until she was thirty-one, right? And then she had me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But when you were born, she was—what? Twenty-eight? And—”

  “Oh, Franny, stop it!” burst out Val.

  “Stop what? What am I doing?”

  “You’re always doing this. You’re always trying to make us talk about him.”

  I knew that she meant her father. But the way she said the word him this time was kind of funny—it sounded dismissive and impatient. She sounds like a real teenager now, I thought, forgetting that I was a teenager myself.

  “We’ve always talked about him,” I said.

  “When we were little,” said Valentine, as if she were reading my mind. “When we were little, Franny, and we’re not that little anymore.”

  It’s true, what Valentine says. She’s starting to look like the portraits.

  I mean, like the nudes. She’s filled out that way and I guess that’s why it’s like she’s bursting.

  You know, there’s only one nude in the apartment who doesn’t look like that. Aunt Theo herself. Aunt Theo in her portrait is all long lines and bones.

  I’m five foot seven now and still growing. I don’t really have any boobs or hips yet to speak of. So the funny thing is, out of all the bodies in the portraits, the one mine most looks like is Aunt Theodora’s.

  Sometimes, sometimes when Clover’s out on an errand I tiptoe upstairs and gaze at Aunt Theodora’s portrait looming over the bed. She stares at me out of the thin blue light of that Parisian morning. I can’t wait to ask her who painted it, when I finally meet her in person.

  Yesterday a letter came from Aunt Theo, addressed to me. This was out of the ordinary because most of her letters are addressed to Clover, and then Clover reads them aloud to us, skipping certain parts. I had a feeling that those were probably the most interesting parts, but anyway it was nice of her to read aloud from the letters at all.

  The letter was addressed to “Miss Frances Lord,” in Aunt Theo’s unmistakable handwriting on a cinnamon-colored envelope, so I opened it. I didn’t even wait until Val got home.

  Here is what the letter said.

  Dear Frances,

  But I think you go by Franny. One of these days you’ll have to grow into Frances, which in my view is a name of substance, so why not start growing into it now?

  From what Clover tells me about you two girls, you, not Valentine, are the proper one to confide things in.

  I’m writing about Clover. I know it was I who told you she needed her alone time, but now I am worried she is growing slack in her capacities as chaperone.

  Not that I want you bustling around the city like tourists. I do want you to treat your time in New York like you live there. But:

  You ought to have some nights to remember. And so, ask Clover to take you someplace swanky, but for Lord’s sake don’t make it too trendy. And do, do, do dress up! No trousers.

  Report back to me on your progress. I’ll be interested to see if a girl of your generation can write a decent letter, but, Frances my dear, I have a feeling you can.

  XXX

  Theo

  Someplace swanky but not too trendy … the Plaza, obviously. We could go there for cocktails! Well, Clover could get a cocktail, and we could get Shirley Temples or something. I suggested this to Clover. She groaned and said:

  “Oh, Franny! You’re sweet to think of it, but the Plaza’s not like it was when Eloise lived there, you know. It’s just not like that anymore. Why, Donald Trump owns it.” She shuddered delicately at the name.

  I suddenly felt very young and foolish and not like a New Yorker at all.

  But then Clover smiled at me and said, “Oh, don’t worry, I know just the place. Let me just make sure we go on a night when Warren’s working.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Who’s Warren?” asked Valentine.

  “Warren is an old flame of Theo’s.”

  “Oh,” we both said. It figured.

  “And the destination?” I asked.

  “The destination,” said Clover, “is Bemelmans Bar.”

  7

  The Older Man

  A couple of nights later, we all got dressed up to go to Bemelmans. Clover said that I could wear my Catherine Deneuve dress, the navy-blue shift with the white Peter Pan collar. I said I thought maybe it wasn’t dressy enough but she said: “Oh no, trust me. It’s exactly right.”

  That’s a phrase of Clover’s. It’s exactly right. She says it whenever she approves of something. Which makes you think that in her world a lot of other things must go under the heading: exactly wrong. Here is what she told us in a nutshell about the world today: “We are hardly living in the golden age.”

  Meanwhile, Valentine said, “But I don’t have anything fancy! We just
wear jeans or leggings in San Francisco. It’s true what they say about the East Coast. Everyone here is so uptight!”

  Clover took a good long look at her and said, “You know, I think we’re about the same measurements, you’re just so much taller. You already have quite the figure actually. If you don’t mind something being short on you, I bet I can find you something of mine.”

  A little while later, she came back with a backless sea-green sheath dress in a light, breezy silk. It looked like something to have cocktails in in an old movie. But Valentine said, “No back, that’s weird. I wish it were low-cut.”

  Clover said, “Trust me, this way it’s much more subtle.”

  “Subtle?” echoed Valentine. “But, Clover, I don’t want to be subtle.”

  Clover laughed and said, “No, at your age, I don’t suppose you would,” and ended up letting Valentine get away with borrowing a pair of alligator pumps of Theo’s (“Don’t tell”) and putting on gobs of dark green eyeliner. Then she said, “Put up your hair. No, no, not straight back. Up, up in a twist. Then pull some of the curls out in front. That’s it, you’ve got it.”

  The dress was very short and very tight on Valentine and she looked absolutely fantastic and she knew it.

  I thought how crummy it was to be fourteen years old and have to look all jeune fille in a Peter Pan collar and my pale pink ballet flats, when my sister was trotting around in a pair of the great Theodora Bell’s alligator pumps.

  Clover, as if sensing this, said, “You look very pretty tonight, Franny, and very Parisian.”

  “Thanks, Clover.”