The Summer Invitation

The Summer Invitation

Text copyright © 2014 by Charlotte Silver

Published by Roaring Brook Press

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To Eva and Rebecca

Table of Contents

Prologue
     Aunt Theodora Invites Us

1
     The Umbrellas of San Francisco

2
     The Bluebird of Greenwich Village

3
     Uncommon Cottons

4
     The Secret Roof-Deck

5
     Lilac Gloves

6
     Nudes

7
     The Older Man

8
     Ballet Lessons

9
     The Fifi or The Framboise?

10
     Valentine’s Knee

11
     Lemon Soufflé

12
     This Is Not Central Park

13
     Belgian Chocolates at the Sherry-Netherland

14
     Carnival of the Animals

15
     Where’s Valentine?

16
     Meet Me Under the Clock

17
     At the Foot of the Marine Nymph

18
     Thunder!

19
     An Omelet and a Bottle of Champagne

20
     Palazzo

21
     Getting to Know You

22
     Nice to Have Known You

23
     That Was the Summer When

Epilogue
     Boucher’s Seasons

The Summer Invitation

Prologue

Aunt Theodora Invites Us

Aunt Theodora’s invitation arrived all the way from Paris on a piece of French stationery. The edges were scalloped and her handwriting on the lavender-colored paper was black and slashing, like a sword. It read:

Dear Frances and Valentine,

Has your mother ever told you that once upon a time I warned her in no uncertain terms against moving to San Francisco
?
I visited the place just once in my life and I was so bored I could weep! An old admirer of mine thought he would woo me by taking me on a tour of wine country. The fool. Had he been paying attention, he might have known I only ever drink Italian reds or French champagnes.

The entire state of California is for people who talk too slow. And if one is craving sunshine, which I admit one sometimes does, one goes abroad for that. Italy is just the ticket. Failing that, Greece.

You are young ladies now and I don’t like to think of you just chilling, as they say, in San Francisco.

So. I am commanding your mother to let you come to New York this summer and stay in my apartment in Greenwich Village. Not Italy, but almost. This offer will not be repeated.

I know that your parents wouldn’t be keen on letting you stay in the apartment alone, so my friend Clover Leslie has agreed to act as your chaperone for the first month while I’m away and I shall join you after that. Don’t worry, Clover is not an old lady, and do not fear that you will have to address her as “Miss Leslie.” She is twenty-eight and can teach you some things because she learned everything she knows from me.

So it’s arranged
???

Life unfolds.

XXX

Theo

1

The Umbrellas of San Francisco

Aunt Theodora isn’t our
real
aunt, though. She’s just this older woman who Mom got to know in Paris and has been friends with ever since. Aunt Theodora has lived the whole world over—we get postcards and letters postmarked from New York or Paris or Budapest or Rome—but she was born in Boston to one of those old families that had something to do with founding the country way back. Her full name is Theodora Wentworth Whitin Bell, and I guess in Boston all those names are supposed to be a big deal. I don’t know about that; I just know I like the sounds of them.
Theodora. Wentworth. Whitin. Bell.

Aunt Theo is old-fashioned, and proud of it. She doesn’t
do
e-mail. She rarely
does
the phone. She doesn’t
do
a lot of things, but she does do letters. Not predictable birthday and Christmas cards with tidy little checks like what other older relatives send you. And never cards from the drugstore with a vase of flowers on the front and cute sayings inside. No, just letters, arriving out of the blue on a random crummy day and giving you a little lift. I always look forward to them. Val says: “Didn’t Aunt Theodora get the memo that
nobody
sends letters anymore?”

The only time Val and I ever send letters is when Mom makes us write thank-you notes after we get presents on Christmas and our birthdays. But still, I like getting letters even though I don’t send them that often. Letters are special, and especially Aunt Theo’s.

Valentine was born in Paris and nobody knows who her father is. She has copper curls and violet eyes. Mom says not to call them violet, just dark blue. But that’s because Mom has the same eyes and she’s too modest to call them violet, which sounds
so dramatic.
Violet is one of my favorite words.

When Mom was a young woman, she moved to Paris after graduate school and worked for some famous Italian architect. His big thing was designing opera houses around the world. Everybody used to say she looked just like Elizabeth Taylor, that old actress with the violet eyes and all the ex-husbands.

It’s so unfair. Valentine’s name is French, and mine is only English. Mom likes for people to pronounce Valentine in the French fashion, so the last syllable rhymes with lean rather than line. Say it to yourself:
Valentine.
Oh, it’s another lovely sounding word. I should tell you right away though that Mom isn’t of French heritage or anything like that, just a Francophile, she says. We go to French school, where pronouncing Valentine’s name right is not a problem, and where some of our classmates are named things like Isabelle, Thérèse, and Celeste. But outside of school, people get it wrong, even though Mom has this stern way of saying “And this is my daughter Valen
tine”
with an emphasis on the last syllable. Actually, though, she only started going by Valentine recently. It used to be that everybody but Mom called her Val, which I think still suits her much better, but don’t tell her that. Mom always insisted on the full name because that way you can tell it’s French. Her eyes used to just snap whenever a new person addressed Valentine as Val instead.

Mom’s eyes can really snap because, just like Elizabeth Taylor, she also has these dramatic, satiny black eyebrows. I wish I had them too, but so far, there is nothing too dramatic to report about
me.
Mom always says I have chestnut hair but I know I don’t. I know it’s just plain mousy. And it’s
straight.
I know some girls like straight hair these days, but I think curly is much prettier. Val can put her hair up in this big twist with the curls slipping out up front, and it’s so pretty. She knows it too! She’ll practice sweeping up her hair in front of the mirror when she thinks I’m not looking.

I was born three years after Val in San Francisco, and my father is Val’s stepfather; he adopted her so now we all have the same last name. Well anyway, Mom and Dad got married when Val was so young, he might just as well be her real father. Dad works in real estate and is big on the opera. He’s the type of father who’s always trying to educate you at the dinner table. Sometimes I get the feeling Mom is kind of bored with him, but maybe that’s just what marriage is like. But he’s very nice to us and pays for the fancy school we go to. Mom is an architect who designs wineries in Napa Valley. We live in one of those Victorian houses with all the crazy colors in Pacific Heights. Peacock-blue door, rose trim on the windows. That’s where I was born. A home birth, Mom always says, like it was this really great thing.

Valentine was born in a hospital somewhere in Paris and Mom was all alone. But that’s another story.

When we were little, Mom used to tell us stories of her life in Paris as a young woman, and then she would break off in the middle and sigh.

The mystery of who Val’s father might have been was the only thing in our lives that was the least bit romantic. When Mom and Dad weren’t there, we talked about him all the time. The story of the circumstances surrounding Valentine’s birth was like a favorite story we’d listen to again and again at bedtime, changing certain details to suit our mood. Sometimes her father was a penniless artist in a garret. Other times we wanted him to be wildly rich and own a chateau stocked with the most fabulous wine cellar. Not that we drink wine—
yet.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Valentine and I are both really into singing. Mom and Dad saw to it that we took lessons, though we like to sing just about anything really, silly songs and new songs too. We sing in the San Francisco Girls Chorus. On rainy days when we were little Mom would always play an old record of the sound track to
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg—Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
—and make us sing along. That’s our favorite movie because the songs are in French and it has all of these crazy bright colors; you could just eat it up, that movie’s so yummy-looking. One day Valentine stopped singing and asked:

“Is that what it’s like?”

“What?” said Mom.

“Being in love.”

And Mom sighed and said, “No, not really.”

The day Aunt Theo’s invitation arrived it was a Saturday morning and we were eating breakfast. During the week, we always eat breakfast in the kitchen, and Dad’s so busy that by the time Val and I get up he’s already at work. But on Saturdays and Sundays we all sit at the dining room table with the French paperweights on it. Dad makes our favorite breakfast, which is Nutella crepes and fresh-squeezed tangerine juice. Mom and Dad drink coffee, of course, which I would love to drink too (with plenty of sugar!), but we’re only ever allowed to drink it when we’re in Europe. Because I guess in Europe anything can happen.

Mom held up the mystery letter and said, “Girls, who do you think this is from?”

“Who?” I asked, looking at the letter. Val wasn’t paying the least bit attention. She was too busy spreading her crepe with
gobs and gobs
of Nutella. I put just a neat layer of Nutella and fold the crepe and sprinkle it with powdered sugar. Val puts powdered sugar, plus she squeezes a tangerine over it so the juices are all running.

But as soon as I glanced at the envelope, I guessed who it was from. Aunt Theo’s handwriting is inky and dramatic, like Mom’s eyebrows. She always has the most gorgeous stationery, heavy, with hand-cut scalloped edges. I think it’s always the same brand of stationery, French stationery, but she uses different colors. It’s never girly or happy colors with Aunt Theo, never those wonderful candy-box colors like they have in
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
It’s always rich, sorrowful colors, deep purples, coffee browns, dusty reds. They’re a woman’s colors.

“I have a question,” I said. “Why, if Aunt Theo’s such a big traveler, doesn’t she ever come and visit us?”

“Oh, but she hates Northern California,” said Mom, laughing. “It’s one of her positions in life. Hating Northern California.”

“But
we’re
here,” I protested.

“Theodora Bell is a woman of inflexible principles, Franny,” Dad said.

Then Val made a good point: “But that doesn’t make any sense. I thought most East Coast people even if they disliked California still liked
Northern
California. I mean, everybody loves San Francisco.”

“Valentine! Theodora Bell is not everybody.”

“Oh, please,” said Val, with a roll of violet eyes. And she went back to eating her crepe. Which meant that I got to read the letter first.

“Oh my God, this is so exciting!” I announced.

“What is?” said Val, finally paying attention. And when she got to the end of the letter, she too said right away: “Oh my God, Franny’s right. This is so exciting!”

“What is?” Mom wanted to know.

“New York City!” Val burst out.

“New York City?” said Mom.

“New York City?”
said Dad.

So then he took the letter from Val, and Mom read it over his shoulder, like couples do.