The Summer Invitation (10 page)

Dear Clover,

Coming to the States, and will be in New York for a couple of days. Are you still at Theo’s digs in the Village? I hope so, as I like picturing you there. Perhaps with that turtle of yours
__
Carlo, was it?

I’ll be staying at my club on East 50th. Breakfast lunch drinks etc. etc. etc.?

Your old admirer,

Digby Mansfield

I tucked the letter into the envelope and put it back on the counter. So
that
explained it! Why there was more to Clover weeping on the sofa than just Carlo dying, and why she had been moved to tell Val and me that story tonight, of all nights.

And maybe it even helped explain why Val and I had suspected that she’d been sad about something or other from the beginning of the summer. She was twenty-eight. She’d been in love. She’d had a
disappointment.
But maybe—just maybe—this visit could make it up to her, and maybe I, Franny, could even help her?

12

This Is Not Central Park

In a few days’ time, another note arrived from Aunt Theo across the ocean. This time it was just a postcard—on the front it showed a Degas painting,
Three Ballet Dancers, One with Dark Crimson Waist
, and on the back it said:

Dear Frances
not
Franny,

C. tells me V. has an admirer. Remember. You are only in New York a little while longer. What about you
?

I wrote back:

Dear Aunt Theo,

It isn’t a question of having an admirer. It’s a question of finding an admirer who interests me.

Another postcard came from Theo, another Degas, this time a rose-tinted sketch called
Seated Dancer
:

Isn’t it lucky for you that my old beau Leander is coming to New York
?
That is all I am going to tell you.

T.

The day I got this postcard, Val was off somewhere with Julian and Clover and I were drinking coffee on the secret roof-deck. Not that it was quite so secret anymore. I think Clover felt guilty about letting Valentine use her bathroom to primp for dates with Julian, so she let me drink coffee with her there as a treat. I think it was so I wouldn’t feel so left out. Clover can be kind of a pushover as a chaperone. She’s not so strict as that word would suggest.

I never drank coffee in San Francisco but I don’t know
how
I’m going to give it up when we go home! My parents started letting Val drink coffee regularly when she turned sixteen, but she drinks it
loaded
with lumps and lumps of sugar. Clover and I take ours hot, with just a
nip—
Clover’s word—of heavy cream. (I do put
just one
lump of sugar, which Clover says I won’t need in time.) She always serves the cream in a little buttery yellow pot of Aunt Theo’s with a cracked spout, so you have to pour it out very carefully.

Clover says I am a
natural
coffee drinker. She says she is not so partial as a rule to tea drinkers, and neither is Aunt Theo, because coffee drinkers, they swear, are apt to have more
character.

Somehow I feel very protective of Clover now that I know she has
a secret.

This afternoon, I showed her Aunt Theo’s postcard and said, “Who is Leander? Have you ever met him before, Clover?”

“Oh, yes. Many times.”

“Well, when is he coming to New York anyway? And why does Aunt Theo want me to meet him?”

“Oh, that. Well—because he’s interesting, I suppose, and a man from whom you can learn the art of conversation.”

“The art of conversation?” I repeated.

“Why, don’t laugh, Franny. It’s of the utmost importance.”

“Will he tell me about Aunt Theo? He’s an old beau of hers, she says.” I gestured to the postcard.

“Oh,
everybody
is an old beau of Aunt Theo’s,” said Clover. “But yes, Leander will certainly be willing to tell you all about her, if you ask.”

“Did you invite him to the party?” I was thinking of the party we were having for Aunt Theo’s arrival.

“Of course!” Then she took a sip of her coffee and announced, “Also. I’ve been thinking, Franny. Don’t you want something to remember from your summer in New York? Summer always goes so fast! Why, you’ll be back in San Francisco before you know it.”

I laughed and said, “Oh, I think I already have lots to remember.”

“Oh, I know you do, but I mean, don’t you want to make some kind of statement this summer? To look back and say ‘That was the summer when…’?”

I saw what she meant. Val would always be able to say: “That was the summer I met Julian. The summer I fell in love.” But what would
I
be able to say?

“Well it’s just an idea I had,” Clover went on, “but I was thinking about your hair.”

I saw what she meant about that too. I pouted a little.

“Oh. I know. It isn’t as pretty as Val’s.”

“It doesn’t have to be like Val’s,” said Clover, “and by the way, no sulking. You’re also a very pretty young girl
after your own fashion.
To follow one’s own fashion. That’s the important thing. Theo would agree with me.”

“Theo was a
model.
She modeled
in Paris.
”

Clover ignored this and went on, “Anyway, I was just thinking I might take you to get a haircut. Long hair is pretty of course, but a haircut, a really good haircut, can be sophisticated. It can add distinction.” She paused and added: “Val, for instance, is a beautiful girl, but she does not necessarily have distinction.”

That did it. I would get my hair cut.

“Kenneth’s,” Clover announced. “Kenneth’s is the thing.”

“What’s that?”

“He did Marilyn’s hair, and Jackie’s … and Theo’s mother, whenever she came to New York. It’s
the
place.”

Kenneth’s was located at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, in a beautiful set of rooms with all these cool-looking black-and-white photographs. The staff there called me “mademoiselle,” which I filed away to tell Val. “Mademoiselle wants the Seberg,” said Clover, adding: “The Jean Seberg. That is, a pixie cut, very classic.”

“That is what we do best here,” the hairdresser assured Clover. “The classics.”

Snip, snip, went my long ashy brown hair I had never liked very much in the first place. Snip, snip, snip, one thin strand and then another. My eyes were closed, I wanted to open them to see the final results. Then I heard the hairdresser say, “Voilà, mademoiselle, the Seberg,” and I opened my eyes and stared at my reflection in the mirror. Clover was right: I was completely transformed.

“I told you,” she said. “And your eyes are so beautiful. They just pop.”

“Can we go pick up some eyeliner? Please, Clover, please.” I was thinking of the dark green eyeliner Val always wore and how dramatic it looked.

“You’re, what, fourteen? Too young. What you have is a natural, gamine beauty. Enjoy it, why don’t you?”

Afterward Clover took me shopping, “to launch your new look.” We went straight to Bergdorf Goodman, and when I said, “Isn’t that terribly expensive?” Clover said, “Here’s what we’re going to do, Franny. We’re going to buy you the key pieces of wardrobe. Think of it as curating a collection. You will have these pieces for years, and no going around San Francisco buying cheap little things here and there with your friends, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I liked the challenge of Clover’s proposition: the idea of
curating a collection.
Val would never have the discipline to do something like that and stick to it.

Here is what Clover picked out for me at Bergdorf’s: a classic tan trench coat, like the one Catherine Deneuve wears when it’s raining out in
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
; three French sailor shirts, one black stripes, one navy, one pale pink; two pairs of ballerina flats, one black, one gold; one pair of black “cigarette pants” (“But, Clover, I don’t smoke!” “It’s just the name, silly”); one navy pleated skirt; and two dresses. The first dress was a cool black linen A-line. The second one was cream-colored in a material Clover called “sharkskin” with a Peter Pan collar and big white buttons up the back. The black dress was very comfortable, but the cream one, not so much. It was very straight and slim.

“It’s a sheath dress,” said Clover, “and you are lucky to be able to pull it off.”

I said the word
sheath
over and over again in my head.
Sheath.
It was so silky and lovely, that word. There was something private about it, a secret, almost. My first sheath dress …

We were all set, but then Clover said, “Oh! One more thing. For your hair.” I said I thought my hair was all set.

“But surely sometimes you’ll want a bow.”

“A bow?”

“Black velvet, I think.”

“Black velvet? For summer? Are you sure?”

“
Absolument.
It’s very French.”

And so we located a black velvet hair ribbon, nestling it in tissue paper in one of my many palest purple Bergdorf Goodman bags. Wait till Val saw me! Oh, she would just
perish
of jealousy!

Then before we left Clover said, “You know, Franny, I think I need to buy a little something too. Would you mind helping me pick something out?”

“Of course not,” I said, thinking: She is going to go meet him after all! This man—this Digby—whoever he was …

Wasn’t it exciting—Clover and I both having meetings with men who were coming to town? She had Digby, and I was getting curious about meeting this old beau of Theo’s, this Leander. I would wear my new sheath dress: yes, that was the one.

“Perfume, I think,” I heard Clover murmur.

“Perfume?”

“Yes, Franny, I thought I might mix up my scent. It’s a good thing to do … every once in a while,” she added without her usual confidence, and I knew that she was thinking about something. And then she sighed and said, “Oh, no, never mind. I’ll save it for later.”

“Why, though? We’re here.”

“Because,” explained Clover, “sometimes it’s nice to have something to look forward to, you know.”

All of a sudden, I saw what Val meant about twenty-eight being, in a way,
old.
Because for Val and me there seemed to be so much to look forward to. I couldn’t imagine getting to the age where having something to look forward to could be considered a treat.

Then Clover suggested we take a walk through Central Park and head up toward the Whitney. It was a hot, sticky day, but being in the shade of the trees was nice.

“What’s your favorite place in Central Park?” asked Clover.

“The zoo,” I said right away. Val and I had gone with Mom and Dad when we were little, and it was one of the first things we checked out again when we got here this summer. “A day like today, I’d like to go see the polar bears. They always look so sleepy and
cool.
”

“Oh, I don’t much like
large
animals,” said Clover, and I couldn’t help but think of Carlo the turtle. “I like birds, especially when they have beautiful blue feathers. There is this one kind of bird from India…”

But then Clover lost her train of thought when we walked past a little girl having a tantrum in front of the boathouse.

“I want to go to Central Park,” she wailed. “Mommy, Mommy, I want to go to Central Park.”

The child was speaking in a British accent and was all dolled up in a fluffy white party dress and black patent leather Mary Janes. I guessed her to be about five years old. Her mother was tall and wore her blond hair back in this low bun, and she was pushing her younger daughter in a big fancy stroller, like the Rolls Royce of baby vehicles. It looked to me like a scene out of
Mary Poppins.

The mother said, “I told you already, this
is
Central Park.”

The child put her hands and her hips and announced: “This
is not
Central Park.”

Clover and I burst out laughing, and then so did the mother. We walked on, and Clover remarked: “That poor little girl, what a life of disappointment is in store for her! What do you think she imagined Central Park to be like? is the interesting question. Do you think she thought the trees were made out of emeralds or something?”

“The water made out of sapphires,” I added.

“One wonders what fabulous visions were dancing in her little blond head.”

The piece that Clover wanted to show me at the Whitney was called
Calder’s Circus
by the American artist Alexander Calder. Clover says it’s better to leave a museum really connecting with one piece than trying to see everything and connecting with nothing.

“This is my
favorite
,” she said, sighing.

Calder’s Circus
is a miniature reproduction of an actual circus. It’s made out of all these cool everyday materials—wire, cork, wood, cloth. Because it’s about the circus—and because it’s kind of like a diorama—what it most made me think of was being a child again. The tininess and the preciousness of it. And you know how going to the circus is such a treat when you’re a kid. It’s like getting ice cream cake with pink candles. I don’t know, maybe I was feeling sentimental that day because of Clover being twenty-eight and having to look forward to a dinky thing like perfume, or the little girl in Central Park who had dreamed, for all we knew, of trees made out of emeralds and what life would hold for
her.
Maybe it was my new haircut, and how it seemed to mark in a very clear
physical
way the ending of one period of my life (little Franny with long mouse-colored hair) and the beginning of another (sophisticated Franny—I hoped?—with her cropped Parisian do). Maybe it was just the characters in the circus. Like, the elephant made me think of a toy I’d had when I was a baby, an elephant named Sebastian, and what had become of him. What had become of all of my old toys, in fact?

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is looking at
Calder’s Circus
made me very sad, and I said so to Clover. I asked her if it ever made her feel that way.