The Summer Invitation (14 page)

I couldn’t get alcohol obviously, so I just got seltzer with lime. I like seltzer because it’s so sparkly you can almost pretend it’s champagne if you want.

The man behind the counter said: “Some sunglasses you’ve got on. I take it you’re not a tourist?”

I hesitated before saying: “No.”

I mean, if Val can lie about being a ballerina, I think I can lie about a little thing like not being a tourist. Anyway, what was it Aunt Theo had said? The idea when you traveled was to find a café and pretend that you lived there?

As if the man was reading my mind, he asked, “Are you a French movie star?”

I thought it was better to ignore this comment. Val, for one, would have made a big deal about it. Instead I asked him: “Even though I’m not a tourist, I still want to know—what do you think is the best thing on the menu? I mean”—I thought of the word Clover often used—“what is the most classic thing on the menu?”

“Easy,” he said. “The oyster pan roast.”

“Okay, I’d like one of those, please.”

“You got it.”

I sat back and drank my seltzer and spied on Clover and Digby, who were sitting at a romantic corner table. It was so frustrating, because I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I did notice this: they didn’t order the pan roast. They were eating just plain raw oysters. After a time, their table was
heaped
with shells. And I saw them polish off
a whole bottle
of white wine. To think, I didn’t know that anyone even drank at lunch anymore! Mom and Dad never do. They have one glass of wine each, at dinner.

Then—blame it on the wine?—Digby folded his hand over Clover’s.
Very close
, I noticed. And I imagined the warmth of it flooding over hers.

My oyster pan roast arrived, and oh my God did it smell delicious. It came in this big soup bowl with a piece of toast and on top of the toast there were all of these creamy oysters. I was so happy while I was eating it I almost forgot about spying on Clover and Digby, and that’s how it happened. I mean that’s how they saw me, when they were finally leaving the restaurant.

“Franny!” I heard Clover exclaim. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Now that was annoying, because
I’d
been planning on using that phrase in case I got caught, so I just said: “Oh, hello…”

“Franny,” said Clover, “this is an old friend of mine, Digby Mansfield. In town from Rome. Digby, this is Franny Lord. I told you about Franny, remember. She and her sister, Valentine, are here from San Francisco.”

“San Francisco,” said Digby in a wondering, actually kind of hopeless tone, “San Francisco.” And I wondered if he was like Aunt Theo and didn’t “do” the West Coast. He didn’t look like any man on the West Coast I’d ever seen. “But to see you sitting at the Oyster Bar, anyone would take you for a native.”

See, that’s what I meant by Digby having easy charm. I couldn’t tell if he meant it, but he sure made it sound like he did.

Then, as if something had caught his attention, he asked me in this kind of sharp tone of voice, “Are you the one who was born in Paris?”

Why did everyone mistake me for French today? It must have been a
really
good haircut.

“No,” I said, blushing, for Digby’s eye contact was very intense. “Oh, no, that was my sister, Valentine. I was born in San Francisco.”

“San Francisco again!” exclaimed Digby. “You mustn’t be proud of it, you people. To me it’s a very dull town.”

“I wasn’t—”

I don’t think that Digby was being mean or anything, but I had noticed that the friends I’ve met of Aunt Theo’s all have one thing in common, and that is that they’re very, very opinionated. Oh, well. I guessed this was good training for when I finally met her in person, since obviously she was going to be opinionated too.

“Digby,” said Clover firmly, “leave Franny alone. Franny is a dear. Franny is my favorite,” she added, leaving no doubt that she preferred me over Valentine. There was an awkward silence among the three of us, and then Clover took care of it, turning to Digby and saying, “Well, I guess I should be walking you out. Franny, you stay here, why don’t you?”

Now that I’d been caught, there was just no way I could spy, so I had no idea what was going on when Clover walked him out of the restaurant. It seemed to me like she was gone
forever.

When she came back, she had her green sunglasses back on. But when she sat down next to me at the counter, she took them off, and there were tears sparkling on her lashes.

“Oh, Franny!” she said, and laughed, a laugh that was wistful and wild all at once. “Oh, Franny, fancy running into
you
here, indeed. You know—I think you just saved me from a grave misfortune.” She rolled her eyes, and I couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not.

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, I think so actually. Before we ran into you, I’d actually told Digby I would go back to his club with him. Too much wine, and all that!”

“And oysters,” I added.

“Quite right, Franny. Too much wine and far too many oysters. A dangerous combination. Such a silly little lunch, when you think about it! You know that before we met I actually told him, ‘Meet me under the clock!’ Like in the movies. I did kiss him goodbye just now, this really passionate, tragic-feeling kiss. Digby
is
a good kisser. But, me and this ridiculous hairdo! The Soufflé!” She laughed rather wildly, and I got worried about her. I didn’t quite see, the way Clover could, how things could apparently be both so funny and so sad. “And then there’s—” Clover paused.

“And then there’s what?”

“And there’s the past. That too. You know. The way it just sits there yawning between people.”

I didn’t know, and I think Clover could tell, because she said, “Oh, I forget, in some ways you really are still fourteen. That’s not a bad thing—it’s a very lovely thing. I’ll tell you what! You know what I’d like to do right now? Go to Bemelmans and have some of those nice cheesy bar snacks and erase this whole afternoon.”

Bemelmans was just about my favorite place I’d been in New York, and I couldn’t wait to go back.

“Oh, Clover, can we?” I said.

“Of course I
should
be going to my studio, but let’s forget about that. Let’s celebrate.”

“Celebrate?”

“My solitude, of course. Or put it another way: freedom. What I mean is—” Clover paused. “When you’ve earned your solitude and figured out how to enjoy it, as I do, it’s really quite foolish to undo it for
nothing.
You know, Franny, I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone before—not even Theo. He wanted to marry me, once.”

“Digby?”

She nodded. “Yes, when I was twenty. It would have meant dropping out of college and moving to Rome. It was just
ridiculous.
”

“Is he British?” I asked. I thought I had detected a slight accent.

“Oh, his accent, you mean. Why it’s a fake accent, you know! Not that he hasn’t lived there for years, but
still.
Theo always used to make fun of it, in fact.”

It was then I decided for good that Digby was not worthy of Clover’s attentions and that she was better off without him, free to go wherever she wanted with her orange suitcase.

We took a cab ride to Bemelmans. On the way uptown, I asked her: “What is Digby’s connection to Aunt Theo, anyway?”

“Oh, they go way, way back. To her college days, I suppose.”

“Was he her boyfriend?”

“No, no, I don’t think so, actually. He was just a—what do you call it?—a kindred spirit?”

“Oh.”

Lucky for us, once we got to Bemelman’s Theo’s old beau Warren was there, and Clover and I just talked and talked and ate cheesy bar snacks for the rest of the afternoon. I felt very close to her, as if, through Clover, I had gotten back what I had lost from my sister.

17

At the Foot of the Marine Nymph

The day after Clover and I went to the Bemelmans Bar, I stayed out all day exploring and got back to the apartment just as the sun was setting. No lights were on, so I assumed that Clover was at her studio, back in the swing of her “solitude,” and that Valentine was off somewhere with Julian. I turned on the lights and kicked off my shoes. Suddenly I heard a sob, like a baby crying. But I didn’t know of any babies in the building. Then I realized that the sound was coming from upstairs.

I walked upstairs to Aunt Theo’s bedroom. The sobs carried through the French doors from the roof-deck. Slowly I opened the doors. It was dark out by now, and the lights of the city were turning on. And there was Valentine, lying on the green velvet chaise longue and weeping, weeping, the way the young girl wept in the crashing rain at the end of
Claire’s Knee.

“Valentine!” I said, and it was only after I said it that I realized it had been a while now since I had called her Val.

She was still weeping.

I sat down beside her in the dark. I said: “Is it—Julian?”

She nodded.

“What happened?”

“He already had another girlfriend!”

She sobbed some more.

“That’s
terrible
,” I said.

“She’s older than me, she goes to Juilliard too. Her name is Beatrice and she plays the piano. They met at some genius camp in the Berkshires.”

“Oh,” I said, adding: “That’s kind of annoying actually.”

“I know! Totally annoying.”

“I know you must feel horrible,” I said, “but it is the end of the summer and…”

“And what, Franny? We were
in love.
We were going to write
letters
, and I was going to come back to go to college here and we were going to live together, like in some little apartment in the Village…”

This plan did not sound all that realistic to me, but no way was I going to point that out right now. But what did I know? I’d never been in love. And for that matter, should love be “realistic”? Shouldn’t love be all about transcending the “realistic”? Oh, I was full of all these fascinating thoughts and questions tonight …

Trying to make my voice sound extra gentle, I asked: “Where was the girlfriend—Beatrice—all this time?”

“Oh, she was on tour in Shanghai. She got back a few days ago.”

“Also annoying.”

“Oh, Franny, you get it! I hate her. What am I going to do?”

“We’ll—we’ll ask Clover. She’ll know.”

“Clover? But Clover is almost thirty and she’s not married, remember.”

But I knew Clover’s secret: I knew that she could have gotten married, once. It occurred to me, all of a sudden, that maybe I wouldn’t get married either. Maybe I’d grow up and live in New York, and sit in old-world Italian cafés wearing dark glasses, and be a writer. Yes: I’d be a writer. But now was not the time to share it with Valentine. All I said was: “So?”

“So.
She
doesn’t have some magical formula for how to be happy in love.”

The city lights were very splendid from the secret roof-deck, and I suddenly found myself in an expansive mood.

“Is that the point of love?” I asked. “To have a magic formula?”

Valentine survived the night by eating a bagful of Mint Milano cookies she refused to share with me (I didn’t really mind), and listening to the
Swan
movement of
Carnival of the Animals
over and over again.

“God!” she said, splitting another Mint Milano in half. “You’re going to have to go get me another bag of these, Franny, I swear, they’re the only thing that’s keeping me alive.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” I said.

“It’s New York City,” said Valentine. “Something will be open.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Won’t you be getting all hopped up on sugar? Don’t you want to be able to fall asleep?”

“What are you, dumb, Franny? My heart is broken, my life is over! I wish I could go to bed and fall asleep absolutely
forever.
”

I couldn’t help but notice how Valentine, when she was happy with Julian, didn’t want the Belgian chocolates I brought her from the Sherry Netherland. But now, without him, Mint Milanos were supposedly “keeping her alive.” And so among other things this summer, I discovered that sugar seemed to have something to do with sex in the lives of grownup women. I would have to start paying more attention to my cravings, myself.

The next morning, when Clover heard that Julian had dumped Valentine, her “magic solution” was to take us straight to the Frick. She was “appalled” we hadn’t already been, and assured us, “You’ll leave there and feel better, I know it.”

But first, we had to get Valentine out of bed.

“I don’t want to go,” she said, moaning. “I just want to stay in bed and die. Pull the shades, Franny, will you? The light, the light!”

Clover’s solution to that was to serve her a café au lait with more milk than coffee and buttered toast shredded into bits, as if it were for a baby. When Valentine finally and with great effort got out of bed, Clover had already picked what she was going to wear, generously offering her a dress from her own closet. I had never seen a dress quite like it before. Clover called it a “patio gown.” It was sleeveless but very long and in a silky knit material of different zigzagging blue and green stripes, like the ocean. Valentine, being bratty, was not convinced that she liked it.

“It’s weird,” she said. “All those zigzags.”

“It’s a Missoni,” Clover said, adding: “Aunt Theo got it for me from Italy one summer. And if you can’t see the inherent chic of a Missoni, Valentine, well, I don’t know what this summer in New York has done for your cultural and aesthetic education.”

At this, Valentine burst into tears again, reminding Clover: her heart was
broken.
It would be broken
forever.

“Oh dear,” said Clover, obviously feeling bad. “Come on, put on the dress and you’ll feel better. You’re going to look gorgeous in it. You can keep it, in fact. Bring it back to San Francisco and your mother will die of jealousy, her seventeen-year-old daughter with a real Missoni. I love it, but the fact is I’m not quite tall enough to get away with that length.”