The Summer Invitation (17 page)

“Oh, speaking of San Francisco,” said Ellery. “Do you know what Theo once said to me about the West Coast?”

“No,” we all said.

“She said: ‘What would I want to live on the West Coast for? It is too far from Italy.’ Italy was always the important thing for her.”

“Must have been,” said Valentine. “It sounds like she’s always going on and on about it. Italian this; Italian that…”

“Valentine,”
said Clover, but Ellery merely laughed.

“Aha! I see you must be the rebellious sister. There is always one rebellious sister, isn’t there, and one good one? That is, if we are speaking of female archetypes.”

“Well,” said Val, kind of hesitating because I don’t know if she could tell if he was giving her a compliment or not. “I’m the older one, obviously. I’m seventeen.”

“Seventeen! An enchanting age. And, in addition to being rebellious, you are also going to be extraordinarily beautiful.”

Really, this was getting to be too much. And then I heard Clover saying, “Ellery knows what he’s talking about, Valentine. He’s been around lots of famous beauties before. He used to be a gossip columnist.”

“You did?” Valentine sounded suddenly very interested.

“Oh, back in the day,” said Ellery airily. But then I could tell that Val’s expression had changed, because she’s not so interested, after all, in anything that happened “back in the day,” and I bet that any of the names he might have mentioned wouldn’t have meant anything to her.

Clover was in the middle of pouring Ellery a glass of champagne when the buzzer rang, and I ran downstairs wondering if it was going to be Alexander. But no—it was Warren. He was carrying a bottle of champagne. “Hey, Franny!” he said, and gave me an affectionate hug. He was so tall, he had to lean way down to reach me.

“The party’s upstairs,” I said, gesturing to the staircase. “On the roof-deck.”

“The secret roof-deck?” He smiled, looking mischievous.

“Wait, do you know it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh.”

I was disappointed.

I led him up the staircase and into Aunt Theo’s bedroom, which was kind of like crawling under the fold of a magic tent. We were sucked into the red walls, the Oriental rug made up of olive greens and golds, not to mention, on the bed, the famous leopard-skin blanket.

“That painting,” said Warren, and pointed at the portrait of Aunt Theo over the bed.

“Do you know that too?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” he said again.

“L’heure de la lavande,”
I said now, feeling like I was a tour guide in a museum.

“Your accent is very good, Franny,” said Ellery, who had come over to join us in the bedroom.

“Thank you, Ellery.”

He must have known Warren from—what was the phrase he had used?—“back in the day.” They were saying hello to each other, and Clover was rushing in to pour more champagne.

“I never knew who painted that,” said Warren.

“Yeah, I don’t know either,” I said. But then, trying to sound all knowledgeable, I added: “I think it was painted in Paris, though.”

“Ellery, do you know who painted this portrait of Theo?” Warren asked.

“No, she would never tell even me. And she used to tell me everything, everything!”

The buzzer rang. Alexander! I thought.
I hoped.
And I raced down the staircase again.

21

Getting to Know You

Only it wasn’t Alexander. It was—another bottle of champagne? Because here was another older gentleman, bearing a bottle. This one was a beautiful dark green with a fancy pink-and-blue label.
Crème de Cassis
, the bottle said.

“Is that from Paris?” I asked him.

“Dijon,” he said.

“Oh.”

He laughed.

“Don’t worry.
I’m
from Paris, even if the bottle isn’t.”

“Oh!”

“You are Miss Valentine Lord, perhaps?” He was now staring at me intently.

“Oh, no, she’s my sister! I’m Franny—” I caught myself just in time. “I’m Frances Lord. How do you do?” And I put out my hand.

The strange gentleman was laughing at me, but it was a nice laugh. There is such a difference in people’s laughs, don’t you think? And now I stepped back and stared at
him
intently. He was rather a small man, but still handsome. He had on white jeans and purple velvet loafers. Also, he had red hair. Dark red, kind of like what you call auburn. I liked him.

“Ah, Frances!” he exclaimed, and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “You are the daughter of Milly and Edward, correct?”

“Yes, that’s them. Do you know them?”

“From another life…” he said, and sighed.

It turned out that the strange gentleman’s name was Laurent Victoire, which I thought was just lovely; French names are the prettiest, and I got jealous, all over again, that Valentine had one and I didn’t.

“Is Theo here?” Laurent asked me, as I led him upstairs.

“Not yet. She’s flying in tonight. Do you know—I’ve never actually met her!”

“Ah, and your sister—Valentine, is it?—has she ever met her before?”

“No, neither of us have. That’s why we’re so excited to finally get to see her in person tonight!”

“She is quite something,” he said now. We were standing in Aunt Theo’s bedroom, at the foot of the bed. Everybody else had moved outside to the roof-deck. “A great beauty. A vision, you might even say! See, Frances,” he pointed to the painting over the bed, and whispered, “That portrait. Don’t tell any of the others, but I was the one who painted that.”

“You did?”

He nodded.

“When? Where?”

“One morning in Paris, it was. Wintertime. You see the light in the painting. It’s blue. Blue, bordering on lavender. A winter light. You can tell. The year must have been, oh, 1965 or ’66…”

Forever and ever ago, I was thinking! A whole other country and a whole other world, and all of a sudden the painting seemed more romantic to me than ever before.

“It’s beautiful,” I told him. “Really it is. But what did you mean don’t tell the others? If I had painted a painting like that, I would be so proud of it, I would definitely want everybody else to know!”

“Ah, but you are not grown up, just yet. You do not know men,” said Laurent, smiling. It was a kind smile, but still. I was a little insulted, because no teenage girl likes being told she’s not grown up yet, and as for not knowing men, well, I had a boy showing up to see me any minute now! So there!

“Were you in love with Theodora Bell?” I asked him, feeling that it was not every day that I conversed with random red-haired gentlemen who had just flown in from Paris and that now was the time to be bold.

“No,” he said simply. “I admired her and her beauty, and I wanted to paint her, to capture it forever. But no, Frances, I was not in love with Theodora Bell, I was in love with somebody else.”

Before I could ask “Who?” Clover had spotted Laurent and he was giving her a kiss, and then the buzzer was ringing again, and I ran downstairs to answer it. Clover called after me, “Oh, just tell Oscar to send everyone on up, Franny, dear,” just as I was opening the door and saw that it was—Alexander Austin! I hoped I didn’t blush when I saw it was him, but I think maybe I did.

“Hey, Franny,” he said. He wasn’t carrying champagne or any kind of alcohol, obviously, but instead a bouquet of flowers. They were wild flowers, which are the prettiest flowers to have in the summertime, I think. But really—it wouldn’t have mattered what kind of flowers he had brought me, even just plain old carnations, say, because the first time a boy brings you flowers, it’s simply very sweet!

“Come upstairs and have some pink lemonade,” I said. “I mean, if you like pink lemonade. There’s also sparkling water if you’d rather have that.”

Alexander said he would have pink lemonade and smiled. We went upstairs and I introduced him to Clover first, which I thought
only proper.
I was relieved that he had on a jacket, a blue blazer, I guess kind of like what boys on the East Coast must wear at prep school. I knew that Clover would approve of this, and Aunt Theo too, when I introduced him to her later on. I imagined it: introducing Alexander to Aunt Theo. I imagined her being proud that I had finally found an admirer who interested me, as I had promised her in my letter.

“How do you do, Alexander?” I heard Clover saying to him.

Other guests were now arriving. The secret roof-deck was getting full. A gypsy fortune-teller arrived. Her name was Mama Lucia and she had on all red and spoke with a Russian accent. “Says she used to be a countess or something,” Ellery whispered to me. “But I don’t think so…” I was also introduced to somebody named “Cousin Honor,” said by Ellery to be a relative of Theo’s and a famous modern dancer. She also had on palazzo pants! Only hers were black. I was trying to keep track of all these details so that I could “take notes” on the party in my journal later on. Meanwhile, Warren smashed a champagne flute by accident. He was a big guy and I think just couldn’t help smashing into things. Valentine went to go get a broom and dustpan to clean it up. I was too distracted with Alexander being there to help her. I wanted to prove that I was a good hostess by paying enough attention to him.

And then Warren started telling this story about Aunt Theo. “Hey, that reminds me. You remember those really colorful old dishes Theo always had, I think they must have been French—?”

“The Quimper?” Clover asked.

“If you say so, kiddo. I remember one time Theo gave me this birthday party here at this very apartment. I was still in my twenties, I was just a kid. Anyway, toward the end of the party, I must have had too much vino because I dropped one of her plates.

There was this horrible silence. Then you know what Theo did? She burst out laughing, oh, she has such a great laugh, a really sexy laugh, you know, and then she picked up
her
plate and dropped it. It shattered in a million little pieces. Then everyone laughed and we all had more vino. A great birthday, that party.”

Now Ellery was competing with him, starting to tell another story about one of Aunt Theo’s famous parties just as I was vowing that when I grew up and had parties of my own, I would be a hostess just like Aunt Theo. I would laugh if somebody broke a dish. I would laugh and make it all better. Then just as I was thinking this, Clover tapped me on the shoulder and announced, “It’s just been brought to my attention! We’re almost out of ice. Would you and Alexander mind running around the corner to the bodega and getting some more?”

She smiled sympathetically, and I knew that she was asking me because she thought it might be fun for me to be alone with Alexander instead of being swarmed by grownups. Grownups are interesting, but only up to a point.

“Let me,” wailed Valentine, looking all languid in the moonlight. By now it was officially dark. Looking at her striking this long-armed pose next to one of Aunt Theo’s lemon trees, I thought of a dryad or something, some mythological creature that Clover might have shown us that day we all went to the Frick together and sat by the fountain to talk of Love. “Let me, Clover. I’ll go.”

“Not so fast, young lady. You are going to stay here and mingle.”

Val sighed, still managing to look poetic. I had to hand it to her. Then Clover introduced Val to Mama Lucia, which I know Val must have dreaded, because now that she’s seventeen, there’s just no way around it: she prefers the company of men to that of almost any woman.

“I don’t want to miss Aunt Theo,” I said to Clover.

“You won’t. The bodega is just around the corner. But hurry, Franny. Hurry.”

Once we got to the bodega, Alexander offered to pay for the bag of ice. It was a small gesture, but still, I thought it was very gentlemanly of him and I was very impressed by his behavior. It was kind of like his bothering to wear a jacket to the party tonight in that it showed that he paid attention to the little things.

“When do you go back to Boston again?” I asked him. Everything on the city sidewalks at that moment was bright and vivid to me. A cocker spaniel on a red leash; a girl hailing a taxi in a blue polka-dot dress. Even a cone of pistachio ice cream that was melted at my feet. I had to move aside to make sure I didn’t step in it, but I didn’t mind. Even the messiness of New York—New York in the summer, ice cream spilled on the street, even the garbage cans, by this time at night overflowing—made me think: Such richness. That was the same thing I’d felt the very first night we got here, walking around the Village with Clover. I thought it again but even more strongly tonight.

“Soon,” was all Alexander said. And then: “When do you go back to San Francisco?”

“Soon,” was all I said too.

Because with some people you don’t even need words. With some people you can be silent comfortably. You just have
this feeling
about them. It’s kind of like what Clover called being a kindred spirit.

Alexander took my hand as we walked inside the building. He’s going to kiss me! I thought. And when finally he did, I was so relieved, because let’s face it, I did want to get to go back to San Francisco and say to all of my friends: I’ve been kissed.

But it made me realize again what a difference there can be in kisses. For instance, there was the way that I had seen Digby kiss Clover that day at Grand Central, a sad, lingering kiss. I am sure that there was sadness in that kiss; I felt it. I think that must have been because they were older and meeting again for the first time in years. And then there was the way that Val told me that Julian had kissed her for the first time on the roof-deck of Barge Music, taking her into his arms
all of a sudden.
I think that must have been because they were young and confident. But Alexander and I were even younger than them, of course, and not quite so confident. For one thing, even though he kissed me, he forgot the part about taking me in his arms, like Julian did with Val, or like they do in the movies. Instead he just kind of bent down a little and pressed his lips to mine, and I pressed mine right back. Because, even though there can be such a difference in kisses, your first one is something to remember all your life.