The Summer Invitation (3 page)

“Yes,” said Clover. “When she was very young. Younger than me, even, I think.”

We would be sleeping in the bedroom downstairs. It had dusty coral walls and two twin beds with brass headboards. The sheets and pillows were mismatched, but in a way, I thought that looked better than matched—like Aunt Theo couldn’t be bothered to try that hard. Clover left us to unpack alone, which I though was nice of her, since of course we had all kinds of things we wanted to talk about right now.

“I get the bed by the window!” exclaimed Val, sitting down on it and sighing. Then she tapped the mattress and said, “Not too comfy a bed actually. And to think, I thought Aunt Theo was
loaded.
Actually to tell you the truth this place isn’t as fancy as I thought it would be. What do you think, Franny?”

“I love it,” I said immediately and rather protectively. But I saw that Val had a point. There was no television, and the kitchen with the dusty black-and-white diamond floors hadn’t been remodeled in forever. I started to get the impression that Aunt Theo wasn’t big on modern conveniences of any kind.

“Oh my God, I am just dying to read Aunt Theo’s novel. Aren’t you?”

“Yeah, later maybe,” said Valentine, though she’s not as big on reading novels as I am, to tell you the truth. “I’m dying after that flight and I want something sweet ASAP. Lemonade or, I know, let’s go get raspberry lime rickeys!” That was our favorite drink back in San Francisco.

“But where will we be able to find them?” I asked her.

“Oh, Franny!” Valentine flashed me her Big Sister look. “It’s New York City. You can find anything here.”

“Okay, but let’s unpack first.”

Just as I said this, we heard a knock on the door. It was Clover, saying the magic words: “Girls, would you like to go shopping?”

3

Uncommon Cottons

Clover walked like a real New Yorker, elbows out and eyes straight ahead. When she went outside, she took off her glasses with the rhinestones and put on a pair of huge vanilla-colored sunglasses.

“I got them with Theo in Paris,” she said by way of explanation. Then, to Valentine, “You were born there, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Valentine, with a little bit of pride in her voice that I knew her well enough to recognize.

Clover changed the subject by asking us: “Don’t you two have sunglasses?”

We shook our heads.

“Oh, I forgot, San Francisco! Those wonderful dreamy fogs rolling in. I love it, it feels so good on my skin. But in New York in the summer, you’ll want to get sunglasses. That will be fun, picking sunglasses out.”

I was glad that somebody had finally said something good about San Francisco. I felt at such a disadvantage, having been born in California and not Paris, like Val. Or even just the East Coast, where Clover was from and which was obviously superior to the West, or why would Aunt Theo have taken such a strong stand against ever coming to visit us?

But I’d always had this feeling about the East. We had been in New York City one time before when Valentine was eleven and I was eight and the San Francisco Girls Chorus got to perform at Alice Tully Hall, which is part of Lincoln Center. Dad’s big on music and still talks about it:
My daughters performed at Alice Tully Hall.

So we performed at Alice Tully Hall and went to tea at the Plaza and had our pictures taken in front of the portrait of Eloise and went on a pony ride in Central Park. We went to the MoMA and the Met and the Museum of Natural History. We both made up our minds that one day we’d come here again.

You know what I noticed right away when we got here? New York has the most beautiful light. San Francisco is beautiful just generally but New York has this light—it just has this
richness.
It has different dimensions. By now it was going on 6:00 p.m., the heat lifting a bit, and we walked down one of the side streets with all the marvelous old brownstones in all the different shades of brick: red, pink, beige. We don’t have much brick like that in San Francisco.

“Oh, this way,” said Clover, and we followed her down another one of the side streets till we got to this cool vintage store.

“Oh,” Valentine and I swooned, gazing at a full-skirted, fluffy orange dress in the window.

“You could pull off that color,” said Clover to Valentine but not, I couldn’t help but notice, to me.

We went inside and exclaimed over stiff crinolines, bunny-soft cashmeres, tiny beaded purses.

The lady behind the counter started talking to Clover. She was positively ancient but cool-looking. Her eyelids were all sultry with black liner and she was wearing this black linen sort of smock-dress with coils of turquoise on both of her wrists. They looked like underwater creatures, those bracelets, like they might spring to life and bite you.

I eavesdropped on their conversation, catching certain parts.

“But whatever became of the historian?”

“It didn’t work out.”

“Who broke it off?”

“
He
did.”

“Clover,” the woman said, “are you trying to tell me you don’t have a lover at the moment?”

Clover laughed lightly and said, “Afraid so.”

“But, my dear, that’s all wrong. I’m seventy-five and I have two.”

Lover.
That word was in the air, here in the Village, this summer.

Valentine was leafing through an old
Mademoiselle
magazine from July 1948 and lazily reading aloud from the captions on the photo shoots: “The Ultra Violets,” “British Imports,” “Uncommon Cottons…”

Clover said to us, “Girls, this is Joan. Joan, this is Franny and Valentine. They’re visiting from San Francisco.”

“San Francisco!” said Joan. “I used to work at City Lights. I mean, way back when it started.”

Dad was always trying to educate us about local history, and so we did know a little bit about City Lights Bookstore and the Beats. We made conversation about that, and then Joan picked out some clothing for us.

Here is what she chose.

For Valentine: a Mexican circle skirt from the 1950s, heavy green cotton scattered with faint gold gems that jangled a bit whenever she moved.

“See, you can just throw that on with a camisole, and it will look a little more modern.” said Clover. “And please don’t ever say
tank top.
Say
camisole
:
camisole
is a lovely word. I despair of the word
tank top.
”

Valentine did a twirl so we could hear the gems stir again.

“She’s a beauty,” said Joan to Clover approvingly, and I tried my best not to be jealous. But then Valentine tugged at the waistband of the skirt as though she was just itching to get out of it and said, “No thanks. It’s just not for me. It’s so heavy … and
long.”

She had a point: girls our age almost never wore long skirts anymore. The shorter the better was all the rage, and Val was always disappointed that Mom never let us go out of the house in
really
short ones.

“Well, of course the cotton is heavy,” said Joan, bristling. “It’s beautiful quality. Young people these days are just used to everything being thin and cheap, you wear it one season and throw it away. Why, that skirt is over fifty years old!”

“Exactly,” said Valentine, before slipping back into the dressing room to take it off. I knew that if Mom had been with us, she would have said
Valentine
in that tone of voice to let her know she was being rude. Clover had just met us, so she couldn’t get away with scolding her.

I turned out to be a better customer than Valentine. Here is what Joan chose for me: a navy-blue 1960s shift dress with a white Peter Pan collar. I thought at first it looked too babyish, but then Clover said, “Not at all! On the contrary, it’s very sophisticated. And
très française.
Did you ever see
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
?”

Did we ever see
The Umrellas of Cherbourg
?

“Oh God,” said Valentine, “have we ever! Mom used to make us sing from it all the time!”

“They’re singers,” Clover explained to Joan. “Classically trained.”

“I’ll call it my Catherine Deneuve dress,” I said, picturing myself wearing a big white bow in my hair like she does in the movie, but more than that, much more than that, picturing myself wearing my new dress and
being in love.
Then my imagination ran off with me. It rains a lot in San Francisco too, you know, just like in the movie. Say I got a trench coat. Say I had a boyfriend. We could wander the hilly streets arm in arm, the rain coming down. We could sing:

If it takes forever I will wait for you

For a thousand summers I will wait for you …

And so on and so on, till we got to the end of the song.

Valentine and I decided to get both outfits. Even Val was finally convinced, though at first she’d said the skirt was too old-fashioned. Mom and Dad had given us a certain amount of money to spend on shopping in New York, and we thought that these seemed original and worthwhile. Then after Joan had rung up our purchases Clover stopped to look at a soft, woven honey-colored purse with tortoiseshell handles. The woven fabric was something that Clover called “raffia.” Joan said it was from the fifties. I didn’t quite “get” it, but Clover assured us it was very chic and “ready for Italy” and bought it immediately.

Once we got up to the register, I noticed that Val was trying on scarves. She was tying them softly around her hair, around the beautiful copper curls I wished were mine. When she finished with one scarf she put it back and picked up another—the last one she picked up was this brilliant shade of green. Back at home, I couldn’t recall Val ever wearing that color, but now that I saw her in it, I knew that shade belonged to her alone and that I’d never ever try to wear it myself. Clover and Joan saw it too, and then they did something I thought was strange—they sighed. The way Mom sighs when she remembers Paris. As if they too were remembering something.

“That has to be yours, Valentine,” said Clover, and paid for it along with my dress. She said these were “presents” from Aunt Theodora.

Then Valentine asked something I myself had been wondering: “Where does Theo get all her money?”

Clover shrugged and said, “Oh,
that.
Her family made it way, way back. Mills or something.”

After we left the store and were walking down the street again, I looked down at my feet and came back to reality. I was wearing a pair of dingy black flip-flops. Valentine was wearing purple ones. Clover had on a pair of white patent-leather sandals, and her toes were painted this luscious peach color.

I made up my mind then and there. We’d have to get new shoes to go with our new clothes. And we’d have to get our toenails painted.

“What’s that color?” I asked Clover. “I mean the one on your toes?”

“Oh, that,” said Clover, looking down at her toes with a sly little smile. “Italian Love Affair.”

4

The Secret Roof-Deck

It was Clover who got the idea to give Aunt Theo a party on August 14, the night she was supposed to arrive back in New York.

“A birthday party?” asked Valentine. “Old people don’t always like to be reminded of their birthdays, you know.”

“Never you mind about old people,” said Clover. “And anyway, her birthday’s in October, not August.”

“So it’s more like a welcome back party then,” I said, trying to sound more knowledgeable about these things than Valentine.

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Clover. “Although you know what kind of party Aunt Theo used to have when I was your age?”

“What?”

“She called them Getting to Know You parties.”

“A
what
party?”

“A Getting to Know You party,” Clover repeated. “You see, when I was your age Aunt Theo used to have these parties where the whole idea was to bring a fascinating stranger. So, I would have to go scampering all over the streets of the Village introducing myself to possible strangers to invite. ‘Unknowns,’ Aunt Theo called them. At the beginning of the party, we always had this special ritual we did. Aunt Theo would make us all hold hands and sing “Getting to Know You.” And then after that, the party could begin.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead,” announced Valentine.

“You wouldn’t be caught dead what?” asked Clover, smiling.

“Holding hands
with strangers.
Singing songs
with strangers.”

“Well, I would!” I said, just to be contrary. “I think it sounds—interesting.”

“Franny! Mom and Dad raised us not to speak to strangers.”

“Well, if you’re so big on doing only what Mom and Dad say—”

“Girls! Stop all of this quarreling. Never you mind. Anyway, I don’t imagine that your parents would much like it if I had you two dragging strangers off the streets, so let’s just call this a Welcome Back party, shall we? Whatever we call it, the important thing is to make it a party to remember.”

I liked that idea—“a party to remember.” I was looking forward to planning it, and most of all, to finally meeting Aunt Theo in person. But then, right from the beginning, I think I was more interested in the characters of Aunt Theodora and her protégée Clover Leslie than Valentine was. That’s how I thought of Theo and Clover—as characters out of an old-fashioned novel who had suddenly appeared in our lives, making everything somehow more colorful and fascinating than before. Anyway, here are some things I learned about Clover Leslie:

1) She was an orphan. When she was growing up in Boston, Aunt Theo was her guardian.

“For how long?” Valentine asked.

“Forever,” said Clover, and we didn’t ask her any more questions about that, though of course we wanted to know how her parents had died or if they’d gone missing or what. Our curiosity was only natural, the same way it’s only natural that Valentine wants to know who her real father is.

2) Clover was a sculptress. She had gone to Bennington, which is a tiny school on a hill in Vermont that is famous for artists and writers and modern dancers. After school, she got a studio in the Village and had had some shows and sold her pieces to very high-end stores on the Upper East Side. Her work, she said, was more uptown than downtown because her sensibility (that was a new word; I filed it away) was old-fashioned. She was a classicist, she said: another new word. There were a couple of her sculptures at Aunt Theo’s apartment and she showed them to us. They were tiny and of mysterious sea creatures; the white porcelain was touched with pale blue, her favorite color.