The Summer Invitation (7 page)

“‘Vittadini,’ I told her.

“She said, ‘You’re tall for an Italian.’

“I said, ‘My mom’s side’s Irish.’

“She turned turned to Honor and said: ‘Honor! Give Warren the Irish-Italian waiter my number.’ And she did, and the rest is history. Many years have passed, there have been other women. But she was the great love of my life.”

The next morning, I remembered that Aunt Theo’s letter had said, “Report back to me your progress.” She was expecting me to write her a letter. But, oh dear—on what? I didn’t have any stationery. So I found this great Italian stationery store called Il Papiro, up on Lexington Avenue Clover had told me all about it when I told her I needed to get stationery, and I’d been excited to check it out. Once I finally got there, I chose this cream paper with two lonesome-looking silver swans painted on the bottom. And then a navy-blue pen. I’d never had a fancy pen before, but I thought that when you wrote to Theodora Bell, you couldn’t use just any old pen.

But that night Val saw me writing the letter and said, “Oh God, Franny, are you writing a
letter
? I mean, letters are okay for an old lady like Aunt Theo, but for you? Nobody sends letters anymore.”

“Just because nobody does a thing anymore,” I said, “doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it to do.”

“But the world changes! Why not keep up with it?”

“Clover says—”

“Oh,” Val threw up her hands, “Clover says, Clover says, Theo says! I mean, I’m so glad Aunt Theo let us come to New York for the summer and all, but honestly, sometimes I feel like we’re living in, I don’t know, a
museum
in her apartment.”

“But who wouldn’t want to live in a museum?” I asked. “Remember how when we were little we wanted to go live in the Palace of Fine Arts?” That’s in this absolutely beautiful old building in San Francisco. “Remember, we wanted to go and put a tent up on the grounds, and feed the swans in the lagoon?”

“Yes,” said Val, “but, Franny, we were just children then.”

I paused. I supposed she had a point.

Here’s what I decided to write.

Dear Aunt Theodora,

Reporting on so-called progress. Valentine suggested the Plaza. Can you believe it? When everybody knows it’s owned by Donald Trump. Luckily I came up with Bemelmans Bar.

When I go to a place like that, I start to see you what you mean about California having no true style to speak of.

Anyway they sent us dessert and everything was just divine.

Oh, we met your old flame Warren. He says hello.

XXX

Frances

P.S. Please, Aunt Theodora, I think I should let you know I’ve just about filled the beautiful pink-and-gray journal you sent me from Paris. Would it be too bold to ask for another?

A week passed, and a package for me appeared in the mail. It was the same type of journal, but different colors, darker and richer this time, not pink-and-gray but plum suede with mauve pages. I couldn’t help but notice they were more like the colors Aunt Theo would choose for herself. A woman’s and not a girl’s.

The letter she had enclosed with the package had two words of advice: “Take notes.”

8

Ballet Lessons

Then Valentine fell in love, which of course is what we’d both been waiting for.

It happened this way.

Ever since we went to the Carlyle and Warren flirted with her, she’d been pretty much insufferable, flouncing around the apartment in her underwear and making mysterious faces in the mirror.

“Put some clothes on, Val,” I told her.

“Oh, just because you don’t have any boobs yet,” she said, which I think was absolutely uncalled for.

Incredibly enough, she went on, “Of course you might be one of those women who never really gets boobs. But that’s okay. There are so many different kinds of clothes you’ll be able to wear.”

“Val.”

“Well, just ask Clover. She was saying it used to be so hard going shopping with Aunt Theo, because, you know, Aunt Theo’s so tall and skinny and used to be a model and all and Clover’s so short. But Aunt Theo always made her feel better by saying that she, Clover I mean, had the kind of body that looks prettiest naked.”

“Val!”

“Suit yourself,” she said, and went back to applying her eyeliner in the mirror. It was Saturday morning, and she was getting ready to go to this ballet class at Lincoln Center. The reason for that was because an old friend of Aunt Theo’s turned out to be a former ballerina who now taught classes there for beginners. Clover had arranged for us to attend her classes for free if we wanted, but only Valentine wanted to; I did ballet once when I was little and wasn’t any good at it, so I didn’t want to make that mistake again. But Valentine loves dancing and was excited to give it a try.

“If you don’t finish up with that, you’re going to be late,” I warned her.

“Oh, hush! There might be boys there.”

“In
ballet
class?”

“Just, you know, around,” she said mysteriously.

After class, Valentine and I had planned to meet at this tearoom on the Upper East Side called Sant Ambroeus. Clover had recommended it to me earlier that morning, thinking that we would be sure to enjoy it. Valentine was walking across the park to meet me, and so I got there before her and had a chance to take it all in. You know something? I kind of like eating in restaurants alone. There is such opportunity for observation then. When you’re with someone else, you don’t notice things the same way.

Clover had recommended Sant Ambroeus because it’s Italian, Milanese to be exact, and very old. It seems like everywhere Clover recommends is old but has style. Sant Ambroeus definitely does. The pastries are in shining cases and there are crystal chandeliers. The waiters wear pink shirts and black pants and all seem to be just incredibly handsome. One young man filling water glasses looked a bit like a piece of ancient sculpture.

Oh, when I go to college the first thing I want to do is take Italian! Aunt Theo and Clover speak it from going abroad so much. I don’t think it will be too, too hard for me to pick up since I’m fluent in French already. Here were some of the beautiful-sounding words on the menu:
Asparagi Freddi, Polipo al Profumo de Limone, Vitello Tonnato …

“Franny, what are you doing, talking to yourself?”

I looked up and saw Val. Her black leotard was sliding off her shoulders and her twist was coming undone. If she hadn’t been so gorgeous, I would have felt embarrassed to be seen with her in the dining room of Sant Ambroeus.

“Oh,” I said, caught, “you’ll think it silly, but I was just practicing my Italian.”

“
Your
Italian, Franny? You make it sound like you already speak it! Well, tell Mom and Dad you want to learn it, and see if they’ll fit it into your schedule. Just imagine”—Val sighed all melodramatically—“going back home, and having to do homework, and activities, and Girls Chorus.” Then she picked up a menu and said, “God, Franny, you expect me to eat
octopus
when I’m in love?”

“You mean
Polipo al Profumo…”
I began, showing off my accent
and
knowing full well that it annoyed her I didn’t ask right away about the guy, whoever he was.

“Well, I just can’t eat when I’m feeling all light and breathless…”

“Oh.” I couldn’t imagine ever being in such an emotional condition that I wasn’t fond of eating. Especially here, at Sant Ambroeus!

“Aren’t you going to ask me?” she demanded.

“All right, Val. Who is he?”

“His name is Julian,” she said, with a proud lift of her head. “He has dark hair and blue eyes.”

“Oh,” I said. I did have to admit that was an attractive, and rare, combination.

Julian.
I pondered the name. “
Wavy
dark hair,” she went on. “And
deep
blue eyes. And he was carrying a cello. Turns out he goes to Juilliard. That’s just about impossible to get into!”

“I know, I know.”

“You have to be, like, a genius—”

“Where did you meet him?”

“Well—it was right after I got out of ballet class. Oh, I’ll tell you about what happened in class later! But anyway. It was after class and I walked outside and went to sit down by that fountain they have, the big one that’s all lit up at night. I was just sitting there when I noticed this cute boy with a cello, and I started looking at him, and then he startedlooking at me too. And then he came over and talked to me!”

“What did he say?”

“‘Are you a dancer?’ is what he said.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said yes.”

“Val!”

“Whatever.”

“But you know he must just assume you’re a ballerina?”

She tossed her head and said, “Well, what of it? If you were a man, wouldn’t you fall in love with a ballerina?”

I had to admit she had a point. When it came to Love, ballerinas had the edge over the rest of us.

“Val, how old is he?” I asked.

“Twenty-one.”

Twenty-one! The perfect age, it seemed to me, for any cute boy to be. I thought it only appropriate that one’s first love should be a couple years older anyway. And definitely not younger: no way.

“How old does he think you are?”

“Well,” said Valentine, “I’m not exactly sure, but he thinks I go to the ballet school.”

I looked at Valentine sitting across from me, and I understood that she now lived in a different world from me. It was the world of being a beautiful young woman, a world in which dark-haired, blue-eyed strangers carrying cellos saw you and felt compelled to speak to you out of nowhere. And it was also a world, I saw, of small lies. But lies were important when one was in love. The truth, not so much. I saw that now.

Our food arrived: egg salad and tomato sandwiches, and ones with chicken salad and lemon zest. For tea, we got a pot of something called Vanilla Darjeeling Royal.

“You know what, Franny?” said Valentine, reaching for a sandwich and popping it into her mouth in one bite. I always take tiny bites of tea sandwiches, to make them last longer. “Maybe being in love is all right for your appetite after all. This looks
delish.
”

We ate our food and sipped our Vanilla Darjeeling Royal tea and were perfectly happy. One of those meals to remember, I was thinking. Aunt Theo was quite right to tell me to “take notes.” And afterward when we got back to the apartment I did. As I was writing up the afternoon’s events in my journal, for the first time ever I thought to myself that maybe someday I would write a novel too.

9

The Fifi or the Framboise?

“So you’re in love,” said Clover that evening. “Is it the first time?”

Valentine nodded gravely that it was.

“Well,” said Clover calmly, as if she were a priestess overseeing an initiation ritual of some kind, “then there is only one thing to be done.”

“What?”

We were both dying to know.

“Lingerie shopping, of course.”

Lingerie shopping! The words alone were enough to thrill us.

“Oh!” said Valentine. “Oh! Mom never lets me get fancy underwear. And you know what I want? Black lace, with, what are those things called, garters—”

“It might not be time for black lace just yet,” said Clover. “We’ll have to see. But we’ll get you something, and whatever it is, it will be beautiful.”

Valentine looked a bit sulky, because I knew she thought that black lace was just the thing, the only thing, when it came to lingerie.

“We’ll go shopping tomorrow,” said Clover. “We’ll make a day of it. But one thing to keep in mind, girls: just because I’m taking you lingerie shopping doesn’t mean that I expect you to wear it in front of somebody. Not necessarily and not by any means soon. I’m taking you lingerie shopping because lingerie is something for
you.
Not for a man. If there’s a man, that’s just a perk, but not the point. Understand?”

But I don’t think poor Val did, because later that night, when we were lying in our twin beds, she said, “What was Clover talking about, anyway? I’m
so
going to show Julian my lingerie.”

I rather wanted to tell her that I saw Clover’s point. But I didn’t, because I thought she’d only say that I was fourteen and didn’t have any boobs yet or anyone to show them to anyway. And you know what? She would have been right.

The next morning, Clover appeared at the foot of the staircase in a white cotton dress and this wonderful pale blond straw hat with a navy grosgrain ribbon. On her hands were a pair of little white gloves. I thought she looked like a most beautiful chaperone.

“No trousers please,” she said.

“But my green skirt’s dirty!” exclaimed Valentine, who was wearing a white T-shirt and black leggings, with her hair up in a messy bun. Perhaps she was thinking that if she ran into Julian, she’d better continue to look like a ballet dancer.

“Oh, all right,” said Clover. “Be glad Theo’s not here yet. When I was younger, she always made me dress up whenever we went shopping. When I was around Franny’s age or maybe a little younger, we used to dress up and go to the Armani store. Theo looks marvelous in Armani. She’d leave her credit card at home, and we’d pretend I was a young heiress from Denmark and that Theo was my British governess. So I’d get to try on all the clothing, see. We never bought anything but we did make them believe we were serious. Then I grew up and I didn’t really fit into Armani anymore.”

Clover sighed, remembering.

“Why not?” asked Valentine. “Shouldn’t you have fit into it
better
, once you grew up?”

“Oh, no,” said Clover, “not once I got my shape. Armani is for tall, narrow people. But who cares? There’s always lingerie! Come on, you two.”

We went outside, and stopped for “caffeine, God help me,” said Clover. Once she was caffeinated, she said, “Now. I suggest we do a tour. Like you do with museums. The art of undergarments. The demure and the not so demure.”

“The
not
so demure, please,” said Valentine.