The Summer Invitation

by Charlotte Silver

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  To E & R

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Map

  Prologue Aunt Theodora Invites Us

  1 The Umbrellas of San Francisco

  2 The Bluebird of Greenwich Village

  3 Uncommon Cottons

  4 The Secret Roof-Deck

  5 Lilac Gloves

  6 Nudes

  7 The Older Man

  8 Ballet Lessons

  9 The Fifi or the Framboise?

  10 Valentine’s Knee

  11 Lemon Soufflé

  12 This Is Not Central Park

  13 Belgian Chocolates at the Sherry-Netherland

  14 Carnival of the Animals

  15 Where’s Valentine?

  16 Meet Me Under the Clock

  17 At the Foot of the Marine Nymph

  18 Thunder!

  19 An Omelet and a Bottle of Champagne

  20 Palazzo

  21 Getting to Know You

  22 Nice to Have Known You

  23 That Was the Summer When

  Epilogue Boucher’s Seasons

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Much gratitude goes to my agent, Emily Forland, and to my editor, Nancy Mercado, as well as to Angie Chen and the wonderful team at Roaring Brook. And special thanks to the late, great Lindy Hess, who first suggested that I write a young adult book, and to Jane O’Reilly, who made my summer chaperoning gig happen.

  Prologue

  Aunt Theodora Invites Us

  Aunt Theodora’s invitation arrived all the way from Paris on a piece of French stationery. The edges were scalloped and her handwriting on the lavender-colored paper was black and slashing, like a sword. It read:

  Dear Frances and Valentine,

  Has your mother ever told you that once upon a time I warned her in no uncertain terms against moving to San Francisco? I visited the place just once in my life and I was so bored I could weep! An old admirer of mine thought he would woo me by taking me on a tour of wine country. The fool. Had he been paying attention, he might have known I only ever drink Italian reds or French champagnes.

  The entire state of California is for people who talk too slow. And if one is craving sunshine, which I admit one sometimes does, one goes abroad for that. Italy is just the ticket. Failing that, Greece.

  You are young ladies now and I don’t like to think of you just chilling, as they say, in San Francisco.

  So, I am commanding your mother to let you come to New York this summer and stay in my apartment in Greenwich Village. Not Italy, but almost. This offer will not be repeated.

  I know that your parents wouldn’t be keen on letting you stay in the apartment alone, so my friend Clover Leslie has agreed to act as your chaperone for the first month while I’m away and I shall join you after that. Don’t worry, Clover is not an old lady, and do not fear that you will have to address her as “Miss Leslie.” She is twenty-eight and can teach you some things because she learned everything she knows from me.

  So it’s arranged???

  Life unfolds.

  XXX

  Theo

  1

  The Umbrellas of San Francisco

  Aunt Theodora isn’t our real aunt, though. She’s just this older woman who Mom got to know in Paris and has been friends with ever since. Aunt Theodora has lived the whole world over—we get postcards and letters postmarked from New York or Paris or Budapest or Rome—but she was born in Boston to one of those old families that had something to do with founding the country way back. Her full name is Theodora Wentworth Whitin Bell, and I guess in Boston all those names are supposed to be a big deal. I don’t know about that; I just know I like the sounds of them. Theodora. Wentworth. Whitin. Bell.

  Aunt Theo is old-fashioned, and proud of it. She doesn’t do e-mail. She rarely does the phone. She doesn’t do a lot of things, but she does do letters. Not predictable birthday and Christmas cards with tidy little checks like what other older relatives send you. And never cards from the drugstore with a vase of flowers on the front and cute sayings inside. No, just letters, arriving out of the blue on a random crummy day and giving you a little lift. I always look forward to them. Val says: “Didn’t Aunt Theodora get the memo that nobody sends letters anymore?”

  The only time Val and I ever send letters is when Mom makes us write thank-you notes after we get presents on Christmas and our birthdays. But still, I like getting letters even though I don’t send them that often. Letters are special, and especially Aunt Theo’s.

  Valentine was born in Paris and nobody knows who her father is. She has copper curls and violet eyes. Mom says not to call them violet, just dark blue. But that’s because Mom has the same eyes and she’s too modest to call them violet, which sounds so dramatic. Violet is one of my favorite words.

  When Mom was a young woman, she moved to Paris after graduate school and worked for some famous Italian architect. His big thing was designing opera houses around the world. Everybody used to say she looked just like Elizabeth Taylor, that old actress with the violet eyes and all the ex-husbands.

  It’s so unfair. Valentine’s name is French, and mine is only English. Mom likes for people to pronounce Valentine in the French fashion, so the last syllable rhymes with lean rather than line. Say it to yourself: Valentine. Oh, it’s another lovely sounding word. I should tell you right away though that Mom isn’t of French heritage or anything like that, just a Francophile, she says. We go to French school, where pronouncing Valentine’s name right is not a problem, and where some of our classmates are named things like Isabelle, Thérèse, and Celeste. But outside of school, people get it wrong, even though Mom has this stern way of saying “And this is my daughter Valentine” with an emphasis on the last syllable. Actually, though, she only started going by Valentine recently. It used to be that everybody but Mom called her Val, which I think still suits her much better, but don’t tell her that. Mom always insisted on the full name because that way you can tell it’s French. Her eyes used to just snap whenever a new person addressed Valentine as Val instead.

  Mom’s eyes can really snap because, just like Elizabeth Taylor, she also has these dramatic, satiny black eyebrows. I wish I had them too, but so far, there is nothing too dramatic to report about me. Mom always says I have chestnut hair but I know I don’t. I know it’s just plain mousy. And it’s straight. I know some girls like straight hair these days, but I think curly is much prettier. Val can put her hair up in this big twist with the curls slipping out up front, and it’s so pretty. She knows it too! She’ll practice sweeping up her hair in front of the mirror when she thinks I’m not looking.

  I was born three years after Val in San Francisco, and my father is Val’s stepfather; he adopted her so now we all have the same last name. Well anyway, Mom and Dad got married when Val was so young, he might just as well be her real father. Dad works in real estate and is big on the opera. He’s the type of father who’s always trying to educate you at the dinner table. Sometimes I get the feeling Mom is kind of bored with him, but maybe that’s just what marriage is like. But he’s very nice to us and pays for the fancy school we go to. Mom is an architect who designs wineries in Napa Valley. We live in one of those Victorian houses with all the crazy colors in Pacific Heights. Peacock-blue door, rose trim on the windows. That’s where I
was born. A home birth, Mom always says, like it was this really great thing.

  Valentine was born in a hospital somewhere in Paris and Mom was all alone. But that’s another story.

  When we were little, Mom used to tell us stories of her life in Paris as a young woman, and then she would break off in the middle and sigh.

  The mystery of who Val’s father might have been was the only thing in our lives that was the least bit romantic. When Mom and Dad weren’t there, we talked about him all the time. The story of the circumstances surrounding Valentine’s birth was like a favorite story we’d listen to again and again at bedtime, changing certain details to suit our mood. Sometimes her father was a penniless artist in a garret. Other times we wanted him to be wildly rich and own a chateau stocked with the most fabulous wine cellar. Not that we drink wine—yet.

  Oh, I forgot to mention that Valentine and I are both really into singing. Mom and Dad saw to it that we took lessons, though we like to sing just about anything really, silly songs and new songs too. We sing in the San Francisco Girls Chorus. On rainy days when we were little Mom would always play an old record of the sound track to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg—Les Parapluies de Cherbourg—and make us sing along. That’s our favorite movie because the songs are in French and it has all of these crazy bright colors; you could just eat it up, that movie’s so yummy-looking. One day Valentine stopped singing and asked:

  “Is that what it’s like?”

  “What?” said Mom.

  “Being in love.”

  And Mom sighed and said, “No, not really.”

  The day Aunt Theo’s invitation arrived it was a Saturday morning and we were eating breakfast. During the week, we always eat breakfast in the kitchen, and Dad’s so busy that by the time Val and I get up he’s already at work. But on Saturdays and Sundays we all sit at the dining room table with the French paperweights on it. Dad makes our favorite breakfast, which is Nutella crepes and fresh-squeezed tangerine juice. Mom and Dad drink coffee, of course, which I would love to drink too (with plenty of sugar!), but we’re only ever allowed to drink it when we’re in Europe. Because I guess in Europe anything can happen.

  Mom held up the mystery letter and said, “Girls, who do you think this is from?”

  “Who?” I asked, looking at the letter. Val wasn’t paying the least bit attention. She was too busy spreading her crepe with gobs and gobs of Nutella. I put just a neat layer of Nutella and fold the crepe and sprinkle it with powdered sugar. Val puts powdered sugar, plus she squeezes a tangerine over it so the juices are all running.

  But as soon as I glanced at the envelope, I guessed who it was from. Aunt Theo’s handwriting is inky and dramatic, like Mom’s eyebrows. She always has the most gorgeous stationery, heavy, with hand-cut scalloped edges. I think it’s always the same brand of stationery, French stationery, but she uses different colors. It’s never girly or happy colors with Aunt Theo, never those wonderful candy-box colors like they have in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It’s always rich, sorrowful colors, deep purples, coffee browns, dusty reds. They’re a woman’s colors.

  “I have a question,” I said. “Why, if Aunt Theo’s such a big traveler, doesn’t she ever come and visit us?”

  “Oh, but she hates Northern California,” said Mom, laughing. “It’s one of her positions in life. Hating Northern California.”

  “But we’re here,” I protested.

  “Theodora Bell is a woman of inflexible principles, Franny,” Dad said.

  Then Val made a good point: “But that doesn’t make any sense. I thought most East Coast people even if they disliked California still liked Northern California. I mean, everybody loves San Francisco.”

  “Valentine! Theodora Bell is not everybody.”

  “Oh, please,” said Val, with a roll of violet eyes. And she went back to eating her crepe. Which meant that I got to read the letter first.

  “Oh my God, this is so exciting!” I announced.

  “What is?” said Val, finally paying attention. And when she got to the end of the letter, she too said right away: “Oh my God, Franny’s right. This is so exciting!”

  “What is?” Mom wanted to know.

  “New York City!” Val burst out.

  “New York City?” said Mom.

  “New York City?” said Dad.

  So then he took the letter from Val, and Mom read it over his shoulder, like couples do.

  “Well,” she said afterward, “that’s Theo all over. I suppose you’re dying to go?”

  “Now, now—” Dad began, in the voice that means: not so fast.

  “Oh, Edward, but Theo’s arranged it so perfectly,” said Mom. “They’re going to have a chaperone. And we’ve met Clover before. In Paris once, don’t you remember?”

  “I remember,” said Dad.

  “Clover Leslie is a lovely young woman and I’m sure she’ll be a most responsible chaperone,” said Mom. “I feel all right sending the girls away if they’ll be staying with somebody we know. You thought she was lovely, Edward, remember. Remember,” she kept on saying, really begging him to let us go.

  Meanwhile, Valentine was getting carried away, as if our parents had already said we could go, no questions asked.

  “New York City!” exclaimed Valentine. “New York City! An apartment in the Village! Oh, just wait till I tell my friends. They’re going to be sooo jealous.”

  “Valentine,” began Mom, to admonish her for being bratty.

  But Valentine didn’t listen. Instead she leaned over and whispered into my ear, “There will be cute boys there,” and I started to feel a little bit left out because I could already imagine a whole summer ahead of us in which she would be more excited about meeting cute boys in New York City than hanging out with me.

  “Well, Edward?” said Mom. “What do you think?” It was clear that she already had decided to let us go, but then Mom can be kind of a pushover. Still, I could tell that she really did want us to get to go, because she said: “Remember, Theodora Bell was such a great influence on me when I was a young woman, and I’d love for her to be an influence on the girls’ life too. Also”—she reached for the letter across the table and skimmed it again—“it says that she’ll be joining Clover in New York the middle of August. So, she’ll be there too! The girls will get to meet her.”

  By the end of breakfast, we’d all convinced Dad to say yes. I think it was the idea of us having a chaperone for part of the time that sold him. He remarked that Aunt Theo’s unusual proposal sounded like a very “educational” experiment. And Mom said: “Girls, it will be a summer to remember all your life.”

  2

  The Bluebird of Greenwich Village

  The previous three summers, Val and I had gone to a music camp. We were sorry to miss it because we liked all the friends we’d made there, but no way would we give up the opportunity to go to New York.

  “A program,” exclaimed Val. “A program! Who wants that? That’s like being in school. We’re going to have adventures. In New York City. We’re going to Live!”

  I hoped so. Oh, how I hoped so! When you’re fourteen or even seventeen, it seems like you’re just waiting for Life with a Capital L to happen.

  Meanwhile, every night at dinner, Mom and Dad drank wine and discussed Aunt Theo. She was our main subject of conversation in the days leading up to our trip.

  Dad told us: “She used to be one of the great beauties of the age.”

  “From a long line of beauties,” said Mom, and reminded us that Theo’s ancestors had been painted by John Singer Sargent, whose painting Portrait of Madame X of a redhead in a black velvet gown we once studied at school.

  “And when she was at Radcliffe,” Dad chimed in, “she was on the cover of Mademoiselle. The college girl issue. Do they still do that issue anymore?”

  “Edward!” exclaimed Mom, giggling. “I don’t even think that Mademoiselle exists anymore, does it? Let alone the college girl issue. Oh dear! We must be getting old.”

  N
ow they both laughed, which is something I’ve noticed that grownups do when speaking of getting old, as if it were funny. But is it?

  “And then after Radcliffe, of course, she was an Avedon model,” said Dad, trying to draw Val and me back into the grownup conversation.

  “A what model?” asked Val.

  “Avedon. Richard Avedon. He was the fashion photographer of the age.”

  “Very chic,” said Mom. “Why—girls! Remember that movie Funny Face?” We both love Audrey Hepburn, so of course we did. That’s the one where she’s a bookstore clerk in Greenwich Village who gets discovered to be a model and goes to Paris. “Well. The Fred Astaire character was based on him.”

  “Oh,” we said, swooning. We just loved musicals.

  “Aunt Theo used to have a lot of boyfriends, right?” said Val. Being seventeen, this was her idea of the most important thing.

  Mom paused and said thoughtfully: “Yes, though she wouldn’t have called them boyfriends, which, come to think of it, is not a very attractive or romantic word. She would have called them lovers.”

  Lovers: I said the word to myself, just in my head. I would have been embarrassed to say it out loud. Lovers. Lovers plural! Just imagine it! I was at the age where a lot of my friends had had their first kisses, and some of them were even starting to have boyfriends, but I have to confess: I’d never even been kissed. Maybe this summer, I thought. Maybe in New York …

  “The worst kind of heartbreaker,” said Dad. “Remember that story about what happened to that one boyfriend, Red Lyman, the Harvard quarterback who attempted suicide…”

  “Edward,” said Mom, in the voice that meant: not in front of the girls.

  The night before we left for New York, our last night at home with Mom and Dad for a long time, we all watched this movie that Aunt Theo was in when she was young and living in Hollywood for a time. The movie was from the late 1960s, Dad said. Aunt Theo played a sexy co-ed wearing a long black graduation gown and got to kiss a very famous movie star. It’s true that she was as beautiful as everybody said. Not pretty—beautiful. But to me, you know what Aunt Theo looked like? Like a cross between an angel and a witch.