I never drank coffee in San Francisco but I don’t know how I’m going to give it up when we go home! My parents started letting Val drink coffee regularly when she turned sixteen, but she drinks it loaded with lumps and lumps of sugar. Clover and I take ours hot, with just a nip—Clover’s word—of heavy cream. (I do put just one lump of sugar, which Clover says I won’t need in time.) She always serves the cream in a little buttery yellow pot of Aunt Theo’s with a cracked spout, so you have to pour it out very carefully.
Clover says I am a natural coffee drinker. She says she is not so partial as a rule to tea drinkers, and neither is Aunt Theo, because coffee drinkers, they swear, are apt to have more character.
Somehow I feel very protective of Clover now that I know she has a secret.
This afternoon, I showed her Aunt Theo’s postcard and said, “Who is Leander? Have you ever met him before, Clover?”
“Oh, yes. Many times.”
“Well, when is he coming to New York anyway? And why does Aunt Theo want me to meet him?”
“Oh, that. Well—because he’s interesting, I suppose, and a man from whom you can learn the art of conversation.”
“The art of conversation?” I repeated.
“Why, don’t laugh, Franny. It’s of the utmost importance.”
“Will he tell me about Aunt Theo? He’s an old beau of hers, she says.” I gestured to the postcard.
“Oh, everybody is an old beau of Aunt Theo’s,” said Clover. “But yes, Leander will certainly be willing to tell you all about her, if you ask.”
“Did you invite him to the party?” I was thinking of the party we were having for Aunt Theo’s arrival.
“Of course!” Then she took a sip of her coffee and announced, “Also. I’ve been thinking, Franny. Don’t you want something to remember from your summer in New York? Summer always goes so fast! Why, you’ll be back in San Francisco before you know it.”
I laughed and said, “Oh, I think I already have lots to remember.”
“Oh, I know you do, but I mean, don’t you want to make some kind of statement this summer? To look back and say ‘That was the summer when…’?”
I saw what she meant. Val would always be able to say: “That was the summer I met Julian. The summer I fell in love.” But what would I be able to say?
“Well it’s just an idea I had,” Clover went on, “but I was thinking about your hair.”
I saw what she meant about that too. I pouted a little. “Oh. I know. It isn’t as pretty as Val’s.”
“It doesn’t have to be like Val’s,” said Clover, “and by the way, no sulking. You’re also a very pretty young girl after your own fashion. To follow one’s own fashion. That’s the important thing. Theo would agree with me.”
“Theo was a model. She modeled in Paris.”
Clover ignored this and went on, “Anyway, I was just thinking I might take you to get a haircut. Long hair is pretty of course, but a haircut, a really good haircut, can be sophisticated. It can add distinction.” She paused and added: “Val, for instance, is a beautiful girl, but she does not necessarily have distinction.”
That did it. I would get my hair cut.
“Kenneth’s,” Clover announced. “Kenneth’s is the thing.”
“What’s that?”
“He did Marilyn’s hair, and Jackie’s … and Theo’s mother, whenever she came to New York. It’s the place.”
Kenneth’s was located at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, in a beautiful set of rooms with all these cool-looking black-and-white photographs. The staff there called me “mademoiselle,” which I filed away to tell Val. “Mademoiselle wants the Seberg,” said Clover, adding: “The Jean Seberg. That is, a pixie cut, very classic.”
“That is what we do best here,” the hairdresser assured Clover. “The classics.”
Snip, snip, went my long ashy brown hair I had never liked very much in the first place. Snip, snip, snip, one thin strand and then another. My eyes were closed, I wanted to open them to see the final results. Then I heard the hairdresser say, “Voilà, mademoiselle, the Seberg,” and I opened my eyes and stared at my reflection in the mirror. Clover was right: I was completely transformed.
“I told you,” she said. “And your eyes are so beautiful. They just pop.”
“Can we go pick up some eyeliner? Please, Clover, please.” I was thinking of the dark green eyeliner Val always wore and how dramatic it looked.
“You’re, what, fourteen? Too young. What you have is a natural, gamine beauty. Enjoy it, why don’t you?”
Afterward Clover took me shopping, “to launch your new look.” We went straight to Bergdorf Goodman, and when I said, “Isn’t that terribly expensive?” Clover said, “Here’s what we’re going to do, Franny. We’re going to buy you the key pieces of a wardrobe. Think of it as curating a collection. You will have these pieces for years, and no going around San Francisco buying cheap little things here and there with your friends, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. I liked the challenge of Clover’s proposition: the idea of curating a collection. Val would never have the discipline to do something like that and stick to it.
Here is what Clover picked out for me at Bergdorf’s: a classic tan trench coat, like the one Catherine Deneuve wears when it’s raining in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg; three French sailor shirts, one black stripes, one navy, one pale pink; two pairs of ballerina flats, one black, one gold; one pair of black “cigarette pants” (“But, Clover, I don’t smoke!” “It’s just the name, silly”); one navy pleated skirt; and two dresses. The first dress was a cool black linen A-line. The second one was cream-colored in a material Clover called “sharkskin” with a Peter Pan collar and big white buttons up the back. The black dress was very comfortable, but the cream one, not so much. It was very straight and slim.
“It’s a sheath dress,” said Clover, “and you are lucky to be able to pull it off.”
I said the word sheath over and over again in my head. Sheath. It was so silky and lovely, that word. There was something private about it, a secret, almost. My first sheath dress …
We were all set, but then Clover said, “Oh! One more thing. For your hair.”
I said I thought my hair was all set.
“But surely sometimes you’ll want a bow.”
“A bow?”
“Black velvet, I think.”
“Black velvet? For summer? Are you sure?”
“Absolument. It’s very French.”
And so we located a black velvet hair ribbon, nestling it in tissue paper in one of my many palest purple Bergdorf Goodman bags. Wait till Val saw me! Oh, she would just perish of jealousy!
Then before we left Clover said, “You know, Franny, I think I need to buy a little something too. Would you mind helping me pick something out?”
“Of course not,” I said, thinking: She is going to go meet him after all! This man—this Digby—whoever he was …
Wasn’t it exciting—Clover and I both having meetings with men who were coming to town? She had Digby, and I was getting curious about meeting this old beau of Theo’s, this Leander. I would wear my new sheath dress: yes, that was the one.
“Perfume, I think,” I heard Clover murmur.
“Perfume?”
“Yes, Franny, I thought I might mix up my scent. It’s a good thing to do … every once in a while,” she added without her usual confidence, and I knew that she was thinking about something. And then she sighed and said, “Oh, no, never mind. I’ll save it for later.”
“Why, though? We’re here.”
“Because,” explained Clover, “sometimes it’s nice to have something to look forward to, you know.”
All of a sudden, I saw what Val meant about twenty-eight being, in a way, old. Because for Val and me there seemed to be so much to look forward to. I couldn’t imagine getting to the age where having something to look forward to could be considered a treat.
Then Clover suggested we take a walk through Central Park and he
ad up toward the Whitney. It was a hot, sticky day, but being in the shade of the trees was nice.
“What’s your favorite place in Central Park?” asked Clover.
“The zoo,” I said right away. Val and I had gone with Mom and Dad when we were little, and it was one of the first things we checked out again when we got here this summer. “A day like today, I’d like to go see the polar bears. They always look so sleepy and cool.”
“Oh, I don’t much like large animals,” said Clover, and I couldn’t help but think of Carlo the turtle. “I like birds, especially when they have beautiful blue feathers. There is this one kind of bird from India…”
But then Clover lost her train of thought when we walked past a little girl having a tantrum in front of the boathouse.
“I want to go to Central Park,” she wailed. “Mommy, Mommy, I want to go to Central Park.”
The child was speaking in a British accent and was all dolled up in a fluffy white party dress and black patent leather Mary Janes. I guessed her to be about five years old. Her mother was tall and wore her blond hair back in this low bun, and she was pushing her younger daughter in a big fancy stroller, like the Rolls Royce of baby vehicles. It looked to me like a scene out of Mary Poppins.
The mother said, “I told you already, this is Central Park.”
The child put her hands on her hips and announced: “This is not Central Park.”
Clover and I burst out laughing, and then so did the mother. We walked on, and Clover remarked: “That poor little girl, what a life of disappointment is in store for her! What do you think she imagined Central Park to be like? is the interesting question. Do you think she thought the trees were made out of emeralds or something?”
“The water made out of sapphires,” I added.
“One wonders what fabulous visions were dancing in her little blond head.”
The piece that Clover wanted to show me at the Whitney was called Calder’s Circus by the American artist Alexander Calder. Clover says it’s better to leave a museum really connecting with one piece than trying to see everything and connecting with nothing.
“This is my favorite,” she said, sighing.
Calder’s Circus is a miniature reproduction of an actual circus. It’s made out of all these cool everyday materials—wire, cork, wood, cloth. Because it’s about the circus—and because it’s kind of like a diorama—what it most made me think of was being a child again. The tininess and the preciousness of it. And you know how going to the circus is such a treat when you’re a kid. It’s like getting ice cream cake with pink candles. I don’t know, maybe I was feeling sentimental that day because of Clover being twenty-eight and having to look forward to a dinky thing like perfume, or the little girl in Central Park who had dreamed, for all we knew, of trees made out of emeralds and what life would hold for her. Maybe it was my new haircut, and how it seemed to mark in a very clear physical way the ending of one period of my life (little Franny with long mouse-colored hair) and the beginning of another (sophisticated Franny—I hoped?—with her cropped Parisian do). Maybe it was just the characters in the circus. Like, the elephant made me think of a toy I’d had when I was a baby, an elephant named Sebastian, and what had become of him. What had become of all of my old toys, in fact?
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is looking at Calder’s Circus made me very sad, and I said so to Clover. I asked her if it ever made her feel that way.
“Oh, yes, Franny, my sweet,” said Clover, eyes wide. “Every, every time.”
13
Belgian Chocolates at the Sherry-Netherland
Theo’s old friend Leander came to town a couple of nights later. With Clover’s permission, we had agreed to meet at this old hotel, the Sherry-Netherland. Clover dropped me off outside the entrance. I was wearing the cream sharkskin sheath and the black velvet bow in my hair. It was a hot evening, but I loved how cool my neck and shoulders felt with my new haircut. I just felt this kind of keenness.
“Won’t you come in with me?” I asked her.
“It’s your night, Franny. Your entrance.”
And then she smiled and waved goodbye, disappearing down Fifth Avenue into the dusk.
I had never been to the Sherry-Netherland. But I remembered it being mentioned in Eloise when she talks about there being pigeons on the roof of the Sherry-Netherland, so I knew it had to be near the Plaza. The name had stuck with me all these years because it was just so luscious. The Sherry-Netherland: it sounded like a big box of chocolates.
Speaking of the Plaza, Val and I snuck in there one time just to use the bathroom. (Clover gave us that tip: hotel bathrooms are the best. Just hold your head high and walk in like a lady.) Well, the bathrooms at the Plaza must be the most splendid in the whole city, if you ask me, and Val loved the whole place, the deep reds, the leopard pillows, the hot-pink lights, everything. But when I looked around the lobby of the Sherry-Netherland, I knew that it was much more to my taste than the Plaza. I’ll tell you the difference: The Plaza is like a big glitzy engagement ring, a new one. The Sherry-Netherland is like a tiny delicate one in an antique setting. Maybe it even has a few tarnishes here and there but it’s truly romantic. The Sherry-Netherland is like an old jewel sunk in the city. The decor is soft terra-cotta reds and dusty chocolate marble and dull golds. I love it.
Leander was waiting for me at the bar. I knew him instantly because it was August now, the city was starting to empty of people, and there were only a handful of people at the bar. Who else could the distinguished white-haired gentleman be?
I went up to him and introduced myself, using my full name, the way Aunt Theo would have wanted me to: “Hello, I’m Frances Lord.”
“Charming,” Leander said. “But please tell me that you really go by Franny.”
“Sometimes,” I said. “But I’m growing out of it a bit now, you know. I’m fourteen.”
“Of course you are,” said Leander. “But of course you are.”
“My sister is seventeen,” I went on. “She used to go by Val, but now everyone calls her Valentine. It’s much more appropriate.”
“Theo told me there were two sisters. She said the older one was supposed to be very beautiful but that from what she could gather the younger one was more interesting. I can tell she was right, Franny … May I call you Franny?”
“Certainly.”
There was a pause, and we considered the drinks menu. Leander got Scotch and soda, and I got a soda and bitters, which is nonalcoholic but not sweet. I didn’t want to order a sweet drink in front of Leander. Val would have done that; she would have had no sense of subtlety. Here we were at the Sherry-Netherland. I couldn’t sit there sipping a Shirley Temple for Lord’s sake.
It was starting to occur to me that for an old man Leander was rather handsome. He had a fine, sharp profile and his white hair had a kind of crispness to it. Actually he reminded me of the Sherry-Netherland itself. He had this old-time elegance, wearing white linen trousers and a brown seersucker blazer, a bit frayed around the cuffs. His butterscotch-colored loafers were old and obviously Italian. Since this summer in New York, I was beginning to be able to identify these things.
“Theo bought me these shoes,” he told me. “This one time, in Florence. She was always very generous with her money and I’ve never had a penny. She was having an affair with a count—”
“A count?”
“Why yes. And a handsome young waiter or two.” He laughed.
“How did you meet Theo?”
“In Paris. Spring of ’63, at a café under the flowering chestnut trees. Do you know the French word for chestnut tree, by the way? It’s very beautiful…”
“Le châtaignier,” I answered promptly. Leander looked surprised, so “Val and I go to French school,” I explained.
“Of course you do, you creature of Salinger, you! Anyway, I met Theo in Paris in the spring of ’63 under the flowering chestnut trees. She had just graduated from Radcliffe and was in Paris working as a runway model.
Now that I think of it, her hair was rather like your hair, the same haircut. Very becoming if a girl has good bones.”
I was about to tell him I’d gotten the haircut a few days ago and that it was Clover who’d suggested it, but then I decided to let him think I had come up with the idea all on my own. It was better that way.
“Her lips were pale and her eyes were dark. That was the fashion then. But what I remember most about Theo, that afternoon, apart from her considerable beauty, was that she had been crying. There were teardrops on those black Mod lashes of hers. I went up to her and introduced myself. She said, ‘It’s no good talking to me, whoever you are. I’ve been weeping.’ I said, ‘But I am always weeping.’ She laughed and after that we were fast friends.”
“Lovers?” I tried to make the word sound casual.
“Actually, no. Not that I wasn’t quite in love with her, at first. Any man would have been. But it was Paris in the spring in that golden era and love was mine for the taking. Oh, the girls crossing the avenues in their plaid skirts, their blue striped dresses! When it rained they wore trench coats…”
“What has become of the trench coat?” I asked, imitating Leander.
“What indeed? Well anyway. Theo and I were friends and friendship is something altogether different from love. In a way, one finds, it’s much rarer … more precious.”
Now this, this was incredible to me. Friendship rare? But back in San Francisco, Val and I had so many friends. Girlfriends were ordinary everyday entities. Love was the miracle. I tried saying so to Leander. He sighed and asked me: “How old are you again?”
“Fourteen. I’ll be fifteen in February.”
“Oh, you’ll live a lot between now and then, don’t worry. By the time February comes, you’ll feel as though you’ve aged decades. But permit me: fourteen is still very young. And what an enchanting age it is. You’ll find, as time goes on, that innocence is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
The Summer Invitation Page 8