“What does that mean?” I had a vague idea that an “aprodisiac” was a fancy word having something to do with sex.
“Aphrodisiac, from the goddess Aphrodite. Presumably your schooling has encompassed the Greek myths? So an aphrodisiac is a substance that is said to heighten desire. Oysters are a rather clichéd example. But for me a better way to look at it is that an aphrodisiac heightens eros, love, beauty. And furthermore, an aphrodisiac must be personal. To each their own. So for me, an aphrodisiac might be a certain flavor bubble bath my Danish wife, Annebirgitte, used to use when we were first married. Annebirgitte, say it to yourself, Franny, it is a very beautiful name. The bubble bath she used was pine. It smelled of the woods when I was first courting her.”
“I don’t think I have any yet,” I said.
“Any what?”
“Aphrodisiacs.”
“You do, or shall I say … you will soon. I should think that this summer…”
“What about this summer?”
“Well, being here, in New York, under Theodora Bell’s tender tutelage…”
“There was something you said earlier, Leander.”
“Yes?”
“You said that when you met Theo that afternoon in Paris in the café, she had been weeping. But I just can’t see Theo ever weeping.”
Leander laughed. “Precocious! How precocious this one is. You are quite right, Franny, quite right.”
“I think of Theo as being … almost inhuman. You know, terribly glamorous and sharp and jaded and all that.”
“Oh, yes, oh, yes. I’ll tell you what, Franny! Are you hungry? I know I am! Let’s order chicken salad sandwiches, why don’t we?”
“Chicken salad sandwiches? I didn’t see them on the menu.” I had seen oysters, shrimp cocktail, and extraordinarily expensive cheeseburgers. What is it about New York City and paying so much for cheeseburgers, anyway?
“We’re in one of the finest hotels in one of the finest cities in the world, are we not? Do they not have chicken? Mayonnaise? Bread? Lettuce? Could they not whip up the, if anything, quite modest meal of my fantasies and in doing so transport me to the past?”
And so they did. And Leander was right: a simple cold chicken salad sandwich on toasted white bread can be delicious. After we finished our sandwiches, the bartender sent us a plate of Belgian chocolates in fluted red paper. Apparently that was what the hotel guests got overnight on their pillows. I ate only one of them because I was full, so I put two of them in my pocketbook, to share with Val later that night.
Afterward Leander and I said goodbye to each other on Fifth Avenue.
“Promise me something,” he said.
“What?”
“That you’ll write to me sometimes when you get back to San Francisco.”
“My sister Valentine says nobody writes real letters anymore.”
“Ah! But that’s your sister Valentine. You, Franny, I have a feeling about you…”
“You do?”
“Yes. I have the feeling that you may grow up to become a writer. So writing letters will be excellent practice.”
I decided that I liked what he said about me growing up to become a writer. Also, he would write back to me, and I just love getting real letters in the mail. Between Leander and Aunt Theo, I’m going to be quite the correspondent when I get back to San Francisco.
* * *
I was putting on my nightgown, my Amour Baby-Doll in Wild Rose that Clover bought me the day we went lingerie shopping, when she knocked on my door.
“You home, Franny? May I come in?”
“Sure.”
Clover opened the door wearing her blue-check artist’s smock and a pink chignon in her hair. There were specks of yellow paint on the smock that looked like they hadn’t quite dried yet, so I could tell she had been at her studio.
“Oh, how pretty you look! Wasn’t I right about how important it is to have a pretty nightie? Now, tell me all about your evening.”
I tried to think of something to say other than the question that was on my mind. Eventually I decided to say: “We had chicken salad sandwiches.”
“At the Sherry-Netherland? I would have had oysters, myself. Or … shrimp cocktail, maybe.”
“Oh. Are you fond of oysters?”
“Oh, very! The food of the gods, and so aquatic.”
“Do they make you think of Sag Harbor?” All of a sudden, I remembered her story of the summer she was seventeen.
“Well, yes, I suppose they do, now that I think of it.”
“Would you call them an aphrodisiac?”
“Heavens, Franny, what a strange question! Though to be perfectly candid: come to think of it, yes.”
“Leander says there is no aphrodisiac like innocence.”
“Does he? Well, that sounds like Leander, all right. Anyway, I hope you had fun? And isn’t the Sherry-Netherland lovely? The Plaza is so obvious.”
I couldn’t help pointing out: “Val loves the Plaza.”
But Clover only said, “Why not? People do,” and kissed me good night before going on her way.
I lay in bed in my Amour nightie, but somehow, I couldn’t fall asleep. It was as if I had drunk champagne, when it was only soda and bitters. I was all abuzz. And it’s hard to sleep when you are feeling that way in New York, because outside, you know that so much is going on. As they say, it’s the city that never sleeps …
When I woke up the next morning, I discovered that the Belgian chocolates I’d saved for Val were melted in their pretty red paper cups. It was a shame, but when I told her they were all melted, she said, “Oh, thanks, Franny, but don’t feel too bad about it, you know. It’s funny, I’m just not craving anything sweet right now.”
And then a memory came to me of the time we were at Bemelmans Bar and got Shirley Temples and Clover remarked that once she grew up she didn’t much care for sugar anymore: “It’s just that after a certain point, one finds one’s cravings change. There start to be—other things…”
14
Carnival of the Animals
Just when I’d given up on Val including me in anything ever again, she surprised me. Julian had an extra ticket to this fancy event where his string quartet was playing, and he and Val asked me if I wanted to come along. At first, I didn’t want to act too excited because that would have been kind of embarrassing, but then Clover said, “Oh, that will be so much fun for you, Franny. What are they playing?”
“Oh.” Val shrugged, not all that interested. “You know, that piece—the one with the sounds of all the animals—Circus of the Animals.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Clover. “Carnival of the Animals, you mean. Delicious!”
Julian’s string quartet was playing at an event at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Clover says that’s a very prestigious organization that goes way, way back, and in order to be a member you have to be a famous author or musician or painter. It’s in this big old mansion all the way up in Harlem, right on the edge of Riverside Drive, on a street that goes down to the water. When we got there, the light falling over the river was very beautiful, and I remarked to Val, “You know how sometimes you can forget that Manhattan is actually an island?”
“I never really thought about it,” said Val.
“Well, I just did,” I explained, “because being here I really remembered. It’s like getting—I don’t know—a whiff of the ocean.”
“The ocean? Really, Franny?”
“It’s just … in the air,” I said. Sounding rather knowing and mysterious, I hoped.
We were dressed just the opposite of each other tonight. I had on my black linen dress and the black velvet bow in my hair. But Val meanwhile was dressed very simply—at Clover’s suggestion—in a long white cotton dress. And around her red curls she wore the soft, floaty green chiffon scarf she got at that vintage store in the Village. I thought the two of us must have looked just elegant walking up the broad steps of the Academy. Val’s dress looked practically Grecian, the length
and the sweep of it.
Also, we were decades younger than everyone else who was there. These people were old. A lot of the men wore bow ties and the women did their hair in these big upsweeps with Victorian-looking tortoiseshell combs.
Inside the building, there was this grand staircase and these cozy libraries and galleries full of famous paintings.
“See,” Val whispered to me. “Pretty ritzy. Julian was telling me that, like, Jackie O used to come to this event back when she was alive.”
Our names were on the guest list. We got to wear name tags saying “Franny Lord” and “Valentine Lord” written out in this lovely black cursive. I vowed right away to save mine afterward—it would be a memento from the summer.
Julian’s string quartet played in a cool white room on the top floor. We watched them set up while the room filled with people. There he was—Julian, and wearing a tuxedo too! I had to give Val credit: he was handsome, the dark, the distinguished, living-in-New-York-City classical musician. The girls in the quartet wore black cocktail dresses.
Once everyone was seated, the president of the Academy got up and introduced the quartet. Apparently he was a famous poet, though naturally we’d never heard of him. He was this funny-looking little man, but interesting, with a purple ascot and his arm in a sling. The ascot and the sling just seemed to go together somehow, like they were parts of a costume. I mean, it was hard to imagine the poet not wearing the sling, even once his arm got healed.
After rambling on for a while about the Academy and its members and which ones had died this past year and blah blah blah, he said a few words about Julian’s quartet and the piece they were going to play.
“We’re going to hear the Swan movement from the Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns,” the poet said, caressing the word swan. A sigh swept through the audience. “I know, I know,” he said. “It will take you back to your childhood, it will make you melt.”
I couldn’t help but notice that when he was playing, Julian stared right at Valentine, right into her eyes. Nobody had ever looked into my eyes like that, but then, I reminded myself, I was only fourteen: surely somebody would someday. But then, the more they played, and as the music swelled, my thoughts got carried away. You know how music can bring up the strangest emotions? Well, suddenly I had this flash. And the flash said: I will never be young again.
After the quartet was finished playing, everyone went downstairs and sat down to dinner in the library. There was endive salad with blue cheese and Bartlett pears, followed by beef Wellington, which is beef and buttery mushrooms in a pastry shell, so pretty much the height of luxury. I found myself seated between the wife of the president of Juilliard, who didn’t speak to me much, and a cranky old nature essayist and biographer who did. He was nearly blind and needed my help identifying the food on his plate. Val wouldn’t have helped him, or she would have acted a little put out if she did. Val’s not so big on old people, but I like them, and I liked the nature essayist, in spite of his being a little on the cranky side. He was wearing a suit, like all the other men here, but the difference was he had on a hunting cap with a very striking green feather in it. It wasn’t a playful, delicate feather, like you might see on a lady’s hat. It was a very masculine feather. I asked him to tell me about it.
“Oh, this,” he said. “From the Texas Green Kingfisher. A fan sent it to me once. That was back in—let’s see—1967, I think it was.”
1967! My goodness he was old.
Meanwhile, Julian and Valentine weren’t even attempting to make conversation. They were just staring at each other across the candlelit table, pretty much drowning in each other’s eyes.
The dessert arrived, bitter chocolate pot de crème with raspberries.
“What is that?” asked the essayist, poking.
“Chocolate,” I said.
“Oh, chocolate. Good! Berries,” he said, in a wondering tone, poking again. “Blackberries?”
“Raspberries.”
“Oh.” He seemed disappointed.
When we got up from the table, the essayist gave me his mailing address, in Vermont. Another correspondent for me!
We walked downstairs and I watched all the fancy old people get into limousines. There were so many of them, stretched all the way down the block! I’d never seen limos before, not in real life. I guess I was so busy paying attention to the limos, I somehow lost sight of Valentine. I looked around and couldn’t find her until I saw the whisper of a long white dress: she was the only woman in the whole crowd who had on a dress that color. I guess women must stop wearing white dresses after a certain age, like after they get married. She and Julian were strolling down the hill toward Riverside Drive. The sky was pitch-black now, and you could see the lights throwing these sparkly streamers on it. Julian was carrying his black cello case, and I thought that between that and Val in her white dress, they made a gorgeous picture.
I started to follow them, and finally I shouted, “Hey, Val! Valentine!”
But it was Julian, not Val, who turned and looked at me. They stopped walking.
“Hey, Franny,” he said. “You have a good time tonight?”
“Oh—yes!” I said. “But—”
The limos were driving off, and I started to wonder how we were going to get home. Probably by subway. As long as Julian was with us, I figured it would be okay.
“But?” asked Val, sounding very impatient.
Mom and Dad had said that whenever we were out late, we should call Clover to let her know when we’d be home. If it was ever really late, Clover would come and get us. I mentioned this to Val.
“Well—shouldn’t we call Clover to let her know that we’re out of the event?”
Then I saw Val glance at Julian, rather helplessly.
“I think—” began Julian, but Val interrupted him, saying, “Sorry, can you excuse us for a sec?”
So then Julian stood back from us with his cello, trying to pretend he wasn’t listening to us.
“Franny,” said Val, her eyes flashing in the moonlight, “I’m not coming home tonight and there’s no way you can make me and you’re not going to call Clover.”
“But, Val…”
“Oh, please, Franny, for once would you not ‘But, Val’ me? Come on, you’ll get home fine and you’ll just tell Clover, but only if she asks, that I’m coming home later. I’m coming home later, and I’ll be fine.”
I thought that Val was taking advantage of Clover being such a nice chaperone, and I said so.
“Clover’s all right, Franny, but Clover couldn’t possibly understand.”
“Understand what, Val?”
Valentine tossed her red curls and said, “Being in love,” as though I were an absolute idiot.
Meanwhile, Julian was pacing in the background and had started to look a little impatient, and suddenly I started to feel very young, and I was very embarrassed to be treated this way.
I turned to see if there were any limousines left. There weren’t, but I did see a couple of regular yellow taxis. And then just as Julian called to us, “Hey, Franny, why don’t we take a cab downtown with you?” I drew myself up straight and addressed him but not Valentine. I knew she wouldn’t like that. Trying to keep my voice cool, I said: “Thank you, Julian, but I think I’d prefer to take a taxi back by myself if you don’t mind.”
“Let me walk you,” he said, but I wouldn’t let him. I walked off and got into a taxi. I couldn’t help but hope that Val was looking at me as I did it and thinking how grownup I looked. She didn’t have a proper little black dress yet, I remembered, and I did.
But once I got inside the taxi I didn’t feel quite as tough as before, little black dress or no little black dress. For one thing, the ride seemed to go on forever and ever. We were really very far away from Aunt Theo’s, since it was all the way downtown. Sometimes you forget how big New York City is, and then you see it at night from the inside of a car: it’s glamorous, all right, but also kind of threatening. I got the sense that
it was true: I was only one person out of millions in this city. And all of a sudden I started to feel lonely. Not just lonely—sad. I was sad because of Valentine. It was all over, our life together in San Francisco, as girls. When we got back home, everything would be different. Would we ever sing out loud again?
If it takes forever I will wait for you
For a thousand summers I will wait for you …
15
Where’s Valentine?
“Cash,” the driver said.
After all that, I finally had arrived in front of Aunt Theo’s building and I had just taken out Mom and Dad’s credit card, which they said to use only on special occasions or in emergencies. I figured that if this didn’t count as an emergency, what did?
“I thought you could pay with a card,” I said. I was certain that you could pay with a card. It was true that until tonight I’d never taken a taxi by myself, but I’d seen Clover pay for them with cards before and also I had checked to make sure that there was a credit card machine inside the car tonight before it started moving.
“Cash,” the driver repeated.
“But I thought—”
I don’t like to argue with grownups, or with anybody, really. But I didn’t have enough cash on me to pay for the ride. FYI, the cost of taking a taxi from West Harlem to the Village? Outrageous! I can’t even bear to tell you exactly how much it was.
“Cash, miss. The machine—it’s not working. Broken,” he enunciated.
I wasn’t sure, quite frankly, if he was telling the truth about the credit card machine not working, but even if he wasn’t, what could I do about it? It was his taxi and I was just the passenger.
“But I don’t have cash!” I exclaimed, and was embarrassed that my voice when I said this sounded on the brink of tears. All of a sudden I felt very young and very alone and very unprotected, and I think he knew it too. I wished that I hadn’t let on, but I couldn’t help it.
The Summer Invitation Page 9