The Summer Invitation
by Charlotte Silver
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.