Clover usually answers things quickly, but this time she didn’t.
“Oh, yeah,” said Valentine. “Remember what she said in her letter? ‘Life takes me to Germany’?” She tried to do an Aunt Theo accent, all dramatic, but I didn’t think she quite pulled it off. She sounded kind of silly, and I knew Aunt Theo would never sound silly.
“I don’t think,” said Clover, “that she would think that was a very polite question for you to ask.”
We went back to eating our spaghetti carbonara. That’s spaghetti with eggs and bacon, and is that combination ever delicious. Then Clover said to the waiter, “Please, another glass of wine,” and we were left wondering just what it might be that she was trying to hide.
6
Nudes
Sometimes we liked to go and have picnics right across the street in Washington Square Park. That was Clover’s suggestion, and she made a special point of getting some of our favorite foods—after asking us to list them—so that we could pack the picnic ourselves and not spend money on going out to lunch every single day. Also, Val and I liked playing around in the kitchen every once in a while. What we did is: spread ricotta and figs and some honey on brown bread. If we had any figs left over after we made our sandwiches, we took those to nibble on; you can never have too many figs. Then, we packed those tiny brown bottles of Italian soda called Sanpellegrino Chinotto, more bitter than American soft drinks and absolutely delicious. Back home Mom and Dad didn’t like us to have any soda, even if it’s Italian. But we talked Clover into getting us a pack of it anyway. After all, it wouldn’t be a summer away from home if we weren’t allowed to get away with at least a little something that we wouldn’t ordinarily.
One day we were in the park eating our picnic when I asked Val: “Aren’t you ever going to read Aunt Theo’s novel?”
“Hmm, probably not,” she said.
“But aren’t you even curious?”
Val appeared to consider this, selecting a fig.
“These aren’t quite ripe yet, I don’t think. It’s still too early in the summer.” Then: “Curious, curious? Am I even curious? I guess I’d have to say: not really, Franny.”
“But I am.”
“Well, you always were more of a reader than me, Mom says.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “It’s like ever since I read Aunt Theo’s novel I’m under this spell. It’s like I’m living in my head not right here”—I tapped the grass where we were sitting—“not right here in New York City with you, but somewhere else, somewhere you couldn’t even point to on a map, not even if you tried. It’s like I’m living in a dorm room at Radcliffe in the 1960s, say, or a café in Paris…”
“Weird,” was all that Valentine said.
“I know, right?”
“Totally!” We giggled.
“Aren’t you even curious to meet Aunt Theo when she comes in August, though?”
“Oh, yeah, sure, I want to see what the big deal is. Also, we’re having a party. There might be cute boys there.”
“Um, I think there will be more like older men.”
“I’m curious about them too, actually.”
“Valentine.”
“So what?”
“You’re boy-crazy!”
“I’m seventeen,” said Val, as if that explained everything, and who knows? Maybe it did.
Later on that same night, I heard Clover crying. I don’t think she knows I saw her, but I did. I tiptoed upstairs to ask her a question and I was standing in the entryway just behind the salmon-colored velvet curtain when I heard the sound of tears, not tiny trickle-trickle tears but rough, broken-sounding ones. So then I turned and went back downstairs.
I told Valentine about it, but she didn’t seem too upset. She was lounging on the bed in her underwear and eating a nectarine, her long copper curls falling peek-a-boo style over half of her face.
She shrugged and said, “Maybe she just has her period.”
“Val!”
That’s the kind of thing boys are supposed to say, not your older sister.
“Well, I feel like hell when I have mine. Ugh, none of my jeans fit me, and all I want to do is eat chocolate bad. Nutella! That’s what I crave. Nutella.”
The truth was, I had to admit that she had a point. I’d just gotten my period last year and I absolutely hated it. But I didn’t want to discuss it with her, or with anyone else for that matter.
So I said: “I don’t think so. I think there’s something a little sad about Clover, don’t you? As if—as if life hadn’t worked out the way she’d hoped.”