“Cool!” said Valentine. I turned around and saw that she was trying on a black satin cat-eye eye mask. Then she took off the eye mask and said, “Oh my God, Franny, look!”
I looked and saw that she was pointing at a display of white cotton underpants. At first glance, they all appeared to be the same and very innocent-looking, almost like what Valentine and I used to wear when we were little girls, but then on the backs black cursive letters spelled out different words: Aime-Moi, Touche-Moi, Attache-Moi …
“Oh, I forgot you two speak French,” said Clover, with a twinkle. “Come along, girls.”
What Clover chose for me eventually was the Amour Baby-Doll in Wild Rose. It had tiers of chiffon and was trimmed in nude lace. I had never owned anything so exquisite in my entire life. The color was just right and reminded me of something Aunt Theo would choose.
For herself, Clover bought a pair of silk stockings, white, not black, with lace on top.
“Why can you get stockings and I can’t?” asked Valentine.
“Stockings come later,” said Clover.
“Later? Later when?”
“Later on in a woman’s life.”
“Oh my God,” squealed Valentine, “I can’t wait!”
10
Valentine’s Knee
For the next several days, there was no word from Julian, and poor Val looked like she was going to perish (Clover’s word) of waiting. This was what all the songs I loved meant about being in love being full of pain: just to look at Val’s face every night before we got into our twin beds. She looked sunk. And then when we turned off the lamp every night, I’d hear her let out this great big sorrowful sigh.
But then, the most wonderful thing! A surprise! A phone call. A real, what Clover called a proper, phone call, inviting her on a real, a proper date. Since Julian was a cellist, what he had in mind was a musical evening. He took Val to this place called Barge Music, just over the Brooklyn Bridge, where the orchestra played chamber music floating out there on a barge in the East River. They heard a Russian program, which was very emotional, Val said, telling Clover and me all about it later. Which was why when Julian took her out on the roof-deck during intermission and took her in his arms and kissed her all of a sudden, with a view of the whole skyline winking behind them, she just couldn’t resist.
I thought that Clover might object to this—Val letting herself be kissed on the first date. I thought back to how she had said, “Why not try to place something of a value on yourself, Valentine?”—a question that I’d been thinking about ever since then and planned to bring up with my friends back in San Francisco. So I was surprised when Clover exclaimed, “So you let him kiss you! How romantic.”
Val just had this silly melting look on her face and couldn’t even say anything. Now you know Val is ordinarily very talkative and opinionated, so that just shows you: love does extraordinary things to a woman.
Finally, she found her voice and admitted: “It wasn’t my first kiss, actually. But it was so romantic, it felt like it, you know? Like the beginning of something. There was this boy at music camp—well actually, there have been a couple of boys at music camp…” She blushed. But then as if she had gone too far, she explained: “All we did was make out.”
“Quite all right, Valentine,” said Clover smoothly.
But I was thinking I’d never been kissed yet, myself. There’d never been any “boys at music camp” for me.
And I can’t help but notice, the more time that Val spends with Julian, that she isn’t quite so interested in spying on that couple on the other roof-deck anymore. Maybe she doesn’t need to figure out what they were doing, now that she’s doing the same things herself: they don’t hold quite the same mystery anymore.
Now whenever Valentine has a date with Julian, Clover lets her upstairs to use her bathroom, Theo’s bathroom, to get ready. She emerges wearing light makeup—Clover insists on light makeup only—and smelling of lavender, and with this kind of glow.
Meanwhile, I still have to use the bathroom downstairs.
One night Clover was brushing Valentine’s hair out with a marble-backed Italian hairbrush in front of one of Theo’s antique mirrors.
“I once read,” she remarked, “that women’s hair is at its thickest at the age of fifteen. Your hair certainly is plenty thick. Do you think it’s true?”
“Oh, no,” Valentine said, in real despair. “But I’m seventeen already. Does that mean mine is thinning?”
Clover laughed as she gathered Valentine’s red curls up in a twist.
“There,” she announced.
When Valentine had gone, I asked Clover, “Why do you think that is?”
“What?”
“Why do you think they say women’s hair is the thickest at the age of fifteen?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Clover casually. “I suppose it must have something or other to do with youth.”