“And oysters,” I added.
“Quite right, Franny. Too much wine and far too many oysters. A dangerous combination. Such a silly little lunch, when you think about it! You know that before we met I actually told him, ‘Meet me under the clock!’ Like in the movies. I did kiss him goodbye just now, this really passionate, tragic-feeling kiss. Digby is a good kisser. But, me and this ridiculous hairdo! The Soufflé!” She laughed rather wildly, and I got worried about her. I didn’t quite see, the way Clover could, how things could apparently be both so funny and so sad. “And then there’s—” Clover paused.
“And then there’s what?”
“And there’s the past. That too. You know. The way it just sits there yawning between people.”
I didn’t know, and I think Clover could tell, because she said, “Oh, I forget, in some ways you really are still fourteen. That’s not a bad thing—it’s a very lovely thing. I’ll tell you what! You know what I’d like to do right now? Go to Bemelmans and have some of those nice cheesy bar snacks and erase this whole afternoon.”
Bemelmans was just about my favorite place I’d been in New York, and I couldn’t wait to go back.
“Oh, Clover, can we?” I said.
“Of course I should be going to my studio, but let’s forget about that. Let’s celebrate.”
“Celebrate?”
“My solitude, of course. Or put it another way: freedom. What I mean is—” Clover paused. “When you’ve earned your solitude and figured out how to enjoy it, as I do, it’s really quite foolish to undo it for nothing. You know, Franny, I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone before—not even Theo. He wanted to marry me, once.”
“Digby?”
She nodded. “Yes, when I was twenty. It would have meant dropping out of college and moving to Rome. It was just ridiculous.”
“Is he British?” I asked. I thought I had detected a slight accent.
“Oh, his accent, you mean. Why it’s a fake accent, you know! Not that he hasn’t lived there for years, but still. Theo always used to make fun of it, in fact.”
It was then I decided for good that Digby was not worthy of Clover’s attentions and that she was better off without him, free to go wherever she wanted with her orange suitcase.
We took a cab ride to Bemelmans. On the way uptown, I asked her: “What is Digby’s connection to Aunt Theo, anyway?”
“Oh, they go way, way back. To her college days, I suppose.”
“Was he her boyfriend?”
“No, no, I don’t think so, actually. He was just a—what do you call it?—a kindred spirit?”
“Oh.”
Lucky for us, once we got to Bemelman’s Theo’s old beau Warren was there, and Clover and I just talked and talked and ate cheesy bar snacks for the rest of the afternoon. I felt very close to her, as if, through Clover, I had gotten back what I had lost from my sister.
17
At the Foot of the Marine Nymph
The day after Clover and I went to the Bemelmans Bar, I stayed out all day exploring and got back to the apartment just as the sun was setting. No lights were on, so I assumed that Clover was at her studio, back in the swing of her “solitude,” and that Valentine was off somewhere with Julian. I turned on the lights and kicked off my shoes. Suddenly I heard a sob, like a baby crying. But I didn’t know of any babies in the building. Then I realized that the sound was coming from upstairs.
I walked upstairs to Aunt Theo’s bedroom. The sobs carried through the French doors from the roof-deck. Slowly I opened the doors. It was dark out by now, and the lights of the city were turning on. And there was Valentine, lying on the green velvet chaise longue and weeping, weeping, the way the young girl wept in the crashing rain at the end of Claire’s Knee.
“Valentine!” I said, and it was only after I said it that I realized it had been a while now since I had called her Val.
She was still weeping.
I sat down beside her in the dark. I said: “Is it—Julian?”
She nodded.
“What happened?”
“He already had another girlfriend!”
She sobbed some more.
“That’s terrible,” I said.
“She’s older than me, she goes to Juilliard too. Her name is Beatrice and she plays the piano. They met at some genius camp in the Berkshires.”
“Oh,” I said, adding: “That’s kind of annoying actually.”
“I know! Totally annoying.”
“I know you must feel horrible,” I said, “but it is the end of the summer and…”
“And what, Franny? We were in love. We were going to write letters, and I was going to come back to go to college here and we were going to live together, like in some little apartment in the Village…”