Valentine put the dress on and smiled for the first time since yesterday when she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Clover also gave her the pair of emerald-green sunglasses she’d worn on her date with Digby, adding: “Those are on loan, mind you. No tucking them in your suitcase. But do wear them today. It is always a good idea to wear sunglasses after a breakup, one never knows when one may feel like bursting into tears. Oh, also, you might get your nails done later.” Valentine’s toenails at the moment were dark red, but terribly chipped. “And you might,” Clover continued, “consider getting a new color. Freshening these things up a bit is always good for morale.”
We took a cab uptown, another concession to Valentine’s fragile state: “One can’t brave the New York City Transit System on a broken heart,” Clover said. The Frick is just up the street from the Sherry Netherland, and it isn’t a big museum like the Met—Valentine and I had been to the Met twice this summer, and we couldn’t get through it. The Frick is in this mansion where someone once actually lived. I always have loved portrait paintings and the Frick has some of the best. One you have probably already seen because it’s very famous is Comtesse d’Haussonville by Ingres. It shows a young brown-haired lady in a soft blue gown leaning against a fireplace. There is something about her gaze I just love. She looks like she has a secret.
We went to the Museum of Modern Art too when we first got to New York, but I don’t know, I guess I like eighteenth-century painting best. It’s so realistic, you can stare at the painting and come up with a story.
There were also pieces of French sculpture, which Clover, being a sculptress, made much of. But I’ve never liked sculptures as much as paintings because they don’t lend themselves to stories quite the same way. A sculpture just stands there, it doesn’t let you in.
Valentine acted a bit bratty at first, swanning about the museum and sinking onto the benches in her Missoni patio gown and emerald-green sunglasses. People turned to look at her, and I had the thought: She will be in love again in no time. It seemed to me that my sister was made for Love with a Capital L, though I also knew that, Valentine being Valentine, she would milk her broken heart for sympathy for as long as she could.
“Girls,” said Clover, “girls, come, this is what I wanted you to see especially, the Fragonard Room.”
“The what room?” asked Valentine.
“Fragonard. He was a rococo French painter, one of my favorites. Come, up, up, up, Val, this way.”
Sighing, Valentine pulled herself up from the bench, and we followed Clover.
Clover was right: the Fragonard Room was absolutely marvelous, like if a pink-and-gold valentine could be a room, it would be the Fragonad Room. It consists of murals, which I love, because, talk about making up stories! Murals are the best when it comes to that. The murals in the Fragonard Room are all on the theme of The Progress of Love.
“Which one are you most immediately drawn to?” Clover asked us.
I pointed at one mural, and Valentine at another.
“Interesting,” said Clover. “Very interesting.”
“What’s interesting?” I asked.
“Well, which mural you choose says a great deal about your romantic sensibility, I think. You, Valentine, chose The Lover Crowned.”
The Lover Crowned showed two lovers in a garden of red roses under a lush blue-green sky.
“I did not,” said Valentine, to whom this must have been quite humiliating on the day when she was nursing a broken heart. “I meant to choose Love Disparue.”
Clover laughed lightly and said: “Well, there is no mural by that name, though perhaps there should be. And anyway, you chose the one you already chose: Love Triumphant. Which in my opinion is an excellent sign for your recovery, Valentine. You are not a true Romantic, but rather a true optimist and sensualist. And you have the good fortune to be beautiful. I see a most happy and active love life in your future.”
“Happy?” said Valentine, practically spitting the word. “Happy, you say? And I’m not a true Romantic?”
“No, I’m afraid you’re not. Your sister is the true Romantic. See, Franny, you chose Love Letters. Isn’t it delicious, by the way?” Clover gestured to the painting, which also showed two lovers in a garden, but the colors were softer and the painting was much more wistful than The Lover Crowned. “That pink parasol, did you ever see such a tender shade of pink? A tender sensibility is what choosing this painting connotes—tender and sentimental. The person who chooses Love Letters will treasure and remember things. Not so, the person who chooses The Lover Crowned, they’ll forget, they’ll tumble into love all over again. But also, to choose Love Letters means that you will be forever disappointed. It means that you prefer expectation to consummation, and that, Valentine, is the true Romantic condition.”
“That makes no sense at all,” said Valentine. “A true Romantic would enjoy the consummation. A true Romantic would choose The Lover Crowned.”
“Oh, no,” said Clover. “A true Romantic knows that the inner life is the thing, the only thing that really matters, in the end. And that’s what makes the pursuit of human connection so tragic.”
“That’s just crazy, Clover,” said Valentine, shaking her head. “Crazy.”