Once we got up to the register, I noticed that Val was trying on scarves. She was tying them softly around her hair, around the beautiful copper curls I wished were mine. When she finished with one scarf she put it back and picked up another—the last one she picked up was this brilliant shade of green. Back at home, I couldn’t recall Val ever wearing that color, but now that I saw her in it, I knew that shade belonged to her alone and that I’d never ever try to wear it myself. Clover and Joan saw it too, and then they did something I thought was strange—they sighed. The way Mom sighs when she remembers Paris. As if they too were remembering something.
“That has to be yours, Valentine,” said Clover, and paid for it along with my dress. She said these were “presents” from Aunt Theodora.
Then Valentine asked something I myself had been wondering: “Where does Theo get all her money?”
Clover shrugged and said, “Oh, that. Her family made it way, way back. Mills or something.”
After we left the store and were walking down the street again, I looked down at my feet and came back to reality. I was wearing a pair of dingy black flip-flops. Valentine was wearing purple ones. Clover had on a pair of white patent-leather sandals, and her toes were painted this luscious peach color.
I made up my mind then and there. We’d have to get new shoes to go with our new clothes. And we’d have to get our toenails painted.
“What’s that color?” I asked Clover. “I mean the one on your toes?”
“Oh, that,” said Clover, looking down at her toes with a sly little smile. “Italian Love Affair.”
4
The Secret Roof-Deck
It was Clover who got the idea to give Aunt Theo a party on August 14, the night she was supposed to arrive back in New York.
“A birthday party?” asked Valentine. “Old people don’t always like to be reminded of their birthdays, you know.”
“Never you mind about old people,” said Clover. “And anyway, her birthday’s in October, not August.”
“So it’s more like a welcome back party then,” I said, trying to sound more knowledgeable about these things than Valentine.
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Clover. “Although you know what kind of party Aunt Theo used to have when I was your age?”
“What?”
“She called them Getting to Know You parties.”
“A what party?”
“A Getting to Know You party,” Clover repeated. “You see, when I was your age Aunt Theo used to have these parties where the whole idea was to bring a fascinating stranger. So, I would have to go scampering all over the streets of the Village introducing myself to possible strangers to invite. ‘Unknowns,’ Aunt Theo called them. At the beginning of the party, we always had this special ritual we did. Aunt Theo would make us all hold hands and sing “Getting to Know You.” And then after that, the party could begin.”
“I wouldn’t be caught dead,” announced Valentine.
“You wouldn’t be caught dead what?” asked Clover, smiling.
“Holding hands with strangers. Singing songs with strangers.”
“Well, I would!” I said, just to be contrary. “I think it sounds—interesting.”
“Franny! Mom and Dad raised us not to speak to strangers.”
“Well, if you’re so big on doing only what Mom and Dad say—”
“Girls! Stop all of this quarreling. Never you mind. Anyway, I don’t imagine that your parents would much like it if I had you two dragging strangers off the streets, so let’s just call this a Welcome Back party, shall we? Whatever we call it, the important thing is to make it a party to remember.”
I liked that idea—“a party to remember.” I was looking forward to planning it, and most of all, to finally meeting Aunt Theo in person. But then, right from the beginning, I think I was more interested in the characters of Aunt Theodora and her protégée Clover Leslie than Valentine was. That’s how I thought of Theo and Clover—as characters out of an old-fashioned novel who had suddenly appeared in our lives, making everything somehow more colorful and fascinating than before. Anyway, here are some things I learned about Clover Leslie:
1) She was an orphan. When she was growing up in Boston, Aunt Theo was her guardian.
“For how long?” Valentine asked.
“Forever,” said Clover, and we didn’t ask her any more questions about that, though of course we wanted to know how her parents had died or if they’d gone missing or what. Our curiosity was only natural, the same way it’s only natural that Valentine wants to know who her real father is.
2) Clover was a sculptress. She had gone to Bennington, which is a tiny school on a hill in Vermont that is famous for artists and writers and modern dancers. After school, she got a studio in the Village and had had some shows and sold her pieces to very high-end stores on the Upper East Side. Her work, she said, was more uptown than downtown because her sensibility (that was a new word; I filed it away) was old-fashioned. She was a classicist, she said: another new word. There were a couple of her sculptures at Aunt Theo’s apartment and she showed them to us. They were tiny and of mysterious sea creatures; the white porcelain was touched with pale blue, her favorite color.
“Do you have a thing about the ocean?” asked Valentine.
“Absolutely,” said Clover.
“Do you ever do anything else? Like, do you ever do nudes?”
“Val!” I exclaimed, embarrassed.
But Clover only said casually, “Sure. All the time.”
“Male nudes?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Do you have male models? Like, at your studio?”