The Summer Invitation Read Online Free PDF Page B

you stepped. And there was a blue-greenish wrought-iron table with a couple of matching chairs. On the table, an espresso cup with the remains of Clover’s morning coffee, and a vase of dying yellow roses.
    At the foot of the table was a sculpture of a small blue swan. Its feet were ringed by different size seashells. I wondered if that was one of Clover’s sculptures.
    “Oh my God,” said Valentine, “a sofa! Sweet. ”
    I would have called it a love seat, though if I had, Valentine would have said: “Who are you trying to sound like? Clover?” So I didn’t. Anyway, it was under a canopy of white muslin and it was green, green velvet. Imagine, just imagine it, lying on a velvet sofa in the middle of New York City.
    No, not in the middle of New York City, on top of New York City! Here we were, on the seventeenth floor of this huge apartment building.
    “Let’s check out the view,” I said, and so we did, leaning over the railing as far and as long as we could, and taking in the blue and green and red brick sweep of the city, how beautiful it was and all ours, ours to explore.
    “Oh my God, look!” exclaimed Val, pointing.
    “What?”
    “That couple is totally making out!”
    “Where?” After I said it, I was embarrassed by the quickening of my voice. I shouldn’t have given away my excitement quite so easily.
    “There, on that roof-deck, the one with the geraniums, the pink geraniums, see.”
    I looked, searching for the pink of the geraniums, and finally found it. Val was right: a couple was lying in each other’s arms and kissing on a blue deck chair. It was a wonderful artificial blue, the blue of a swimming pool, and the two of them looked so happy on this summer afternoon. I noticed a pitcher of pink lemonade on the table next to them, and pointed this out to Val.
    “You’re not supposed to be paying attention to pink lemonade, Franny,” she said. “You’re supposed to be paying attention to what they’re doing. ”
    “But they’re just—kissing.”
    “Kissing goes other places,” said Val darkly.

5
    Lilac Gloves
    Before we went to New York, Dad gave us this speech about the importance of making the most of our time in the city. Go see the Statue of Liberty, he said. Make sure you get to Rockefeller Center. Don’t miss the Whitney. It’s time you learned something about modern art. How about we get you girls tickets to a Broadway show? How about it, Milly, he asked Mom, are they too young for the Metropolitan Opera?
    “Edward,” said Mom. “Don’t worry about it so much. I want you girls to have a wonderful time in the city and just be. ”
    And then she smiled at us, a little sadly, I thought at the time.
    It turned out that Valentine enjoyed being a tourist much better than I did. She wanted to do all the things Dad said we should do, and in those first few weeks I went with her, and we had fun.
    I think Mom and Dad had this idea that Clover would take us on activities all around the city. After all, Theo had described her as our “chaperone,” and that sounded like what a chaperone was supposed to do with her young charges. But actually Clover wasn’t big on activities, or not on pre-planned ones anyway. We learned that there were a couple of reasons for this. One was that during the daytime, as Theo had explained to us in her letter, Clover was supposed to be working in her studio. The other reason was that Theo—and therefore Clover herself—didn’t do activities.
    Clover explained this to us by saying:
    “The first time I went to Paris, I think I must have been, oh, ten years old. As soon as we got there, the first thing Theo did was assign us code names for the visit. We needed French names, see. So she named herself Jacqueline and me Celeste. And then I’ll never forget her saying to me, ‘Don’t think we’re going to the Eiffel Tower, young lady. Don’t think we’re going to see the Notre Dame. Here’s what I like to do when I travel see. I like to pretend that