Free The Summer Invitation by Charlotte Silver Page B

together, we always shared a large popcorn with gobs of butter, even though Mom and Dad always made a point of telling us that the bright yellow liquid they give you at the movie theater isn’t real butter. We didn’t care; we loved it. But tonight, I had this feeling Val would prefer to share a large popcorn with Julian, which is exactly what she did, batting her eyelashes and saying to him, “Oh, Julian, you’d better like butter on your popcorn.” So I opted out of popcorn and got some Junior Mints, which are my favorite.
    We were by far the youngest people in the theater. It seemed that two kinds of people came to movies at Lincoln Center: old people alone or old couples. Not young girls like us.
    Finally, the theater darkened and the movie started. Claire’s Knee was an old film, but at least it was in color. It began with a shot of a beautiful red-and-white motorboat in the canal, with rows of swans parting the water on either side. I thought it was such a delicate image, like something out of a storybook, out of one of the Babar books Mom used to read us at bedtime, and I sat there transfixed. What happens in the movie is this: The man in the boat goes to this summerhouse, which is on Lake Annecy, in the French part of Lake Geneva. There he meets two sisters, though he meets the youngest one, Laura, first. Laura has dark hair and is flat-chested but very intelligent. I wouldn’t say she has a pretty face, but it’s what you would call an interesting face; it comes alive when she’s talking. This man, whose name is Jerome, takes her opinions very seriously. They have these incredible, long conversations about Love. Usually they have them sitting in the garden drinking tea, and one time they go on a hike. Laura starts to have a crush on Jerome. You can just tell.
    But then her sister Claire shows up. Oh, I forgot to mention—Laura and Claire aren’t real sisters, they’re half sisters. Claire is older than Laura and very beautiful; she’s the blonde you see in the movie poster, wearing a straw hat. Most of the movie she spends in a bikini, though there’s this one scene when she’s climbing a ladder where she has on this dress I loved, robin’s-egg blue, with pleats. I was thinking I’d try to find one like that at the vintage store we went to with Clover. I can just imagine Clover saying, in that way of hers: Trust me. It’s very sophisticated.
    Anyway, the scene where she’s climbing the ladder is where Jerome falls in love with love, which you can kind of see coming right from the minute he meets her, because she’s so beautiful and always filmed in this beautiful, gauzy, late afternoon light. What happens is, she’s on a ladder picking apples when all of a sudden Jerome notices her knee. The idea is, he falls in love with her knee. Her knee is girlish and delicate. But I guess it’s her girlishness that must be attractive to him.
    Imagine it! Falling in love with another person based on their knee , based on any body part! It reminded me of this time, just a couple of days ago, when we were walking down the street with Clover. It was a very hot night and we’d just gone to get ice cream in the Village and were walking back to the apartment when we passed this really cute guy. Val squealed and said, “Cute!” so loud I think he might have heard her. “Shh!” I said, embarrassed. “What?” said Clover, totally innocent: she hadn’t noticed the guy. “You didn’t notice him?” demanded Val. “But he was absolutely gorgeous.” And then Clover said she didn’t much notice men based on their looks: “I happen to require more information.” I took note of that phrase, to bring back to San Francisco with me. It sounded so grand. I happen to require more information.
    You know something? I think that when I grow up, I’m going to require more information too.
    But this man in the movie, this Jerome, didn’t require any more information than long shiny blond hair and a pair of pretty