Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [61]
EIGHT
Celebrating a new addition to our household.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
The Tender Trap
Frank was, without doubt, the most romantic man I had ever met. Not only did he make a point of telling me how much he cared for me every day but he’d leave little notes and cards around the place for me to find.
They might have been secreted inside my purse, slipped under my pillow, or stuck to the refrigerator door or a bathroom mirror. He’d draw a smiley face wearing a bow tie, and then beneath it he’d write something thing like “Good morning, pretty—I love you, F.” “Sweetheart!! I love you so much—I may quit drinking! Nah! But I do adore you,” or “To my Girl, I love you. What’s-his-name.” He’d often sign himself Charlie Neat because it was the perfect moniker. Charlie was a name he used whenever he wanted to be incognito on the telephone, at a hotel or venue, and he was obsessively neat. I have kept every one of the notes he wrote me, and I still have them, pasted into a scrapbook.
Even in the middle of a world tour with its punishing rehearsal and performance schedules, Frank always took time out to surprise me with dinner plans, unexpected excursions, or trips to our favorite stores. He claimed I had a “black belt” in shopping, but then who wouldn’t when repeatedly told, “Get what you want, baby—the sky’s the limit.” Even though I could buy myself whatever I wanted, he continued to shower me with gifts. Knowing how fond I am of jewelry, he’d pick me out something like a set of “poils” from Japan and present them to me, often in the most unlikely way.
One night we were preparing to go out for a gala dinner in Monte Carlo, and I was having my hair done in our suite. Not yet dressed, I was wearing a smock while a hairdresser tended to me at my dressing table. Frank strolled in wearing his tux and asked, “What are you wearing tonight, sweetheart?”
“That oyster silk gown you like,” I replied, smiling at his reflection in the glass.
“What jewelry?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I might wear my ruby and diamond choker, but I haven’t decided.”
He reached into the pocket of his dinner jacket and pulled out the most incredible necklace I had ever seen in my life. There was no velvet box, no fancy wrapping, just a necklace dripping with diamonds and emeralds, ending in a final drop of a rock the size of a quail’s egg. “Try this,” he said, casually slipping it into the pocket of my smock. “It was made for Madame Cartier.”
My hairdresser gasped.
Lifting it out and staring at it more closely, I held my breath. This was the Cartier Necklace, the talk of Monte Carlo. It had been the centerpiece of the Boutique Cartier window next door to the casino. Only the previous day I’d stopped and stared at it in awe with some of my girlfriends. Speechless, I draped it around my neck as Frank fixed the clasp. I could feel the weight of it on my skin, and the coolness of the stones. I’d always loved emeralds, and these were the finest I’d ever seen, not that I could see them very clearly because my eyes misted over with tears of gratitude and love.
“I don’t know what to say!” I finally whispered.
He kissed the nape of my neck. “Then say nothing. Just turn a few heads tonight.”
As I arrived at a gala on Frank’s arm that night wearing the Cartier Necklace, Caroline Tose (the wife of Leonard, who owned the Philadelphia Eagles) came rushing up to me and, staring at the necklace, asked, “Is that what I think it is?” When I nodded, she cried, “Holy shit!” From then on, that piece of jewelry was known to us as the Holy Shit Necklace.
Frank had such a great eye for a good stone, and he really appreciated fine jewelry. I don’t know where he picked up that skill, but he sure perfected it with practice. The trouble was he’d buy me so much jewelry, especially when we were traveling, that I began to