Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [72]
Excited and a little scared about what awaited me in Chicago, I hurried to Bobby’s room, where I found him taking a nap. Shaking him awake, I said, “I’m flying to Chicago tonight, and I need you to present the trophy for me tomorrow. Can you do that?”
Yawning and scratching his head, my son replied, “Sure.” Bless him, he didn’t ask a single question. As I went to leave the room, he called out, “Happy Mother’s Day.” In all the excitement, I had completely forgotten the date.
Still wearing my tennis clothes, I went down to the hotel lobby and found one of Frank’s drivers waiting for me. He took me to the airport, where a private plane flew me to Chicago. I was the sole passenger, and as I sipped a cocktail and watched the sky turn Sinatra orange over the clouds, I wondered what the dawn would bring.
Frank was staying at the Ambassador East, which was the nicest hotel in Chicago at the time. Feeling chilly and self-conscious in my short pleated skirt and white shirt, I walked through the lobby while a porter followed with my luggage. Aside from being unaccustomed to arriving at a hotel via the main entrance, I felt unduly nervous. I was directed to the best suite, and when the door opened a wall of scent hit me. The huge living room was filled with every kind of flower imaginable. There must have been more than a hundred bouquets in vases and baskets. In the background, soft music was playing. How I’d missed him!
Frank grinned at me and said, “Wait till you see what’s in the other room.” He led me through to a bedroom filled with even more roses and lilies, orchids and his favorites—gardenias. As I stood in the middle of the room, speechless, Frank casually tossed two enormous gemstones into the middle of the king-size bed. I stared at him and he stared at me, but I still didn’t move a muscle.
“Well, aren’t you going to look at them?” he asked impatiently. He stood by the window smoking a cigarette and forgetting my rule. I could tell he was nervous, so I didn’t complain. Walking as steadily as I could toward the bed, I focused first on an enormous pear-shaped diamond that I later learned was twenty-two carats. It dazzled me with its perfection. Blinking back tears of happiness, I recalled how I’d told Frank a long time before that, if he ever asked me to marry him, I’d like a pear-shaped diamond just like one I’d seen in a magazine. This was almost identical. With a trembling hand, I picked it up and felt the weight of it. The second stone was even larger—a perfect green emerald. I didn’t know what to say.
“You can have them set any way you want,” Frank said as my eyes met his.
In spite of myself, I thought, That’s still not a proposal! Seeing the look of childish expectation on his face, however, I realized that it was probably the closest I was going to get. Relenting finally, I ran to his arms and let him enfold me in his loving embrace. That reunion, of all our reunions, was surely the sweetest. As we lay together for the rest of the day and night telling each other over and over how much we loved each other, I was filled with such happiness that I never wanted to break the spell.
We did eventually have to get dressed, of course, and then Frank sent me to see a friend of his in the jewelry business. Praying that I was doing the right thing, I asked the friend to set the diamond in an engagement ring setting. Once the enormous solitaire was ready, I had the jeweler return it to Frank, not me, so that he could present it to me whichever way he wanted. The French-born actress Claudette Colbert was a great friend of Frank’s and was in a show in Chicago at the time. She advised him what to do. “Put the ring in Barbara’s soup during dinner,” she suggested.