Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [73]
“No way, Frenchy!” Frank told her, alarmed. “She might eat it!” So they came up with another plan.
The next night Frank invited Claudette and her beau for dinner with us in a smart Chicago restaurant. As we were sipping champagne and chatting, I suddenly spotted what I thought at first was a chunk of ice in the fluted stem of my glass. Then I got it. “What’s this?” I cried, feigning surprise.
As Frank and Claudette exchanged a private smile, he shrugged and said, “I dunno.”
Reaching in, I fished out my ring. “Is this for me?” I asked, giving him a knowing look.
“Yes, beautiful,” Frank replied, suddenly coy. “Why don’t you put it on?”
Those were still not the words I wanted to hear, so I handed the ring to him and said, “Here, Frank, you put it on. Put it anyplace you want.” I held out both my hands.
Shaking his head, Frank admitted defeat and carefully placed it on my left ring finger. Claudette and her boyfriend applauded that most delicious of moments, and as Frank pulled me laughingly into his arms and kissed me, I was truly the happiest woman on the planet.
A part from Claudette and her man, no one knew our big secret, and I wondered when Frank would announce it. I told my parents and Bobby, of course, and they were thrilled, but the rest of the world could wait.
A week or so after we got back from Chicago, Frank took me to Van Cleef & Arpels in Beverly Hills to have my emerald set into a necklace, and we bumped into a woman we both knew. Thinking that Frank wouldn’t want our engagement public yet, I quickly slipped my left hand behind my back.
“Hello, what are you doing here?” the woman asked suspiciously.
“Having a stone set for Barbara,” Frank told her.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s just a gift,” Frank said, showing her the emerald. “Take a look.”
“Oh. That’s pretty.”
Frank turned to me, and grinning, he said, “Show her the other one.”
Uh-oh, I thought, but I did as I was told. “Wow!” the woman exclaimed. “That’s really pretty! Does that mean anything?”
Frank laughed. “Of course it does, silly!” That was the closest he’d come to saying we were engaged, and I was stupidly delighted and relieved. Now I just had to wait to see what he wanted to do next.
Two weeks later we were at the Compound, sitting out by the pool. All of a sudden Frank looked up from his crossword and said, “Sweetheart, don’t you think we ought to set the date?”
I thought to myself, Well, I guess that’s a proposal.
He was romantic in every other way, but for some reason he just couldn’t bring himself to say the words “Will you marry me?” Maybe it was because he’d said them three times before, and each time the marriage had ended disastrously. Maybe it was because he felt he’d been coerced into it this time. I didn’t care; I loved the romanticism of it all—the flowers, the size of the stones, placing my ring in a glass of champagne. A born performer, that was the only way he knew how to show what was really in his heart.
• • •
Frank’s mother, Dolly, and I had resolved our differences by the time her only son told her we were getting married. Once she realized we were serious, she was great and understood that she and I shared the same agenda—to make Frank happy.
She had moved to Palm Springs from the house Frank had bought her and Marty in Fort Lee, New Jersey, so that she could be nearer her son. She loved the bungalow he gave her on the edge of the Compound and the fact that she was so close by. Several times a month, she’d invite us over for delicious Italian suppers that she’d spent the entire day preparing. Frank always teased her a lot, and one night he took along a can of pork and beans and put it on his plate. The look on her face as she was about to serve him her famous meatballs was priceless.
At around this time, I decided to convert to Catholicism. I thought, I’ve been Methodist, Jewish, and now Catholic. I might as well. At least I’ll have all the bases covered. Frank wasn’t nearly as religious as his mother and went to church only at Christmas—we’d usually go to midnight Mass after a party at our house. He never