Along the Infinite Sea (23 page)

His words reached me from a distance. When I tried to breathe, the air was too thin. I said, in a voice so faint it couldn't possibly have been mine, “You can't be serious. I'm carrying another man's child.”

He shook his head. “If we marry, Annabelle, the child is mine. He will have my name, he will have a home and a father and four doting brothers and sisters. God willing, we will give him more of them, in time.”

“But your own children. A stepmother. They will hate me.”

“On the contrary, Frieda will be delighted. She adores you. She has in fact been hinting to me, and not too delicately. The others, I suspect, have long wanted me to find someone to cheer me a little.”

“You are mad,” I whispered.

“No, I am not mad. I have never been so clear in my objective. I am in love with you. I have been consumed with you since I first saw you in your father's home, playing your cello for a roomful of people who were not worthy to hear you.”

“Johann, stop,” I said desperately.

“I realize I am not a handsome man, nor a charming man, but you will find me a faithful and devoted husband, my Annabelle”—he kissed my hand again—“if you will allow me that honor. You are weeping.”

“I don't deserve this. I don't deserve your kindness.”

“It is not kindness, Annabelle. I am taking gross advantage of your situation to win the hand of a woman to whom I could not otherwise aspire. Now relieve my anxiety and tell me you will marry me.”

He didn't look anxious. His large face had taken on color, and his eyes were bright, but his expression had hardly changed at all. My pulse clicked in my ears, my head rang. Marry him. Marry Johann. Safe, stern, faithful Johann, who had no hidden wife, no mistress. Johann, who loved me so much, he would take my shameful baby, too. I stared
at his pale bright eyes, washed free of color, and I knew I would never catch Johann in bed with Peggy Guggenheim. I would never walk into a party and count a dozen other women he had slept with. Imagine that, a lifetime of secure love, a houseful of children and loyalty. Between myself and the cautionary tale of my mother's life, I would have Johann standing in protection, a reliable giant.

I had spent the last few weeks half expecting him to propose, half preparing to reject him, half preparing to accept him, and now that the opportunity had arrived, at the exact moment I had thought it lost forever, I didn't know how to reply. I stammered a helpless cliché: “I don't know what to say.”

“You must say yes. You must. You have no choice. I am determined, Annabelle.”

“Then yes,” I said recklessly, and a wave of shock passed across my stomach. Marry Johann. I pulled my hand from his grasp and reached up to snatch his face between my palms, so I wouldn't be afraid of what I had just done. Who could be afraid, when Johann von Kleist stood between you and the world? “Yes, Johann. I'll marry you.”

I crashed my lips into his, and the violence of his response made me gasp into his mouth. He seized my shoulders and stood, lifting me with him, holding me against his chest while he kissed me. The blood roared so loudly in my ears, I didn't hear the knock on the door, but Johann did. He set me back on the floor and took up my hand, and he told the surprised housekeeper to congratulate him, because Mademoiselle de Créouville had just agreed to become his wife.

6.

We were married the following Saturday, first at the German embassy by the ambassador and then at the Mairie de Paris, where our papers were properly stamped and the marriage made official. My reeling father attended, and a delighted Lady Alice, and all four of Johann's
children, along with his sister, who had traveled from Berlin. Charles had still not returned, and nobody knew where to find him.

Afterward, we all had dinner at the Ritz, where Johann and I were to spend the night before leaving on our wedding trip to Rome. I sat between the two oldest children, Frederick and Marthe, who were perfectly friendly, if perhaps stiff. I couldn't blame them. Had their father given them any hint that he was thinking of marrying? Or had they just received telegrams at school, and the necessary train tickets to Paris? Frederick liked to play sports and ride like his father; Marthe was fond of tennis and books. They had been to Florence last summer with their father to see the art and enjoyed it very much, but their favorite part was when they woke up at dawn and drove to Siena for the Palio. One of the jockeys had fallen off, not fifteen feet away from where they were standing, and had nearly been killed. Frederick described this scene with vigor, using the salt and pepper to illustrate the various positions. I stared at his moving hands and thought, My stepson.

My father drank a great deal to overcome his shock. He gave a splendid toast and remarked on the absent Charles:
He will now think more carefully before leaving town without a forwarding address, eh?
Everyone laughed. Johann also rose and gave a brief toast, thanking everyone for attending on such short notice, but at his age one had lost the patience for a long engagement. He thanked me, his new wife, for the favor of marrying him, and he promised to make my happiness the study of his life.

We had a small but elegant white cake. Johann's half-English sister Margaret took pictures of us cutting it. When everyone finished, she shepherded the children to taxis, though not before lining them up to kiss their father and their new mother good-bye. The scent of sugar hung behind them. My father and Alice left shortly after that.

7.

As a surprise, Johann had booked the legendary Imperial Suite for our wedding night. It was only seven o'clock, but the November sky had already been dark for hours, so the evening felt much later.

We hadn't kissed since the moment of our engagement. There was too much planning to be done, too many logistics to be sorted out. We had not had five minutes for romance, and Johann was, after all, an orderly man, who wanted to wait until our union was properly sanctioned. Now the plans had been executed, the logistics completed. We were man and wife, and there was nothing to do but to be married.

At the door to the suite, Johann bent down and lifted me into his arms to carry me across the threshold. I gasped at the opulence of the rooms. There was a bucket of champagne on the table in the drawing room, next to an enormous vase of fresh red roses, just opening and deeply fragrant. Johann opened the bottle and poured out two glasses. We drank to each other. Johann set down his glass and lit a cigarette with quick, nervous fingers. I had never seen him nervous. The understanding of his anxiety calmed my own jumping pulse, my panicked blood. I took his hand and asked him to show me the other rooms.

We saw the dining salon, the marble bathroom, the guest bedroom. We arrived at the splendid master bedroom, gilded, hung with silk damask, where the imperial bed confronted us, as wide as the ocean. I began to shake again, because it was done, there was no turning back: I was now irrevocably the wife of Johann von Kleist, and in a moment he was going to start kissing me, he was going to start making love to me. That was his right as my husband. A man who wasn't Stefan was now my husband. A man who wasn't Stefan was going to make love to me, consummating our marriage, and without the least warning a cry of grief ripped the interior of my lungs, like a cat clawing for escape: a cry of what in French we call
agonie
, because it was November and August was gone forever.

I must put August out of my mind, as if it didn't exist.

Johann took my champagne glass from my hand (it was only half finished) and set it on the bedside table next to his. He put out his cigarette in a small gold tray shaped like a seashell. He removed his splendid dress uniform jacket and hung it carefully in the wardrobe, and then he drew me into his enormous arms and kissed me, without uttering a word, and I thought, It's better this way, it's better that we don't say anything at all.

8.

It seemed almost silly, afterward, to fall asleep in bed together at the absurdly early hour of eight-thirty in the evening, though it would have been equally silly to rise. It was our wedding night, after all.

Johann climbed out of bed to fetch his cigarettes. When he returned, the mattress bowed to his weight, and I rolled helplessly into his side. He smoked for a while, without speaking, and finished his champagne. I fell asleep to the sound of his breathing and woke at eight to find my husband fully bathed and dressed, having already ordered breakfast, which was laid out neatly around a vase of fragrant gardenias on a table next to the bed: the start of our married life.

COCOA BEACH
•
1966

1.

Pepper screams. Not because of the headlock, but because a current of pain has just thundered up her foot like an approaching freight train, and then slammed into her brain in a cataclysmic explosion, like you see in the movies.

Without warning, the arms drop away, and Pepper staggers face-first onto the oriental rug.

“Jesus!” the man says. “You're pregnant!”

The lamp flashes back on. Pepper rises on her elbow and clutches the top of her foot, encased in its slipper. Already a bubble of numbness is forming around the pain, an ominous sign. “Holy
fuck,
” she whispers.

“Who the hell
are
you?”

“You just broke my foot.”

“I didn't break your foot!” He crouches down next to her and lifts her hand away. “Oh. Jesus. Ouch.”

“I'll say.” An unfamiliar pricking sensation surrounds Pepper's eyeballs, like she might—please, God, no!—actually cry.

“Can you wiggle your toes?”

Pepper tries. “No.”

“Damn it. I guess it's the ER. What the hell did you do?”

“What did
I
do?
You
were the one who grabbed me in a headlock, sonny.”

“
You
were the one lurking behind the door in my mother's study, about to clobber me!
In the dark!
”

“I thought you were a burglar!”

“Me? For all I know,
you're
the burglar.”

“Oh, you've got a nerve. Do I look like a burglar to you?”

Pepper lifts her head, tosses back her hair, and gives him a gander, just to make her point. And . . . well. Not quite what she expected, is he? Big young man, broad shoulders, dark hair, strong face, cranky eyebrows. Annabelle's son? Not that she cares. Not that it matters whether she cares, because in that instant of connection, right before her eyes, the cranky expression transforms to astonishment.

“Jesus. Pepper
Schuyler
?”

She frowns, or rather deepens her frown. “I'm sorry. Do I know you?”

His hand falls away from her foot. He looks at her face, blinking a little, as if to clear his eyeballs of her image and replace it with one he likes better. “I guess not,” he says. “All right. You sit here, I'll get some ice.”

“I'm not just going to
sit
here and wait for
ice
.”

Annabelle's son rises to his feet and stares down at her. “Well, Miss Schuyler. I don't mean to be rude, but I'd say you don't really have a choice.”

2.

“So how exactly did you hurt that foot?” asks Annabelle's son, as they drive to the hospital through the dark Florida night in the same Ford Thunderbird Pepper drove earlier that evening. Except that
Annabelle's son has put the top back up, and her hair is quiet about her face.

“Because you stepped on it, you big ox.”

“No, I didn't.”

Pepper sighs. “It was the thing I was about to hit you with.”

“What thing was that?”

“I don't know. It was dark. Some sort of statue on the bookshelf. I dropped it when you grabbed me.”

He starts to laugh. “You were going to hit me with Mama's
Grammy
?”

“Her what?”

“Her Grammy Award. A music award. She's a cellist. You know, plays the cello.” He motions with one hand, a fair bowstroke.

“I
know
she plays the cello. Obviously.” Pepper speaks with dignity, and tries to ignore the rich quality of his laughter, which would be far more attractive if she weren't holding a bag of ice to her throbbing foot, thanks to his existence on this earth. She adds: “We're friends.”

“God, I hope so, or I'll have to have you arrested for trespassing.”

“Oh, wouldn't that be rich. Considering she practically kidnapped me and dragged me to her lair.”

“Oh, really? Sounds like Mama, all right.”

That laugh again. Pepper looks out the window, though there's nothing to see, just black shapes sliding past, houses and palm trees and telephone poles crawling with vines. There's always something a little overgrown about Florida, isn't there? As if the landscape is just waiting for its chance to take over again.

“Sure, go ahead and laugh,” she says. “You're not the one with a broken foot, being held against your will.”

“Nice try, but I'm not buying it. No one holds Pepper Schuyler against her will.”

She turns her head and narrows her eyes at his dark profile. “You seem to know a lot about me, for a man I don't know from Adam.”

“I work for a law firm in Washington. I've seen you around.”

“Oh, another lawyer. I should have known.”

“You've got a problem with lawyers?”

“No. I just seem to attract them, that's all.”

He shrugs. “Flies to the honeypot. So how did Mama kidnap you?”

“I sold her a car.”

“A car? What kind of car?”

“Didn't she tell you?”

There is a little silence. He checks the rearview mirror, slows the car, makes a left turn across an empty street, into an even emptier street. He drives competently, she'll give him that: fast and easy, clutch and gears in perfect synchronization. His hands are large and firm on the steering wheel, a detail Pepper admits reluctantly, because she's in no mood to find any man attractive, let alone this one, who just broke her foot.

“No,” he says at last. “Why? Should she?”

“It's a mighty nice automobile, that's all. Cost her a fortune. Where's this hospital of yours, anyway? North Carolina?”

A nice easy chuckle. “No. Coming right up. How are you feeling?”

“Like a pregnant woman with a broken foot.”

“I'm glad to hear it.”

“Oh, a masochist, too. It figures.”

A flurry of lights appears before them on the right-hand side of the road. He brakes carefully, and Pepper has the feeling he's grinning, the bastard.

“I'm not a masochist. I just figure you must be all right, if you can still snap like a turtle.”

3.

“I suppose I should ask your name,” Pepper says, as he's carrying her to a wheelchair inside a pair of thick arms. Her nose bobs along next
to his neck, which smells absurdly of soap, sweet and clean. Soap! Who still smells like soap at two o'clock in the morning? Annabelle's son, apparently. She tilts her nose away.

“Oh, Mr. Dommerich will do.”

“Not for what I have in mind.”

“You're a tough customer, Miss Schuyler.” He deposits her in the wheelchair and swings around to grasp the handles. “It's Florian.”

“Florian?”

“Dare I hope it rings a bell?”

“It's not Tom, Dick, or Harry, anyway.”

“Well, I guess you'll remember me now, at least. The ox with the oddball name who broke your foot.” He pushes her confidently down an antiseptic white corridor. A nurse looks up from the station as they pass.

“Mr. Dommerich!”

“Well, hello, Nurse Smith. Long time no see. Late shift tonight?”

“Lucky me.” She glances down at Pepper, and her mouth turns downward. She points her sharp finger to the right. “Labor and delivery is that way.”

Florian laughs that laugh again. “Nope, not yet, Smitty. Just a broken foot. We're headed to the ER.”

He must have flashed her a hell of a smile as he said it, because she brightens like a Christmas tree, right before she flushes like a beet.

“Oh! Of course! The ER is straight ahead,” she sort of stammers, and Pepper rolls her eyeballs.

“I know. But thank you, Smitty. I'm just flattered you recognized me.” He puts the faintest emphasis on the word
you
.

“Of course. I—I didn't realize you were married, Mr. Dommerich.”

“Full of surprises,” he says, over his shoulder.

Pepper says, once the nurse is behind them: “On familiar terms, I see.”

“My dad was in and out of here for a while before he died. I got to know the joint pretty well. Here we are.”

“Oh, God, I'm sorry. Of course. I wasn't thinking.”

“What, an
apology
? Christ, what's next? You'll be thanking me, and I'll expire from shock.” He addresses the orderly at the admittance desk. “Good morning. Not too busy, I hope?”

The orderly points to the door. “Labor and delivery, not ER. Don't they tell you anything?”

“No baby tonight, actually. Broken foot, if I know my metatarsals, and it's a doozy. The right one. How's the wait?”

The orderly looks down at Pepper's foot and frowns. He pulls out a clipboard from a stack, sticks in a sheet of paper, and hands it to Florian. Pepper makes a move to snatch it away, but Florian shoos her expertly. “You sit tight with the ice bag, all right? I'll take care of this.”

“Are you the husband?” says the orderly.

Pepper opens her mouth to say no.

“Looks like it,” says Florian.

The orderly laughs. “Name?”

“Florian Dommerich.”

“I mean your wife's name.”

“Oh. Pepper.”

A frown. “Her real name, Mr. Dommerich.”

There is an awful little silence. Pepper is still sitting in her state of shock; the casual word
wife
seems to have glued her jaw shut.

“Darling,” says Florian, “what
is
your real name? I've forgotten.”

Nobody knows Pepper's real name, if she can help it. She stares mutinously at the orderly, whose blue ballpoint pen stands poised over the paperwork on his desk.

“She's kind of funny about it,” Florian says. “Wouldn't tell me until right before the ceremony, and even then she made me whisper the word, so only God could hear me. Just one of her adorable little foibles.”

She was going to kiss him. She was going to murder him.

“I don't have all night, Mrs. Dommerich,” says the orderly.

Florian coughs. “You can't just write down Mrs. Florian Dommerich? We are one flesh, after all. Joined at the hip.”

“Is
your
foot broken, Mr. Dommerich?”

“Well, no.”

The orderly points his pen at Pepper. “So I'll be needing
her
name, okay? And condiments don't cut it, not in the ER, not on my watch.”

“With all due respect—”

“Prunella,” says Pepper. “Okay? It's Prunella. Family name.”

The orderly's eyebrows rise. Behind her back, Florian's chest makes a grave little shudder that travels through his arms to vibrate the wheelchair. He lifts one hand and snaps his fingers.

“Ah! That's it. How could I forget?” he says. “Prunella.”

4.

On the way back to the villa, Pepper asks him why he did it.

“Did what?”

“Pretend you were my husband, back there.”

“Oh, you know. Makes the paperwork easier, doesn't it? No awkward questions.”

His tone is light. His tone is mostly always light, as if nothing is too serious for him to handle, everything's a joke; that taking a stranger, a heavily pregnant woman, to the emergency room in the middle of the night and pretending she's your wife is . . . well, just one of life's little adventures. He's rolled up his shirtsleeves, and his forearms are sturdy, his hands strong as they hold the wheel. He is altogether dependable.

“Well, it ends now, okay?” she says. “No husbandly privileges when we get back.”

“Perish the thought.” Florian reaches for the radio dial and fiddles with it. Static, mostly, and then a thin stream of lonely trumpet pierces the noise. “I also figured you might need a break.”

“A break, do I?”

“You know, holed up like this, no one around to rub your feet and
buy you jars of pickles. Mama's got a nose for folks in trouble. I thought maybe you didn't need any more of it. Trouble, I mean.”

There are all kinds of heroes,
Annabelle said, on the ride up to Cocoa Beach, and as Pepper stares at the gray landscape a week and a half later, through an entirely different windshield, she hears those words again. Almost like the woman's sitting right there, like a chaperone—yes, right there delicately on the bench seat between the two of them, Florian and Pepper—and whispering in Pepper's ear.

“I can handle trouble, all right. People say it's my middle name. My first name, too, if you think about it.”

“Oh. Prunella, you mean?”

“Don't get sassy.”

“I'll get sassy if I feel like it, Miss Trouble. It's the least I can do for you, get you snapping again. Back in fighting-turtle form.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Florian slows the car and turns, and Pepper realizes they're already back at the house, that the dark space washing away to her right is the ocean, and the line of pink above is the breaking dawn.

“It means I like you how I saw you in Washington, Pepper Schuyler, even if you wouldn't give me the time of day. I like you conquering the world, not sitting back and letting it conquer you.”

Pepper looks through the bug-spattered glass at the approaching garage and bursts into tears.

5.

She hates the crutches, and the crutches hate her. Florian knows better than to offer help. He just opens the doors wide as she comes to them, and smiles from the corner of his mouth as she swears.

“Need anything else?” he says, when she swings herself through the doorway of the guest cottage and tosses the crutches on the floor.

“Trust me, you've done enough.”

“All right, then. Keep the handkerchief. Take your pills. Sleep as long as you like. I'll tell Clara to keep the coffee warm.”

He starts to close the door, and Pepper says
Wait
.

Florian pauses with his large hand on the doorknob, eyebrows expectantly high.

“Thanks,” she says.