“I see.”
We paused to cross the Place de la Concorde, a complex maneuver that absorbed our attention until we reached the high black railing around the Tuileries and the warm green scent of the trees. I heard the tinkling of the carousel above the blaring of traffic behind me. Florian, who knew what was coming, gripped the edge of his perambulator and tried to climb out.
“Anyway,” said Charles, looking unspeakably out of place as he pushed the baby carriage along in his threadbare suit and boater hat, “there’s a party tonight, a farewell bash kind of thing, and Nick asked me to bring you along to say good-bye.”
“Why does he want me to come with you?”
“I don’t know,” Charles said innocently. “Maybe he just wanted to give us a chance to break the ice and get to know each other again.”
My brother stared straight ahead, squinting, sturdy and handsome, as he pushed Florian’s carriage along the fence, toward the entrance along the rue de Rivoli. His cheeks were a little pink from the sun, or maybe it wasn’t the sun.
I put my hand on his and made him stop. He looked down at the pavement below the shining chrome handlebar. I put my hands on his waist and turned him toward me, and I put my head against his chest.
“I’ve missed you,” I whispered.
His arms came around me.
“I missed you, too, little Sprout,” he said, into my hair.
5.
So that was how I came to stand before Stefan Silverman on a July night in 1937 at the bar of the Hotel Ritz in Paris, married and restless, like a housecat left alone for the weekend, who has already eaten all the food in her dish.
Pepper
COCOA BEACH • 1966
1.
Maybe it’s the painkillers. When Pepper wakes up, she has to blink several times at the wall to remember her own name, and several more times to recall where she is and why. The room is full of sunshine. Her stomach moans with hunger. She hasn’t slept so deeply since she was a child.
She sits up, and her foot explodes with pain.
Oh, God. The study, the letter, the front door, Florian, OUCH, hospital.
Florian.
Florian Dommerich. Annabelle’s son.
Pepper sinks back on the pillow. A few feet away, the cheerful yellow curtain represses a brilliant sunlit afternoon, just bursting to get through the window glass and fall on her naked skin. Her crutches lean against the nearby wall, in a pool of discarded nightgown. Pregnant, on the lam, and now this. A broken foot that’s taken up a nice neat throb of pain, in rhythm with her heartbeat.
Florian Dommerich. She remembers the name. She now remembers that at some point, at some Washington party, she was introduced to a man with the unusual name of Florian. But she doesn’t remember that specific moment of introduction, not even if she screws her eyes shut and digs deep. She doesn’t remember looking up into a handsome face, or admiring a pair of sturdy forearms as she shook a large and dependable hand. Because it was already too late, wasn’t it? She was already besotted with another man. Life was like that, wasn’t it? You got on the wrong train and missed your stop, and then you couldn’t go back. By the time you retraced your steps, the right train had already left, gone, departed, the train not taken.
It’s a depressing thought, and should keep a woman in bed for the rest of the day. But that’s not Pepper, is it? Pepper shakes out her hair and thinks, Well, who needs trains, anyway? Noisy big smelly things, never on time, breaking down in all the wrong places. Better off without them.
She swings her feet to the floor and reaches for the bottle of pills on the bedside table, the ones the hospital pharmacy dispensed to her before she left. The label on the side says MRS. PRUNELLA E. DOMMERICH, and she’ll be damned if she tells you what the E stands for.
2.
The table in the dining room is laid for one, and breakfast is still laid out on the sideboard in a series of patient silver chafing dishes. Pepper sets the crutches against the wall and helps herself. Clara wanders in with a pot of coffee, gratefully received, and after the first scorching gulp Pepper sets down her cup and asks Clara if Mr. Dommerich is around.
He’s taken the dogs for a walk on the beach, Clara tells her, and from the shining look on Clara’s face, she envies the dogs.
“Is he, now?” says Pepper. She eats two helpings of eggs and six slices of crisp bacon, washed down with coffee. The sun spills against her back through the French doors, warm and cheerful. A shame she can’t see the beach from here, but the dining room lies against the courtyard, probably to catch the sunset. (Strawberry preserves on the toast, don’t you think? The toast is always tip-top, the butter melted just so, the rich flavor complementing the sweetness of the preserves.) Oh, but don’t misunderstand! Not because of Florian walking the dogs. Heavens, no! That’s incidental. She just wants to watch the beach, the flat and infinite ocean, to remind her how unimportant she is, just another speck of pregnant sand under the sun. Pepper wipes her mouth on the napkin, drains the last of the coffee, and rises.
Clara’s back in the kitchen. Pepper calls out a Thank you anyway, because the Schuylers have their faults but they always thank the staff, whether or not they mean it. She rises, grabs her crutches, and heads for the door.
3.
The dogs find her first. Dogs love Pepper and she loves them back, because dogs never let you down. Their idolatry never dims. Toby inspects her crutches while Oliver inspects her crotch. She fondles a silky head and tells him how wicked he is, and he agrees, tongue lolling.
A whistle. The dogs swivel their ears, toss her a pair of identical apologetic glances—Duty calls, ma’am!—and race back up the beach.
Pepper removes the crutches from her armpits and drops them on the sand. The tide’s low, exposing irregular lines of refuse that reek familiarly of rot and brine. She lowers herself into a warm hollow. When she was little, she would walk along the beach in summer with her father and sisters, and they would look for sea glass. Tiny liked the clear ones most (diamonds are a girl’s best friend, don’t you know), but Pepper and Vivian fought over the colorful ones, the ones that still retained bumpy traces of lettering, hinting at a past life as a bottle of tonic or a jar of preserves. Eventually they worked out an amicable split: Vivian kept the blue glass, and Pepper the greens and browns. The shards still sit in a large glass container in her old bedroom in East Hampton, unless Mums threw it out. But then Mums doesn’t throw things out, does she? So it’s probably still there, sitting on the window ledge, catching the sun.
A wet nose finds Pepper’s hand, and she closes her eyes and smiles.
“I’m pretty sure the nice doctor said you were to rest that foot as much as possible.”
She lifts her heavy right foot, bound snugly in plaster of paris. “I’m resting it right here, aren’t I?”
Florian sits down next to her, smelling like the sea. Toby climbs between his knees and licks his chin with a long, thick tongue, which Florian just manages to keep away from his lips. “Slept well?” he says.
“I did indeed. Those were lovely pills. You should break my bones more often.”
“Well, you’re looking better.”
“What does that mean?”
He holds up his hands, palms out. “Nothing. Just, you know, a little haggard last night.”
“Haggard?”
“And then your hair.” Waggles his forefinger next to his ear.
“Well. My God. It’s a wonder you didn’t just call an ambulance and save yourself all that trouble.”
Snaps his fingers. “Damn it! Why didn’t I think of that? Could’ve slept like a baby instead.”
“Don’t lay that at my door. You slept when you got back.”
Toby lopes off with Oliver, a game of tag, and Florian settles back in a hollow and puts his hands behind his head. His feet are bare and bony, his dungarees rolled a few inches above
his ankles, wet at the edges and dusted with sand. “Not really,” he says.
“Oh.” She wiggles her toes. “Sorry.”
“There you go again with the apologies.”
“Crazy, huh? Must be the dope they gave me.”
“Or the baby. I hear they do things to your minds.”
He brings the subject up so naturally, Pepper forgets to be awkward. She puts her hand on her stomach and says, “Tell me about it.”
No reply. The water rushes in and out, stirring a crusted patch of seaweed left behind at the last tide. The dogs cross before them. Pepper stares at Florian’s toes, the healthy and unbroken bones of his feet, attached to a pair of strong ankles. She wonders what the rest of him looks like, under those damp and wrinkled dungarees and that sky-blue shirt that’s rolled up to each elbow. If she looks out of the bottom corner of her eye, she can just make out the shape of a well-hewn thigh. She pictures that clean square-cut face, that dark curling hair, those chocolate-brown eyes, and God, just kill her now. It’s been so long since she’s kissed a man, so long since she’s held a man in her arms, that she actually—while staring at his toes and calculating the difference in height between big toe and second toe, because wasn’t that supposed to signify something?—yes, she actually contemplates what it would be like to have sex with him. What it would be like to kiss Florian. Be naked with Florian. Whom she just met yesterday.
The baby makes an inquisitive movement under her hand.
Oh, yes. The baby. The baby! Thanks ever so much, baby dear, for reminding Pepper that she might as well give this fantasy free rein, go all the way, indulge herself to the limit of her imagination, because that’s all it is. Fantasy. The sex-starved fantasy of a pregnant woman, who is alluring only in memory. The formerly alluring Miss Pepper Schuyler.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Florian says.
“That depends on whether you want it answered.”
“Why are you having this baby, all by yourself?”
Pepper struggles to her feet, and in a flash Florian is up beside her, steadying her elbow.
“All right,” he says. “Too personal.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll answer yours if you’ll answer mine.”
“Fine. Sock it to me.”
“What are they saying in Washington?”
“About you?”
“Yes, you big lug. About me. About where I am and why I left.”
He shrugs. “Just that you’re another Fifth Avenue deb, can’t handle a real job. Had a fight with your boss and split.”
“For real?”
“What do you mean, for real? I don’t lie, Pepper.”
“No, of course you don’t.”
“Honest to God. You shocked the bejesus out of me last night, and not just that you turned up in my mother’s study. Of all the girls in the world.”
She exhales slowly. There’s some meaning in that last sentence, but she’s too relieved by his news to give the words the attention they deserve. Florian bends down and hands her the crutches, fitting them under each arm, just like the orderly last night.
“You really shouldn’t be walking around like this. You should be slumped in a chair with your foot up on a stool.”
Pepper turns her head and looks at him straight. “Get real, Dommerich. Me sitting on a chair all day?”
He laughs, just as the dogs come up behind him and knock him in the knees, sending him staggering nearly into her arms, except that her arms are caught in the crutches. At the last instant, he whirls himself safely around the edge of her. “All right, all right. Here you go, boys.” He picks up a stick and catapults it down the empty beach, and they stand there together, watching the eager hindquarters pump away, the sand fly like dust beneath the paws. Toby reaches the stick first, and Oliver disputes it with him. Florian turns as if to say something, and stops with the words still in his mouth.
“What is it?” Pepper pushes her hair behind her ear.
“Damn it all, you really are beautiful, you know that? I’m sorry. I know you couldn’t care less at the moment, but God almighty. When the sun’s on you like that.”
“You should have seen me before.” She whistles.
“I did see you before, remember? And I thought you were beautiful then. But Jesus.” He shakes his head and steps forward to meet the incoming dogs.
“I’m a mess,” she calls after him. “You can’t even see my cheekbones. Or my waist.”
He hurls the stick. “My dad always said Mama looked best when she was pregnant. He said it was the greatest sight in the world.”
“Yeah, well, it was his baby, wasn’t it? His wife and his baby.”
Pepper turns and plunges her crutches into the sand, heading back to the house. Seconds later, Florian catches up with her. “Hey. Hold on.”
“Look, I don’t need your pity, all right? And I certainly don’t need you taking advantage of the situation.”
“Taking advantage? Of you?”
“I think I know when a man’s trying his luck.”
“Wait a second.” He takes her arm and pivots to face her, just as they reach the edge of the empty road separating the villa from the beach. “You honestly think I would make some kind of move on my mother’s houseguest? My mother’s pregnant houseguest?”
“That’s what it sounded like from my end.”
“Trust me, I’ve got no reason to make a move on you.”
“Then what was all that about? Oh, Pepper, you’re so beautiful, even when your belly’s all the way out to Kansas.”
He shrugs. “Statement of truth, and a fact you’re already plenty well aware of. I also happen to think you’re a bossy hoyden who thinks a little too much of her sex appeal and likes to sail way too close to the wind. And your toes are crooked.”
“My toes aren’t crooked.”
“They are the hell crooked.”
Pepper looks both ways and crosses the street. Behind her, Florian whistles for the dogs. When she hears the scratch of toenails on asphalt, she says, over her shoulder, “Because I wanted it.”
“Wanted what?”
“Wanted the baby. That’s why I’m having it.”
4.
A half hour later, Pepper sits in the blue-and-white armchair in the living room overlooking the ocean, flipping without much interest through a year-old copy of Vogue magazine. Her foot reposes on a matching blue-and-white ottoman, and her face, when she looks up to find Florian and a pair of root beers, should have warned him away.
Not Florian. He holds out a root beer, still frosty, cap removed. “Peace offering.”
“I didn’t realize we were at war.”
“You sounded pretty warlike out there.”
“That’s just me.” She takes the bottle. She hasn’t drunk root beer since she was a kid, and she’s surprised to find that it still tastes exactly like it used to.
Florian settles himself in the matching chair and balances the root beer in his cupped palms. “I have a few questions.”
“Some men never learn.”
“Not personal ones, this time. At least, not that personal. I was wondering about Mama, actually. When she split. What she said before she left.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I haven’t heard from her in two weeks, and she usually telephones about something or other every couple of days.”
Pepper shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine. We’re not exactly lifelong friends. She bought the car from me, took me to dinner, dragged me to her lair, and left the next afternoon. She never said why.”
“Didn’t leave a note?”
“She left a note, but it just said that something had come up, and she’d be back in a few days.”
“How long ago was that?”
Pepper swallows back her root beer. “Nine, may
be ten days ago.”
“And you weren’t worried?”
“Well, no. Should I have been?”
“This is normal behavior in your book? Inviting a stranger to stay in your house and then disappearing for a week and a half?”
“Oh, I’ve seen odder, believe me.”
“You didn’t wonder where she’d gone?”
“Not really. I was just grateful for the hot breakfasts.”
The dubious eyebrows.
“All right, I wondered a little,” Pepper concedes. “But she’s a big girl, wouldn’t you agree? She can go where she likes. Clara said she goes on trips like this sometimes. Anyway, it would have seemed rude just to call a cab and catch a flight home, without saying good-bye.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Thank you,” she says acidly.
He smiles, almost as if he means it. “No, really. I’m just surprised you stayed on so long, that’s all. Don’t you have family to hurry back to?”
“No more than most people.”
“Because of the holiday, I mean.”
“What holiday?”
“Pepper,” he says, looking at her seriously, “Thanksgiving is in three days.”
Pepper chokes on her root beer. “What?”
“It’s Monday. Thanksgiving is Thursday. That’s why I’m here, because Mama’s supposed to join us at my brother’s house for turkey and pumpkin pie, and no one’s heard from her in two weeks.”
“Thanksgiving.” Pepper dabs the corner of her mouth with her forefinger. Jesus, what’s happening to her? She can’t even keep track of the calendar. “How about that.”
Florian’s frowning at her, and the crease in his forehead mesmerizes her momentarily, so that when he asks her if everything’s all right, she answers with all honesty: “Yes. Perfectly.”
“So then why aren’t you off on a jet plane, Miss Trouble, heading home for turkey with your folks?”
“We aren’t the cuddliest family, rumor has it.”
“They don’t know about the baby, do they?”
“Of course they know.” She finishes the root beer and sets it down on the lamp table. “Two of them do, anyway. My sisters.”