He seized my arms. “Annabelle, no. Please don’t do this. You’ve got to stay here. You’ll be safe in the hotel, you and Florian.”
“I don’t want to be safe if you’re not.”
“But Florian!”
“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare blackmail me. We are a family, Stefan, we are not going to break apart. Do you hear me? I’m in your skin, remember? We’re a family. I swore it when I found you again, I swore I’d never give you up. Stefan, please, you have got to understand, you have got to take me with you.”
“You are killing me, Annabelle.”
Florian began to cry.
I put my hands on Stefan’s cheeks. His bones fit into my palms. “I won’t let you. I won’t let you walk out of this room alone. You are not allowed to do this alone anymore.”
“Annabelle, please—”
Florian slithered from the bed and ran to Stefan’s legs. “Don’t leave. Don’t leave.”
“You see?” I whispered. “This is all there is. This is all we have. The three of us.”
Stefan closed his eyes. His hand dropped to Florian’s head, to the sobbing face that stuck to his knees and wet the legs of his pajamas.
“Stefan. I gave you my own blood, remember?”
It was a cheap plea, and he must have known it. That pint of blood had entered his veins three years ago, and by now it was gone, churned over and converted into Stefan’s own. But as I said the words, I recalled the drone of the tender’s engine, the slap of waves against the hull of the Isolde, the briny smell of the sea and the reek of gasoline exhaust. I remembered Stefan’s brave and lugubrious voice, telling me not to be stupid, and the giddy plunge in my belly as I fell in love with him. The sight of my red blood flowing through the tube and into the vein on his wrist, to bring him back to life.
Stefan said, in a defeated voice, “You will do exactly as I say, is that understood? You will hide in the boot if I tell you to hide in the boot. If there is the least trouble, I will deposit you in the nearest hotel and you will wait there quietly with our son, is that clear?”
I fell on his chest.
“Yes. Yes, that’s clear.”
4.
We reached the outskirts of Stuttgart just before two o’clock in the morning. A lurid yellow-orange glow hung over the rooftops, like a bank of fog. “They have started burning,” Stefan said.
“What are they burning?”
“Whatever they can, probably. Synagogues, businesses. Maybe houses.”
“My God.”
“What did you expect, Annabelle? They want to destroy us, don’t you know that?”
“Destroy? You don’t mean that.”
“What do you think I mean? I mean destroy. I mean obliterate, I mean they want us blistered from the face of the earth.”
“But how could they do that, while good people are watching? While the world is watching? They can’t possibly think they can get away with it.”
“That is the point. They want to see what they can get away with. The entire history of the past five years, they have been seeing what the world will let them get away with. And the world is so sick of everything, it doesn’t care.”
“It will have to act now.”
“Just watch, Annabelle. Just watch and see what the world does and doesn’t do.”
I stared at the lurid sky.
“It’s impossible. They just want to get rid of you. They just want you out of Germany.”
“You do not understand a thing, Annabelle. Not a fucking thing.”
“But you’re talking about murder.”
He tossed his cigarette out the window. “Do you want to know how many times they tried to kill me at Dachau? They called it punishment and rehabilitative labor and all kinds of nice, clean things. But they just wanted to kill me, that is all, neat and simple. Only I would not give them the satisfaction.”
“Then why did they agree to let you out to go to the hospital?”
“A very good question, Annabelle. I have asked this myself many times.”
I looked down at Florian’s sleeping head in my lap. “You think it was Johann.”
“I do not think anything anymore. I just want to get the hell out of here with my wife and my son and daughter. I want to get the fuck out of Germany while we are all still alive. What is it?”
“You called me your wife.”
“And you are crying about this?”
“Yes, damn you. I am crying about this.”
5.
Everywhere you could hear the sound of smashing glass. Stefan drove quickly, past throngs of young men whose faces were yellow under the streetlights and the glow of the fires, whose eyes were lit by something else, but you couldn’t outrun that sound. It shattered the ends of your nerves; it made your heart explode and explode in your chest. Hurry, I said to Stefan, pressing my feet on the floorboards, but it was a stupid thing to say. He was already driving as fast as he dared.
He knew the way, which was fortunate because I didn’t recognize anything in this strange glow that had overtaken the city. The Himmelfarbs lived in a residential neighborhood, lined with trees, and as we approached the district the crowds of young men seemed to thin out. Maybe we’re past the worst, I said, and Stefan didn’t reply.
We turned a corner, and I recognized the street. My gaze traveled down a few houses to the right, and there it was, the familiar low iron gate, the tiny garden, the five steps leading to the stoop. The sidewalk was empty and still, except for the distant sound of shouts and breaking glass, a radio play of destruction. All the lights were out in the houses. Stefan stopped the car and jumped out. He went around the passenger side, took Florian from my arms, and grabbed my hand. We hurried up the stoop and banged on the door.
“It’s me, Wilma! It’s Stefan! Open the damned door!”
The door sprang open over the last two words, and Wilhelmine Himmelfarb stood gray-faced in the entry, her hair lank over her forehead, holding Henrik on her hip.
“Thank God,” she said.
Pepper
SAINT MARY’S • 1966
1.
Pepper stares downward at that Audrey Hepburn neck, ending in the crisp triangles of a black collar, a trench coat belted chicly at the waist.
“There you are,” Annabelle says brightly, holding out a black leather hand.
“Here I am.”
Annabelle turns her attention to the man at Pepper’s elbow. “Good morning. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. My name is Annabelle Dommerich.”
The hand again. He takes it, shakes it briefly, mumbles his name.
“Enchanted,” says Annabelle.
“I thought you were on Cumberland Island,” says Pepper.
“Yes, I expect you did. Well, I’m back now. As you see.”
“But Florian and Susan are on the ferry out, the one that just left. You’ve just missed them.” It occurs to Pepper that this remarkable failure might not necessarily be a coincidence.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Dommerich, but if you don’t mind, the lady and I were having a discussion—”
Annabelle turns and gives him the blinding smile. “As a matter of fact, sir, I do mind. I need to speak rather urgently to Miss Schuyler. I’m afraid your little discussion will have to wait.”
He gives her an amazed look, the look of a man unaccustomed to hearing the word wait. The astonishment lifts his thick eyebrows almost into his hairline.
Pepper links elbows with Annabelle. “Poor dear,” she says. “That’s twice in one morning.”
“Twice what?”
“Refused.”
2.
“I don’t believe that man means to leave,” says Annabelle, staring down from Pepper’s second-floor window to the blue Lincoln parked outside. The drizzle has let up, but the blanke
t of gray remains, deadening the chrome on the bumpers and the tailfins.
Pepper stretches out on the narrow single bed and props her foot on a pillow. “It’s a genetic disease that runs in the family. They can’t hear the word no.”
Annabelle makes an irritated noise.
“Anyway,” Pepper continues, hardly missing a beat, “enough about little old me. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Hmm.” She turns from the window and leans against the sill. “What do you think of my son?”
“I think he’s delicious. So does the fair Susan. They’ll make you some beautiful grandkids, those two.”
Annabelle frowns, but it’s not the ordinary kind of frown. It’s a flat-browed, purse-lipped kind of frown that says, Not on my watch, sister.
“If Florian marries that girl, I’ll disown him,” she says.
“What’s this? You don’t like Susan?”
“I like her enormously, but she’s not marrying my son.” Annabelle pauses. “She’s tone-deaf. I won’t have Florian living without music.”
“That seems a little unfair. It’s not her fault, is it?”
“And she’ll let him walk all over her. Florian can be a little bossy, like his father. He needs someone who’ll stand up to him.” She gazes innocently at the ceiling.
“And yet you let them sail off to Cumberland Island together, without any adult supervision.” Pepper holds up her hand. “Don’t even try to tell me you didn’t know they were on that ferry. I just want to know how you gave them the slip. And maybe why.”
Annabelle turns back to the window. The overcast sky is flat against her face, ironing out every possible sign of age. She could be twenty years old. “He’s taking something out of the trunk,” she says.
“Never mind him. You said you had to speak to me.”
“That was only to rescue you.”
Pepper sits up. “What happened out there?”
“On the island, you mean? Nothing. I went, I came back.”
“And the part in the middle? Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Yes. Oh, now he’s coming back inside. There’s something under his arm, a large envelope. My God, the look on his face.”
“I said never mind him. I want to know what happened last night. Why you came back, looking like a chocolate éclair that’s had all the cream taken out.”
Annabelle walks to the fireplace and holds out her hands to the flames. Pepper admires her fingers, long and beautifully shaped. Her head is bowed a little, examining the nails. “Like I said, nothing happened. I went to see if I was right, if an old friend of mine was living there.”
“An old lover.”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“Well, was he?”
“Yes, he was. It was him, all right.” She rubs her hands together, and with her right thumb she twiddles the slim gold wedding ring on the fourth finger of her left hand.
“Well? Did you say hello? Throw yourself in his arms? Spend the night in bed?”
“None of those things.” She picks up the silver candlestick on the mantel and studies the base, like she’s looking for the hallmark. “I managed to find out where he lived. It was a bit of a trek. I took a bicycle. I waited outside for a bit, gathering up my courage. It’s a bit frightening, you know, seeing someone again after such a long time. You don’t know how they’ve changed, or how much you’ve changed, or whether they forgive you for everything. So I waited.”
A knock sounds on the door.
“Ignore it,” says Pepper. “You waited?”
“I waited until midnight, and then I turned around and went back to the inn, and this morning I found a fisherman to take me back to the mainland. And now I’m packing up and going home.”
Pepper stands up, grabbing the sofa arm for support. “What? You gave up?”
Annabelle looks at her sharply. “Why do you care?”
I have no idea.
“I just do, that’s all.”
The knock sounds again. A thick masculine voice: “Miss Schuyler! I need to speak with you.”
Annabelle lifts her eyebrows. “We could sneak out the back way and leave in my car, if you don’t mind leaving your things behind for Florian to bring later.”
“No, I’m going to settle with him, believe me. But you first. I need to know why you gave up. You of all people. You gave up on his doorstep.”
“Gave up what?”
“Everything! Claiming him back.”
“Claim him back? But that wasn’t the point, darling. That wasn’t the point, after all these years. He has his own life now. I just wanted to see if it was really him. I just wanted to make sure he was all right.”
“You went to all that trouble, just to look at his house? You didn’t even knock and say hello?”
“No. There was no point.”
“Why not?”
Annabelle smiles and spreads out her hands. “Because he wasn’t alone.”
3.
Pepper plants her crutches into the rug. “This had better be good. I’m heading upstairs right now to pack up.”
His face is a picture of anger, all grim and highlighted in red. He strides right past her and tosses the long manila envelope on the coffee table, next to the remains of the gingersnaps. “Come here.”
“I’ll stand right here, thanks.”
Pepper can still hear the click of Annabelle’s shoes on the stairs, making her defeated way to her room, where she will pack her things for the drive back to Florida, to the big empty villa by the ocean. Or maybe she will just go straight to her son’s house in the Washington suburbs, for Thanksgiving? The widowed matriarch, presiding over her sprawling family. Someday Pepper will have to get the whole story out of her. The car, the man she left behind. The man she married.
“All right,” he says. “Have it your way.”
He unties the fastening on the envelope and draws out a thin stack of papers. “Please understand, we don’t want to have to use these. Your family, they’re an institution in New York, they’ve given this country some of its finest citizens. So we’d really hate to have to send this information to the press.”
He spreads the papers out on the coffee table, pushing the plate with the gingersnaps into the corner. Some of them are typewritten pages; some are photographs. A nice little collection. Pepper recognizes her father in one of them. He seems to be naked.
“We did a little research,” he says, in an apologetic tone, as if to say, You left us no choice, honey, no choice but to dig up all this dirt from under the carpet.
Well, every family has its dirt, doesn’t it? But Pepper’s family is so old and distinguished, so sprinkled with rebellious and eccentric characters. The dirt accumulates gradually in a family like hers, but it’s a rich and fertile kind of dirt: the kind that, if you plant a seed, will grow a whole goddamned garden of scandal. And maybe that kind of thing doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe it won’t get you struck from the Social Register, or blackballed from the Knickerbocker Club, or (shame of shames!) ostracized from the best Fifth Avenue drawing rooms.
But maybe it will.
It all depends, doesn’t it, on what’s contained in that little array laid out on the coffee table, next to the gingersnaps.
Pepper hobbles across the old rug and stares down at the field of white rectangles. She picks up one of the typewritten pages and reads about Uncle Freddie, whom everybody knew had gotten his oil contracts the old-fashioned way, but really. To see the whole affair in black-and-white.
He clears his throat. “The attorney general may have to prosecute.”
She looks up. “The irony here is that your family’s done worse.”
He shrugs. Because it hardly needs saying that if a man smuggles in a bottle or two of whiskey from Canada and the cops are paid not to hear him, it di
dn’t really happen.
What a nuisance, Pepper thinks. What a damned nuisance. I’m going to have to be a hero, aren’t I?
After all this, I’m going to have to take the fall.
4.
He lets her go upstairs to pack. It’s not as if she’s going to try any funny business, is she, not when those papers still lie in their manila folder, under his arm. He even takes the laundry bag and carries it to the blue Lincoln himself, what a gentleman, dropping it into the trunk like a sack of refuse. Then he opens the door for her.
“Thank you,” she says, removing her crutches from under her arms and tossing them inside. The seats are pure virgin white, not a single smear, reeking of cigarettes. She pauses with her hand on the top of the doorframe and stares at the generous porch of the Riverview Hotel, the empty ferry landing to the side. The river, leading out to the wide blue sea.
He swings around to the driver’s side and puts the key in the ignition. The engine takes a few turns to get going, but then it lets out a nice handsome roar, eager to be off, eager to drive right out of this damp and sleepy town and head back to Washington in time for Thanksgiving.
“Stop!”
A lithe black figure leaps down the front steps toward the street.
“Pepper, no! Don’t get in the car with that man!”
“Get in,” he says to Pepper. “Now.”
Pepper braces herself on the door and swings inside, and the Lincoln lurches forward, away from the curb, racing back up the street toward the brand-new interstate.
5.
After a block or two, he glances in the rearview mirror and turns on the radio. Roy Orbison. “Who the hell was that, anyway?” he asks.
“You’ve never heard of Annabelle Dommerich? The cellist?”
He whistles. “No kidding. How do you know her?”
“We met in Palm Beach.”
He glances again in the mirror. “She’s a very attractive woman. Married?”
“I don’t think you’re her type.”
“They all say that at first.”
She looks out the window. The town still looks asleep. Each block blurs past her eyes, doors closed, sidewalks empty. Maybe it’s the drizzle, which has begun again, pattering against the windshield. He turns on the wipers. Swish, swish, into the dull drone of the engine, the rattle of rain.
Along the Infinite Sea Page 37