Beatriz Williams - Along the Infinite Sea - Love, friendship and heartbreak, the perfect summer read

“I’ve heard that one before.”

Annabelle laughs. “I expect you have, you naughty girl.”

Pepper is just awake enough to appreciate the lack of censure in Annabelle’s voice. Well, she is European, isn’t she? She has that welcome dollop of joie-de-whatever, that je ne sais no evil. She’s not one to judge. Maybe that’s why Pepper spilled her guts back there, in the middle of the road, like a cadaver under dissection. Or maybe it was the moon, or the goddamned ocean, or the baby and the hormones and the nicotine starvation. Whatever it was, Pepper hopes to God she won’t regret all this over breakfast.

“We bought the place in 1941,” Annabelle was saying, as they passed through the darkened rooms. “It was built in the twenties, during the big land rush. We got it for a song. It was in total disrepair, not even properly finished, but the bones were good, and there was plenty of room for the children, and it was all by itself, no nosy neighbors. There was something rather authentic about it, which is a difficult thing to find in Florida.”

“I’ll say.”

“I mean, except me, of course!” Annabelle’s midnight exuberance is almost certifiable. Pepper wants to throttle her. Of course, six months ago, Pepper could midnight with the best of them. Six months ago, midnight was just the beginning. That was how she got into this mess, wasn’t it? Too much goddamned midnight, and now here she was, stumbling through an old house in the middle of Florida, knocked up and knocked out.

A latch clicks, a door swooshes open, and now they’re in a courtyard, full of fresh air and lemon trees. Annabelle turns to the wall and switches on a light. Pepper squints.

“Just over here, honey,” says Annabelle.

Pepper follows. “I don’t mean to be pushy, but does this guest cottage of yours happen to have a working lavatory?”

Annabelle claps a hand to her cheek. “Oh, my goodness! What an idiot I am! It’s been so long since I had babies. Come along. My dear, you should have said something. I didn’t realize you were so polite.”

“I’m not, I assure you. I just didn’t happen to spot any flowerpots along the way.”

The grass is short and damp. They’ve moved beyond the circle of light from the house. Pepper sees a rectangular shadow ahead and hopes to God it’s the cottage, and nobody’s waiting inside. Peace and quiet, that’s all she needs. Peace and quiet and a toilet.

A step ahead, Annabelle opens the door and steps aside for Pepper to enter first. The smell of soap and fresh linen rushes around her.

“Home sweet home. The bathroom’s on the right.”

When Pepper emerges from the bathroom ten minutes later, Annabelle is standing by the window, looking into the night. From the side, her face looks a little more fragile than Pepper remembers, and she thinks that maybe Annabelle is right, that she isn’t really beautiful. The nose is too long. The chin too sharp. The head itself is out of proportion, too large on her skinny long neck, like a Tootsie Pop.

Then she turns, and Pepper forgets her faults.

“All set?”

“Yes. Thanks for the nightgown and toothpaste. I’m beginning to think you had this all planned out.”

“Maybe I did.” Annabelle smiles. “Does that make you nervous?”

Pepper yawns. “Nothing’s going to make me nervous right now.”

“All right. Sleep in as long as you like. I’ll have coffee and breakfast waiting in the main house, whenever you’re up. Is there anything you need?”

“No, thanks.” Pepper hesitates. Gratitude isn’t her natural attitude, but then you didn’t spend your life dangling elegantly from the pages of the Social Register without learning how to keep your legs crossed and your hostess well buttered. “Thanks awfully for your hospitality,” she adds, all Fifth Avenue drawl, emphasis on the awful .

“Oh, not at all. I’m happy I could help.”

Pepper’s radar ears detect a note of wistfulness. She sinks on the bed, bracing her arms on either side of her heavy belly, and says, “Helped me? Kidnapped is more like it.”

“Miss Pepper Schuyler,” Annabelle says, shaking her head, “why on this great good earth are you so suspicious? What have they done to you?”

“A better question, Mrs. Annabelle Dommerich, is why you care.”

An exasperated line appears between Annabelle’s eyebrows. She marches to the bed, drops down next to Pepper, and snatches her hand. Her hand! As if Annabelle is the mother bear and Pepper is Goldilocks or something. “Now, look here,” she actually says, just like a mother bear, “you are safe here, do you hear me? Nobody’s going to call you or make demands on you or—God knows, whatever it is you’re afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid—”

“You’re just going to sit here and grow your baby and think about what you want to do with yourself, is that clear? You’re going to relax, for God’s sake.”

“Hide, you mean.”

“Yes, hide. If that’s what you want to call it. There’s a doctor in town, if you need to keep up with any appointments. The housekeeper can drive you. You can telephone your parents and your sisters. You can telephone that horse’s ass who put you in this condition, and tell him he can go to the devil.”

Pepper cracks out a whiplash of laughter. “Go to the devil! That’s a good one. I can just picture him, hanging up the phone and trotting off obediently into the fire and brimstone, just because Pepper Schuyler told him to. Do you have any idea who his friends are? Do you have any idea who owes him a favor or two?”

“He’s no match for you . Trust me. You hold the cards, darling. You hold the ace. Don’t let those bastards convince you otherwise.”

Pepper stares at the mama-bear hand covering her own. The nails are short and well trimmed, the skin smooth and ribbed gently with veins the color of the ocean. Annabelle doesn’t use lacquer.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Pepper says. “Why do you care?”

Annabelle sighs and heads for the door. She pauses with her hand right there on the knob. Dramatic effect. Who knew she had it in her?

“All right, Pepper. Why do I care? I care because I stood in your shoes twenty-nine years ago, and God knows I could have used a little decent advice. Someone to keep me from making so many goddamned mistakes.”

A week passed. Charles had left with his friends before I returned; I was now wise enough to suspect why. Herr von Kleist packed up his few trunks and roared away in his beautiful Mercedes Roadster later that afternoon. My father—as always—rose late, retired late, and reserved nearly all of his time for his remaining guests. I had little to do except wander the garden and the beaches, to practice my cello for hours, to walk sometimes into the village, to examine the contents of my memory for signposts to my future.

On the seventh day of my isolation, I woke up under the settled conviction that I would move to Paris, to Montparnasse, and teach the cello while I found a master under whom to study. It seemed a natural place for me. I was both French and American, and I had read about how the streets and cafés around the boulevard du Montparnasse rattled with Americans seeking art and life and meaning and cheap accommodation. If a certain handsome young German Jew were then to turn up on my stoop one day, perhaps requiring immediate medical assistance, why, I would take him in with cheerful surprise. I would find a way to weave him into the hectic fabric of my happiness.

I was not going to wait any longer for my life to start. I was going to start my life on my own.