Margot: A Novel (17 page)

11
tions. In another way, I am very ready to leave by dessert.
12
Quiet is my solace. And I am relieved when Ilsa begins to
13
clear the dishes and Bertram grabs his hat.
14
“Oh,” Ilsa says, wiping her hands on her blue-checkered
15
apron as I am walking toward the front door. “I almost forgot.
16
I was going to tell you that Bertie and I are planning a trip to
17
Germany for some time next year.” I nod, though I do not like
18
at all where this is going. “I would like to visit Eduard and
19
show Bertie the city of my birth,” she says.
20
“But Eduard is dead,” I say. He died of cancer, just before I
21
began working at the law firm three years ago. Ilsa did not go
22
to the funeral then because it was too far, too hard to get there.
23
And I, well, I could never go back. Not even for Eduard.
24
She nods. “But I would like to visit his grave. And it is get
25
ting cheaper and easier to travel overseas now. We could all
26
take an airplane. It would be a grand adventure.” She smiles
27
at me, revealing her tiny white teeth.
28S
“I don’t think so,” I say.
29N
She leans in and kisses my cheek. “Think about it,” she
whispers in my ear. “Sometimes you can go home again, you
01
know. The war has been over for many years, my dear.” She
02
holds on to me tightly, gives my shoulder one last squeeze,
03
and then, at last, she lets me go.
04
05
06
As Bertram drives me back to my apartment in silence, I find
07
myself staring at the darkness out the car window, imagining
08
home again, and not even Frankfurt, but the Prinsengracht.
09
There is a reason why I could not go home again. Why I did
10
not. Why I do not, even now. It is the same reason why I can
11
not commit any words to paper to send to my father. Ilsa
12
would never understand it, even if I tried to tell her. But then,
13
she knows nothing of my sister. And perhaps, even if she did,
14
she would not understand, with her purely American sensi
15
bilities. But there is another reason why I haven’t told her the
16
entire truth. If I am being honest with myself, I know it is
17
because I fear if she knows it, all of it, she will hate me.
18
“Margie,” Bertram says with a nod when he pulls up by the
19
sidewalk on Ludlow Street.
20
“Thank you for the ride,” I tell him. “And please thank Ilsa
21
again for the dinner.” He nods, opens his mouth as if to speak,
22
then closes it again.
23
“What is it?” I ask him.
24
He stares at me, hesitates for a moment, and then says,
25
“You know, if you should ever need anything, Ilsa and I, we
26
always want to help you . . .” His voice trails off, as if, sud
27
denly, he is out of words again.
S28
“Yes,” I say. “Of course. Thank you, Bertram.”
N29
01
He nods and pats my shoulder in what is meant to be a
02
sweet gesture, but comes off awkward instead. I smile at him
03
and get out of the car, but for a moment, as I walk back into
04
my apartment building, I wonder if Ilsa and Bertram are
05
right. If, by myself, in this city, working on Joshua’s case, hid
06
ing, hiding, hiding, if by doing all this, I am somehow teeter
07
ing on the brink of something terrible.
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28S
29N
01
02
03
Ch
apter
Tw
ent
y-on
e
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
It takes me a long time to fall asleep after I return
14
home from Ilsa and Bertram’s. I lie there for hours in the
15
darkness, thinking about Frankfurt, wondering if by now it
16
has been put back together, the way it once was, before the
17
war, and what Ilsa might see where I last saw broken glass
18
and red swastikas. Then my thoughts turn to my father in
19
Switzerland, and I wonder if he has as much trouble sleeping
20
at night as I do. Do so many terrible memories still haunt
21
him, or does he instead fall into an easy sleep brought on by
22
thoughts of everybody reading the book? Perhaps his dreams
23
are pleasant, bursting with the knowledge that because of
24
him, the entire world knows my sister, loves her. Or thinks
25
they do.
But what of me?
I wonder now. Does he ever still
26
think of me, of the diary I kept? The life I once lived?
27
When I finally do fall asleep, my night is filled with black
S28
and tumultuous dreams. In them, I replay a memory, the way
N29
01
I so often do. This time, I am lying on the parched earth. I
02
am a sack of flesh and brittle bones in German-occupied
03
Poland, not too far from the train tracks. I am too tired to run
04
any longer; I expect to die, and I welcome it. And then, there
05
is a hand on my shoulder.
06
I squint and in my eyes there are only shadows, a nun’s
07
coif, the sounds of German. But not Nazi German; her Ger
08
man has a softness that reminds me of when I was little girl.
09
“Steh auf, komm schnell.” Get up, come quickly.
She’s whis
10
pering, in my ear. Or maybe she is shouting. My ears hurt and
11
ring, and it is so hard to hear.
“Komm mit mir bevor sie dich
12
finden.” Come with me before they find you.
13
I am so thirsty, I can’t move my mouth to speak or barely
14
even breathe.
15
She holds on to my arm, dragging me along, as if I am a
16
sack of potatoes. My bare feet scrape against the ground, but
17
I do not feel them being scratched. I feel nothing.
18
Her black Beetle is parked off to the side of the road, and
19
she opens the door and pushes the front seat forward, reveal
20
ing the tiniest of spaces in the back. Her hands find my back
21
and push me inside the car.
“Runter, niedrige.” Get down, low.
22
I crouch into a ball on the floor of the backseat.
23
Only then can I get my lips to move.
“Meine schwester?”
I
24
whisper.
My sister?
25
“Ja,”
the nun says.
26
“Meine schwester?”
I whisper again.
27
“Ich bin Schwester Brigitta,”
the nun says
. I am Sister Bri-
28S
gitta
. She reaches down to touch my forearm, a bone with
29N

indelible ink, and then she whispers in my ear.
“Ich werde dir
01
nichts tun, Kind.”
02
I will not harm you, child.
03
04
05
I wake up to the sound of a clock ringing, and I am sweating,
06
German words echoing in my head:
Meine schwester? Meine
07
schwester?
08
That morning was the closest I ever came to telling Bri
09
gitta about my sister and what happened to the two of us just
10
before she found me that day. Brigitta hid me in the nunnery
11
until the end of the war, and then let me stay for a while after
12
I searched the Red Cross lists for my family . . . for Peter. But
13
even at the very end, when she dropped me at Eduard’s in
14
Frankfurt, I did not tell her the truth.
15
I hear the sound again, and I wonder if I am still dream
16
ing. It sounds like the alarm clock in Eduard’s guest room,
17
and suddenly I see his face. After the war, when Brigitta
18
dropped me on his doorstep, his face was warm and ebullient,
19
only now, in my half sleep, I see it shriveled from the effects
20
of his cancer, and instead, he is Eduard the skeleton.
21
I open my eyes, and I realize it is not a clock ringing at all,
22
but the telephone in my apartment.
The telephone.
And it is
23
still ringing. Over and over again. The clock on my nightstand
24
reads 5:01 a.m.
25
I get out of bed, put on my slippers, and fumble in the
26
darkness to the other side of the room where the phone sits,
27
on the counter by the icebox. “Hello.” I pick up, expecting
S28
N29

01
Ilsa’s voice, saying, maybe, she is still worrying about me, or
02
plotting to take me home with her, even in her dreams.
03
“Hello,” a voice says. It is a man’s voice. And for a moment
04
I think,
Peter! I have found him, and he has found me. He
05
knows about the movie too.
Then the voice says, “I call num
06
ber, from advertisement.” He speaks in broken English, in a
07
voice I do not recognize, and I realize he is not Peter at all but
08
a stranger who has gotten my number from Joshua’s ad.
09
“Now?” I say, and I sigh.
10
“Advertisement say between five and six only.”
11
This man is clearly confused, as am I, in my half-sleep
12
state. Though it is, in fact, between five and six. Joshua must
13
not have specified p.m. Americans would assume this to be
14
the case, but for a new immigrant, a factory worker, a man
15
who is used to early mornings, perhaps the implication is lost.
16
“Yes,” I finally say. “I guess it does.”
17
“Advertisement say, Jews who work for Robertson’s unite
18
against anti-Semitism,” the man says.
19
“Yes.” I nod, and Ilsa’s words echo in my head.
Do not talk
20
to any men.
I push the warning aside. There is no harm in
21
merely talking to anyone, and Joshua has asked me for this
22
much.
23
“You are Jew?” the man asks me.
24
I draw my breath in, because no one has ever asked me
25
this, so directly, in my American life. “No,” I finally lie, and I
26
explain to him about Joshua and Bryda Korzynski and the
27
lawsuit.
28S
“Group litigation?” The words sound funny in his voice, as
29N
if he’s talking about a child’s game.
“Yes,” I tell him, trying to make my voice sound reassuring.
01
But it is hard, when you are half asleep, and when you are
02
sweating because you sense that even through the phone, this
03
man, like Bryda Korzynski, is enough like you to recognize
04
your secret.
05
“I don’t know,” he finally says. “I thought I just meet other
06
people. Like me. America is lonely place, no?”
07
“Yes,” I say, and suddenly I feel I am biting back tears.
08
“It is.”
09
10
11
A few hours later, though my hands are moving on the type
12
writer, I can feel the particular slant of Shelby’s eyes on my
13
face. Finally, I stop typing and look up.
14
“Okay,” she says. “Spill, Margie.”
15
“What have I spilled?” I ask her, shaking my head, not
16
understanding. My brain still falls underneath a heavy fog of
17
sleeplessness, the weight of my half dream/half memory of
18
Brigitta. Then there is the sound of Ilsa’s voice last night, still
19
echoing in my head, telling me that I can go home again. And
20
the lonely voice from the phone this morning. “Gustav Gross
21
man,” he told me, when I pressed him to give me his informa
22
tion for Joshua.
23
“What is going on, with you and . . . ?” Shelby nods her
24
head meaningfully in the direction of Joshua’s office.
25
“Nothing,” I say, putting on my best secret keeper’s face,
26
which is to say, keeping my expression entirely blank. A skill
27
I learned specifically in the camp: a skill of survival. But then
S28
I remember it is Friday today, and Joshua had said we would
N29
01
meet again at the end of the week, a thought that fills me
02
with happiness. “Nothing is going on,” I repeat, keeping my
03
voice calm, for Shelby’s sake.
04
“He’s been staring at you,” she whispers. “Through the
05
window, all morning.”
06
I feel my cheeks turning warm at the thought of Joshua
07
watching me, the way I have so often watched him. What
08
does he see now when he looks at me? Does he see the tired,
09
too-thin woman with the thick brown curls, the tortoiseshell
10
circle glasses, the sweater? Or does he see something differ
11
ent, something else, something no one has seen except for
12
Peter? I put my hand to my face, as if to wipe away the embar
13
rassment. “You must be mistaken,” I say.
14
“Nope,” she says. “Oh . . . don’t look now, but here comes
15
Papa and he doesn’t look happy.”
16
I pound my fingers noisily against the keys and see
17
Ezra, stomping past us, out of the corner of my eye. Can he
18
know? About the advertisement? If he does, surely he will fire
19
me. He is Joshua’s boss, which makes him my boss too. My
20
heart explodes against the walls of my chest, and I draw in
21
my breath.
22
I hear their angry voices slip through the paper-thin walls.
23
I hear some of the words. “Penny” . . . “Margate” . . . and
24
“good son.”
25
Shelby picks up the phone but doesn’t talk, and casts her
26
eyes in my direction, brows raised.
27
After a few minutes they both walk out, Joshua trailing
28S
behind Ezra, head down as if he is a wounded animal or a
29N
little boy who’s just been scolded. He stops in front of my desk
for a moment, tips his hat. “Monday,” he says to me. The word
01
sounds like a promise, and I nod, understanding, that on
02
Monday we will convene again to discuss our secret case.
03
“Have a nice weekend,” I say to him.
04
He smiles at me, and then he runs to catch up with his
05
father on the elevator.
06
“Somebody’s in trouble,” Shelby says to me in a singsong
07
voice, after the elevator doors shut. She shakes her head.
08
“Now, that Penny, she’s a girl I wouldn’t mess with.”
09
“What do you mean?” I ask.
10
“Clearly she’s got her hooks in Joshua, and she is used to
11
getting what she wants.”
12
“I don’t think so,” I say.
13
“Maybe you, Margie, are a sweet little fling, but Penny,
14
she’s the girl a guy like Joshua marries.”
15
“I am not Joshua’s fling,” I say, exasperation leaking into
16
my voice.
17
“I’m just saying, Margie. Be careful. I don’t want you to get
18
hurt.”
19
Why is everyone always telling me this, as if I am a deli
20
cate girl, made of glass? I wrap my sweater tighter around
21
myself, holding on to my left forearm with my right hand,
22
tightly, tight enough so my arm begins to hurt.
23
24
25
26
27
S28
N29
01
02
03
04
Ch
apter
Twent
y-t
wo
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
The second the big clock by the elevator chimes 3 p.m.,
15
Shelby switches off her radio, stands, and begins gathering
16
her things. “Let’s get a drink,” she says. “And today, I’m not
17
taking no for an answer, Margie.”
18
“Maybe I wasn’t going to say no,” I tell her, and I stand and
19
gather my own things, relieved for once to get out of the office
20
early. I remember what Joshua said about feeling suffocated
21
here, and right now I can understand that feeling.
22
Ron is still working, so it is only Shelby and I who walk
23
across the street and take a seat at a table at Sullivan’s Bar. This
24
is the place I’ve been to with Shelby before, where the dance
25
floor is checkered, and where the office girls, like us, sometimes
26
hike up their skirts a little too far to dance after they’ve drunk
27
a little too much. Not me, though sometimes I wonder what it
28S
might feel like to let yourself go like that, to be so free.
29N