Margot: A Novel (2 page)

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Street, I sit on the couch for a little while, letting Katze, my
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overweight orange tabby, knead his claws into the threads of
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my blue sweater, then my plaid skirt. He cannot settle himself,
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my Katze. He can never decide exactly where he wants to sit,
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nor can he bring himself to chase the mice I sometimes hear
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scurrying in the walls. But I do not hold this against him. I
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cannot seem to settle myself now either, and I tap my pointy
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blue pump in an uneasy rhythm against the dark hardwood
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floorboards.
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Friday nights, I always light a candle at sundown and say
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a silent prayer.
Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha’olam
. . .
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Words repeat themselves in my brain, even though Margie
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Franklin, she is a Gentile. My Friday prayer, it is not religion,
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it’s ritual.
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But now it is not quite dusk yet, and the words repeating
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themselves in my brain, just after 4
p.m., are Shelby’s: The
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Diary of Anne Frank
is much too sad for that,
she’d said
.
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I push Katze aside and begin pacing across the room. It is
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tiny enough that I take only ten steps before I have to turn
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around and start all over again. Back and forth and back and
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forth.
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Much too sad.
I am certain Shelby cannot even fathom
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that kind of sad. Shelby was born in the United States, a
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Christian, and during the war she and her sister lived with
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their parents in a two-bedroom apartment that she describes
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as small. “There were rations,” she told me once. “We didn’t

always have enough to eat. My shoes wore through, straight
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to the soles.”
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When she told me these things, I’d nodded, as if I was
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sympathetic to her plight. Then I bit my tongue to keep it
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from moving, from saying all the things I often think about
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my own time during the war, but never would dare utter out
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loud to Shelby.
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You’ve at least read the book by now, haven’t you?
She’d
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actually admonished me, standing there on Market Street.
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I stop pacing for a moment by my bed, where my copy of
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the book sits atop the small shelf above my mattress. Its
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bright orange cover is tattered, the pages worn from too much
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use.
No,
I would tell Shelby, if she ever pressed me for an
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answer.
I haven’t read it. I don’t want to.
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And yet that, like so much else, would be a lie, as I know
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the words contained within the diary by heart.
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I hold the book in my hand now, flipping through its dog
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eared pages. My eyes skim through the mentions of Peter’s
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name.
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When I first came to America, before I discovered the
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book, I would often call the operator and ask for Peter, but it
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has been a long while since I have done that now. Sometimes,
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though, I still dream of walking into him on the street, by
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chance. He will look different, with shorter hair, and he will
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be older, of course, his body thicker, more of a man’s, like
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Joshua’s. But I will recognize him all the same—his face, or
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his eyes, blue and clear as the sea.
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We promised each other we’d come here, when the war
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ended, or if we escaped. Peter picked the city of Philadelphia
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out of his world atlas.
The City of Brotherly Love,
he told me.
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Surely, Jews cannot be in hiding there.
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Peter is dead,
I remind myself now.
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But then, so am I.
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I put the book back on the shelf, and I reach for the phone
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on my small kitchen counter. I turn the dial to 0, but I wait a
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moment, before letting my finger go.
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“Operator,” a woman’s voice says on the other end.
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I open my mouth to ask for him.
Peter Pelt,
I want to tell
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the operator.
I need to talk to Peter Pelt
.
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There is a movie, Peter. A movie, for goodness’ sake!
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But it has been so long since I have called and asked for
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him under the new name we agreed on, and now I cannot
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bring myself to make a sound.
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I look out the small square window behind my couch; it is
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nearly dark now.
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I hang up the phone and reach underneath my kitchen
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counter for my Shabbat candle.
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Chapter Three
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The law office of Rosenstein, Greenberg and Mos
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cowitz is on the seventh floor of a wide cement office building
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near the corners of Market and South Sixteenth streets in
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Center City, Philadelphia. It is close enough to walk to from
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my apartment, and also the courthouse, which makes it per
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fect both for the lawyers and for me.
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Monday morning I am one of the first people to arrive at
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the office, at least according to the elevator attendant, a small
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brown-skinned man named Henry, who I find to have sympa
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thetic brown eyes.
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“Anyone else here yet?” I ask him, hopeful.
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“Only Mr. Rosenstein,” he says. “The younger one.” I smile
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to myself as Henry ushers me through the elevator door. By
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Monday morning, both Shelby’s voice and my call to the oper
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ator have dimmed.
So there is a movie,
I told myself on the
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walk to work this morning.
So what? It will be no different
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from the book
. Then I reveled in the fact that today it is Mon
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day, and that means I will get to see Joshua again. That
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thought now turns my cheeks warm as I step off the elevator
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and walk into the large open center room of the law office.
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My metal desk sits face-to-face with Shelby’s in this center
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room, where all the lawyers’ secretaries have their desks. We
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are surrounded by the lawyers’ offices, which are behind
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closed doors all along the sides. Joshua’s office is just to the
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right of our desks, and Ezra’s office is the next one over. The
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other partners, Saul Greenberg and Jason Moscowitz, have
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offices on the other side of the room, closer to the elevator,
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but I suspect Ezra likes to be on this side so he can keep an
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eye on his son.
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Joshua’s office, like the others, has a small rectangular
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window by the door, and I watch him for a moment now,
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through the glass. He is sitting at his desk, studying some
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thing carefully. His forehead creases when he does this, as if
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concentration is either an art or a science. I can’t decide.
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Joshua looks up from his desk, catches my eye, and smiles at
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me. I smile back before I walk to the break room and brew
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some coffee. I pour Joshua a cup with two sugars the way he
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likes it, and then I tread carefully back to his office and rap
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lightly on the door.
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“Come in,” he says. His voice floats, in a way that told me,
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even the very first time I met him, that he has never known
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anything like I have. Joshua’s life in America has been
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charmed, I suspect, even when he was a teenager, during the
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war, with the rations. But I don’t hold this against him. “Good
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morning, Margie.” He smiles again. His smile is one of those
warm American smiles where nothing is held back, where joy
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is uncontained. I hand him the coffee, and he thanks me.
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“How was your weekend?” he asks.
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“It was fine, thank you,” I say, even though I spent most of
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it cooped up nervously in my apartment. Saturdays, I always
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still keep as a day of rest, though this particular one had not
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felt very restful. Sundays, I normally take my correspondence
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work to Fairmount Park to study by the banks of the Schuylkill
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River, though this Sunday I walked to the Reading Terminal
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Market and perused the fruit instead, knowing I would be
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unable to concentrate on my studies. Across the street I’d
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spotted the cinema I have gone to with Shelby before, and I
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saw it there, on the marquee, in hideously assaulting red let
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ters:
The Diary of Anne Frank.
I stared at the picture of the
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unfamiliar woman on the movie poster out front. I watched
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her face, her deep brown eyes, as if she too could stare back at
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me.
Look at you,
my sister said, laughing, in my head.
Living
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your American dream in a thick black sweater
. When I returned
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home, I thought about dialing the operator again. But some
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thing stopped me. Now I shake the thought away. “How was
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your weekend?” I ask Joshua.
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He shrugs. “I’ve had better.” Joshua and his father, Ezra,
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don’t always get along. I learned this on my third day of work,
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when I heard their raised voices coming through the paper
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thin walls of Joshua’s office. Their disagreements have
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become, over the past three years, a fairly regular occurrence.
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Shelby says Ezra used to be nicer before his wife, Joshua’s
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mother, died the year before they hired me. But this is some
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thing I would never ask Joshua about, though I feel a hole in
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the pit of my stomach for him, thinking about the empty
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space where his mother used to be. I wonder if she was the
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one who loved him better, the way it was with my mother and
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me. My sister was Father’s. I was Mother’s.
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But all I allow myself to say now is, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
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He shrugs again. He is so casual about his family squab
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bles, the way all the Americans I’ve met seem to be. Once
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Shelby got into a fight with her mother, and they didn’t speak
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for three months. Then, one weekend, they went out to lunch,
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and Shelby told me it was “water under the bridge.” From the
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sound of her voice I understood that she was no longer angry,
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but I did not understand the reference to water and bridges,
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or how she could let go of her anger, just like that.
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“Well.” I stand. “I should get to work.”
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“Margie.” He taps his fountain pen gently against his
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desk.
“How are your paralegal studies coming?”
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“Good,” I say, feeling guilty now about having ignored
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them this weekend. Next weekend I will do double, I promise
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myself. “Two more correspondence classes left.”
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“Great. I’ll talk to my father soon about finding a position
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for you when you’re done,” he says.
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I smile at him, and I stop at the doorway for a moment.
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He smiles back at me, his warm American smile again
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lighting up his face. “By the way, how’s Mr. Katz?” he asks.
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I laugh, the way I always do when he turns Katze, the
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orange tabby, into a Jewish-sounding man, most definitely a
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lawyer. It is doubly funny because there is a Mr. Katz who
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works in the district attorney’s office, a portly man with a
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