Margot: A Novel (3 page)

skinny black mustache who makes Joshua grimace whenever
01
he has to go up against him in court.
02
“Mr. Katz is well,” I tell Joshua. “Getting fatter by the day.”
03
Joshua was the one who found him, right after I started
04
work here. Katze was gaunt, crying in the back alley near the
05
lot where Joshua parks his car. Joshua kept him for a month
06
until he felt bad about leaving him all the time to go back and
07
forth to Margate, and that was when I volunteered to take him
08
home.
09
“I’ll have to stop by to visit him sometime,” Joshua says now.
10
I nod. He is always saying that, though he has never once
11
actually stopped by to visit.
12
13
14
I am still feeling warm from my conversation with Joshua
15
when Shelby breezes in at five past nine, plunking her satchel
16
down on her desk with a thud. “Well,” she says, without even
17
taking a breath. “The movie was fabulous. Of course. Millie
18
Perkins was to die for. Absolutely perfect for the role, if you
19
ask me.”
20
“Who?” I ask, looking up from my typing. But the warmth,
21
it is already gone, and for a moment I am chilled, even in my
22
sweater.
23
“You do know who I’m talking about, don’t you, Margie?”
24
I shake my head. “All work and no play. Very dull.”
25
“Who did she play?” I ask, my curiosity suddenly getting
26
the better of me. Though as soon as the words are out of my
27
mouth, I want to take them back.
S28
N29

01
“Who did she play?” Shelby laughs. “Anne Frank herself,
02
of course. I read an interview with her in
McCall’s
last month,
03
and the darling girl—she was a model, didn’t even want to be
04
an actress, but she was so touched by Anne’s story she took it
05
on. And she was just fabulous. To see her and Peter . . . I
06
nearly died I was crying so hard.”
07
My stomach clenches at the sound his name, in her voice.
08
She is saying it wrong, of course. Not P
ee
ter, P
ay
ter.
09
“I’m telling you, Margie, you really missed out.”
10
“I’m sure,” I murmur. And Shelby looks at me and frowns
11
as if she’s caught on to something.
12
My lying is a second skin by now, so easy to forget it’s
13
there, so I don’t always remember that lying is actually an art,
14
and those who aren’t meticulous about it are easily exposed.
15
I look up and Shelby is still frowning. “It’s way too hot in
16
here for that sweater, Margie.” Today I am in a black sweater
17
over a pale pink top and a high-waisted gray skirt.
18
“I’m rather comfortable,” I say, but when she finally sits
19
down at her desk and begins her typing, I lower my head and
20
wipe carefully at the beads of sweat on my brow with a hand
21
kerchief.
22
23
24
25
26
27
28S
29N
01
02
03
Chapter Four
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
The rest of the day passes without incident, and the
14
second the clock by the elevator chimes 5 p.m., Shelby stops
15
her typing—maybe midsentence—turns to me, and says, “I’m
16
meeting Peggy for dinner. Want to come?”
17
Peggy is Shelby’s sister, and not just her sister, but her
18
twin. They are fraternal twins, though, so they look surpris
19
ingly different. Peggy is tall and brown-haired, while Shelby
20
is petite and blond. Peggy works as a nurse at the University
21
of Pennsylvania Hospital, and mostly she must work odd
22
hours and is not free to meet Shelby for dinner.
23
“I don’t want to intrude,” I say, though I have been to din
24
ner with Shelby and Peggy many times in the last three years.
25
Peggy is calmer than Shelby, and I imagine if I’d known them
26
both together, Peggy and I would be more natural friends.
27
I glance through the glass window by Joshua’s office, and
S28
I see he is still working hard, his head bent over at his desk.
N29
01
Lately, I have been staying late, just in case Joshua might
02
walk out of his office after everyone else has left and ask me
03
if I would like to catch dinner, or a drink, as he did once
04
before, in January, on the day Alaska became the forty-ninth
05
state. “Do you know what we should celebrate tonight?” he’d
06
said to me with a smile that nearly tumbled me out of my
07
secretary’s chair when he walked out of his office after six
08
that night.
09
“I don’t know. What should we celebrate?” I’d murmured,
10
feeling warm and stunned, and thus completely missing the
11
joke.
12
“Juneau,” he said, laughing. “The capital of Alaska.”
13
“Oh.” I’d felt my cheeks turning red at my stupidity.
14
“I bet Ike’s already back in Gettysburg toasting his new
15
state. Or Mamie probably is anyway.” He laughed again, and
16
this time I got the joke, as Shelby was always telling me things
17
she read about Mamie Eisenhower having a problem with
18
drinking.
19
I laughed, and he turned his head to the side and looked
20
at me. I am medium height and too thin. My dark brown hair
21
tumbles past my pale cheeks, nearly to my shoulders, and I
22
wear round glasses that hide my leather-colored eyes. I dress
23
plainly, in conservative dresses and sweaters, the way any
24
good secretary would. But the way Joshua was looking at me
25
then, it made me wonder if he was seeing something else in
26
me, something more than a secretary. It was just a moment,
27
and then Ezra stormed out of his office, yelling at Joshua
28S
about something. Still, it is a moment I want to get back to,
29N
and so I often try to wait him out.
“Come on,” Shelby is saying now. She pokes my forearm
01
with her finger, hard enough so it hurts a little, even through
02
the sweater. “It’ll be fun. I promise. And Peggy thinks you’re
03
swell. She’d rather have dinner with you than me anyway.” She
04
laughs. And this time her laugh falls over me, like a stream.
05
I think about it for a moment, and I wonder if Shelby is
06
finished talking about the movie. I’ve noticed Americans,
07
Shelby included, have the ability to focus on something for
08
only a little while, and then they move on to something else,
09
so I am hopeful that the time has already passed for this. To
10
Shelby, it is just a movie, after all. It is not real life.
11
I glance again through the window in Joshua’s office. But
12
I
want
to go eat with Shelby and Peggy. So I stand up and
13
gather my things and follow Shelby to elevator.
14
15
16
Shelby and I walk down the city block, arms linked, our shad
17
ows stretching against the reflection of the office buildings
18
and the soon-setting sun. We head toward Casteel’s Diner, a
19
short silvery building with wide square windows and a neon
20
red sign, just down South Seventeenth Street. We walk
21
inside, and it is loud and smells of grilled hamburger. It is
22
crowded at this hour with men in suits and women in their
23
work dresses, and the sound of something fast that I don’t
24
recognize pours from the jukebox. I spot Peggy still dressed
25
in her starched white uniform, sitting in a red leather booth
26
by one of the large windows, sipping on what looks like a tall
27
chocolate malt. When she sees us, she stands up, waves, and
S28
then reaches for her sister.
N29
01
She and Shelby, they hug, and then they kiss each other
02
quickly on the cheek. I stand back, and suddenly my heart
03
feels like it’s bleeding out in my chest. When I see them
04
together, the way they look when they hold on to each other,
05
I remember again that something is missing from me, some
06
thing that feels like the phantom weight of a stolen limb or
07
internal organ, something so grossly essential that I’m not
08
quite sure how I remember to keep breathing all the time
09
without it.
10
I close my eyes, and I can still remember the feel of my
11
sister’s hip, resting against mine as we lay next to each other
12
on her small bed, both writing in our diaries, our pens scrawl
13
ing across the pages, nearly in unison.
14
My sister would sometimes put her diary down on her
15
chest, put her head on my shoulder, and close her eyes. “You’ll
16
wake me, if anything exciting happens?” she’d whisper in my
17
ear. Then she’d fall asleep, and I’d lie there, wide-awake, lis
18
tening to the soft sounds of her breathing, her chest hum
19
ming slowly as it moved up and down. She seemed so
20
peaceful asleep, as if she was just back in her bed at home on
21
the Merwedeplein, off in some distant dreamland where she
22
forgot where and who we were. I always watched the door
23
when she was sleeping, listening closely for even the softest of
24
movements. I did not want her to be pulled out of her dream
25
land by the Green Police. I wanted to protect her. Which
26
makes what happened, what I did, at the very end, feel even
27
worse.
28S
“Margie.” I look up at the sound of Shelby’s light voice.
29N

Shelby and Peggy are both sitting there, next to each other
01
now in the red booth, shoulders touching, staring at me. Two
02
different sets of eyes, but really they could be one. Everything
03
else about Shelby and Peggy is so different except for their
04
eyes, rich brown, the color of milk chocolate.
05
“Come on,” Peggy says to me. “Have a seat.”
06
I slide across from them and pick up a thick plastic menu,
07
but I do not actually read it. Instead, I listen to the sounds of
08
their voices: back and forth and back and forth, like Ping
09
Pong. Are they arguing or are they chatting? It’s hard to tell.
10
Their words move so fast, thick with much emotion. I want to
11
reach my hand out and capture them, to hold on to them and
12
take them home with me to my apartment, to keep them there
13
with me at night, when it is hard to find sleep. But Shelby and
14
her sister, their words are like bubbles. Even if I could grab on
15
to them, just for a moment, they would pop and disappear.
16
Can I read your diary?
I hear my sister’s voice in my head.
17
She asked me that once, as we lay there together, hip to hip.
18
Her voice was still light then, much the way Shelby’s is now.
19
If I can read yours,
I told her, and then we switched books.
20
Because why not? There was no privacy anymore. And
21
besides, maybe I’d wanted her to know exactly how I felt
22
about Peter, so I could claim him for my own. Not that that
23
was the way things ever worked between us.
24
“Peg,” I hear Margie saying now. “You must go see the
25
movie. P
ee
ter is so dreamy.”
26
Oh, the movie.
Clearly, I have underestimated her; Shelby
27
is not done talking about it.
S28
N29