Margot: A Novel (4 page)

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Peggy laughs and shakes her head. “Only you would see
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that movie as a romance, Shel.”
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“That’s not true,” Shelby says, picking up her own thick
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plastic menu and hiding behind it with mock offense. “He’s
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dreamy. That’s a bona fide fact.” She lowers her menu and
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stares pointedly at me. “See,” she says, wagging her forefinger
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at me. “You should’ve come with me, Margie, so you could
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back me up on this.”
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“What makes him so dreamy?” I ask, and the sound of my
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own voice startles me, as if the question has popped out of
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my mouth, without my permission. Immediately, I want to
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take it back.
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“The way he hangs on to Anne and kisses her, just as
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they’re about to be ripped out of the annex . . .” She shakes
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her head. “You have to see it.”
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“That didn’t happen,” I say softly.
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“How do you know?” Shelby asks, and I realize I have said
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too much. I feel my brow breaking into a sweat, and I am ready
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to stand and run.
The way he hangs on to Anne and kisses her . . .
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“Of course, Margie’s right, Shel,” I hear Peggy saying,
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though her voice sounds very far away. “It was just a movie.
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Do you really think hiding from the Nazis was romantic?”
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“I don’t know,” Shelby says. “Maybe. All cooped up like
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that, with nowhere to go.”
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Peggy rolls her eyes in my direction, but I cast my gaze
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down, toward the table. My stomach turns, and I stare at the
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menu, as if I am trying very hard to decide what I should eat,
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though now I am no longer hungry in the least. I breathe
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deeply, fighting the urge to stand up and run out of the diner.
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For a few moments I concentrate on my breath, in and out
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and in and out, until I hear the conversation turn, and Peggy
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and Shelby start bickering over which sandwich to share for
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dinner.
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“Fine,” Shelby is saying now. “If you don’t want hot turkey
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then Margie will split with me instead, won’t you, Margie?” I
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look up and nod slowly, carefully.
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Peggy rolls her eyes again. “Everything is always so diffi
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cult with you, Shel.” But she says it lightly and with a smile,
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so I know she is teasing.
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Shelby elbows her sister and laughs. The sound of it now,
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once again, falling over me like a stream.
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Chapter Five
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Back in my apartment, later that evening, I lie on the
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blue couch with Katze and think about what Shelby said.
The
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way he held on to Anne at the very end, kissed her . . .
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That is ridiculous, not at all what happened. Not even close.
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I stare at the phone. I have not called to look for him, in so
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long. But now I wonder again, for maybe the millionth time:
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what is true and what is not? If the movie is filled with such
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outrageous stories like the one Shelby spoke of, well . . .
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I kept a diary before my sister even started hers, before the
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annex even. In 1941, I wrote about a boy named Johann, who
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had straw-colored hair and pale blue eyes and who lived
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around the block from us on the Merwedeplein. I wanted him
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to notice me so badly it made my stomach hurt.
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Once, before the annex, my sister had picked the diary up
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off my dressing stand and read it without asking me.
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“Who’s Johann?” she asked me.
“That’s private,” I told her.
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“You tell
Maria,
but you won’t tell me.” She put her hands
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on her hips, honestly offended, as if Maria were a real person
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whom I loved more than I loved her. Maria was just the name
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I called my diary, only further evidence of her snooping.
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“Johann is not a real person. He’s just a character,” I lied.
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“Oh.” Her eyes lit up then. “You’re telling stories.”
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I remind myself of this moment so often, every time I look
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through the book. Every time I read the words she has written
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about Peter. And again now, having heard Shelby’s descrip
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tion of the movie.
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You’re telling stories.
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Now I stand up and reach for the phone on my kitchen
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counter; I pull the dial to 0 again, and this time, I quickly let
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it go before I lose my nerve
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“Operator,” the woman’s voice says.
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“I need the address and number for a Peter Pelt, Philadel
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phia,” I tell her. The words shake in my throat.
Peter Pelt.
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That was the name he told me he would go by, in Philadel
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phia.
I will no longer be a Jew,
he’d whispered to me as we
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were lying on the divan in his room, more than once.
I will
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leave everything behind. Hiding who you are, it’ll be so much
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easier than hiding where you are.
He would be Peter Pelt, and
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I would be Margie Franklin. We would come to Philadelphia,
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and we would be Gentiles together, safe together.
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“Just a moment,” the operator says now.
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I hold my breath and close my eyes. According to the Red
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Cross, Peter died in 1945, after a death march to Mauthausen.
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But also, my sister and I both died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen.
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“Miss.” The operator comes back, and I am waiting for her
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to say it again: that he doesn’t exist.
Peter van Pels died, near
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Mauthausen, fifteen years ago, almost
. “Here you go,” she says
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instead. “I’ve got a P. Pelt, at 2217 Olney Avenue, Apartment
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4A . . .” She is still talking, but my ears buzz so loud, I almost
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cannot understand what she is saying.
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I have not called to ask for him for so long. How long has
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this listing been there?
Peter died, near Mauthausen.
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After the war, we will go to Philadelphia,
he told me, so
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many times.
We will find each other in the City of Brotherly
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Love.
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But Peter is dead.
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Or he isn’t.
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I can never be entirely sure what is real and what is not.
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Chapter Six
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The next morning at work, I sit at my desk and hold
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tight to the yellow piece of paper on which I wrote down P. Pelt’s
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information. I stare at it so hard that the letters swim before my
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eyes, becoming something unreal. I force my eyes away, and
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then they catch on something else. There, through the glass,
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working at his desk, is Joshua. He concentrates hard, reading
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something carefully, so from this angle I can see only the arch
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of his broad shoulders and the top of his chestnut curls. I won
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der how late he stayed last night, and if I had stayed too, if he
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would’ve walked out of his office and invited me for a drink
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again. But it feels wrong to imagine that now, and I quickly look
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away. I finger the yellow paper between my hands until it starts
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to crumble.
P
could mean a lot of things, I tell myself: Paul,
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Patrick, Peter.
Peter Pelt.
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Shelby steps off the elevator, and I hastily fold the yellow
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paper up into the smallest of squares and tuck it in the bot
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tom of my satchel before she can ask me about it.
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But when she reaches her desk, I see her eyes are red and
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puffy, and she does not seem to notice what I am or am not
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doing in the least, which is not at all like her.
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“Everything okay?” I whisper across the desks. She nods,
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then shakes her head. “Do you want to talk about it?” She
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opens her mouth, then closes it again, and I guess that what
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ever happened has something to do with Ron, as he seems to
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be the only thing that can shake Shelby’s normally happy dis
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position. It occurs to me that whatever it is, it might have
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taken her mind off her new favorite topic, the movie, and I
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feel a little guilty for feeling relieved. Though Shelby some
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times pesters me, I don’t ever want her to get hurt.
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“Margie.” Joshua buzzes me through the intercom, and
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Shelby sits down at her desk and pulls the beige cover off her
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typewriter.
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“Yes, Mr. Rosenstein,” I say.
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“I’m leaving for court in five minutes. Can you get my Zim
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merman files ready?”
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“Of course,” I say. I look to Shelby, who shrugs, and then
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Joshua bursts out of his office, dressed to the nines in a navy
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blue three-piece suit. His body hums with nervous energy,
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the way it always seems to before court, and I notice, as he
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straightens his striped tie and reaches for his hat off the rack,
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that his hands shake just a little bit.
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“Good luck,” I say, handing him the stack of files he’d
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asked for. Zimmerman, I remember, is a man who’d embezzled
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money from the Franklin, a Jewish social organization where
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he’d once been treasurer.
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Joshua nods and smiles at me, a smile tinged with ner
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vousness, but still, a Joshua smile nonetheless, so I cannot
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help but smile back, even as I now think guiltily of the yellow
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square tucked in my satchel.
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I watch Joshua walk to the elevator, and then I turn back
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to Shelby. Her face is pale and small, her blond hair a little
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mussed. She is listening carefully to instructions from Ezra
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now, through her intercom.
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“Yes,” she is saying. “Yes, of course. Right away, Mr. Rosen
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stein.”
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In a way, I think, looking at her now, thinking about the
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way her voice sounded last night as she insisted the annex
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was romantic, Shelby reminds me of my sister. She is alive
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and stubborn and kind and terribly emotional. If it had been
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her and Peggy in the annex, I am sure, she would be the one
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the world is in love with now, while most everyone else
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wouldn’t even remember that Peggy had ever existed or, for
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that matter, kept a diary. And Peggy, like me, she would prob
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ably be happy about that.
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For the longest time, I have lived in fear of walking by
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Robin’s Books and seeing my own face staring back at me as
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well as my sister’s. I have been full of fear, wondering what
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would happen if everyone knew, if my father knew, that I am
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still here. At first, I became Margie Franklin, the Gentile,
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because it was Peter’s plan, but then it became about survival,
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all over again. I did not want people to know that in so many
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