Margot: A Novel (16 page)

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Chapter Twenty
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My first telephone call comes on Wednesday night,
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after the ad has run for two full days. But it is not a call from
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anyone who might join in Bryda’s lawsuit. It is a call from Ilsa.
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“Margie,” she says right away when I pick up, and I sigh
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with relief at the sound of her voice. Two days I’ve left work
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early, avoiding Shelby’s questioning looks, and I’ve run home
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to stare at the telephone, where I’ve willed it not to ring the
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entire hour.
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“Oh, Ilsa,” I say. “I’m glad it’s you.”
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“My dear,” she says, and I can picture her on the other end
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of the line, shaking her petite blond head. “Why on earth is
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your telephone number in the
Inquirer
?”
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“Oh.” I draw in my breath. I have not considered the pos
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sibility that Ilsa, the one person who knows my number other
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than Joshua, might see the ad and find it perplexing. “Well . . .”
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I say, though I am not sure what I should say next. Lying is a
second skin, but it is failing me now. The first skin feels warm,
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ripened, ready to break to the surface.
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“Spit it out, my dear,” Ilsa says. Ilsa is not my sister, nor my
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mother. She is the American cousin of my mother’s German
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friend Eduard. After I told Eduard I needed to come to Amer
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ica, he persuaded Ilsa to sponsor me and take me in. Our
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relationship is a strange one because it is not quite a friend
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ship. She holds a power over me, and not because she means
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to, or necessarily even wants to. But still, she does. When Ilsa
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asks me for the truth, sometimes I am compelled to give it.
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“I am helping my boss with something,” I say. “With a
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case.”
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“Involving anti-Semitism?” she says, sounding skeptical. I
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imagine her pulling at her earlobe a little, the way she does
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when something her husband, Bertram, tells her makes her
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nervous.
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“Sort of,” I say, “But it is very top secret. He’s asked me not
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to discuss it.”
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She hesitates, and I hear the short sound of her breath on
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the other end of the line. “I don’t like the sound of that,” she
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finally says. She doesn’t say anything for a moment. “You
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know you can always give the job up, move back in with us.”
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“I like my job,” I say. And also, now, I cannot imagine not
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seeing Joshua every day.
I tell you as a friend, Margie,
he’d said
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to me.
A friend.
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“Well, at the very least, you’ll come for dinner tomorrow,”
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she says. “We haven’t seen you in a while. We worry about
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you. Are you eating?”
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“Of course I’m eating,” I lie.
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“Well, good,” she says. “Tomorrow night. Bertram will drive
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over to pick you up so you don’t have to take the bus.”
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I agree, we hang up, and my phone doesn’t ring again that
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night.
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The next night, Ilsa’s husband, Bertram, pulls up outside the
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sidewalk by my apartment building in his blue Ford Fairlane.
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He honks once, and I walk outside to find him waiting for
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me in the car. He is a tall, quiet man, who hides his face
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behind a thick copper beard and mustache.
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“Margie,” he says, after I slip into the passenger seat. “It’s
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been a while.”
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“Yes.” I nod. “It has.”
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“Are you well?” he asks.
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I nod. “And you?”
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“Fine,” he says.
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We don’t talk anymore as he drives us slowly toward the
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home he shares with Ilsa in Levittown, Pennsylvania, United
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States of America. But it is not because Bertram and I don’t
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get along; it is because Bertram is a quiet man, and also
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because I think he is used to being with Ilsa, who talks so
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very much that it’s possible he now has nothing left to say.
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Ilsa and Bertram live on Oak Lane, in a quiet suburban
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neighborhood where all the houses—and the streets begin
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ning with the letter
O
—look nearly identical. In fact you
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probably could not tell Ilsa’s house from all the others on the
block from the outside alone, but on the inside, the house is
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uniquely decorated with Ilsa’s hand-sewn curtains and dolls.
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Ilsa is robust in every way that Bertram is not, and after
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the quiet ride, she greets me at the door to their familiar tract
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house with a hug, then pulls back and looks at me. “My dear,”
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she says, shaking her head, so her blond curls tumble against
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her shoulders. “You are too thin. Come in. Eat.”
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Even now, when I look at Ilsa, I see the face of the woman
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who came to pick me up in New York City, New York, just
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after my boat arrived. Eduard had shown me a picture of her,
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her wedding photo with Bertram. She was a tiny woman,
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nearly childlike in size next to Bertram, who is tall and a little
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burly. In the black-and-white photo all I could tell was that
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her hair was lighter than Bertram’s, and that her smile was
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enormous. In person, her hair is nearly the color of snow, and
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her smile, it is even bigger.
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That first time I saw her she was waiting for me at the
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New York Harbor, her tiny arms pushing through the crowd
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to get to me. Eduard had made sure I’d had a first-class ticket
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from Bremerhaven, so my experience in getting off the boat
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in America would be an easy one, so I would not be subject
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to poking and prodding and questioning at Ellis Island. After
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a cursory glance at me, my shoulder-length curls, the nice
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brown dress Eduard had purchased for me for just this occa
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sion, the doctor had signed my paper, and I’d disembarked.
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It was warm, nearly summer, and there was a crowd. Mostly
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men, mostly in suits. The men in tattered clothes, I imagined,
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they waited at the exit from Ellis Island where the third-class
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passengers entered into America, if they were lucky.
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“Margot?” Ilsa said my name. I did not see her at first,
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amid all the men, but once I heard her voice, I turned, and
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there were her arms, pushing through the swarm of men. Her
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arms reached me, and she stared at me for a moment, as if
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she wasn’t sure it was really me, or perhaps she was wonder
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ing if she’d made a giant mistake in agreeing to sponsor me,
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to take me into her home.
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“Why would she even take me?” I had said to Eduard
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when he told me of her. “I am a perfect stranger.” Or more
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rightly so, an imperfect one.
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“I know my cousin,” Eduard had said. “She will take you.
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In fact, she will love you.”
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That first time I saw her, she put her arms on mine, and she
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said, for the first of many times, “My dear, you are so thin. You
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are flesh and bones. I will have to fix that, Margot.” She clung
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to me, and her high voice rose above the din of the crowd.
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“Margie,” I told her, when I found my voice. “Everybody
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calls me Margie.” Nobody had ever called me Margie, except
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for Peter. But I was in America. I was going to be Margie.
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“Okay then, Margie,” Ilsa said. “Come. Come with me, my
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dear. Let’s try to catch the train so we are home in time for
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dinner. I will fatten you up in no time.”
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In six years, not so very much has changed.
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“So,” Ilsa says as she cuts her meat loaf into delicate pieces
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and watches with the eyes of a hawk to see how much I am
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eating. “Tell me about this boss of yours who is making you
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take after-hours phone calls at your home.”
I shrug and chew carefully. “He’s not making me do any
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thing,” I say. “And he’s paying me seven dollars extra a week.”
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“A raise,” Bertram says, lifting his thick copper eyebrows.
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“Good for you, Margie.” That’s the nice thing about Bertram—
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when the time is right, he figures out the most decent thing
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to say. I smile at him.
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“Hmm,” Ilsa says as she tugs on her earlobe a little.
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“It’s really not a big deal,” I tell her. I feel so comfortable
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telling her this lie that it barely feels like a lie at all. “And
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besides, no one has even called yet aside from you.”
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She shakes her head. “Still,” she says. “I don’t like it. A
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woman living all alone in the city with her phone number
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published in the paper.”
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“Illie,” Bertram says, his voice hanging lightly on his pet
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name for his wife. “Margie is a big girl.”
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Ilsa smiles at me. “You know I only worry out of love, my
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dear.”
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“I know,” I say, and I do. Ilsa and Bertram were unable to
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have any children, and in a way, I suppose, I have helped her
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as much as she has helped me. She told me once that before
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I arrived, there were mornings when it was hard for her to get
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out of bed, and that once, in the bathtub, she put her head
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under the water and thought about not coming up. “What is
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one’s life if she doesn’t have a purpose?” Ilsa had asked me
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then.
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I’d nodded as if I’d understood, though really, what I
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understood was that American sorrows are so, so much dif
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ferent than my own.
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“Just don’t take any calls from men,” she tells me now. I
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nod but she is still frowning. “And certainly, don’t give anyone
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your address.”
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“Of course not,” I say. “Now really, stop worrying.”
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She relents, for now, and we eat the rest of our dinner,
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making small talk. Bertram talks about his own job in the
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city, where he runs an accounting firm and Ilsa talks about
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the curtains she has decided to make for the bedroom: blue
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lace. Before I came—and after I left—this has been Ilsa’s
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purpose in life: decorating. I nod politely through the dinner,
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and in a way I miss this: family, dinnertime, easy conversa