Margot: A Novel (25 page)

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where, all over my sister and me, covering all of us.
I open my mouth to scream but no sound escapes me.
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My throat is too parched. I haven’t had enough to drink in
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weeks.
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At 5:21 a.m., my phone starts ringing. I am lying in bed with
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my eyes closed, but nonetheless, I am not sleeping. My brain
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is heavy from my dream, and sleep has already felt like the
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furthest thing from my reach for a few hours. Still, I am good
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at pretending, lying there with my eyes closed, just because I
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know it is what I should be doing at this hour.
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As I walk toward the phone, I find myself thinking about
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Peter
again—
Peter van Pels, Pete Pelt, P. Pelt—
and I push my
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brain to remember the sound of Peter’s voice, the pitch of it,
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how my name would sound as he spoke it.
Margot. You’re
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really beautiful, even if you don’t know it.
If he were to see the
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number in the paper, if he were to call it; if he were to find
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me listed in the phone book, Margie Franklin, as we always
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said—what would he even sound like now? What time would
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he call? Peter and I almost always spoke in Dutch. Would his
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voice sound different in American English?
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“Hello.” I pick up the phone.
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“Margie, hello. It is me, Gustav, again.” Gustav Grossman’s
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broken version of English rings clearly in my ear, and any
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notion I have of remembering Peter vanishes. For a moment
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I am surprised, because I do not remember having told Gus
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tav my name, but maybe I did. “I do not wake you, do I?”
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Gustav is asking.
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“No, Mr. Grossman,” I say. “You do not.”
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“I’m sorry I call back.”
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“That’s okay,” I tell him. “But I really don’t have any
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news for you. I promise my boss will call you when he has
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some.”
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“I know that,” he says. “But your voice, it has very beauti
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ful sound, and I wonder maybe you have breakfast with me?”
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Ilsa’s warning echoes again in my head. Ilsa is wise and
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strong, and I do not know Gustav. He could be a wife killer,
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a creeper, a secret Jew hater, or even a Nazi.
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“Margie.” He says my name again. Gustav’s voice sounds
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kind and broken all at once. Maybe Gustav and I, we have
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much in common, and suddenly, in Gustav’s voice, I feel it
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again, that wayward sense of homesickness that I can never
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seem to squelch in America, no matter how hard I try.
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“Yes, okay,” I tell Gustav.
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“How about today,” Gustav says.
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“Today?” I ask.
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“Yes,” Gustav says. “Why don’t we meet today?”
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I agree to meet Gustav at 8 a.m. at Casteel’s Diner. Though it
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is not far from the office, and in an area that is crowded in
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the mornings usually, I cannot shake Ilsa’s warning after I
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hang up the phone. And I know what I am about to do, meet
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ing Gustav this morning, is what the Americans would con
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sider Mickey Mouse. That is to say, dumb. And I am not
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dumb. I was always the top pupil at the Jewish Lyceum, top
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self-learned in the annex. I know many languages. I survived
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the Nazis. I jumped from a train and somehow made it safely
to America, Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love. But still I
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have agreed to meet Gustav, this strange man from the other
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end of my phone who really could be anyone, because I think
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we are both lonely, lost souls in a great big American city.
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Yet, I am no Mickey Mouse, no matter what Shelby might
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have you think. So I quickly dial the number to Joshua’s
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house before I am about to leave.
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“Hello,” a woman’s voice answers, and it throws me
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because I was expecting Joshua’s voice. I think of the woman,
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baby Eleanor, and the pink Cadillac, but then I shake the
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thought away. No.
Penny.
“Hello,” she says again, and my
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heart tumbles.
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“Hello,” I finally say. “This is Margie Franklin, is Mr.
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Rosenstein there?”
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“Oh,” she says. “Hi, Margie, it’s Penny.”
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“Hello,” I say. There is the space of silence, and though it
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is the sound of nothing, it feels excruciating to me.
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“Josh can’t come to the phone right now,” she finally says.
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“Can I take a message?”
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I hesitate, remembering that moment at my desk when I
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pretended to intercom Joshua as she stood by, eagerly craning
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her neck to see into his office. I suspect that what I tell her
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now will never reach Joshua, but I say it anyway. “Can you tell
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him I am meeting with someone, for our new case, at Casteel’s
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before work today?”
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“Hang on,” she says, “let me grab a pen.” She waits, what
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is probably the appropriate amount of time for pretending,
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and then she says. “All right. Casteel’s before work today.” She
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pauses. “Anything else?”
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“That is all,” I say.
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After I hang up, I cradle the receiver in my hand for a
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moment, imagining the weight of Penny’s smirk on the other
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side of the line.
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C
hapt
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I walk down Market Street past the law office to get
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to Casteel’s. It is early and the air is still cool, the street
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uncrowded. My breath rasps in my chest, then my throat, and
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I remind myself. Breathe. Just breathe. It is not so hard.
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I feel my heart pounding in my chest, my throat closing a
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little bit. What am I doing? I wonder. Why am I meeting this
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man who I do not know, just because he is a Jew and lonely
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like me? He could be anyone, I remind myself.
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I close my eyes for a moment, and I see Penny’s face, then
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the redhead’s, and then baby Eleanor.
What color were her
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eyes?
Why did I not think to notice them?
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Suddenly I hear the heavy footsteps behind me again. I
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quicken my pace. They quicken too. Pounding, faster, faster.
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I think of Charles Bakerfield, offering me a ride on Friday.
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Was he following me? Or was he just being nice?
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He’s a creeper,
Shelby said.
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I am trying to breathe. But I cannot. My chest hurts from
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the effort of breathing and running—it is too much. The
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boots, they get louder and louder, and louder, breaking my
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ears, and then I am back on the Prinsengracht again. May
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1942, just before the call-up notice came. Mother had asked
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me to stop by there after school, to bring Pim a letter at the
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office that had come for him that morning. I’d held it in my
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satchel all day, and on the way home, I took a different turn
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from my sister. She was skipping, anyway, with her friend
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Hanna, as if the yellow star across her heart, it meant nothing.
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I walked quickly, though my legs were already tired. I was
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scared to walk alone, or even leave the house since I’d over
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heard Father talking, telling Mother that now Jews could be
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arrested, just for being Jews. “They do not even need a rea
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son,” he’d said to Mother, when he thought my sister and I
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weren’t listening. “They see a yellow star and that’s enough.”
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I turned the corner, just before the Prinsengracht, and I
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heard the sound of footsteps behind me. The heavy gait of
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boots.
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I sped up to a run, and the boots, they sped up, too.
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“Stop,
Jood
.” A man’s voice called out to me, and I couldn’t
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breathe; the words fell on me, like the hardest of rains, flood
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ing me, sweeping me down toward the Prinsengracht, drown
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ing me. Yet my feet stood still on the pavement as if they were
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stuck there. I wanted to run, harder, faster. I didn’t. The
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sound of the man’s boots got heavier in my ear.
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I turned, and he was behind me, dressed in his Green
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Police uniform: thick black boots, long green coat, hat like a
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bell, obscuring all but his black and penetrating eyes. “What
are you doing, a young girl on a business street at this time?”
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He spoke to me in Dutch. I had trouble understanding the
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words at first, though by then I was already quite fluent in
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Dutch. With fear, my brain still turned back to its first lan
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guage, German. I tried to answer, but my voice, it trembled
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in my throat and refused to make a sound.
“Jood,”
he yelled in
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my face, his breath hot and smelling of cigarettes. “Answer
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me,
Jood
.” He grabbed my arm roughly, twisting it a little.
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“I am going to see my father.” The words fell out of me,
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somehow. “He works on this street.”
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He twisted my arm a little more, a smile twitching against
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the white hairs of his mustache, a smile that said he was
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deriving pleasure out of frightening me.
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“What’s your name,
Jood
?”
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That was the time to lie, the time to find a second skin,
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only I was too young then, too innocent to understand
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how important lying was. I told him my name. If I had lied,
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maybe the call-up notice never would’ve come a few weeks
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later, and we wouldn’t have had to go into hiding so quickly,
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just to save me.
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He let go of my arm. “Hurry up,” he told me. “Run. Your
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yellow star, it’s making me sick.”
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Je gele sterren, ze maken me ziek.
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There is the Dutch. It comes back to me sometimes, even
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still, in 1959.
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Just as I reach Casteel’s, I feel a large hand grasp my shoul
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der, tugging at the corner of my sweater.
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Stop,
Jood.
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I hear the sound of a scream, somewhere, in the distance.
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It rises, like a siren, getting louder and louder, hurting my
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ears.
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It takes a moment for me to recognize that that sound, it
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is my own.
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“Margie,” a voice is saying, whirring in my ear.
Margie,
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Margie, Margie.
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The name falls and breaks like a clap of thunder followed
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by a torrent of rain. “Margie, are you all right?”
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The voice is familiar, and the screaming stops. I look
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around, and I realize I must’ve fallen down as I was scream
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ing, because now I am sitting there, on the dirty morning
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sidewalk on South Seventeenth Street, staring at the tops of
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black, dressy, familiar shoes.
Joshua.
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“Margie.” Joshua’s voice echoes in my head. “I’m sorry. I
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didn’t mean to frighten you. I was just trying to catch up with
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you.” His large gentle hand reaches down for mine, and I hold
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on to it, allowing it to pull me up, back to my feet. “Are you
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all right?” he asks again.
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“Yes,” I finally say, but he does not let go of my hand. He
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laces his fingers through mine, and he shoots me a worried
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smile.
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Suddenly I am embarrassed that Joshua heard me scream
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ing, that he saw me slink to the ground. It has happened to
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me before, these fits, as Ilsa would call them. Where some
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thing will startle me, and I will crumble. “It must be some
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kind of residual stress,” Bertram guessed, “from the war.” And
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Ilsa had encouraged me to see a doctor, but always I refused.
“It’s nothing,” I told her, and then, for so long, I’ve been
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able to contain myself.
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“It’s nothing,” I tell Joshua now.
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“Are you sure?” he asks. “Because you seemed pretty
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upset. Did something happen?”
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His eyes look at me in a way I have not seen before. It is
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neither seriousness nor sadness, but something else. Con
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cern? Have I worried him? Does he think I was getting
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mugged here on the street? That would certainly be a better
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explanation for my screaming than the truth, but some lies
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make me feel too terrible, so I will not tell him that.
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“No,” I say softly. “Nothing happened. I just . . .”
Twisted
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my ankle. Saw a ghost. Heard a ghost. Am a ghost
. “I just startle
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easily, is all.”
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“Are you sure?” he says again, his gray-green eyes holding
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on to me.
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I nod, and he slowly steps back and lets go of my hand.
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“Shall we go in?” he asks. It is not until Joshua says this
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that I think about how he got here. Penny must have actually
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given him my message. I flush with embarrassment. Of
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course. She does not look at me the way I look at her. Why
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should she? I am Margie Franklin, the Gentile secretary
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wrapped oh-so-tightly in her sweater. And she, she is Penny
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Greenberg, the wealthy Jewess who weekends in Margate.
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I shake the thought away and take a few tentative steps to
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the front window of Casteel’s. Is he inside? Gustav Gross
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man? I put my hand up to the glass and press my face close,
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peering inside, but all I see are two elderly women drinking
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cups of coffee.
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“Margie.” I hear Joshua saying my name again. His hand
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touches my shoulder gently, and I close my eyes for a moment
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before I walk toward the door to Casteel’s. Joshua opens it for
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me, and I walk inside, where I am greeted, at this hour, by the
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smells of stale coffee and greasy bacon. The air is fog and silt,
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and it covers over me, as if in a dream. So many empty tables,
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no men inside to speak of. “I’ll grab us a table,” Joshua says.
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“We can get some breakfast, talk.”
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I nod and walk in the other direction, up to the counter. “I
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was meeting a man here,” I say to the pink-striped waitress,
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who is standing behind the counter, holding a pot of coffee.
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“A man?” she asks. Something about her tone reminds me
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of Shelby when she teases me about finding me a man.
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“Have you seen him?”
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“What does he look like?” she asks. I shrug, and she says,
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“So you were meeting a Joe Doe for breakfast, hon, and he
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didn’t show?” She laughs a little, as if I am an amusement
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to her.
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“Tall,” I hear myself saying, though I know as I speak, the
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words make no sense. “Brown curly hair. Blue eyes, like
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the sea.”
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“Nope.” She shakes her head. “Haven’t seen him.”
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Joshua has chosen us a table by the window just in
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case, he says, Gustav still decides to show. But I wonder if
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he’d already arrived, heard me screaming, saw the commo
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tion on the street, and he ran. That’s what I would’ve done
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had it been the other way around. I would’ve run far and fast,
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holding on tightly to my sweater.
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Joshua asks the pink-striped woman for two cups of coffee
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and two plates of eggs, though I do not think I can stomach
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eggs at this hour, but I do not tell him that.
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“Now, Margie,” Joshua says. “I want you to tell me exactly
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what was going on and why you agreed to meet a client on
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your own.” It’s only now that I realize he sounds annoyed, that
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I have overstepped my bounds as his Gentile secretary.
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“I’m sorry,” I say. But I don’t tell him the truth, about Gus
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tav telling me about the loneliness of America, about how
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Gustav and I have something to discuss, something in
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common, about the wayward sort of homesickness that burns
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a hollow space in my chest. What I tell Joshua is this: “He was
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very persistent about meeting in person today. I called to let
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you know . . .”
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“Okay.” Joshua sighs. “But don’t do it again, all right? If
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someone wants to meet, put them on my schedule.”
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“At the office?” I say, raising my eyebrows.
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“Good point,” he says. “This is becoming more compli
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cated than I thought.” He sighs again and runs his hands
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through his curls. “I hate this secrecy, this . . . sneaking
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around. As if we’re doing something wrong.” He shakes his
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head. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I’m a grown man. A lawyer. And