Margot: A Novel (29 page)

of shelf—the diary, I assume, and says it has been there the
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whole time, where my sister left it.
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I shake my head, and bite my lip, to suppress the urge to
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yell out,
No, no, that is not where she left it. It was on the floor.
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In Peter’s room. It fell from her hands as they carried her out.
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She never kept it on a bookshelf! She hid it away, in her mat-
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tress, just like I did with mine.
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But then I see her—Millie Perkins—and I forget about
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the book for the moment. She bounces into a room, into the
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annex. The place is familiar, but the people, they are all
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wrong. Millie, she is nearly laughable. She is a woman, not a
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girl. She is a model, slim and graceful and filled with infalli
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ble beauty. She is way too old to be my sister, way too pol
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ished. But wait, where is Margot? Oh, there I am, somewhere
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off in the background, like a second-class citizen. At least I
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am attractive, more so than in real life.
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I chew my popcorn, throwing it in handfuls in my mouth.
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It tastes so good, buttery and salty and warm. I eat, and I
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watch the screen as if in a trance. My eyes cannot let go of
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these people and their story. I do not know them. This story,
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it is filled with so much danger and romance and hope. Why
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is there so much ridiculous hope?
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You’re all going to die,
I want to shout at the screen,
all
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of you.
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You will be stripped and shaven and broken and tattooed.
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Fleas will dance off your body like sparks, and the air will
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become a film that suffocates you until you can no longer
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breathe. Stop smiling, Millie. Honestly. The annex is not that
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beautiful. The world is not that beautiful. My sister, she
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understood that.
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And then there is Peter. Oh, Peter. He is not at all as
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handsome as I remember him being in real life. He is the one
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to which the silver screen does no justice. The movie is in
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black and white, and so there are no eyes blue enough to be
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the sea. He is strangely goofy, making eyes at Millie Perkins
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like a dummy as she chases after Mouschi.
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When I see them together, I laugh a little, and I dig into
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the popcorn. My hand scrapes the bottom of the cardboard
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carton. I chew louder, and I need a napkin, but I am not about
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to stand up to walk back to the concession stand to get one.
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Margot is quiet. So quiet. She barely says a word the entire
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time, as if she spent two years of her life a mute in the back
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ground, not at all the kind of girl who would kiss Peter, in his
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room, in the darkness. No, in the movie she is the kind of girl
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who, one night, after she has been ill, blurts out at the dinner
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table that she wishes everything would end already. I hear
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these words come out of her mouth, and I start laughing. I am
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laughing and laughing so hard, that then I am crying. The
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screen is blurry; it is hard to see, to focus. The strangers on
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the screen swim in front of my eyes.
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Then Millie and Peter stand in front of the window, where
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the sky tumbles, large and beautiful. They hold on to each
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other, just the way the book said they did. There are sirens so
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loud and so obvious—movie sirens—from the street below.
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Then the screech of brakes, and Millie and Peter, they cling
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to each other so hard, so fast, their lips meeting. And Margot,
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she is nowhere to be found.
I close my eyes, and then I am holding on to him on the
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divan.
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Peter?
My sister stands there, saying his name.
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There were no sirens. Just quiet one moment, my sister’s
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voice, then banging on the annex door.
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On the big screen, the music swirls. The lovers embrace
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and are still kissing with deep movie-star passion, just as
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Shelby said.
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I stand up quickly, forgetting about the popcorn, and the
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carton tumbles, spilling kernels to the sticky floor.
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I know what happens next. And I cannot watch anymore.
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I run through the front of the theater, and I hit the street,
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where the sunlight is too bright and burns my eyes. I squint
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as I run back toward Ludlow Street, the stupid poem we
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wrote for Pim playing itself in my head. Only suddenly I can
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not remember the order of it at all.
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Pim, Pim, you are so dim. You like to do things on a whim.
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Your hair is gray; your world is grim. You are dead to me now,
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my dear sweet Pim.
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C
hapt
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Fo
rt
y-three
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Pim and I, we never fought the way my sister and my
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mother did. We never yelled or screamed harsh words at each
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other. I did not write angry things about him in my diary the
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way my sister did about my mother.
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It was just that we all knew, all of us. My sister belonged
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to our father, and I belonged to my mother. We were split that
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way, two and two, and we always had been. Sometimes I won
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dered if it was by default, if Father would’ve paid more atten
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tion to me if given the chance. Was Mother only mine
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because she and my sister could not get along? But now, after
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ward, I have come to understand that could not have been it
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entirely.
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Peter did not love his parents, not the way I loved mine.
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Sometimes he fought with them, but not like Joshua and Ezra
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do, or even like my mother and my sister did, when fire
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exploded between them, sparks of love and hate and passion
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falling into one. Mostly, they ignored each other. And Peter
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seethed, quietly.
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“What about our parents?” I asked Peter once, in his room
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in the annex, in the middle of the night. “What will happen
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to them when we go to America.” I thought about Mother and
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Pim, about the way she had begun to cling to him in the
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annex, holding on to his arm with her thin fingers in a way
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she had never done on the Merwedeplein.
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We were together all the time, every second, every day.
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For two years. I didn’t even have the capacity to imagine it
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then, this person I have now become without them. But Peter
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simply shrugged, as if he could imagine life without them. I
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remembered his story about bringing Mouschi into the annex,
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how he felt his parents didn’t care about him. “They gave you
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life,” I reminded him.
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He frowned at me, and reached across the bed for his cat.
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“Not everyone is a good parent like yours.” He paused. “Not
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every father is smart and kind the way yours is, Margot.” He
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stroked Mouschi’s fur roughly with his fingertips. “You know
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why I never talked to you at school, really?” he asked.
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“Why?” I murmured. But I was thinking that the lyceum
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felt so far away, like something in a dream. School. Books.
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Teachers. Walking through the halls with shoes and a light
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step, and an easy sense of contentment. Had I ever really
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done those things? Had I ever existed in a life, really and truly
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of my own, outside the confines of this annex on the Prinsen
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gracht?
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“You had so much,” he was saying. “And you took it all for
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granted. You thought everyone had what you did.”
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“And you could tell that, without ever having talked to
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me?” I could not keep the annoyance from my voice.
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“Yes,” he said. “You did well in school. Everybody loved
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you there. All the teachers. Your home on the Merwedeplein
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was so large and nice. And your father always lit up when he
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talked about you and your sister.”
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“How do you know all this?” I asked him. I had no idea
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where Peter lived before the annex, or how his father had
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talked about him. I’d seen him before at school. I’d noticed
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him and his blue, blue eyes. But we’d never spoken. I’d never
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thought much about him before the annex.
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“I just do,” he said. “You and your sister, you never under
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stood how lucky you are.”
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“You don’t know everything,” I told him, standing up. It was
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the middle of the night, and the moonlight cast an eerie slant
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on Mouschi’s face, lighting his eyes yellow until they were
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glowing. I felt as if my own face was glowing hot, under Peter’s
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words, the idea that somehow I was spoiled, like my sister.
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That I did not appreciate the things I had, or that I just assumed
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that everyone’s parents loved them the way Pim and Mother
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loved us.
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“Come on. Sit back down,” Peter whispered.
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“I don’t think so,” I huffed. “I think I’ll go back to my room
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tonight.”
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“Margot,” he called after me, gently. But I was already
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tiptoeing out, down the stairs, to my cot in my parents’ room,
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where Pim’s gentle snore rattled in his chest and Mother
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gasped quietly in her sleep.
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I lay on the cot for a long while, with my eyes open, won
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dering if Peter was right, if I never understood it, everything
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I had. Everything I would eventually lose.
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In the two and half weeks since Ezra’s collapse,
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Joshua has been to the office only twice. I have been in every
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day, since Joshua called me at home the morning after and
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asked me to please come in to work, at least until he knew
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where things stood with his father. And so I understood, I
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had not quit my job at all, but only ridden down in an elevator
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then back up. Still, for some reason I have felt different sitting
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at my desk. But maybe that is just because Joshua’s office has
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remained mostly empty, only darkness clouding his glass
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window.
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Each morning when he has not come in, Joshua has
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been phoning in, presumably from the hospital, with instruc
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tions. And Shelby and I have been rescheduling appoint
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ments, pushing back courthouse meetings, and, at Joshua’s
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request, handing Ezra’s most pressing cases over to other law
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yers in the firm.
His voice on the phone is solid and cool, all business,
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nothing else. And the two times I have seen him, when he
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has come in, Joshua has not looked at me, in the eyes, not
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even for a second. He has walked off the elevator, in casual
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brown spring pants and a short-sleeved plaid button-down
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shirt. He is a different man without the suit and the tie.
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Younger and larger all at once. He seems to take up more
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space somehow, now that his father is not around. His voice
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booms a little louder. And he has run into his office, past my
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desk, without so much as a look.
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Without Joshua in the office, I find myself daydreaming at
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my desk and thinking again about Mrs. Pelt and Eleanor.
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What if I was wrong? I wonder. What if she was not Mrs. Pelt
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at all, but just a friend with a pink Cadillac who liked to visit?
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She hadn’t told me her name. But she had implied that she’d
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chosen the house somehow. Maybe she owns it and Peter
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rents it from her? Maybe she is just the landlady? But no mat
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ter how many what-ifs fall in my brain, none of them feel true
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or right, and yet even though Joshua is not here, I cannot
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bring myself to leave early, to go back there again. Every time
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I think of it, I am stopped by that image from the movie, the
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two of them kissing by the window as sirens blare in the
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background. It is a fake image, but still, when I reimagine it,
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over and over again in my head, my mind does not picture
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their movie faces, but their real ones.
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“Margie,” Shelby whispers across the desk one afternoon,
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interrupting my thoughts. I look up, and she is pulling her
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pack of Kents from her satchel. She holds them toward me. I
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shake my head. In Ezra’s absence, now, all the girls have
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begun taking their smokes at their desks. I wonder if it is the
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changing times, the brink of a new decade, as Shelby says, or
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if it is just that Joshua was not the only one in the office who
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was afraid of Ezra’s wrath. The air feels more still in here,
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calmer somehow, without Ezra, even though it is now tinged
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with a steady haze of smoke.
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Now Shelby lights her smoke and then smiles at me.
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“We’ve set a date for the wedding,” she says.
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“Oh?” I say, because in the midst of everything else, I have
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nearly forgotten about Shelby’s wedding, about the pink
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bridesmaids’ dresses she and Peg found.
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“Saturday November twenty-first,” she tells me, inhaling
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her smoke, then exhaling.
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November. It will be cold, and thus we will most probably
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wear long-sleeved dresses. But Saturday, my day of rest. I
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hope it will be after sunset. Before I have a chance to ask her
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anything, she divulges all the details: the Rittenhouse. At 7 p.
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m. “It’s a little ritzy, but Ron wants only the best for me, and
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so does my father—”
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“Shelby,” I say, interrupting her, and she taps her smoke in
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the empty coffee cup and looks up. “Are you sure?”
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“Am I sure?” She laughs. “Wouldn’t you want a wedding at
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the Rittenhouse, Margie?”
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“I would want a marriage,” I tell her.
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“A marriage?”
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“A partnership with someone who loves me and respects
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me.”
We will go to America, Peter said. We will be married. We
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will no longer be Jews. We will change our names. Become the
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