Margot: A Novel (31 page)

wedding up, so his father can see it. It will help in his recov
01
ery, I’m sure. He’ll be so happy.”
02
“The wedding?” I ask, my voice trembling as my eyes
03
search Penny’s left hand for a diamond like Shelby’s, or I
04
would guess, twice the size of Shelby’s. But I see nothing. Her
05
thin pale fingers are bare.
06
She leans in closer and lowers her voice. “Of course, it’s
07
not official yet, but everyone has always known Josh and I
08
would be married. Since we were little kids and our mothers
09
pushed us into the sandbox together.” She laughs and pulls
10
back. “Anyway, he’s expecting me for lunch.”
11
I nod, and I don’t even offer to buzz him as she stands up
12
straight and parades herself into his office. She shuts the door
13
behind her, so I don’t even hear it, the sound of their laughter
14
breaking against the sticky afternoon air.
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
S28
N29
01
02
03
04
Ch
apter
Forty-fi
v
e
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
A week later, I am sitting at my desk, still avoiding
15
Shelby’s eyes. It is nearly lunchtime, and each day I have
16
watched the clock with trepidation, wondering if this will be
17
the day that Penny will step off the elevator flashing a giant
18
diamond in my face.
19
But today, just before noon, the elevator opens, and instead
20
of Penny, Bryda Korzynski steps off, dressed in her blue Rob
21
ertson’s Finery uniform. My heart falls immediately into my
22
stomach.
23
“I speak to Mr. Rosenstein,” she says sharply as she
24
approaches my desk, her brown eyes hard like stones, break
25
ing me in two.
26
“Miss Korzynski,” I manage to say, though my throat is
27
parched and my voice barely escapes my throat. She narrows her
28S
eyes at me, and then walks purposefully toward Joshua’s office
29N
door. “You can’t go in there,” I hear myself saying. “He’s with
another client.” Charles Bakerfield has been inside Joshua’s
01
office all morning, his trial now two weeks away.
02
Bryda stops and turns, her brown eyes searing. “Then I
03
wait,” she says, sitting in the chair by my desk.
04
“Is there something I can help you with?” I ask, swallow
05
ing hard as I speak, trying not to choke on the words.
Just
06
breathe. Breathe.
“Or can I schedule you an appointment for
07
later in the week? He might be a while in there.”
08
“You?” She shakes her head. “You come to my apartment,
09
you say Mr. Rosenstein help me. Then he ignore me. He do
10
not take my phone calls.”
11
Her phone calls? They have not come through me, so
12
Joshua must have given her his direct number.
13
Bryda glares at me now, and I pick up the phone to buzz
14
Joshua, which is something I would normally never do when
15
he is in a meeting with a client. But it is as if her eyes, they
16
force me to do it. My fingers tremble as I press the button.
17
“What is it, Margie?” Joshua asks. “Is it my father?”
18
“No, no,” I say quickly, feeling bad that I have frightened
19
him in such a way. “I’m sorry to interrupt. But . . . Miss
20
Korzynski is here, and she wants to see you. And she’s refus
21
ing to come back later.”
22
“Oh.” He sighs. I cannot see him through the glass because
23
Charles’s tall frame, he is blocking my view, but I imagine
24
Joshua putting his hand to his forehead, then running his
25
fingers through his curls. “I didn’t get a chance to call her
26
back,” he says. “Can you tell her?”
27
“Tell her?” I ask, surprised, though maybe I should not be,
S28
as Joshua has already asked me for so much with this case.
N29
01
“That we’re dropping the case. Let her off easy. You can
02
say we just weren’t able to get the support we needed, all
03
right?”
04
“I . . .” I turn and lower my voice so she hopefully cannot
05
hear me. “I don’t think I can,” I say.
06
He sighs again. “All right, then stall her for a while, until
07
I’m finished here, and then I’ll talk to her.”
08
“Joshua.” His name escapes me again, but this time I cor
09
rect myself. “Mr. Rosenstein, I—”
10
“I’m hanging up now, Margie. I’m in a meeting, remem
11
ber?”
12
His end goes to static, and then there I am, adrift in a
13
flood, without even Joshua’s large hand to pull me to safety.
14
15
16
“Well?” Bryda’s thickly accented voice hangs in the air. I turn
17
and look at her, and though her brown eyes break me, sud
18
denly I do not hate her anymore. To be a Jew, and to be
19
treated badly for it. Even here, even in America.
We will no
20
longer be Jews,
Peter said. But it strikes me how unfair it is,
21
that you cannot be who you are, that you will be continually
22
punished for the way you were born. Bryda, like me, lived
23
through Auschwitz. She is mean and bitter and tired, but
24
perhaps she has a right to be all those things. Suddenly I feel
25
like a coward. Running, running. Still running, all these
26
years later.
27
“What happened to your finger?” I hear myself asking, and
28S
then the moment the words escape my lips, I hold my hand
29N

to my mouth, realizing I have misspoken. That I have asked
01
for too much.
02
She frowns, but something softens a little in her eyes.
03
“There was accident,” she says. “In camp.”
04
“But you said it wasn’t what I thought,” I murmur.
05
“I say accident.” She frowns. “My mother, she so sick, so
06
tired. One day, she slip and drop brick on my finger and crush
07
it.” She pauses. “That not what you thought, was it?”
08
I shake my head because I suppose she is right. I did not
09
think of an accident, in the camp. “I’m sorry,” I say.
10
Then I realize I do not hear the sound of Shelby’s fingers
11
on the keys or even feel the haze of her smoke washing across
12
the desks. I glance in her direction, and she is staring at this
13
interaction between Bryda and me with all the intensity with
14
which she inhales a movie at the cinema. I swallow hard, and
15
turn my eyes back toward Bryda, who has now fixed my face
16
in a steady glare.
17
She narrows her brown eyes; she is full of hate and anger
18
again, and now all of it, it is aimed directly at me. As if I were
19
the one who carried her away in the middle of the night. Who
20
accidentally took her finger. Who purposely took her family.
21
You know what worse than Gestapo? Snake.
“You not going to
22
help me, are you?” she asks.
23
I don’t respond, and she seems to take this as a no. Joshua
24
said to stall her. How am I supposed to do that, when she is
25
standing here, prodding me? “You,” she yells. “You did this,
26
didn’t you. You told Mr. Rosenstein not to help me.”
27
“I’m only his secretary,” I hear myself saying, the words
S28
N29

01
seeming to float in somewhere from far away, disconnected
02
from me. “The truth is, he just hasn’t been able to get the
03
support he needs for the case.”
04
She narrows her eyes, so they are slits, barely even alive.
05
“I see way he look at you,” she says. “You more than secretary.”
06
I can practically feel Shelby’s eyebrows arching across the
07
desk, wondering who this woman is and what she knows that
08
Shelby doesn’t.
09
“You don’t know,” I say, and I am angry now too. What
10
right does she have to come here, to think she knows every
11
thing about me? This is America, and if I want to wear a
12
sweater, to be someone that I’m not, well, then that is my
13
right, isn’t it?
14
“You,” she mutters again. “You in your sweater. Thinking
15
you better than me.” She shakes her head. “I hear there doctor
16
who take tattoo away. Just right for you. Then you be liar and
17
out in open, yes?”
18
She stops talking, and everything in the office feels very
19
still, as if everyone, they are listening to Bryda and her accu
20
sations. Shelby’s eyes are wide brown saucers. I am sweating,
21
and I can feel hands on the back of my neck, the rough green
22
skin of a uniform.
Walk,
Jood
. You cannot hide from us,
Jood
.
23
We will always find you,
Jood
.
24
“You not even worth my breath,” Bryda mutters, and then
25
she turns and walks purposefully toward the elevator, getting
26
on, and not even looking back as the doors shut behind her.
27
“Margie?” Joshua says my name. Now he is standing at his
28S
doorway, Charles behind him. How long has he been stand
29N

ing there? What has he heard Bryda say to me? “I heard yell
01
ing. Is everything all right?”
02
“I . . .”
03
“Let me finish up here,” he says to me. “And then we need
04
to talk.” He walks back inside his office and shuts the door,
05
and then Shelby whistles softly under her breath. “What was
06
that all about?” she whispers.
07
But I do not answer her. I cannot speak now. I can barely
08
breathe. Bryda’s words ripped off my sweater, and I am raw
09
and aching, as if my forearm, it is bleeding.
What did Joshua
10
hear? What is he thinking now?
11
I look up, and I expect Shelby to be staring at it, my arm,
12
my sweater. But she is not. Her gaze meets mine, evenly.
13
“Margie?” Shelby’s voice floats across the desk.
Hiding who
14
you are, it’ll be so much easier than hiding where you are,
Peter
15
said
. Like an annex in your mind.
“Why was she telling you
16
about a doctor who could remove a tattoo and calling you a
17
liar?” Shelby’s curiosity has gotten the best of her, and so she
18
is questioning me now as if she is no longer mad. Or perhaps
19
she isn’t. Now it might all be water under the bridge, as she
20
would say. “What tattoo?” she is asking.
21
I close my eyes, and I am standing there at the camp, the
22
numbers being singed into my arm.
It is just a number. Noth-
23
ing can’t mean something. A badge of honor,
my sister says.
24
I open my eyes, and Shelby is still there, her eyebrows
25
raised, waiting for an answer. “She’s crazy,” I finally whisper.
26
“I have no idea what she was talking about,” I lie. I lie and I
27
lie and I lie. It is all I know now; all I have. Everything I am.
S28
N29