Margot: A Novel (33 page)

22
his fingers through his curls. “I suppose I will, yes.” He
23
pauses. “It’s what my father’s always wanted for me, anyway.
24
And he would love nothing more now than to see us married.”
25
“But do you love her?” I ask.
26
He hesitates for a moment, and his eyes catch mine. “I
27
could never be with someone who wasn’t a Jew, you know,” he
S28
says. “I just couldn’t.”
N29
01
I am confused for a moment, because he has not answered
02
the question, because his words, they don’t make sense, and
03
then it occurs to me, what it is he is saying.
You are you,
04
Shelby said. I am the one who is not a Jew. Margie Franklin,
05
she is not a Jew but the Gentile girl Peter was to find in the
06
city of Philadelphia.
We will go to America,
Peter said.
We will
07
be married. We will no longer be Jews.
08
But it is not Peter talking to me about being Jews now, it
09
is Joshua. And why, I wonder, is he telling me this? Does this
10
mean he has thought about me the way I have thought about
11
him, watched me through the glass, wondered what it might
12
be like to run his fingers through my hair? That he has noticed
13
me? That he has not been able to resist the impulse to reach
14
his large hand toward my face, at least once?
I cannot work
15
without you, Margie.
That our lunches and our talks, they
16
have been about something more than a secret case? “Joshua,”
17
I say softly. “I am not who you think I am.”
18
He shakes his head and turns his eyes away again. “My
19
father always said, Penny and I, we would make beautiful
20
babies. He’s right about that, isn’t he?” Joshua has missed it,
21
the first truthful thing I have said to him in three years. But
22
maybe it does not even matter. Even if he knew the truth,
23
Margie Franklin, the Jew, she still would not be wealthy and
24
beautiful and charming the way Penny is. She still would not
25
be the one Joshua’s father would want him to be with.
But
26
what about what he wants?
I wonder.
27
“But do you love her?” I ask. I want him to admit that he
28S
doesn’t. That he does not love her.
I do not love him,
my sister
29N
said. But I did. I do.
“It’s not always about love,” Joshua is saying now, again
01
letting his fingers tread through his hair. “Life is more com
02
plicated than that, Margie. You get to a point in your life
03
where it’s time to stop playing around. And then you just need
04
to bite the bullet and do the things you’re supposed to do.”
05
I think of it, questioning character witnesses for murder
06
ers, then sitting at my secretary’s desk, watching Penny
07
Greenburg, no Penny Rosenstein, saunter in for lunch with
08
her Josh. In no time she will sport a round belly, filled with
09
life, with Joshua’s life.
10
“I don’t think I can,” I whisper. And I stand and push my
11
chair back.
12
“Margie.” Joshua says my name. At first it rings with sur
13
prise. Then he says it again. “Margie, where are you going?
14
Margie, come on . . .”
15
I hit Market Street, already sweating, and I turn the cor
16
ner onto Sixteenth, then Ludlow, but I keep walking, past my
17
apartment, past the bus stop even. Though I am warm, sweat
18
ing, and tears build in my eyes, I keep on walking.
19
I do not stop for a long while, until I hit Olney Avenue.
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
S28
N29
01
02
03
04
Ch
apter
Forty-six
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
My walk, it is a far one, especially now, in the heat
15
and under the weight of my sweater. But I have walked
16
through much worse, and after I am far enough away to put
17
the sound of Joshua’s voice out of my head, I am not in a
18
hurry. I want to arrive by the five o’clock hour so I can stand
19
there, watch him pull up into the drive after work.
20
His car—the black Volkswagen, the kind of car one would
21
never imagine a Jew to drive. A nice and masculine comple
22
ment to his wife’s powder-pink Cadillac.
His wife.
Is it possi
23
ble still she is his nanny, his landlady, his friend, his
24
housekeeper even? But her words from last time about the
25
steps and the stroller—words that implied that she lived there
26
and she had chosen that—swim carelessly in my brain.
27
I approach 2217 cautiously. There are no cars out front.
28S
Not even the pink Cadillac, but I resign myself to sitting on
29N
the bottom step to wait.
I think about Peter’s eyes, blue as the sea. The way they
01
lingered on my face even after the man in green pulled me up
02
from my neck and started dragging my limp body out of his
03
room.
04
“Margot,” he called desperately after me, before one of the
05
men clamped a large hand across his mouth, muffling the
06
sound. I hear it now, my name in his voice, not the way it was
07
that morning but the way he said it as we lay together on the
08
divan. He whispered my name, into my hair, like the sound
09
of wind chimes, blowing back and forth, their sound pleasant
10
and high and sweet.
“Margot.”
11
Margie,
Joshua said.
I could never be with someone who
12
wasn’t a Jew.
His gray-green eyes flickered in the light shining
13
in past the window of the delicatessen. How could he marry
14
Penny? I wonder. How could he marry someone he didn’t
15
even love? Maybe Joshua isn’t even the man I thought he was.
16
I am pretending, pretending, always pretending. But so, it
17
seems, is he.
18
“Hello there.” I hear a woman’s voice, the redhead’s voice,
19
and I look up and she is standing before me on the sidewalk.
20
I have been lost in thought, not even noticing the pink Cadil
21
lac, which now I see is parked in the drive. She holds Eleanor
22
tight to her hip, and the baby makes a fist in the air, then
23
examines it, and decides it looks ripe for chewing.
24
I hold my eyes tightly to the baby’s face, her eyes. Her
25
cheeks are round and fleshy, her tufts of hair the color of
26
sunlight striking snow, and her eyes, they are a remarkably
27
deep sea blue.
S28
“Do you live around here?” the woman asks, and I startle
N29
01
and look back to her face. Her eyes are green, darker than
02
Joshua’s, lighter than Ilsa’s. And now they seem wary of me.
03
I stand. “No,” I say. I clear my throat. “But when I
04
was here a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but notice your box.”
05
I point to the mailbox by the crumbling green door. “I knew
06
a Pelt once,” I say.
07
“Oh,” she says, her eyes softening. “Well, maybe I could be
08
related, then.” She smiles. “Would you like to come in? Elea
09
nor needs a nap, and I need to get dinner ready,” she says.
10
“But we could have a glass of lemonade, talk. You look like
11
you could use a cool drink dressed the way you are.”
12
I want to walk inside the duplex. I want to see them, the
13
pictures she might hang above the mantel of the three of
14
them: her, Eleanor, and Peter. I want to know that he is here,
15
in the city of Brotherly Love, just the way he once promised.
16
I want to watch his eyes light up, one more time, even if it is
17
only in a photograph. “Okay,” I say. “Yes. Thank you.”
18
And I follow her up the steps into the duplex.
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28S
29N
01
02
03
Ch
ap
ter
Fort
y-sev
en
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
The inside of the duplex is dark at first, until the
14
redhead switches on the light. “Excuse me for a moment,” she
15
says. “Let me just run Eleanor back to her crib.” I nod, and in
16
the new fresh light, I have a look around.
17
The living area is spacious, deep rich hardwoods like Ilsa’s
18
covered with an Oriental-style bright red rug and flanked
19
with unmatching green chairs. I approach the mantel, and
20
just as I imagined, it is covered in pictures. A few of baby
21
Eleanor. One when she is very, very young, a newborn. One
22
with the redhead, Eleanor, and an older gray-haired woman
23
who I guess to be the redhead’s mother. Another one with the
24
gray-haired woman and an older mustached gentleman who
25
holds a protective arm around her shoulder.
26
“Ignore the dust,” the redhead says, walking back in and
27
running her finger across the glass of the picture of her and
S28
her daughter, leaving the impression of her fingertip. “I’m not
N29
01
a very good housekeeper, I’m afraid. And now that I’ve gone
02
back to work, I’ve gotten even worse.”
03
“What do you do?” I ask. I imagine Peter would’ve married
04
someone like me or my sister, or the working women we
05
might have become, anyway, had it not been for the war, or
06
had we not been Jewish, or had we been born in America.
07
“Oh.” She laughs. “My friend owns a restaurant, and I’ve
08
been waitressing there. It’s only temporary,” she says, “until I
09
find something better.” She walks into the kitchen and
10
motions for me to follow her. There is a small square oak table
11
that barely feels big enough to seat three, and I try to imagine
12
Peter, his long legs spread out in front of him, cramped in a
13
space like this. How tall was Peter? Now I am only seeing the
14
movie Peter in my mind, and it is ruining everything.
15
She pours the lemonade and hands me a glass. “I’m Petra,
16
by the way,” she says. It is a nice name, Petra. I guess it to be
17
Russian or Slovakian in origin, though Petra looks so clearly
18
Irish with her thick red hair.
19
“That’s pretty,” I tell her. “I’m Margie.”
20
She smiles. And for a moment I think she might tell me
21
that her name is short for Petronella. “Petronella van Daan,”
22