Margot: A Novel (26 page)

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still, I’m under my father’s thumb.”
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I nod, but I am thinking about my own secrecy. My own
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father. All the lies I have told because of him.
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“I know I shouldn’t complain so much about my father,”
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Joshua is saying now. “He’s given me a good life, an easy life,
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especially when you look around and see how Jews my age
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in other parts of the world have had it. Or, hell, even right
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here, in Philly.”
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I nod, but I press my lips together, not saying anything.
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What if Ezra had practiced law in Germany, and passionate,
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contemplative Joshua had been marched to his death at Mau
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thausen? He would not have survived very long, in that world.
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There is a softness about Joshua, but maybe that is only an
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American softness. In another world, Joshua too, it’s possible
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he would’ve found a kind of strength that he did not even
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know existed.
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The waitress plunks our plates down in front of us. Each
is full with eggs over easy, hash browns, two pieces of but
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tered toast, and three large slices of bacon. Joshua pushes the
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bacon aside with his fork, and I am surprised. I would’ve
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expected him to eat it, such a liberal Jew. Or is it just that he
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does not like the taste of bacon? Joshua takes a bite of his
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eggs, and I push mine around on my plate with my fork.
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“He’s given me a good life, an easy life,” Joshua repeats, as
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if he is trying to convince himself. “But sometimes I wonder
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what it would be like to feel truly happy.”
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“And what would make you feel that?” I ask him. I catch
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his gray-green eyes with my own, and hold on to them for just
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a second, until he breaks my gaze and he smiles.
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He shrugs. “Sometimes I think about starting my own
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firm, where I could work on the kinds of cases that would
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help people. Like this suit against Robertson.” He shrugs
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again. “So maybe it’s not going to make me rich, but it means
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something. There just has to be more out there than defend
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ing murderers, you know?”
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I nod. I imagine some people, Shelby, for instance, might
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feel annoyed by Joshua’s complaints—
poor little rich boy
. But
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I am not. Though neither do I feel sorry for him. Joshua is a
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wealthy American Jew, in the year 1959, which also means he
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has choices. Freedom. “Why don’t you start your own firm?”
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I ask him. I think about what I told Shelby once about a sense
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of duty to one’s father. But how far does one’s sense of duty
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go? When does loyalty to one’s father end, and a child’s self
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begin?
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Joshua shrugs again. “I can’t leave my father,” he says. He
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pauses as he sops up egg yolk with his toast and eats a little.
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“My mother left him, both of us. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t
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want to leave, of course. But . . . it destroyed him,” he says.
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“And you cannot work on your own and still be his son?” I
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ask gently.
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He shakes his head. “If I left the firm, my father would see
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it as a betrayal. He’d never forgive me. It’s all he’s ever wanted,
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his only son following in his footsteps. And now. . . since my
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mother passed, well, I’m the only thing in the world he has
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left.”
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“What about what you want?” I ask.
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“Me?” He laughs a little and finishes off his meal, save the
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bacon. “Aren’t you going to eat anything, Margie?” he asks.
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“I’m not very hungry this morning.” He frowns, so I add,
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“And I ate a little before I left my apartment.” Then I take a
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bite of the toast, just so he will stop staring so hard at my
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plate. Only, he diverts his eyes, instead, to my face, and he
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stares even harder, as if he is searching my eyes for the secrets
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that he may have begun to suspect are there.
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“What about you?” he finally asks. “Your paralegal studies
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still going well?”
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“Yes,” I say. Then I think guiltily about the number of
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Sundays I have ignored them lately.
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He nods. “And that is what will make you happy, Margie?
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Is that what you want out of life?”
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I hesitate for a moment, and then I nod again, chewing the
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toast carefully, making an effort to chew, chew, chew each
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bite.
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“But you are afraid of something,” he says.
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“Why do you say that?” I put the toast down and hold
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tightly to my sweater.
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“The way you screamed, out there, on the sidewalk,” he
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says. He reaches his hand across the table and lays it gently
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on my wrist. The gesture is meant to comfort me; I know
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that. And for a moment it does. I can breathe, and the air in
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front of us feels serene like the delicate blowing of bubbles
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under water.
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I wonder what Joshua would say if I told him. If he knew
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it all, everything.
I am not Margie Franklin,
I might tell him.
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I am not Polish. I am not a Gentile
.
I’m a Jew. I was marked as
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a Jew, the thick dark ink on my arm. It is not a badge of honor,
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it is a battle scar, a wound so deep I will never find a way to heal
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it. My name is Margot.
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But before I can tell him anything, Joshua moves his hand,
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and his head is turning. “Can I help you?” I hear him saying,
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and that is when I look up, when I see him for the first time
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sitting at the table across the aisle from us, staring at me, with
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a glassy sheen to his dark brown eyes. He is older than me,
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my father’s age, I might guess, with graying hair that sticks
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out in wiry curls around his temples, and bushy gray eyebrows
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to match.
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“You are Margie?” he says to me. I nod.
Gustav Grossman.
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Not at all what I imagined, which was what? Peter? A Peter
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replacement? “You are even very more beautiful in person
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than on the telephone.”
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“This is who you’re meeting?” Joshua whispers across the
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table.
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“Gustav?” I say to him just to be sure, though I already feel
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certain it is him. He nods, and he smiles at me, revealing yel
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low crooked teeth. He stares hard at my sweater, my heart,
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and nods.
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“Yes, very beautiful, indeed.”
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My cheeks burn, and Joshua frowns and folds his arms
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across his chest. “You are interested in our group litigation
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against Robert Robertson?” he asks Gustav sternly, in what I
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imagine is his courtroom voice.
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Gustav shrugs, and he smiles at me. “You very young too,
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Margie, yes? A sweet, sweet flower.”
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I pull my sweater tighter around my chest, and Joshua
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looks from Gustav to me to him, then back to me. He reaches
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across the table for my hand again and holds it between his
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own. “Look,” he says pointedly to Gustav. “I think you’ve got
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the wrong idea here, pal. Miss Franklin is taken.”
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“She is?” he asks.
I am?
Joshua looks at me and winks
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across the table, and now there is a smile twitching on his
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lips. He is lying. Of course. Being kind. Trying to scare Gus
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tav off. This is some kind of sweet or misguided urge to pro
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tect me. I cannot decide whether this thrills me or annoys
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me. Gustav is odd, yes. But also, I believe he is most likely
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harmless. And Joshua, he is the one who is taken, isn’t he?
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“I’m very sorry,” Gustav says. He looks at me. “On tele
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phone you did not say.” He shakes his head. “America is very
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lonely place. In Berlin, before war, I very handsome boy. I
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have very many friend.”
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I close my eyes and think about my sister and me, walking
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home from the lyceum, before the yellow star, when we still
skipped on the streets, flanked by the laughter of our school
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mates and the gentle flow of the canals. “But you have made
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it to America,” Joshua says to Gustav, and his eyes soften a
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little.
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“Yes,” Gustav says. “But many time, I would give all my
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life, to be boy in Berlin again.” He pauses. “Not Berlin now.
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But Berlin that was.”
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In the annex, Peter and I had talked of America as if it
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were a cloud: rich and full, beautiful and soft. And America,
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it is harder than I dreamed it would be, though beautiful too.
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But sometimes I too would give anything to be back on the
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Merwedeplein with Mother, Father, my sister. Before the yel
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low star and the restrictions on Jews. When my sister and I
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could chase each other on the grassy knoll, the sounds of our
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laughter resonating against the nearby cobblestones like rain
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drops.
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“In America,” Gustav is saying now, “I have no one.”
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“But you must have someone,” I hear myself saying.
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“Someone here who reminds you of home.” Joshua clings
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tightly to my hand, and I look across the table at him, his
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chestnut curls, his gray-green eyes, his uniquely Joshua smile.
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Gustav doesn’t answer.
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Joshua moves his hand to pull his gold pocket watch from
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the confines of his black suit jacket. “We should be probably
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getting to work,” he says pointedly.
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Gustav looks at Joshua then back at me. He hesitates for
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a moment, and then he says, “I’m sorry I waste your morning.”
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“It’s okay,” I say.
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Joshua pulls a card from the cardholder in his pocket and
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hands it to Gustav. “If you want more information about join
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ing the suit, you give me a call. But call me and only me.”
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Gustav nods, and Joshua and I stand and walk out of
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Casteel’s together, holding hands. I know it is only pretend,
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that when we hit the sidewalk, Joshua will drop my hand and
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shoot me a smile.
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But still.
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I am right, of course, and one block up, he drops his hand.
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“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to put your number in the
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paper,” Joshua says, sounding just a little bit like Ilsa.
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“He seemed harmless enough,” I say. “Just lonely, that
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is all.”
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He frowns. “Margie, that’s how every single criminal I’ve
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come across seems, at first.”
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I think about Charles Bakerfield offering me a ride, and I
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cringe. I wonder what Joshua would think about that, but I
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know I will not tell him, because then I will also have to tell
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him about leaving work so early.
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“No.” Joshua shakes his head. “I didn’t like the way he was
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looking at you. I’m sorry, Margie. This is all my fault.” He
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pauses. “I’m taking the ad out of the paper.”
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“Okay,” I say, and as we walk together in the office build
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ing, I cannot seem to erase the smile from my face.
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Ch
apter
Thirt
y-sev
en
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A week passes, then two. Though Joshua has taken
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the ad out of the paper, I still receive a few more calls from
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Rabbi Epstein’s Jews, bringing our number of interested peo
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ple up to twelve. “That is still not enough,” Joshua tells me
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early one morning, sighing the heaviest of sighs, and I nod.
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“There has to be a better way.”
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Joshua has taken a new case, handed down to him by his
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father: Herbert Bittlesby, who killed a man by accident when
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he was driving after a night of drinking. Herbert is a thin,
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nervous-looking man, who twitches his brown eyes in an
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annoying fashion. Shelby does not find him creepy, and she
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tells me she feels sorry for him. I assume this is because he
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is an accidental murderer, and a nervous one at that, but still,
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he is a murderer all the same.
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Each time Herbert arrives at the office, which has been
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three times so far, and also the one time that Charles
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Bakerfield has come back since offering me a ride, I can’t help
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but think about what Joshua said, that he would like to leave
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this place, to start his own firm, to do good in the world.
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There has to be something else,
he told me. I want Joshua to
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leave, but I also don’t. If he leaves, what will happen to my
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job, to me, if I cannot see him every day? And he might ask
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me to come with him, but then, would my days be filled help
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ing him find mistreated Jews? Finding a better way to do what
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he is doing with this group litigation, out in the open?
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“Margie.” Shelby interrupts my thoughts, one afternoon,
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about two weeks after Joshua and I have shared breakfast.
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“Peggy and I are going to John Wanamaker’s to shop for
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dresses on Saturday. Do you want to come?”
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“Dresses?” I ask her.
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“Wedding dresses.”
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“For you?” I ask.
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She shakes her head. “I want to see what styles look good
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on both you and Peg. She’s taller than you, so it might be
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tricky, but we’ll find something. I promise I won’t be one of
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those
brides who makes you wear something truly awful.”
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“Saturday I can’t,” I say.
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She frowns. “You’re studying?”
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I shake my head, and I commit myself to the only lie that
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I think Shelby will find acceptable. “I have a date,” I say. Then
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I add for good measure, “With a nice American man.”
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“Not Joshua.” She frowns.
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“Of course not,” I whisper.
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“Who is it?” she asks, her voice lilting with excitement,
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and then I feel a little bad for creating this imaginary man.
“You don’t know him. He lives in my building.” I pause.
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“And whatever dress Peggy likes, that’ll be fine by me.”
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Saturday. Even if it were not for the fact that I would not try
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on dresses in front of Shelby and Peggy, I would not go to
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Wanamaker’s with her on a Saturday. Saturday is the Shabbat
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day, the day of rest.
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God created the universe in six days, and on the seventh
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day He rested. The seventh day, it is holy.
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I am across an ocean, a lifetime, housed within a second
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skin, no longer a Jew. No longer a believer in God. My candle,
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my whispered Hebrew prayer, my day of rest, they are a com
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fort in their steadiness, their ability to stay unchanged. Every
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single week.
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It is not religion; it’s ritual.
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Religion is breath, Margot,
Mother said.
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But what I have come to understand as I watch the lonely
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flicker of my candle and listen for the faintest echo of Moth
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er’s voice is this: sometimes we breathe because we have to,
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not because we want to.
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C
hapter
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hirty-eigh
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“All right,” Shelby says, waltzing off the elevator a
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few minutes before nine on Monday morning. “Peggy and I
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found the perfect dresses. You like pink, don’t you?”
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“Of course.” I nod obligingly, thinking about the pink
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Cadillac in the Pelt driveway. Actually, I hate pink right now.
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But still, I am about to ask Shelby about the sleeve length,
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when the elevator doors open again, and Ezra storms out, his
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face the color of Penny’s tomato dress.
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Shelby quickly has a seat and picks up her phone, raising
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her eyebrows at me, so I pick up my phone too. Ezra does not
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stop by my desk or even glance at me to inquire if Joshua is
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with someone. Instead, he storms right past and swings open
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Joshua’s door, a rolling, raging thundercloud about to explode.
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I crane my neck to see through the glass window, and
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Joshua is speaking on the phone, though he quickly hangs up
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when he notices his father standing there in front of him.
Ezra slams Joshua’s door shut, and his anger is momentarily
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muffled, the sounds of yelling muted through the paper walls.
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Until suddenly his anger becomes clear, and I hear the words,