Margot

by Jillian Cantor

  “You cannot even die with dignity anymore,” Mother had complained to Father.

  Penny stares at me hard, and then she says, “Josh is really in no state to be discussing work right now.”

  “This is not about work,” I tell her.

  “Well, whatever it is you came for, it’s going to have to wait. This is just the worst possible time.” She puts her hand, her right hand, on my shoulder. “You go back to work, and I’ll tell Josh you’ve sent your condolences, all right?”

  No, it is not all right. I am not okay with allowing Penny to be my gatekeeper, telling me where I can and cannot be, what I can and cannot say, and most especially how and when and why I am allowed to talk to Joshua.

  “I am going to walk down to the beach,” I tell her. “Can you ask Joshua to come down there to talk to me?”

  “Oh, Margie.” She sighs. “I am sure you are a lovely secretary. But that is all you are. All you’ll ever be.”

  Penny’s words rush in my ears, making me suddenly dizzy, because it is possible, more than possible, that there is truth in them. You’re you. Shelby’s voice echoes in my head.

  I am me, I think. And not the Gentile, Polish American secretary. I have spent so many years hiding, and as Ilsa said, it is time for me to become whole again.

  “I will be waiting on the beach,” I tell Penny. “And then, in a little while, if Joshua does not come down, I will knock on the door, and come inside the house.”

  I can feel the weight of her frown on my back as I turn and walk down the staircase that leads me to the sand and the sea below.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  I TAKE OFF MY PUMPS BEFORE I STEP INTO THE SAND, and then I dig my toes in. The beach is warm, and the grains of sand cling between my toes. The sea swells before me, giant and unyielding, even to the snow-white gulls who swoop down and then back up against the pale blue sky.

  The New Jersey sea, it is not at all like Peter’s eyes. It is greener and blacker, murkier. It reminds me more of the color of the canal running alongside the Prinsengracht, the water we could stare at for so long, but could not touch.

  The sea I always imagine in my head is the North Sea, which truly was as blue as Peter’s eyes. We vacationed there, the four of us, before the war got so bad that we could not. I can still picture my sister and me, digging our small hands into the sand while Mother and Father sunned themselves on long chairs. My sister and I dug a moat in a circle around them, pulling at the sand until it coated our arms and dusted under our fingernails. And then we filled the moat with buckets of water, so anyone who would try to get to our parents, as they lay there with their eyes closed, could not.

  “Let’s do a castle,” I said to my sister, after the moat was finished.

  She shook her head. “Let’s keep digging,” she said. “I’ve heard if you dig deep enough you can dig straight through to the other end of the earth.”

  We did not need to dig that far then, though still we tried, until our arms grew tired, our fingers parched and ready to bleed. “Girls,” Mother said when she awoke. “Fill that hole back in. Someone might fall inside and kill themselves.”

  My sister smiled at me and whispered, “We were so close, I think. Maybe next time we’ll get there.”

  There never was a next time, of course. By the next summer, there were no vacations left for Jews. There were not even movies or bus rides or bicycles.

  “Margie?” I hear Joshua’s voice, and I turn away from the sea. He runs down from the house, in his black suit, a yarmulke crushing his curls. He has taken off his shoes and cuffed up the bottom of his pants, and he has removed his tie and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his white collared shirt.

  “Penny told you,” I say, nearly in disbelief. Even though she had told him my message once before, this time it had felt different.

  “Penny?” He shakes his head. “I saw you out the window. I thought it looked like you and then I saw the sweater, so I figured . . .”

  He stops running now, and his breath is hard and heavy in his chest. He is close enough to me that I could reach out and touch his arm or run my finger around one of his chestnut curls, but I do not.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks, still breathing hard. He does not sound angry or annoyed, as Penny would’ve had me believe, but confused.

  “I went into the office to talk to you, and Shelby told me about your father,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”

  He nods, and he gently takes my arm and leads me to the edge of the sea. “Do you want to sit?” he asks. I nod, and he pulls his suit jacket off and lays it on the ground for us. I sit down first, and then he sits next to me, close enough so our shoulders touch as we both hang our feet out and dangle them in the edge of the water. It is warmer than I expected it would be.

  “I wanted to talk to you this morning,” Joshua says. “You know, before all this happened.” He waves his arms around in the air, pointing back toward the house. “I wanted to apologize for Friday, at lunch. I felt I offended you somehow, and that wasn’t my intention.”

  “I know,” I say. “And I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have said those things about Penny and then just run out.”

  “You’re right, though,” he says. “I don’t love her.” My heart swells when he says it, not because I hate Penny so, but because I know it is the truth, and he is admitting it to me, and also to himself. “I love her as a friend, of course. I always have, and I always will, but . . .”

  He sighs and props himself back against his elbows, extending his face up toward the sun. And I do the same. Our shoulders are still touching, our faces beaming in the sun, our toes dancing against the water. If there has ever been a perfect moment since that last one, in the annex, lying in Peter’s arms before my sister walked in, this is the one: sunlight, the sea, the warmth of Joshua’s body next to me.

  “How did you do it?” Joshua asks, after a little while. “When your father died?”

  “Do what?” I ask.

  “I am not even sure what to feel. My father is gone. And I’m numb. Completely and totally numb.” He sighs. “You said you didn’t get along with your father. How did you mourn him and hate him all at once?”

  I think about Pim: Pim standing there, as surely he did, at the doorway to 263 Prinsengracht, just after the war. Pim holding on tightly to our diaries, thinking to himself that something, it couldn’t mean nothing. Pim now, in Switzerland, seventy years old. Seventy! I try to imagine him with snow-white hair, a slightly shrunken spine, but that same look of brightness in his eyes. Lay your head here, Bubbeleh. I will protect you.

  “My father isn’t dead,” I say softly. It is the first time I have said the words out loud, to anyone. And now they sound so real that they startle me all over again, the way my father’s name shocked me when I first saw it written there as editor on my sister’s book. Otto, Father, Pim—for certain alive and breathing in Switzerland.

  Joshua shakes his head, confused. “I thought you said both your parents were dead.”

  “My mother is dead,” I say. “And my sister.”

  “You had a sister?” he asks, sitting back up.

  “Yes,” I tell him. I sit up too, and I look at him. His gray-green eyes are purely green in the sunlight, and they hold my face in a certain way that tells me he is listening intently, more intently than anyone has ever listened. The sun is warm, and my skin aches and sweats underneath my pink sweater. “I loved her,” I say. “I really did.” Joshua covers my hand with his. “Sometimes we fought. But I always loved her. She was beautiful, and she was brave. She was smart and loud and pure and brilliant. I still miss her,” I tell him. He squeezes my hand, and his eyes reach out to me in a smile. “You know her,” I tell him.

  “Me?” he asks, his eyes turning now in confusion.

  “Or you think you do,” I tell him. “Everyone thinks they do. But no one really knows her, not t
he way I did.” My face is turning wet, but it is not until Joshua reaches his thumbs up to wipe the tears away that I realize I am crying.

  “Margie?” he says, wanting me to tell him more, wanting maybe to understand it. The sun beats down upon us, burning on my back, my shoulders.

  I want to tell him everything, but my words, they are suddenly choking me, and there are so many tears that it is hard to keep on speaking.

  Instead, I pull at my pink sweater, tugging it gently off. I free my right arm, revealing my pale and unmarked skin, and then I take a deep breath, and I free my left arm, the arm by which Joshua sits. I fold the sweater in my lap, and I close my eyes, listening to the sounds of the sea whispering in front of me. If I hold out my tongue, I think, I might be able to taste the salt.

  Joshua’s finger dances gently against my left forearm, tracing the A, then the numbers that follow, each one slowly, and I can hear the echo of them in my head.

  “Margie.” Joshua whispers my name.

  After a while I open my eyes. I turn and I look at Joshua. I catch his gray-green eyes, and I hold on to them. “My name isn’t Margie,” I finally say. “It’s Margot.”

  EPILOGUE

  SOMETIMES NOW I STILL THINK ABOUT THAT FRIDAY AFTERNOON in April when I first learned about your movie. In my mind, that afternoon marks the beginning of the end of my hiding in America. Maybe because it was when I first began to understand that staying hidden forever, even here, even now, it is impossible.

  But do not think I blame you for this, Pim. Do not think I blame you for anything. The book, the movie, your new life in Switzerland . . . In one way, I should probably thank you. Had it not been for the movie, I might not have searched for Peter again, or met Bryda, or worked more closely with Joshua. Ilsa might not have figured out the truth about me, and in doing so, I might not have figured out the truth about myself. I am still not sure what happened that day on the train. But now, when I think about it, I realize that Ilsa is partly right. I do think my sister would want me to live. And not in hiding either. If I could ask her now, I believe she would say, much like Ilsa, that I very much deserve my American happiness. And that is what I am working toward now, Pim.

  A month after Joshua buried his father, he officially left his position as lawyer at Rosenstein, Greenberg and Moscowitz. We packed up our desks at the same time as Shelby clung to her cigarette and pleaded with me not to leave her all alone, but then both of us, Shelby and I, we laughed a little, since we knew it would only be a matter of time until she was married and she would be leaving too. Shelby also finally asked Ron about the woman Peggy saw him with, and it turns out it was his secretary, helping him pick out Shelby’s ring. So I am pleased that Shelby too really genuinely seems to have found her happiness. And even though we are no longer working together, we are still friends, and we sometimes find ourselves meeting for a drink after work.

  In August, I completed my paralegal studies, and Joshua officially opened the doors of his new firm, which he simply calls Joshua S. Rosenstein, Attorney-at-Law. He contacted Bryda and Reisel and the others on our list, and since then, we have been working hard on their case. In September, we attracted the attention of Philadelphia magazine, and they did a write-up on Joshua, calling him a “pioneer of our time.” I clipped the article, put it in a frame, and hung it up in our new office, which for now is only one tiny room with two large desks, just above Isaac’s storefront. It is meant to be a studio apartment, I think, but for the time being, it suffices as our office space.

  The article also has brought in some fresh cases. Not murderers, but generally Jewish people who need help, and who have come to understand that Joshua is a person they can trust. Joshua has handled several divorces, one adoption, and also helped a man sue another man who hit him with his car. Joshua says this will be enough for us to keep our doors open for now and continue work on our group litigation, which pleases us both.

  Most days, Joshua does not even wear a suit to work, but casual pants and a starched, collared plaid shirt that almost always brings out the handsomeness of his gray-green eyes. I go to work without my sweater, except for now, when the weather is turning cooler again, and a sweater has become a necessity—not for hiding, but for warmth.

  My Jewishness is no longer a secret in the city of Philadelphia. And if I am being honest with myself, I’m not sure why I really kept it one for so long. Though I am sometimes still afraid of anti-Semites, when I read the news now I make a point to look for good things that happen to Jews in America. And there are a lot: weddings, births, and even that very nice article about a Jewish lawyer who is trying to help other Jews. I was lying to myself, as much as I was lying to everyone else, I guess. My Shabbat candle was more than a ritual. And so were my prayers. In a way, the Nazis tried to erase our Jewishness. Then I tried to erase my Jewishness too. But as Eduard once very wisely told me, you are who you are. I understand now that hiding, it is not really being alive. And I am, Pim. I’m alive.

  Maybe I clung to Peter’s words much more than I should’ve. Who knows if Peter even meant them, or if they were just fairy tale? But they were the only thing that made me feel safe, for so very long. And there remained a secret strand of hope that if I did what Peter and I promised each other, he would still find me. Maybe you think that’s silly, and I wonder if you have even known before now about me and Peter. If you found my diary, then you did, I suppose. But if the NSB destroyed it, or if it is still tucked away somewhere under the folds of my cot . . . well then, I expect a lot of this might surprise you. I hope it will not upset you.

  I guess I should also tell you that everybody here in Philadelphia still calls me Margie Franklin. Even Joshua and Ilsa, who know there is more to me than that. I am Margie Franklin now, Pim. She is the woman I have become. Margot, she is the girl who only lives on as a character in the book.

  Everything I have revealed to you here, I am telling you in confidence. I do not want the entire world to know me, or to think they know me. My sister, she can be the face of all the suffering, the one reminding everyone, still, now, that it cannot, must not, happen again. That we were real people. This is important, and I am glad her legacy lives on this way, whether her diary was stories, fantasies, reality. I do not know. Perhaps it does not even matter. But me—I do not want a book, or a movie, or even a play. I have a life, and what I want now most is to finally live it.

  I hope you will understand my story, Pim. That you will understand why it has taken me so long to write you. I do not know if you will respond to me, but I hope you will. I would like very much for you to meet Joshua and Ilsa and Bertram too. Someday.

  Quite often, I think about that line from my sister’s book, where she said that even amid all the terrible things that were happening to us, she still believed in the goodness of people. So do I, Pim. Brigitta, the nun, saved me. And Mother’s friend Eduard took care of me in Frankfurt when I thought I had no one left. Ilsa and Bertram, they brought me to America, and loved me as if I were their family. Shelby has become my true American friend, and Joshua . . . Joshua has given me breath again.

  I hope that you too have continued to believe in the goodness of people, Pim. That you too are happy in your new life.

  I hear a knock at the door of my studio apartment, and I put my pen and the paper down. The papers form a long thick pile now, more than a diary, maybe even more than a book.

  I gather the paper into a neater pile and put it all into the thick brown envelope, which I have already addressed to Switzerland. I seal it. And then I put it on the corner of my table. I will mail it. Soon. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Sometime—

  I hear the knock at the door again, and I stand. “Just a minute,” I call. I give Katze a quick pat on the head and pick up my small pink purse, which Shelby had been ecstatic to find in the exact pink shade of our bridesmaid’s dresses.

  I open the door, and Joshua stands there, his tall body arched in the frame.
He wears a black suit with a starched white shirt and black tie. He holds his hands behind his back, but when he sees me, he pulls his arms around, and I see he is holding a small nosegay of pink roses in one hand. “For the bridesmaid,” he says, smiling his uniquely Joshua smile, where his gray-green eyes dance across my face. Then he unfolds his other hand to reveal a small ball of twine. “For Mr. Katz,” he says.

  I laugh, and I take the twine and throw it in the direction of Katze, who is lying on the blue couch. He peeks his head up for a moment, then ignores both the twine and Joshua, and goes back to sleep.

  I turn back to Joshua and take the flowers. “They’re beautiful,” I say, and I smile back at him. I hold them to my nose and inhale the sweet sharp scent. They too seem to match my dress exactly, which is a pink taffeta with long sleeves, which Shelby decided upon after I told her I was Jewish and showed her my tattoo. In typical Shelby fashion, she only shrugged, offered me a cigarette, and then told me not to worry at all about the dress. To her, my tattoo, my religion, it changed nothing between us. Though of course she might have flinched had I told her the rest. Worse, she might not have been able to keep it to herself. And that, I think, is the real reason that I hold my final secret close, and have told only Ilsa and Joshua.

  “You ready?” Joshua asks now. I grab my coat off the chair, pull it over my shoulders, and then Joshua holds out his hand, across the doorway.

  “I’m ready,” I say. I take his hand and step out into the hallway. He gives my hand a squeeze, and he smiles one more time as he pushes open the front door to my building with his other hand.