Margot

by Jillian Cantor

  This is no escape plan, I think.

  In 1944, when we were held against our will in Poland, Mother had a plan. She always had a plan. Even when we were girls and we first moved from Frankfurt to the Merwedeplein and she fed us books in Dutch to integrate us into our new world, or when she filled our soup with extra chicken fat in an attempt to get us to gain weight when my sister and I grew sickly in the new world of Holland.

  I believe, even now, that the plan she had in the camp, she had worked out for a long time, before we even needed it, just like Father did, with the annex. When I received my call-up notice from the Germans, he was ready. But the difference was, Father never believed we’d be found in the annex. Mother, I suspect, did.

  Mother whispered her plan to me in pieces, late at night, after the others in the camp were asleep, once our heads were already shaved, our arms marked, our bodies falling apart. She was sick by then, and her voice came out of her in gasps. There had been whispers that they’d be moving us soon, to another camp, but not Mother. She was too sick. I did not want to leave her behind, but I was in no position to protest, and I knew she would never let me, anyway.

  “When they put you on the train, you run,” she whispered to me. “You grab your sister and you run. Wait until the train is moving, but not too fast. Wait until he is watching. He will not shoot you.”

  I knew who she meant, the one guard, who I vaguely remembered from our life in Germany. A neighbor. A Nazi. His name was Schmidt—I could not remember his first name, and I did not want to. I could still picture watching him out our front window in Frankfurt, watching as he watered his grass with a long green hose. Once, when I was a very young girl, not even in school yet, I walked across the yard and played with his shepherd puppy. Schmidt smiled at me then while he tossed the puppy treats and cooed sweet things at her. Schmidt was a different man in his Nazi uniform, his arm wound tightly with the red swastika. His face had grown hard, unyielding.

  “He will not shoot you,” Mother repeated.

  I nodded, not because I thought she was right, but because by then, I was not afraid of being shot. It sounded like an easy way to die, almost a relief.

  “You run,” she told me, “and you take your sister.” She paused. “And when you are free, you find Eduard, in Frankfurt. He will help you.”

  I nodded again, the rhythm of her whisper tickling in my ear. It was like she was telling me a bedtime story, lulling me to sleep, winging on a fantasy.

  “Promise me,” she said again.

  “I promise,” I finally said, my throat so parched that the words barely formed.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FRIDAY MORNING EZRA ROSENSTEIN IS NOT AT WORK, having already departed for Margate, but Joshua comes into the office and announces to me and Shelby that he will not be heading to Margate this weekend.

  “This fight must be serious,” Shelby whispers to me after he goes into his office and shuts the door. She is frowning, I think because she knows Joshua’s presence means she won’t be able to start her weekend early.

  “Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe he just has a lot of work to do.”

  Shelby shakes her head. “He’s a lawyer,” she says. “And he’s rich. It’s not about the work.”

  Joshua buzzes me, just as I am beginning to wonder if Shelby is right, if their fight is the reason why he’s here. “Yes, Mr. Rosenstein,” I say.

  “Margie,” he says, “did you get me those papers I asked for?”

  “Papers?” I ask.

  “After work yesterday . . .”

  “Oh yes,” I say, thinking of the four different city buses it took me to finally make my way home. “Yes, I did.”

  “Good,” he says. “Let’s discuss them over lunch today, all right? We’ll walk down to Isaac’s Delicatessen at noon.”

  “We?” I hear myself saying, though I know it is a stupid thing to say even as the word escapes my lips.

  “Unless you have other plans,” he says.

  “No, no. Of course not,” I say. “Lunch will be perfectly fine.”

  I hang up the phone, and Shelby is staring at me with raised eyebrows, her lips in the shape of an O, but I ignore her and begin typing. And then I smile to myself as I wonder if Ezra is not the reason why Joshua is here today. If the reason why is me.

  As I wait for Joshua to come out of his office, just before noon, my cheeks grow warm at the notion of our upcoming lunch, just the two of us. Then I find myself thinking, That was how it began with Peter and me, lunch. And it is confusing how my mind wanders to Peter, when I am so eagerly awaiting the time with Joshua. But I cannot push the thought away. Peter is there, always there. And the woman’s voice from the phone sounded so much like my sister, though, of course, it could not be.

  My sister’s voice and Peter. They go together in my head now, though, don’t they? Even when things first began between Peter and me, it was because of her. My sister and I had been lying on her bed together that day, writing in our diaries and studying, just the two of us, as we did often. Sometimes my sister slept, and I watched the door. Other times, that day, she could not sit still. It was so small in the annex, and there were so many of us, and we weren’t supposed to talk above a whisper during the day when the office was filled with workers below us.

  This was the hardest for my sister. She enjoyed the sound of her own voice hanging in the air. She was inquisitive. She always wanted to know things, to analyze them out loud. She whispered to me, all the time, about everything. There was no room to think.

  “Can’t you just stop?” I finally said to her, in something that verged on louder than a whisper that day.

  “Just stop what?” she asked, chewing on the edge of the fountain pen she was writing with.

  “Talking,” I said.

  “I’m just asking you how you feel about the weather,” she huffed. We could hear the gentle sound of rain against the rooftop.

  “The weather?” I fumed. “Who cares about the weather? We’re trapped in here. And you’re always talking, always so cheerful.”

  “So I shouldn’t say a word, and what? Be a paragon of virtue like you? A silent and gloomy and determined-to-become-smarter-with-all-your-studies-while-you’re-here bore?” She glared at me, and I got off the bed, and I stormed out of the room, or my best attempt at it while also tiptoeing in my stockinged feet. Right in the hallway, I nearly bumped into Peter.

  He stood there, holding on to his cat, Mouschi, and a few pieces of bread. Peter was tall, with blue eyes the color of the sea. I’d noticed him at school before, but he’d never once seemed to notice me before that moment; even in our closeness in the annex, we’d barely spoken.

  “You can sit in our room with us,” he said then, referring to himself and Mouschi. “It’s quiet. And we’ll share our lunch with you.”

  “Margie.” Joshua’s voice interrupts my thoughts, and I glance at the clock and see that it is exactly noon now. “You ready to go to lunch?” He taps his hand easily against the edge of my desk before reaching up for his hat. Shelby is typing. I hear the clickety-click of the keys, but I also feel her eyes on me, burning steadily through my skin. She will ask me many questions about this when I get back.

  “Yes,” I tell him, standing and picking up my satchel. “I’m ready.”

  Isaac’s Delicatessen is at the end of the block, at the corner of South Sixteenth Street and Market, a mere twenty steps or so from the front entrance of our office building. But I have never been in Joshua’s presence outside the office before, so it feels strange, stepping out into the sunshine, next to him, keeping up with his long strides on the sidewalk.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I asked you to come out to lunch with me today,” he says as soon as our feet hit the pavement. Joshua’s long black shoes turn my small black pumps into dwarves.

  “Not at all,” I say.

  “I know Miss McKinney can be
a bit of a gossip, and I don’t want what we’re doing here to get back to my father. At least until I have a plan.”

  “Of course,” I say. I am surprised by the fact that he seems to have some understanding of Shelby, but more, I am pleased that he has used the word “we’re.” Joshua and I. We’re doing something together. Then I remember what that thing is, and I cling tighter to my sweater around my chest.

  Isaac’s sits in a small glass-covered storefront, underneath a low brick office building. Joshua pulls open the heavy glass door and holds it back, motioning for me to pass in front of him. “Order whatever you want,” he says as he strolls up to the counter. “I’m buying.”

  I order an apple and a cup of chicken soup, and I carry my tray to a small table by the window, which is one of the only ones still open. There are twenty or so tables crammed into the small space, but most of them are already occupied by men in dark-colored suits like Joshua’s. A haze of smoke hangs in the air from their lunchtime cigarettes, but Joshua, he does not smoke. Or at least, not at the office.

  Joshua sits down across from me, so we’re facing one another. It’s loud in here, men’s laughter bellowing across the room, but when Joshua looks at me, I no longer hear it. His eyes are a gray green, closer to the color of winter grass than the sea. I spoon my soup carefully into my mouth while Joshua takes a bite of his chopped liver, which looks just the way Mother used to make it before the war, when there was still food to be had, and when everyone still had an appetite.

  “Are you sure that’s enough food, Margie?” Joshua asks, looking at me, in between bites.

  I nod. “Yes,” I say. Joshua raises his eyebrows, but then the moment passes and he takes another bite. I could tell him that once you have come close to starving, it still feels impossible to eat in abundance, these many years later, but of course, I don’t. We weighed ourselves in the annex once, and I was 132 pounds. After the camp, I was flesh and bone, and now I am only marginally better. The last time I stepped on the scale, at Ilsa’s urging, I was just around 110 pounds. But I try to avoid weighing myself now, the same way I have stopped checking my face in the mirror. Though my face is rounder than my sister’s, my nose a bit wider, my eyes a bit more circular, there is still something there that bears a similarity to her. And without my glasses on, my face appears blurry in the mirror, an apparition. My sister’s face staring back at me.

  “So tell me,” Joshua is saying now. “How was Miss Korzynski yesterday?”

  I swallow some soup and will myself to also swallow away the image of my sister’s ghost. But even as I put down my spoon and pull the thin yellow paper with the two names on it out of my satchel, her face stays in my mind. Paragon of virtue, she whispers. Living your great American life hiding in your thick sweater. What do you think you’re doing here, now, at lunch with your boss? And what of that other yellow paper folded in your satchel?

  I glance down to check that this yellow paper is the right one before handing it across the table to Joshua. It is. He takes it from me, and for just a second the tips of our fingers touch before I pull back quickly. But Joshua seems not to notice, as he is already staring at the paper and frowning. “Two isn’t enough,” he says. I nod, because I have already come to this realization myself. “We need fifty names. Maybe a hundred.”

  “A hundred?” I say, focusing my full attention on him now, on the way he looks so different when he’s frowning, older, more like Ezra. “I don’t think she’ll ever get you that many names.”

  “You may be right, Margie. And yet I know they’re out there. Robertson has three factories in Philly and another four across the river. And many of his workers are Jewish immigrants, like Miss Korzynski.” He sighs. “I’m sorry I’ve wasted your lunch hour with all this.”

  “You haven’t,” I say. “I was glad to leave the office for a little while.”

  He nods. “You should leave the office more at lunch. It’s good to get out of there sometimes.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Sometimes I think I’ll suffocate in that place.” He shakes his head. “My father always seems to think greatness and money are the same thing, but you know what I think greatness is?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Being brave, like Miss Korzynski. Doing something that no one else has dared to do before you. Finding something that terrifies you and then doing it anyway. Does that make sense, Margie?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It does.”

  I stare at Joshua, and for the moment before he stands, his gray-green eyes flicker with something that I can’t exactly put my finger on. And then, quickly, he smiles, and he is glowing again, like the Joshua I am used to.

  Peter’s eyes, they were a blue so deep you might have thought they were in a painting, a van Gogh or a Cézanne. His eyes held on to me when we spoke.

  At first, we shared lunch. Every day for a week. Or maybe two. Time had an odd quality in the annex, hours into days, days into weeks, weeks into months, then years. It was hard to remember the days, to keep track.

  But for some time, Peter and I sat on the divan tossing bread crumbs at Mouschi and talking about the people we knew from school, wondering what had happened to them. Who had been taken? Who was in hiding? Later, when we wanted to become a secret, Peter and I would be together only at night, after everyone else was sleeping. But at first, we shared bread and whispers as the sunlight poured in through the high glass window in Peter’s room.

  After that week, or maybe those two weeks, Mouschi decided he liked me and came onto my lap, which Peter said was strange, because Mouschi normally only liked him and him only. “He knows that you are special,” Peter said as he stroked back Mouschi’s fur. His hand bumped against my leg, unintentionally, but it warmed my skin, even through the cloth of my skirt.

  “I can’t believe your parents let you bring your cat,” I said, wondering what had become of our own poor Moortje. Had the neighbors found her, or had she escaped and become one of those fierce alley cats? Father had said bringing her was too dangerous.

  “They didn’t have a choice really,” he said. “I told them I wasn’t coming here without him.”

  “You did?” I stared at him, at the way his blue eyes held steady. “Were you serious?” He nodded. “You were ready to die for a cat?”

  “It’s different for you,” he said. “You have a sister.”

  “But you have your parents,” I pointed out. “They have to mean more than a cat.”

  He shook his head. “Nah, they probably would’ve left me there and come into hiding without me. But they were too busy worrying about themselves to argue with me over a cat.” His voice sounded small as he said it, and watching the way they alternated between yelling at him and ignoring him in the annex, I was almost inclined to believe him.

  He held on to me then, with his blue eyes, as if we were the only two.

  “Oh, Peter,” I said. “They wouldn’t have left you behind. How could they have? You’re their son.” He shrugged, and I reached my hand up to touch his cheek. It was smooth, a boy’s cheek still, or perhaps an almost-man’s. “I would never leave you behind,” I whispered.

  He smiled at me and stroked Mouschi’s fur. His hand grazed my thigh, and stayed there a second longer than if it were an accident. “I know that,” he whispered back. “And I would never leave you behind either.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  JOSHUA HAS AN ON-AGAIN, OFF-AGAIN GIRLFRIEND: PENNY Greenberg, daughter of Saul Greenberg, one of Ezra’s partners and another name on the law firm’s letterhead. Penny is tiny, almost childlike, with thick black curly hair that tumbles past her shoulders. She shows up at the office sometimes, wearing elegant dresses that I imagine were intended for parties, not for every day or for work. Though I’m pretty sure both that Penny doesn’t work and that she considers every day a party.

  Penny has been stopping by to see her father a lot lately, but ma
inly I suspect she is at the office to see Joshua, using her father as an excuse. I also suspect that she likes Joshua a whole lot more than he likes her. More than once, Joshua has asked me to lie about him being in a meeting or on an important phone call when she has shown up.

  This afternoon, though, she saunters in, draped in a dress the color of a ripe tomato, with a hat to match, her hair twisted underneath in some kind of fashionable up-do that seems impossible to create oneself. I wonder if she has paid someone to do it for her.

  “Hello, Margie,” she says. “Josh is expecting me.”

  She walks past my desk, sashaying her hips. “Hold on a second,” I call after her. “I’ll buzz him. He may be in the middle of something.”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary.”

  I press the button on the phone to buzz him, but she is already past me, in his office. She doesn’t shut the door all the way behind her, and after a moment I hear the sound of her giggle and Joshua’s ebullient laughter.

  Five minutes later, he walks out with Penny draped on his arm. “Margie,” he says to me, tipping his hat on the way past. “I’m leaving for the day.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  He winks at me, and then he says, “Have a nice weekend.”

  Shelby stops typing as soon as the elevator door shuts behind Joshua and Penny.

  “Now this,” she says, smirking, “is an interesting development.”

  “What’s that?” I ask, finding nothing about Penny’s quick escape with Joshua in the least bit interesting.

  “I thought he didn’t go to Margate because he and his father are in a fight. But maybe he didn’t go because of her.”

  “Why would you say that?” I ask, my face turning red, thinking about how I considered our lunch might have been the reason.