Margot

by Jillian Cantor

  “I guess so,” I murmur. But then, I always quite enjoyed school. I was a star pupil at the Jewish Lyceum. It is hard for me to consider what I might have done, had we continued our lives in Amsterdam, had I been able to go on to college.

  “It does make you stop and think,” he’s saying now. “How your life might have been different had you been born somewhere else in the world.” He pauses and finishes off his drink. “My father would’ve been the type to take us in hiding. Although,” he adds, “it would’ve been someplace we wouldn’t have been found, I’m sure. He’d be very good at hiding, at pretending not to be a Jew.”

  I nod, though I begin to feel annoyed with Joshua for the first time. I know he cannot help it that he is an American Jew, that he cannot really understand the way it was. I am sure already, from Shelby’s description, that the movie has put a glamorous sheen of Hollywood on all our experience. Maybe it made Father look weak, the annex cozy, though none of that is true, of course. But then again, how is Joshua to know?

  “Anyway,” Joshua says, “it just made me think more about Miss Korzynski, and how I really do want to help her. So I had an idea.” I take another, bigger swallow of my drink, and though I am now fully convinced it is not club soda, I don’t care. Who’s a paragon of virtue now? I think, inching myself just a little bit closer to Joshua so I am almost close enough for him to whisper, even in the crowded bar. “This is what we can do,” Joshua is saying. His breath is warm, and it brushes against my cheek as he speaks. “I want to put an ad in the Inquirer. We’ll ask people to call us to join the suit. This way, we can collect a group of them, without Miss Korzynski having to do all the work, and this way we can reach all of the factories. Make sense?” I nod slowly, even though Joshua’s words, and his face, are swimming before me. “But I can’t put the law office’s name or number or even my own in the ad. My father will know. Once we have the suit together, I’ll tell him. I’ll show him how important this is, but until then we need to work furtively.”

  I finish off my drink, and my stomach turns. Joshua’s gray-green eyes go in blurry swirls, around and around.

  “So, Margie, what I want to do is this. We’ll put an ad in the Inquirer that says something to the effect of: ‘Jews who work for Robertson’s unite against anti-Semitism.’ And then we’ll put your number underneath it. The people will call you, at home; you’ll take down their names, numbers, information, and then bring them to me.” Joshua pauses and stares at me. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” he says. “So I’ll pay you extra. Five dollars more a week.”

  I cannot imagine it, listening to their surely sad stories of being a Jew and being punished for it. Or even, other Brydas yelling at me through the phone, calling me a liar. Joshua’s face swims in front of me, his eyes swirl faster, until I am not sure anymore whether they are green or blue, whether it is him or Peter sitting there, asking something impossible of me. Peter van Pels. Peter Pelt. 2217 Olney Avenue . . .

  “Okay,” he says. “Seven dollars more a week.”

  I think about the way I felt, there in the annex, lying on the divan, kissing Peter, the way I wanted to be close to him. I hear my mother’s voice, my sister’s, the voice of the girl I was before the annex. What are you doing, Margot, paragon of virtue?

  “I don’t know, Peter,” I say now, only maybe I don’t say Peter’s name. Maybe I just think it.

  “Margie.” I hear Joshua’s voice, although it sounds like it is coming from somewhere very far away, not right next to me. “Your face is so red. Are you feeling okay . . . ? Are you too warm?”

  I shake my head, even though I feel myself falling just a little bit off the side of the bar stool, and then I feel Joshua’s hands, steadying me, tugging at the sleeves of my sweater.

  Peter’s eyes were blue, like the sea. So blue that they made me remember swimming and sky. They held me; they swallowed me; they kept me alive.

  “Margot,” Peter whispered in my ear. “It’s like you and I are the only two people here,”

  I knew what he meant. There was nothing else but me and him, in the middle of the quiet night, in the darkness. We were no longer trapped rats there, hiding, terrified for our lives.

  We were alone, but we were together. Some nights, I wished we would be able to stay there, in the annex, forever.

  “Who’s Peter?” Joshua asks me now. We are standing on the sidewalk, in front of O’Malley’s, and after the noise of the bar, the quiet is almost alarming. Joshua is still holding on to my arm, steadying me with his large hands. “Would you like me to call him for you?” he’s asking now.

  “Peter?” I say, and I realize I must have actually said his name, inside the bar, when I was thinking it. I shake my head. Then I say, “I don’t think that was a club soda.”

  He nods. I notice the sleeves of my black sweater are pushed up slightly, and I tug at them quickly, to pull them back down. “I thought you were going to pass out,” Joshua says. “Come on.” He tugs gently on my arm. “Let me walk you home.”

  “You don’t have to,” I say meekly.

  “Yes,” he says, and his voice is curling with what sounds like guilt. “I do.”

  Joshua is still holding on to my arm as we walk down South Sixteenth, and then Ludlow. For a moment I pretend that it is because he wants to touch me, not because he thinks he needs to hold me up. The air is cooler now, and it calms my cheeks. I inhale deeply, taking in the scent of a Friday night outdoors. On Ludlow Street, that scent is roses, city bus exhaust, a hint of garbage, and something else, a little sweeter, that I think is Joshua’s cologne because it is slightly familiar, something I have smelled before.

  “Margie,” Joshua says. “I hope I didn’t upset you, with my idea.”

  I don’t say anything because, for once, I am not sure how to lie without also telling the truth.

  “I just want you to understand, how important this is to me. Being a Jew.” I think about the fact that Ezra, he is also a Jew and does not feel compelled to help. I wonder if it is not just a money thing, but also a matter of his reputation. Though the partners at the firm are all Jews, many of the clients are wealthy businessmen who are not. “I cannot imagine what it must have been like,” Joshua is saying now. “To have been treated like that, tortured, and then even now . . .” He pauses. “Did you notice Miss Korzynski is missing a finger?”

  I nod, but I remember what she said: It’s not what you think. Maybe it wasn’t the war. Maybe it was an accident in the factory or something that happened to her as a child, in Poland.

  “I can’t give her back her finger, or her family. But she should be treated the right way, in America, after all.” He pauses. “You know what scares me the most?”

  “What?” I whisper.

  “That people will forget, and it will happen again. Another Hitler, more camps. If Jews aren’t seen as equal, then when will it ever stop?” Something clenches hard in my chest, so hard that for a moment I cannot breathe. What if Joshua’s right? What if it could happen to me again? But Margie Franklin is not a Jew, I remind myself. And it could not happen in America. Maybe a few terrible incidents, but not another Hitler. More camps.

  We stop at the entrance to my building, and I turn and look at Joshua. In the soft shadow of the moonlight, he tilts his head, and he looks younger than he does at work, sitting there at his desk, his brow stretched with concentration. Now I can see Joshua as a younger man, a teenager, like the Peter I remember. He is vulnerable, in the moonlight, pondering about the fate of humanity. I want to reach up and touch his cheek, but I clasp my hands together, not only because Joshua might think it strange if I touched him, but also because the feeling of Peter and me there, that last night on the divan, it is so fresh in my mind now. It feels wrong that I should like Joshua so much. A betrayal.

  Joshua lets go of my arm, and he looks at me. I blink, until Peter’s face disappears. In the moonlight Joshua’s gray-green eyes take o
n a yellowish cast. You know what scares me most . . . When will it ever stop?

  “Okay,” I say to him now.

  “Okay?”

  “I will help you.”

  He smiles at me and puts his hand on my shoulder, a gesture of kindness, or maybe it is just to make sure I am steady on my feet. We are standing close now, close enough that I could feel his breath almost against my cheek as he spoke. His eyes trace my face, as if he is seeing something the way he did that day in January when Alaska became a state and he invited me for a drink.

  He begins to say something else, then stops and hesitates for a moment, and he takes a step back.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “I was just thinking I could walk you up, say hi to Mr. Katz.” My heart pounds so hard and loud in my chest that I am certain that Joshua can hear it, or possibly even see it pulsing through my sweater. Joshua wants to walk up, come inside my apartment? I try to remember if I put the yellow paper back in my satchel, my sister’s book back on the shelf, my pile of freshly laundered sweaters back in the drawer . . . “But it’s getting late,” Joshua says. He shrugs. “I probably shouldn’t.”

  “Another time,” I say, and the boldness of my words surprises me.

  “Another time,” he repeats. He smiles at me, and takes another step back, so he is walking away now, slowly, but away nonetheless. I turn to walk into my building. “Margie,” he calls out, and his voice echoes against the empty night sidewalk. I turn back around to look at him. “I’m lucky to have you, you know that?”

  He smiles at me and waves, and then he turns and takes off walking quickly back toward Sixteenth Street as I walk inside, still light-headed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  WHEN I FIRST CAME TO WORK FOR JOSHUA IN JANUARY OF 1956, I did not realize he was the kind of lawyer who defends criminals, or that later on he would become the kind of lawyer who would convince me to help him with a case like Bryda’s.

  I’m thinking about this Monday morning as Joshua’s new client, Charles Bakerfield, a rich man accused of killing his wife, is sitting in the chair by my desk, waiting for Joshua to arrive for their ten o’clock appointment. Charles is tall, with green eyes that chill me a little when he stares at me too hard as I am typing.

  Joshua is running late this morning. At five minutes to ten, he has not even stepped foot in the office yet, and I am filled with a nervous sort of anticipation, not only because of Charles Bakerfield’s intense stare, but also at the thought of seeing Joshua again, this morning. I’m lucky to have you, you know that?

  I’m lucky to be here, I think.

  I saw Joshua’s advertisement in the Inquirer for a legal secretary the week before Christmas, 1955, over a lunch with Ilsa of ginger tea and ham sandwiches, in which I’d cautiously removed the ham and eaten only the bread and cheese. Just before lunch, I had helped Ilsa string garlands and tinsel around the thick evergreen tree that rested in front of their fireplace, where Ilsa had hung an extra stocking, just for me. Ilsa had asked me to climb the ladder and place the yellow star on top of the tree. Not the Star of David. The Star of Death. But a star that seemed all wrong, so unfamiliar that to me, it barely looked like a star at all.

  “After lunch, we’ll unpack the baby Jesus,” Ilsa said to me as she chewed delicately on her ham. My days with Ilsa were spent alongside her as she shopped and decorated. She taught me to sew curtains and make dolls. She consulted me on matters of color and materials, dinner recipes and grocery lists. I knew she was trying so hard to be kind, to include me in her life, so I would never tell her that decorating made my brain feel dull, that her ham and her baby Jesus and her star, they all made me feel more than a little uneasy, even if I had already told her that I no longer planned on being Jewish in America.

  Then I saw it, there in the paper, Joshua’s notice: Rosenstein, Greenberg and Moscowitz. Their Jewishness, it was right there, so obvious.

  I couldn’t help it. I had to apply. There is this wayward sort of homesickness that eats Margie Franklin, the Gentile, at her core. In the law office often, even now, it is the place where I feel most at home.

  Joshua arrives promptly at ten and ushers Charles Bakerfield right back into his office. He runs in quickly, without even so much a glance at me, and I am overcome with a sense of disappointment. I’m not sure what I was expecting, really, but it wasn’t that.

  I watch them now through the glass window, Joshua and Charles. Charles seems much taller than Joshua even just sitting across the desk from him. It’s possible Charles is innocent, though more likely, I think, he is not. The majority of the law firm’s clients are not who I would count among the good people of the world, but the ones who are accused murderers, they make me the most uneasy. Shelby says that someone has to defend them, that it is only fair and right under American law that a person is innocent until proven guilty, but still, I wish it didn’t have to be Joshua.

  This is a case Ezra has insisted Joshua take on. Shelby and I had listened last week as Ezra had yelled at Joshua about it through the paper walls, talking about redemption and bringing in some money for the firm. Joshua either hadn’t responded to Ezra’s rant, or had kept his voice low enough so Shelby and I hadn’t heard his reply.

  So I suppose I can understand it, then, why Joshua wants to help Bryda so badly. Why he is asking so much of me, more than he knows. Money is not greatness, he told me. Bravery is greatness. Still, sitting there at my desk, watching the two of them through the glass, watching Joshua pull at the nonexistent beard on his chin, I realize that helping Joshua with Bryda’s case, it will not be the same at all as helping him type notes and compile documents for a trial, not even a murder trial.

  This will be no different, I tell myself. No different from all the other lies I’ve told. Yet somehow it feels different.

  Joshua’s meeting lasts nearly two hours, and when Charles Bakerfield exits, with an almost eerily contemptuous nod in my direction, Joshua walks out of his office right behind, looking browbeaten.

  “Lunch?” he says to me, quietly, tapping the corner of my metal desk with his forefinger. He grabs his hat from the rack, and tosses it atop his curls.

  Shelby stops typing, and her jaw nearly plummets to the floor. I can almost see the wheels of her brain turning, wondering about his weekend with Penny, and about the fact that Joshua and I went to lunch together on Friday. And she does not even know about the drink on Friday night. I think again about him standing there, on Ludlow Street, the way his voice floated and his eyes traced my face, and I have the strangest feeling that we share something now, something more than work, a thought which makes me smile.

  Joshua turns and looks at Shelby, and she nods at him and continues her typing. I stand up, grab my satchel, and follow him to the elevator.

  “You have to eat more than an apple and a cup of soup,” Joshua says as we stand in line at Isaac’s counter. “Really, don’t be shy about it, Margie.”

  “I’m not a big lunch person,” I say. Or dinner. Or breakfast.

  “All right.” Joshua shrugs. “As long as it’s not on my account.” I shake my head. “But really, Margie, you’re thin as a bird. I worry about you, and I say that as a friend not as your boss.”

  “I’m fine,” I say, because lies, they are so easy now. And really, what I’m thinking about is that Joshua has called me a friend, that my thought back in the office was right: somehow we are connected now, more than we were. Bryda Korzynski, her case, it has made Joshua begin to see me. I’m lucky to have you . . . This is a thought that both thrills and terrifies me.

  “So I wanted to tell you what I’ve done,” Joshua says, after we are seated at the same table by the window. I gnaw carefully on my apple. I nod, and he continues. “I stopped at the Inquirer offices this morning before work. That’s why I was so late. Anyway, the ad will begin running tomorrow. It has your phone number, with a note to call between the hours of five and six
only. This way, it will only be an extra hour you will be bothered with work, and you can leave a little early to make it home by five, all right?”

  “All right,” I say, though secretly, I am already hoping that no one calls. I think Joshua is overestimating. He does not really understand it, as much as he may want to, the continued need to hide and to stay hidden. Bryda Korzynski cannot be the only one who feels she deserves more than she is getting at the factory, but how many others will truly come forward to complain openly as she has done?

  “Let’s have lunch again at the end of the week, and you bring the list of callers with you. Then we’ll see where we are.”

  “Okay,” I say. His eyes seem greener in the daylight, and because we are sitting by the large picture window, sunlight streams past me and onto his face. I smile at him.

  But he shakes his head, as if his mind is off somewhere else, perhaps contemplating the fate of humanity once more.

  “You know that man who was in my office all morning?” he finally says. I nod. “He’s guilty as sin,” Joshua whispers. “And I’m going to keep him out of jail.”

  “That’s your job,” I tell him, though it seems little consolation.

  “Yeah,” he says, and his voice is thick with something I don’t recognize from him. Joshua, whose voice is usually so easy, so filled with that American happiness. Now there is a layer of something like gloom, or sadness. “That’s my job,” he repeats, and then I realize what it is. Joshua is bitter. Joshua dislikes his job.

  How is it that I have worked for him for three years, this whole time, watching him through the glass by his office door as his brow furrowed in concentration, his gray-green eyes dancing with laughter, and I have not understood before now, how unhappy Joshua is with his work?