Margot

by Jillian Cantor

  He nods. “And that is what will make you happy, Margie? Is that what you want out of life?”

  I hesitate for a moment, and then I nod again, chewing the toast carefully, making an effort to chew, chew, chew each bite.

  “But you are afraid of something,” he says.

  “Why do you say that?” I put the toast down and hold tightly to my sweater.

  “The way you screamed, out there, on the sidewalk,” he says. He reaches his hand across the table and lays it gently on my wrist. The gesture is meant to comfort me; I know that. And for a moment it does. I can breathe, and the air in front of us feels serene like the delicate blowing of bubbles under water.

  I wonder what Joshua would say if I told him. If he knew it all, everything. I am not Margie Franklin, I might tell him. I am not Polish. I am not a Gentile. I’m a Jew. I was marked as a Jew, the thick dark ink on my arm. It is not a badge of honor, it is a battle scar, a wound so deep I will never find a way to heal it. My name is Margot.

  But before I can tell him anything, Joshua moves his hand, and his head is turning. “Can I help you?” I hear him saying, and that is when I look up, when I see him for the first time sitting at the table across the aisle from us, staring at me, with a glassy sheen to his dark brown eyes. He is older than me, my father’s age, I might guess, with graying hair that sticks out in wiry curls around his temples, and bushy gray eyebrows to match.

  “You are Margie?” he says to me. I nod. Gustav Grossman. Not at all what I imagined, which was what? Peter? A Peter replacement? “You are even very more beautiful in person than on the telephone.”

  “This is who you’re meeting?” Joshua whispers across the table.

  “Gustav?” I say to him just to be sure, though I already feel certain it is him. He nods, and he smiles at me, revealing yellow crooked teeth. He stares hard at my sweater, my heart, and nods.

  “Yes, very beautiful, indeed.”

  My cheeks burn, and Joshua frowns and folds his arms across his chest. “You are interested in our group litigation against Robert Robertson?” he asks Gustav sternly, in what I imagine is his courtroom voice.

  Gustav shrugs, and he smiles at me. “You very young too, Margie, yes? A sweet, sweet flower.”

  I pull my sweater tighter around my chest, and Joshua looks from Gustav to me to him, then back to me. He reaches across the table for my hand again and holds it between his own. “Look,” he says pointedly to Gustav. “I think you’ve got the wrong idea here, pal. Miss Franklin is taken.”

  “She is?” he asks. I am? Joshua looks at me and winks across the table, and now there is a smile twitching on his lips. He is lying. Of course. Being kind. Trying to scare Gustav off. This is some kind of sweet or misguided urge to protect me. I cannot decide whether this thrills me or annoys me. Gustav is odd, yes. But also, I believe he is most likely harmless. And Joshua, he is the one who is taken, isn’t he?

  “I’m very sorry,” Gustav says. He looks at me. “On telephone you did not say.” He shakes his head. “America is very lonely place. In Berlin, before war, I very handsome boy. I have very many friend.”

  I close my eyes and think about my sister and me, walking home from the Lyceum, before the yellow star, when we still skipped on the streets, flanked by the laughter of our schoolmates and the gentle flow of the canals. “But you have made it to America,” Joshua says to Gustav, and his eyes soften a little.

  “Yes,” Gustav says. “But many time, I would give all my life, to be boy in Berlin again.” He pauses. “Not Berlin now. But Berlin that was.”

  In the annex, Peter and I had talked of America as if it were a cloud: rich and full, beautiful and soft. And America, it is harder than I dreamed it would be, though beautiful too. But sometimes I too would give anything to be back on the Merwedeplein with Mother, Father, my sister. Before the yellow star and the restrictions on Jews. When my sister and I could chase each other on the grassy knoll, the sounds of our laughter resonating against the nearby cobblestones like raindrops.

  “In America,” Gustav is saying now, “I have no one.”

  “But you must have someone,” I hear myself saying. “Someone here who reminds you of home.” Joshua clings tightly to my hand, and I look across the table at him, his chestnut curls, his gray-green eyes, his uniquely Joshua smile. Gustav doesn’t answer.

  Joshua moves his hand to pull his gold pocket watch from the confines of his black suit jacket. “We should probably be getting to work,” he says pointedly.

  Gustav looks at Joshua then back at me. He hesitates for a moment, and then he says, “I’m sorry I waste your morning.”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  Joshua pulls a card from the cardholder in his pocket and hands it to Gustav. “If you want more information about joining the suit, you give me a call. But call me and only me.”

  Gustav nods, and Joshua and I stand and walk out of Casteel’s together, holding hands. I know it is only pretend, that when we hit the sidewalk, Joshua will drop my hand and shoot me a smile.

  But still.

  I am right, of course, and one block up, he drops my hand. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to put your number in the paper,” Joshua says, sounding just a little bit like Ilsa.

  “He seemed harmless enough,” I say. “Just lonely, that is all.”

  He frowns. “Margie, that’s how every single criminal I’ve come across seems, at first.”

  I think about Charles Bakerfield offering me a ride, and I cringe. I wonder what Joshua would think about that, but I know I will not tell him, because then I will also have to tell him about leaving work so early.

  “No.” Joshua shakes his head. “I didn’t like the way he was looking at you. I’m sorry, Margie. This is all my fault.” He pauses. “I’m taking the ad out of the paper.”

  “Okay,” I say, and as we walk together in the office building, I cannot seem to erase the smile from my face.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  A WEEK PASSES, THEN TWO. THOUGH JOSHUA HAS TAKEN THE ad out of the paper, I still receive a few more calls from Rabbi Epstein’s Jews, bringing our number of interested people up to twelve. “That is still not enough,” Joshua tells me early one morning, sighing the heaviest of sighs, and I nod. “There has to be a better way.”

  Joshua has taken a new case, handed down to him by his father: Herbert Bittlesby, who killed a man by accident when he was driving after a night of drinking. Herbert is a thin, nervous-looking man, who twitches his brown eyes in an annoying fashion. Shelby does not find him creepy, and she tells me she feels sorry for him. I assume this is because he is an accidental murderer, and a nervous one at that, but still, he is a murderer all the same.

  Each time Herbert arrives at the office, which has been three times so far, and also the one time that Charles Bakerfield has come back since offering me a ride, I can’t help but think about what Joshua said, that he would like to leave this place, to start his own firm, to do good in the world. There has to be something else, he told me. I want Joshua to leave, but I also don’t. If he leaves, what will happen to my job, to me, if I cannot see him every day? And he might ask me to come with him, but then, would my days be filled helping him find mistreated Jews? Finding a better way to do what he is doing with this group litigation, out in the open?

  “Margie.” Shelby interrupts my thoughts one afternoon, about two weeks after Joshua and I have shared breakfast. “Peggy and I are going to John Wanamaker’s to shop for dresses on Saturday. Do you want to come?”

  “Dresses?” I ask her.

  “Wedding dresses.”

  “For you?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “I want to see what styles look good on both you and Peg. She’s taller than you, so it might be tricky, but we’ll find something. I promise I won’t be one of those brides who makes you wear something truly awful.”

  “Satur
day I can’t,” I say.

  She frowns. “You’re studying?”

  I shake my head, and I commit myself to the only lie that I think Shelby will find acceptable. “I have a date,” I say. Then I add for good measure, “With a nice American man.”

  “Not Joshua.” She frowns.

  “Of course not,” I whisper.

  “Who is it?” she asks, her voice lilting with excitement, and then I feel a little bad for creating this imaginary man.

  “You don’t know him. He lives in my building.” I pause. “And whatever dress Peggy likes, that’ll be fine by me.”

  Saturday. Even if it were not for the fact that I would not try on dresses in front of Shelby and Peggy, I would not go to Wanamaker’s with her on a Saturday. Saturday is the Shabbat day, the day of rest.

  God created the universe in six days, and on the seventh day He rested. The seventh day, it is holy.

  I am across an ocean, a lifetime, housed within a second skin, no longer a Jew. No longer a believer in God. My candle, my whispered Hebrew prayer, my day of rest, they are a comfort in their steadiness, their ability to stay unchanged. Every single week.

  It is not religion; it’s ritual.

  Religion is breath, Margot, Mother said.

  But what I have come to understand as I watch the lonely flicker of my candle and listen for the faintest echo of Mother’s voice is this: sometimes we breathe because we have to, not because we want to.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “ALL RIGHT,” SHELBY SAYS, WALTZING OFF THE ELEVATOR A few minutes before nine on Monday morning. “Peggy and I found the perfect dresses. You like pink, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” I nod obligingly, thinking about the pink Cadillac in the Pelt driveway. Actually, I hate pink right now. But still, I am about to ask Shelby about the sleeve length, when the elevator doors open again, and Ezra storms out, his face the color of Penny’s tomato dress.

  Shelby quickly has a seat and picks up her phone, raising her eyebrows at me, so I pick up my phone too. Ezra does not stop by my desk or even glance at me to inquire if Joshua is with someone. Instead, he storms right past and swings open Joshua’s door, a rolling, raging thundercloud about to explode.

  I crane my neck to see through the glass window, and Joshua is speaking on the phone, though he quickly hangs up when he notices his father standing there in front of him. Ezra slams Joshua’s door shut, and his anger is momentarily muffled, the sounds of yelling muted through the paper walls. Until suddenly his anger becomes clear, and I hear the words, “Robertson . . . What kind of an idiot do you take me for?”

  My heart thuds rapidly in my chest as Shelby shoots me a nervous look. We have been discovered, Joshua and I. I begin to sweat, to shake a little. I might vomit. I close my eyes, and I feel the roughness of hands against my neck. There are no hands. Not here. Not now. But still, I feel them, dragging me down the steps, bruising every single bone along the way, yet I could not cry out.

  I will not cry out, not here. Not at my desk.

  “Margie,” Shelby whispers. “Margie, what’s wrong?”

  It is an effort to breathe. In and out. In and out. In and out.

  “No,” Joshua’s voice booms back, unexpected. “I’m not going to drop it.” There is more yelling, more words I can’t make out. I inhale, exhale. The hand grabs my neck. No, it doesn’t.

  “Yes, you are,” Ezra yells. “I’m your boss, and you’ll do as I say.”

  “Is that all you are,” Joshua yells, “my boss?” There is quiet for a moment, and I feel even through the walls that I can hear the heavy sounds of Joshua and his father breathing. Then, more muffled words I cannot understand.

  Joshua’s door flies open, and he is standing there, at the entryway, breathing hard. He looks to me, then Shelby, then back to me. “Margie,” he says loud enough for a few of the other lawyers to walk to the edge of their offices to stare at him. “I’m leaving.”

  Shelby stares at me hard and shakes her head a little. I can feel her panic gripping me across the desk.

  “Will you come with me?” Joshua asks. His gray-green eyes break on my face, and he says my name, his voice softening: “Margie?”

  Shelby shakes her head again, and her eyes, they remind me of Ilsa’s now, ripe with worry.

  I clutch my satchel from underneath my desk, and somehow, I’m not sure how, I stand up. I look at Joshua. His eyes catch mine, and they are filled with something, or a combination of somethings: sadness or anger, mixed with excitement.

  “Margie, sit down,” Shelby whispers just as Ezra walks out of Joshua’s office and looks to me, then Joshua. Ezra doesn’t say anything, but his face is even redder than before. He clenches his fists tightly at his sides, and he stares hard at Joshua. His eyes are green, I see now, greener than Joshua’s. Joshua breaks his gaze and looks at me again.

  “Come on,” he says to me gently, and he nods in the direction of the elevator.

  I walk behind him, feeling the weight of Ezra’s green eyes and Shelby’s brown ones, as if both of them, they are burning holes through the back of my sweater.

  Once the elevator doors shut Joshua exhales. And then so do I, letting out breath I did not even realize I’d been holding.

  “Thank you,” Joshua whispers to me. But I do not answer him because I am thinking that we have been discovered, and we have escaped, and yet I can feel my fingers trembling. I tighten their grip on the strap of my satchel.

  I realize now that I do not know where it is we are going, that I may have just quit my job, and that if I am not getting a steady paycheck, I will not be able to continue to pay my rent. But I still cannot speak.

  “I’m sorry it happened like that,” Joshua is saying, “but I would’ve asked you to come anyway, you know, when I left this place. I don’t think I can work without you anymore, Margie.”

  I don’t think I can be without you anymore. No, that is not what he said. Work. Work without me. This is all about work. “Okay,” I finally say, and the word sounds hollow, far away, in my voice.

  The elevator pulls us down, down, down, slowly, gently. We have been discovered, and we are escaping, in such an American way. No rough hands on the back of my neck, no bruised shins bumping against the staircase. We float down in an elevator, unscathed.

  “I guess you’re wondering what happened in there?” I realize Joshua is still talking, and maybe I have missed some of what he’s been saying. I nod, though I think it is fairly clear what happened. “My father played golf with Robert Robertson, and Robertson mentioned seeing the ad in the Inquirer a few weeks ago. My father is a smart guy. He put two and two together.” Joshua laughs drily. “I guess my father figured there could not be two Mickey Mouse lawyers in this city wanting to form a group litigation against Robertson.”

  The elevator falls slowly and comes to a stop. “You’re not a Mickey Mouse lawyer,” I say.

  “I know,” he says. “But my father sure thinks I am.”

  The elevator doors open, and Joshua and I step out into the lobby. I stop by the sandwich cart, mainly because I am unsure exactly where we are going, and Joshua seems to be walking slowly, as if in a dream. He stares at me and shakes his head. “I finally did it, didn’t I? I told my father the truth about what I want to do with my life.”

  “The truth?” I say, and my voice escapes in a whisper, as if that word, it is so foreign to me now, I can barely comprehend its meaning.

  “That I don’t want to defend murderers, that I don’t want to work for him. It felt good. It felt really, really damn good.” He pauses. “You know what? I think my mother would be proud.”

  The truth.

  Joshua is still talking, his voice bubbling with excitement. He is saying something about finding an office, or maybe starting out of his home, about how he will build something from the ground up, how we both will, together.

 
Together.

  “Joshua.” I say his name, and he stops talking and smiles at me. His gray-green eyes catch in the sallow light of the lobby. They are so full of life and American entitlement. His truth, it is so easy. I put my hand to my mouth, realizing I have just called him by his first name out loud, the way I do so often in my head. But he doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Don’t worry, Margie,” he says, grabbing my hand. “I’ll make sure you still get paid. And once things get off the ground, and you get certified as a paralegal, we’ll really make a run of it, you and I.”

  “Okay,” I say. He drops my hand, and then he raises his own hand, as if he is about to touch my cheek, to trace it with his finger, the way Peter once did, only he stops just short and then instead reaches and slowly tucks a brown curl behind my ear.

  “Thank you,” he repeats, letting his hand linger by my cheek. “For coming with me. For believing in me. It means so much, Margie. I can’t even tell you how much. Really.”

  I nod. “Joshua.” I say his name again. And it is right there, on the tip of my tongue. The skin has peeled itself back, and so easily, I could say it. Joshua, I am not Margie Franklin. I am not a Gentile. I want to come with you, but I do not know if I can help you with your case, you see, because I too, I am a victim of Jew haters. Only, I do not even like thinking this word—“victim”—much less saying it, out loud.

  Joshua is so close to me, I can feel his breath on my face, and his fingertip, it traces the outline of my cheek now, gently. “Margie,” he whispers, and I have the strangest feeling that he is about to kiss me.

  “Mr. Rosenstein!” A familiar voice shouts Joshua’s name, from the bottom of the stairwell, just on the other side of the elevator. I look up, and Shelby is standing there, gasping for breath, so I know she has just run down the seven flights of steps. Her pale freckled forehead is shining with sweat.

  Joshua moves his hand away from my face, turns toward her, and frowns.