Margot

by Jillian Cantor

  In 1944, the train started.

  It was taking them from one camp to another, from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen. Margot and Anne were lumped in a cattle car, with so many other women, heaps of bones and loose flesh. It was hard to tell whether they were dead or alive, unless they happened to move a limb or twitch an eyelid.

  The train moved slowly, at first, and Margot was by the door. He won’t shoot you, Mother had promised, and Margot saw him there, Schmidt, guarding their car.

  I will run, and he will shoot me, Margot thought. Oh, the idea of running, out in the fresh air, though. It felt glorious and unbearable, after so very long.

  Margot held on tightly to her sister’s hand. They had to jump, or the train would be moving too fast, and maybe they would die as they hit the ground, from the impact alone. A heap of bones and flesh: they might snap. But it was then, or it was never. And Margot promised Mother.

  “Run,” Margot said to her sister, pulling as hard as she could on Anne’s arm. But Anne was too sick, too weak. She couldn’t run. Her almond eyes were saucers.

  “No,” she whispered back. “I can’t make it. Run. Without me.”

  “I won’t leave you,” Margot cried. “You’re my sister. I won’t leave you.”

  “Yes,” Anne said. “You must.”

  Schmidt turned his head, and he stared directly at them. His hand moved to his belt to grasp the handle of his gun, and that’s when Anne pulled all the strength she had to reach her hand up, put it tightly on Margot’s shoulder, and push her hard enough so that her body found the door and it fell, crumbling into one with the parched earth.

  Ilsa’s story, it is a nice one. It is a story of bravery and selflessness and redemption. It is a story that makes Margot nothing more than one of the millions of other Jews who suffered, the ones now whose dead sisters are not icons. It is a story that makes me nothing more than a victim of the Nazis and then, somehow, like Bryda Korzynski, a survivor of them too.

  It could be the truth. It might not be. When I close my eyes and envision the scene, I can see it happening that way, just as Ilsa described. My sister insisting that I go, pushing me from the train. I imagine it the same way I can imagine my sister stepping in front of me in line, getting tattooed first. I cannot tell you if this is the way it happened. I wish I could. But I cannot.

  “You have suffered so much,” Ilsa is saying now. She reaches up and strokes my hair with her hand, and I lay my head down on her fragile bony shoulder. “Oh, my dear,” she whispers into my hair. “It is time for you to become whole again.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  EVENTUALLY, ILSA AND I STAND UP FROM THE BENCH AND continue walking down the street. It feels strange, that nothing around us looks different, that not even the air has changed after I have told Ilsa so much, and Ilsa has given me a story that I may be able to cling to.

  As we walk, I think about her words, that it is time for me to become whole again. What does that even mean? I wonder, until we hit the front entrance to John Wanamaker’s, and then her words begin to make sense.

  Ilsa pulls open the heavy door, but I stop, let go of her hand, and give her a hug. “I have to go,” I tell her.

  “Where?” Ilsa asks me.

  “There is someone I need to see,” I tell her. I think about that last moment in the annex with Peter, my sister, and me. What might have happened, had the Green Police not stormed in? I would’ve asked my sister what she meant, why she was saying his name that way. And Peter would’ve stood. He would’ve looked me in the eyes with confusion or he would’ve gone to my sister. Either way, I would’ve fought for him. I would not have run away—I did not run away; I was ripped away. And that is entirely different. I wouldn’t have let Peter go, just like that. I would’ve at least tried. The way we were together the night before, that last night in the annex. That meant something. I know it did. The way Joshua had looked at me, put his hand on my face. I cannot work without you, Margie. He was saying more than that. He was.

  “Someone?” Ilsa is saying now, arching her eyebrows.

  “My boss,” I say. Ilsa said it was time for me to become whole. And now I cannot imagine myself as someone whole, someone real, without Joshua.

  “Your boss?” Ilsa raises her tiny eyebrows, and her voice now reveals that she has also long suspected there is more between me and Joshua than my inability to work with murderers. But I do not clarify any further.

  “I’ll call you later,” I promise her again.

  “Margie,” she says.

  “I will call you. I promise.” I hesitate for a moment. And then I add, “And please, don’t tell anyone the things I have told you.”

  “Of course,” she says. If it were anyone but Ilsa, I might worry, but I trust Ilsa more than I have trusted anyone since my blood family, and I know she will keep my secret.

  “Margie,” she says my name again. “Wait—I could come with you.”

  “Thank you,” I tell her. “But this is something I need to do alone.”

  She hesitates for a moment before leaning in to give me another quick hug. And then she stands back and watches me go.

  It is nearly lunchtime by the time I arrive at the lobby of the office building, and as a result I have to wait a while for the elevator. I pace the marble-tiled floor in front of it, Ilsa’s words echoing in my brain. You have suffered so much. It is time for you to be whole again.

  I have been hiding for so long that it has become all I am. And I realize I am not even truly certain why I am still hiding, except now it is all I know. A promise I made so long ago that has no meaning anymore. Ilsa knew. She has known for a while. And yet she has said nothing until now. She has cooked me dinner and worried about my weight, and called me “my dear” as if I were her flesh and blood. Is it possible that no matter who you once were, what your past is, how terrible that past is, that you can somehow transcend it? I thought I could, that I would, when I first moved to America. I thought my life would be free and open, and I would find Peter and we would marry. I did not imagine the way my father would put my sister’s book into the world filled with such a different version of life in the annex than the one I remember, the way that would change everything. The way everyone would know my story but me. But I hope that Ilsa is right, that it is not too late. Even now.

  Finally the elevator doors ding and slide open. A group of men in suits, not lawyers from the firm, but men or clients from one of the other companies in the building, step out, past me. Henry holds on to the button to keep the doors open for me, and I am the only one going in, the only one going up, at this hour of the day.

  “Miss Franklin,” Henry says, shooting me a kind smile. His warm brown eyes melt against my face. “I thought maybe you was sick today when you didn’t ride up first thing this morning.”

  “No,” I say. “Just a little sidetracked, that’s all, Henry.” Maybe I have been sidetracked for years now, I think. But I don’t share this thought with Henry.

  The doors open onto the seventh floor and Henry tells me to have a good afternoon. I smile at him and walk quickly toward my desk. It is empty, I see, which means Joshua hasn’t replaced me yet, even temporarily. Not that I would’ve expected him to, this fast, but still I also cannot imagine Joshua working efficiently without a secretary.

  Shelby is at her desk, but she does not appear to be working. She is staring at something—maybe the window by Joshua’s office?—and she lets her cigarette dangle loosely in her right hand.

  “Shelby.” I say her name, and she jumps a little.

  Her chocolate eyes turn, then fall. I wonder if something has happened with her and Ron, but before I have a chance to ask, she is saying, “Oh, Margie, where have you been?” I look past her to Joshua’s glass window, trying to get the tiniest of glimpses of him. But I quickly see the light in his office is off, the office dark, and that Joshua is not inside. He’s at lunch, with Penny. Of course
.

  Still I ask Shelby now, “Where’s Joshua?”

  “Oh,” she says. “You don’t know, do you?”

  I expect her to say it, that over the weekend, Penny and Joshua got engaged, that of course he could not be expected to work on the cusp of such a happy and exciting occasion. Her eyes, when she saw me, it had nothing at all to do with Ron. “Know what?” I ask, my voice breaking.

  “Ezra,” she says, her voice thick with a sadness that I am not used to from her. I turn and look at her, and there are tears in her eyes. One escapes and runs down her cheek. She quickly wipes it away.

  “No,” I whisper, not wanting to believe what she is telling me. If this is true, then why has no one called to tell me? But then I think guiltily of the way I walked out of Isaac’s on Friday as Joshua called after me.

  Shelby nods. “He passed away on Saturday.”

  My fingers feel numb, the air suddenly too thick. “Where is he?” I whisper.

  “Ezra?”

  “Joshua?”

  “Oh.” She grabs a tissue from inside her satchel and blows her nose. “Margate,” she says. “He called in this morning.” She pauses. “He asked for you.”

  “He did?”

  She nods. “I tried to cover for you, Margie. I lied and told him you were in the bathroom, but he said he knew I was lying, that you weren’t in. Where in God’s name were you, anyway?”

  “I have to go,” I tell her. And I turn and walk back toward the elevator.

  “Margie,” she calls after me. “Margie.”

  I press the button for the elevator, but it is still lunchtime, still slow. Shelby stands up from her desk and runs over to where I’m standing. She puts her hand on my shoulder, and I turn to look at her face. Her brown eyes well up with confusion and sadness. “What is going on with you?” she asks. I don’t answer, and the elevator doors open. Henry raises his eyebrows at me in surprise, but he does not say a word.

  “Joshua really asked for me?” I say. She nods, and I step inside the elevator.

  “Margie,” Shelby calls after me. “Where are you going?”

  “Margate,” I say, and there is just enough time before the elevator doors shut for me to watch Shelby’s lips fall open in surprise.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  WHEN I REACH MY APARTMENT BUILDING, I FIND ILSA SITTING outside on the bench where Joshua once waited for me. She is holding a tiny John Wanamaker’s bag and glancing nervously at her slender gold watch. “Margie.” Her eyes break into a smile when she sees me.

  “You didn’t have to wait,” I say.

  “Bertie is picking me up here, remember?” She pauses. “I thought you would still be talking to your boss, for a while.”

  I had been thinking I would go to my apartment, take some money from my stash underneath the mattress, and then make my way toward the Greyhound station, where surely there must be a bus that could take me to Margate. But now I have a different idea.

  “Have you ever been to Margate?” I ask Ilsa.

  “Margate, New Jersey?” I nod. “I’ve been to Cape May,” she says. “Bertie’s cousin Alice has a house there. I think Margate is nearby.” She pauses and looks me up and down. “My dear,” she says. “What’s in Margate?”

  “Joshua,” I say.

  “Joshua?” She pats the space on the bench next to her, and I sit down. “This Joshua, he is your boss?” I nod. “And you are in love with him?” I meet her green eyes, wondering how they are so wise, how she knows so much. And really, that I am not as good at hiding things as I think. At least, not from Ilsa. I nod again, and then she reaches for my hand and clasps it tightly. “Bertie should be here in ten minutes. And then he will drive you to Margate,” she says. “We both will.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  IN THE BACK OF BERTRAM’S FAIRLANE, I CLING TO THE BROWN leather seat and look out the window, waiting anxiously for a glimpse of the sea. I can smell it faintly as we grow closer, the salt air curling in my nose, a smell so foreign now yet also so familiar. Once you have smelled the sea, I don’t believe you ever forget its particular scent.

  Bertram hasn’t talked much, but in true Bertram fashion, he did not argue or even seem upset that his afternoon off was being detoured by an hour-long drive to New Jersey.

  “Margate?” he’d said, raising his copper eyebrows at Ilsa as we both got into the car and Ilsa instructed him to drive there. Ilsa nodded, and Bertram said only, “Illie, pull the map out of the glove box, will you?”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” I said to Bertram. “I could find the bus.”

  “Nonsense.” Ilsa’s green eyes lit up as she found the atlas, and I could feel her excitement bursting through her skin. “We don’t mind at all.”

  And then all Bertram said was, “Check the map, Illie. The White Horse or the Black Horse Pike looks better for Margate?”

  Bertram held one hand on the steering wheel and slid the other across the seat to rest gently on Ilsa’s knee as Ilsa studied the map and then declared the Black Horse Pike to be our route.

  “Black Horse it is, then,” Bertram said, pulling away from the sidewalk, but keeping his hand on Ilsa’s knee.

  I watch her as she still holds the atlas on her lap now, and I cannot help but think of Peter. Of the way his finger traced the name of the city of Philadelphia. City of Brotherly Love. Certainly Jews cannot be in hiding there. And yet what have I been doing, all this time? Peter had brought me here. But no, I think now. I have brought myself. Peter and I were supposed to be together. Or maybe we weren’t. Maybe nothing in the annex was meant to be any more than a story, a fantasy, a way to survive the horribleness of having our childhoods ripped away, our lives ripped away. We will go to Philadelphia, Peter said. Be married.

  I do not love him, my sister said.

  Was she the only one of the three of us who was really, truly being honest? Understanding that the life in the annex, it was a pretend life. It was no life at all.

  “Where in Margate are we going?” Bertram asks as we are getting closer and closer to the sea. The smell of salt grows stronger, and I close my eyes and inhale, letting the salt tingle in my nose as I try to remember the address of the house. I sent things there on behalf of Ezra and Joshua in the past few weeks. “Knight,” I whisper, recalling it. The house is on Knight.

  Ilsa finds the street on the map and gives Bertram directions. Their voices rise and fall in the background as I look out the window, at the houses. As we get closer to the sea, it seems they get bigger, grander, more beautiful. They are delicate and regal all at once, on stilts and swathed in windows. Any one of these could be the Rosensteins’.

  But the one that actually is the Rosensteins’ soon becomes obvious. It is at the end of the drive, the house closest to the sea. Their name is splashed across the black mailbox in white letters. It is not the biggest house on the street, but it seems fashioned of glass, and close enough to the sea that you might almost be able to taste the salt on your tongue from the back deck, which hangs close to the sand.

  “This is it,” I say.

  Bertram stops the car. Ilsa turns around and smiles at me. “Shall I come in with you, my dear?” I shake my head. “Bertie and I will go get a late lunch, then, and come back in an hour. Should that be enough time?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, because I have no idea how Joshua will react when he sees me. Maybe five minutes will be enough, or maybe, hopefully, it will not. “I can take the bus back,” I tell her. “You don’t have to wait.”

  “Nonsense,” Ilsa says. “Of course we’ll wait.” She leans in to the backseat to hug me. “Good luck, my dear,” she whispers in my ear.

  As Bertram’s Fairlane drives away, I stand in Knight Street for a moment, across from the Rosensteins’ house. In a way, it is not so dissimilar to our home on the Merwedeplein, in that it is grand and tall and lofty, and the place where a
well-off family very obviously lives. We had nice things, before the war, before we were hiding. I should not be so intimidated by the big, big house by the ocean. And yet, still I am.

  After a few minutes a powder-blue Chevelle pulls up, and nearly immediately, I realize it is driven by Penny. She rides with the top down, a white scarf wrapped around her petite head. She is dressed in a slender black dress and wears big Marilyn sunglasses. My heart falls as she parks the car in the street next to the house, then turns my way and immediately locks her eyes on me.

  She pulls her scarf off her head, gets out of the car, and runs across the street. “Margie, is that you?” she says. She pulls her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose and gives me a once-over. “If you’re here for the funeral, you’re too late. It was this morning.” She frowns, and I realize I am completely inappropriately dressed for a funeral, should that have been my reason for coming here. I am wearing my pale green dress with my pink sweater.

  I try to glance at Penny’s left hand, nonchalantly, but she clings tightly to her black leather clutch, and I cannot tell whether there is a diamond there or not.

  “No,” I finally say. “I’m looking for Joshua.”

  “You came all the way here for Josh?” She raises her eyebrows, and looks at me in a way that says, Silly, silly girl. Josh would never want to see you. I think about what Shelby said once about wanting to punch Penny in her smug little face, and I clench my hands uneasily at my sides. “Well,” she says, pulling her sunglasses back up over her eyes. “This really isn’t the best time. We’re preparing the house for the first night of shiva tonight. That’s when—”

  “I know what shiva is,” I say. Though there were many shivas I did not get to sit, for my mother, for my sister, we sat one on the Merwedeplein after Gram Hollander died in January 1942. It was only a pretend shiva, though, as my sister said, since we did not want to attract attention then from the Green Police for having a large gathering of Jews. That was the first time I’d seen Mother upset, really truly upset, by the war.