29N
where, all over my sister and me, covering all of us.
I open my mouth to scream but no sound escapes me.
01
My throat is too parched. I haven’t had enough to drink in
02
weeks.
03
04
05
At 5:21 a.m., my phone starts ringing. I am lying in bed with
06
my eyes closed, but nonetheless, I am not sleeping. My brain
07
is heavy from my dream, and sleep has already felt like the
08
furthest thing from my reach for a few hours. Still, I am good
09
at pretending, lying there with my eyes closed, just because I
10
know it is what I should be doing at this hour.
11
As I walk toward the phone, I find myself thinking about
12
Peter
again—
Peter van Pels, Pete Pelt, P. Pelt—
and I push my
13
brain to remember the sound of Peter’s voice, the pitch of it,
14
how my name would sound as he spoke it.
Margot. You’re
15
really beautiful, even if you don’t know it.
If he were to see the
16
number in the paper, if he were to call it; if he were to find
17
me listed in the phone book, Margie Franklin, as we always
18
said—what would he even sound like now? What time would
19
he call? Peter and I almost always spoke in Dutch. Would his
20
voice sound different in American English?
21
“Hello.” I pick up the phone.
22
“Margie, hello. It is me, Gustav, again.” Gustav Grossman’s
23
broken version of English rings clearly in my ear, and any
24
notion I have of remembering Peter vanishes. For a moment
25
I am surprised, because I do not remember having told Gus
26
tav my name, but maybe I did. “I do not wake you, do I?”
27
Gustav is asking.
S28
“No, Mr. Grossman,” I say. “You do not.”
N29
01
“I’m sorry I call back.”
02
“That’s okay,” I tell him. “But I really don’t have any
03
news for you. I promise my boss will call you when he has
04
some.”
05
“I know that,” he says. “But your voice, it has very beauti
06
ful sound, and I wonder maybe you have breakfast with me?”
07
Ilsa’s warning echoes again in my head. Ilsa is wise and
08
strong, and I do not know Gustav. He could be a wife killer,
09
a creeper, a secret Jew hater, or even a Nazi.
10
“Margie.” He says my name again. Gustav’s voice sounds
11
kind and broken all at once. Maybe Gustav and I, we have
12
much in common, and suddenly, in Gustav’s voice, I feel it
13
again, that wayward sense of homesickness that I can never
14
seem to squelch in America, no matter how hard I try.
15
“Yes, okay,” I tell Gustav.
16
“How about today,” Gustav says.
17
“Today?” I ask.
18
“Yes,” Gustav says. “Why don’t we meet today?”
19
20
21
I agree to meet Gustav at 8 a.m. at Casteel’s Diner. Though it
22
is not far from the office, and in an area that is crowded in
23
the mornings usually, I cannot shake Ilsa’s warning after I
24
hang up the phone. And I know what I am about to do, meet
25
ing Gustav this morning, is what the Americans would con
26
sider Mickey Mouse. That is to say, dumb. And I am not
27
dumb. I was always the top pupil at the Jewish Lyceum, top
28S
self-learned in the annex. I know many languages. I survived
29N
the Nazis. I jumped from a train and somehow made it safely
to America, Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love. But still I
01
have agreed to meet Gustav, this strange man from the other
02
end of my phone who really could be anyone, because I think
03
we are both lonely, lost souls in a great big American city.
04
Yet, I am no Mickey Mouse, no matter what Shelby might
05
have you think. So I quickly dial the number to Joshua’s
06
house before I am about to leave.
07
“Hello,” a woman’s voice answers, and it throws me
08
because I was expecting Joshua’s voice. I think of the woman,
09
baby Eleanor, and the pink Cadillac, but then I shake the
10
thought away. No.
Penny.
“Hello,” she says again, and my
11
heart tumbles.
12
“Hello,” I finally say. “This is Margie Franklin, is Mr.
13
Rosenstein there?”
14
“Oh,” she says. “Hi, Margie, it’s Penny.”
15
“Hello,” I say. There is the space of silence, and though it
16
is the sound of nothing, it feels excruciating to me.
17
“Josh can’t come to the phone right now,” she finally says.
18
“Can I take a message?”
19
I hesitate, remembering that moment at my desk when I
20
pretended to intercom Joshua as she stood by, eagerly craning
21
her neck to see into his office. I suspect that what I tell her
22
now will never reach Joshua, but I say it anyway. “Can you tell
23
him I am meeting with someone, for our new case, at Casteel’s
24
before work today?”
25
“Hang on,” she says, “let me grab a pen.” She waits, what
26
is probably the appropriate amount of time for pretending,
27
and then she says. “All right. Casteel’s before work today.” She
S28
pauses. “Anything else?”
N29
01
“That is all,” I say.
02
After I hang up, I cradle the receiver in my hand for a
03
moment, imagining the weight of Penny’s smirk on the other
04
side of the line.
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28S
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01
02
03
C
hapt
er
Th
irt
y-fi
ve
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
I walk down Market Street past the law office to get
14
to Casteel’s. It is early and the air is still cool, the street
15
uncrowded. My breath rasps in my chest, then my throat, and
16
I remind myself. Breathe. Just breathe. It is not so hard.
17
I feel my heart pounding in my chest, my throat closing a
18
little bit. What am I doing? I wonder. Why am I meeting this
19
man who I do not know, just because he is a Jew and lonely
20
like me? He could be anyone, I remind myself.
21
I close my eyes for a moment, and I see Penny’s face, then
22
the redhead’s, and then baby Eleanor.
What color were her
23
eyes?
Why did I not think to notice them?
24
Suddenly I hear the heavy footsteps behind me again. I
25
quicken my pace. They quicken too. Pounding, faster, faster.
26
I think of Charles Bakerfield, offering me a ride on Friday.
27
Was he following me? Or was he just being nice?
S28
He’s a creeper,
Shelby said.
N29
01
I am trying to breathe. But I cannot. My chest hurts from
02
the effort of breathing and running—it is too much. The
03
boots, they get louder and louder, and louder, breaking my
04
ears, and then I am back on the Prinsengracht again. May
05
1942, just before the call-up notice came. Mother had asked
06
me to stop by there after school, to bring Pim a letter at the
07
office that had come for him that morning. I’d held it in my
08
satchel all day, and on the way home, I took a different turn
09
from my sister. She was skipping, anyway, with her friend
10
Hanna, as if the yellow star across her heart, it meant nothing.
11
I walked quickly, though my legs were already tired. I was
12
scared to walk alone, or even leave the house since I’d over
13
heard Father talking, telling Mother that now Jews could be
14
arrested, just for being Jews. “They do not even need a rea
15
son,” he’d said to Mother, when he thought my sister and I
16
weren’t listening. “They see a yellow star and that’s enough.”
17
I turned the corner, just before the Prinsengracht, and I
18
heard the sound of footsteps behind me. The heavy gait of
19
boots.
20
I sped up to a run, and the boots, they sped up, too.
21
“Stop,
Jood
.” A man’s voice called out to me, and I couldn’t
22
breathe; the words fell on me, like the hardest of rains, flood
23
ing me, sweeping me down toward the Prinsengracht, drown
24
ing me. Yet my feet stood still on the pavement as if they were
25
stuck there. I wanted to run, harder, faster. I didn’t. The
26
sound of the man’s boots got heavier in my ear.
27
I turned, and he was behind me, dressed in his Green
28S
Police uniform: thick black boots, long green coat, hat like a
29N
bell, obscuring all but his black and penetrating eyes. “What
are you doing, a young girl on a business street at this time?”
01
He spoke to me in Dutch. I had trouble understanding the
02
words at first, though by then I was already quite fluent in
03
Dutch. With fear, my brain still turned back to its first lan
04
guage, German. I tried to answer, but my voice, it trembled
05
in my throat and refused to make a sound.
“Jood,”
he yelled in
06
my face, his breath hot and smelling of cigarettes. “Answer
07
me,
Jood
.” He grabbed my arm roughly, twisting it a little.
08
“I am going to see my father.” The words fell out of me,
09
somehow. “He works on this street.”
10
He twisted my arm a little more, a smile twitching against
11
the white hairs of his mustache, a smile that said he was
12
deriving pleasure out of frightening me.
13
“What’s your name,
Jood
?”
14
That was the time to lie, the time to find a second skin,
15
only I was too young then, too innocent to understand
16
how important lying was. I told him my name. If I had lied,
17
maybe the call-up notice never would’ve come a few weeks
18
later, and we wouldn’t have had to go into hiding so quickly,
19
just to save me.
20
He let go of my arm. “Hurry up,” he told me. “Run. Your
21
yellow star, it’s making me sick.”
22
Je gele sterren, ze maken me ziek.
23
There is the Dutch. It comes back to me sometimes, even
24
still, in 1959.
25
26
27
Just as I reach Casteel’s, I feel a large hand grasp my shoul
S28
der, tugging at the corner of my sweater.
N29
01
Stop,
Jood.
02
I hear the sound of a scream, somewhere, in the distance.
03
It rises, like a siren, getting louder and louder, hurting my
04
ears.
05
It takes a moment for me to recognize that that sound, it
06
is my own.
07
“Margie,” a voice is saying, whirring in my ear.
Margie,
08
Margie, Margie.
09
The name falls and breaks like a clap of thunder followed
10
by a torrent of rain. “Margie, are you all right?”
11
The voice is familiar, and the screaming stops. I look
12
around, and I realize I must’ve fallen down as I was scream
13
ing, because now I am sitting there, on the dirty morning
14
sidewalk on South Seventeenth Street, staring at the tops of
15
black, dressy, familiar shoes.
Joshua.
16
“Margie.” Joshua’s voice echoes in my head. “I’m sorry. I
17
didn’t mean to frighten you. I was just trying to catch up with
18
you.” His large gentle hand reaches down for mine, and I hold
19
on to it, allowing it to pull me up, back to my feet. “Are you
20
all right?” he asks again.
21
“Yes,” I finally say, but he does not let go of my hand. He
22
laces his fingers through mine, and he shoots me a worried
23
smile.
24
Suddenly I am embarrassed that Joshua heard me scream
25
ing, that he saw me slink to the ground. It has happened to
26
me before, these fits, as Ilsa would call them. Where some
27
thing will startle me, and I will crumble. “It must be some
28S
kind of residual stress,” Bertram guessed, “from the war.” And
29N
Ilsa had encouraged me to see a doctor, but always I refused.
“It’s nothing,” I told her, and then, for so long, I’ve been
01
able to contain myself.
02
“It’s nothing,” I tell Joshua now.
03
“Are you sure?” he asks. “Because you seemed pretty
04
upset. Did something happen?”
05
His eyes look at me in a way I have not seen before. It is
06
neither seriousness nor sadness, but something else. Con
07
cern? Have I worried him? Does he think I was getting
08
mugged here on the street? That would certainly be a better
09
explanation for my screaming than the truth, but some lies
10
make me feel too terrible, so I will not tell him that.
11
“No,” I say softly. “Nothing happened. I just . . .”
Twisted
12
my ankle. Saw a ghost. Heard a ghost. Am a ghost
. “I just startle
13
easily, is all.”
14
“Are you sure?” he says again, his gray-green eyes holding
15
on to me.
16
I nod, and he slowly steps back and lets go of my hand.
17
“Shall we go in?” he asks. It is not until Joshua says this
18
that I think about how he got here. Penny must have actually
19
given him my message. I flush with embarrassment. Of
20
course. She does not look at me the way I look at her. Why
21
should she? I am Margie Franklin, the Gentile secretary
22
wrapped oh-so-tightly in her sweater. And she, she is Penny
23
Greenberg, the wealthy Jewess who weekends in Margate.
24
I shake the thought away and take a few tentative steps to
25
the front window of Casteel’s. Is he inside? Gustav Gross
26
man? I put my hand up to the glass and press my face close,
27
peering inside, but all I see are two elderly women drinking
S28
cups of coffee.
N29
01
“Margie.” I hear Joshua saying my name again. His hand
02
touches my shoulder gently, and I close my eyes for a moment
03
before I walk toward the door to Casteel’s. Joshua opens it for
04
me, and I walk inside, where I am greeted, at this hour, by the
05
smells of stale coffee and greasy bacon. The air is fog and silt,
06
and it covers over me, as if in a dream. So many empty tables,
07
no men inside to speak of. “I’ll grab us a table,” Joshua says.
08
“We can get some breakfast, talk.”
09
I nod and walk in the other direction, up to the counter. “I
10
was meeting a man here,” I say to the pink-striped waitress,
11
who is standing behind the counter, holding a pot of coffee.
12
“A man?” she asks. Something about her tone reminds me
13
of Shelby when she teases me about finding me a man.
14
“Have you seen him?”
15
“What does he look like?” she asks. I shrug, and she says,
16
“So you were meeting a Joe Doe for breakfast, hon, and he
17
didn’t show?” She laughs a little, as if I am an amusement
18
to her.
19
“Tall,” I hear myself saying, though I know as I speak, the
20
words make no sense. “Brown curly hair. Blue eyes, like
21
the sea.”
22
“Nope.” She shakes her head. “Haven’t seen him.”
23
24
25
26
27
28S
29N
01
02
03
Ch
apter
Thi
rt
y-si
x
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
Joshua has chosen us a table by the window just in
14
case, he says, Gustav still decides to show. But I wonder if
15
he’d already arrived, heard me screaming, saw the commo
16
tion on the street, and he ran. That’s what I would’ve done
17
had it been the other way around. I would’ve run far and fast,
18
holding on tightly to my sweater.
19
Joshua asks the pink-striped woman for two cups of coffee
20
and two plates of eggs, though I do not think I can stomach
21
eggs at this hour, but I do not tell him that.
22
“Now, Margie,” Joshua says. “I want you to tell me exactly
23
what was going on and why you agreed to meet a client on
24
your own.” It’s only now that I realize he sounds annoyed, that
25
I have overstepped my bounds as his Gentile secretary.
26
“I’m sorry,” I say. But I don’t tell him the truth, about Gus
27
tav telling me about the loneliness of America, about how
S28
Gustav and I have something to discuss, something in
N29
01
common, about the wayward sort of homesickness that burns
02
a hollow space in my chest. What I tell Joshua is this: “He was
03
very persistent about meeting in person today. I called to let
04
you know . . .”
05
“Okay.” Joshua sighs. “But don’t do it again, all right? If
06
someone wants to meet, put them on my schedule.”
07
“At the office?” I say, raising my eyebrows.
08
“Good point,” he says. “This is becoming more compli
09
cated than I thought.” He sighs again and runs his hands
10
through his curls. “I hate this secrecy, this . . . sneaking
11
around. As if we’re doing something wrong.” He shakes his
12
head. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I’m a grown man. A lawyer. And