shot all of us.
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The noises stopped, and we waited in silence. I heard the
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tick of Pim’s clock. It was a tick that often could rock me to
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sleep, gentle and regular. We waited, perfectly still.
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Peter lowered the knife, and it was then my eyes grew
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focused enough in the dark to see he was shaking. “Margot,”
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he whispered. “Do you want to come up to my room?”
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Now my hand traces a circle on the phone dial, shaking, the
25
way Peter was that night. I turn the numbers, one at a time,
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unsteadily going through each one, until all the numbers have
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been turned, and then I am waiting for the sound of ringing
28S
in my ear. I do not consider what I will say, other than hello.
29N
I do not consider that even if it is him, he might not remember me, the way I remember him. I shut off my brain and
01
listen to the ringing. Once. Twice. Three times. Four.
02
“Hello,” a voice says on the other end of the line. It is high
03
and sweet and mellow, the voice of a woman, not at all unlike
04
the way I might imagine my sister’s voice to sound today, had
05
she lived. “Hello,” she says again. “Anyone there?”
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Quickly, I press the button on the phone to disconnect
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the call.
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Chapter Eleven
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I often replay this fantasy in my American life, a
15
story of my own, if you will. In my head I picture a sweet
16
little American family living in a tidy tract house not too
17
far from Ilsa in Levittown. They are Margie and Pete Pelt,
18
who have two children, a girl named Edie and a boy named
19
Herman, after Margot’s mother and Peter’s father. Margie
20
worries about things like curtains and wallpaper for the chil
21
dren’s rooms and Pete takes the train into the city, where
22
he works.
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At night, Pete takes the train home again, and when he
24
arrives, it is already dark and Margie has already tucked the
25
children safely into their beds. She has a roast chicken wait
26
ing in the oven and a candle lit on the table.
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Pete walks in the door, a brown suit coat hugging his
28S
broad shoulders. His eyes find Margie, right away, so blue,
29N
blue like the sea. Then he finds her mouth with his, and they
kiss, a long kiss that is still imbued with passion, even after
01
so many years, so many secrets.
02
“How was your day?” Margie asks.
03
Pete takes off his coat and hat. “It was good,” he says. “Are
04
the children asleep?”
05
“Not yet,” she answers, and he smiles, a bright American
06
smile, like Joshua’s, so that Margie cannot help but smile
07
back. Then he rushes back to the children’s bedrooms to tuck
08
them in and kiss them good night.
09
Later, after dinner, when it seems the world is pitched
10
with blackness, Margie and Pete crawl into their bed together
11
and cling to each other. The moonlight shines in through the
12
bedroom’s large picture window, just enough to illuminate
13
Pete’s face as he kisses Margie good night and they both fall
14
into a deep and dreamless slumber.
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I am thinking about this fantasy the next morning as I walk to
18
work. Wondering about the woman’s voice who answered the
19
phone last night. Maybe she was a housekeeper, I think. A
20
friend. She cannot really be someone important, another
21
woman who could slip right into my fantasy, just like that.
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Could she?
23
When I arrive at work, Shelby is already there, sitting
24
at her desk holding the phone to her ear, but she isn’t speaking
25
into it. This is Shelby’s ruse, what she does when she wants to
26
eavesdrop on something and doesn’t want anyone to know.
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“Good morning,” I say to her. She holds a finger to her lips,
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then points in the direction of Joshua’s office.
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I’m not trying to eavesdrop like Shelby, but I cannot help
02
but hear Ezra Rosenstein’s booming voice, his words breaking
03
like claps of thunder. “How many times do I have to tell you?”
04
he says. “We don’t take clients who can’t pay our retainer . . .
05
I don’t care. And I’ve played golf with Robertson before.”
06
“So,” Joshua says. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t an anti
07
Semite. Half the men at the club are.”
08
I sigh, realizing they are arguing about Bryda. I slump
09
down in my chair and lean my head on my arms against my
10
desk, not even bothering to cling to Shelby’s ruse. I am
11
exhausted this morning, barely having slept at all last night,
12
my dreams filled with Bryda Korzynski, who morphed into
13
the disembodied women’s voice on the other end of the tele
14
phone line last night, who quickly morphed into Peter’s
15
mother, Mrs. van Pels, yelling about having to sell her rabbit
16
fur so the van Pelses would have the money to pay for food in
17
the annex. “She’s so materialistic,” Peter told me once, hang
18
ing his head in shame. He did not love his mother the way I
19
loved mine, and for that reason, I always felt sorry for her,
20
even if she was, as Peter said, materialistic.
21
“She just wants to hold on to something
,
” I told him then.
22
“Just one thing to remind her of who she used to be
.
”
23
Now I think of her in the camp. She did not have her rab
24
bit fur, then, of course. Neither did she seem to have her
25
voice. She was so much smaller, naked and bald, her flesh
26
pale as snow. Suddenly all she had—all we all had—was
27
indelible ink.
28S
A badge of honor,
my sister said.
29N
Shelby hisses my name across the desk, and I lift my head.
“But she is one of our people,” I hear Joshua saying now,
01
through the paper walls. Joshua’s words feel kind and stupid
02
all at once, his thinking that his people and Bryda’s people are
03
the same. Though underneath, really, are they so different?
04
Joshua was luckier than Peter. Had Ezra Rosenstein practiced
05
law in Germany, Joshua might have marched to his death in
06
Mauthausen. The thought makes me cringe.
07
“What are they arguing about?” Shelby whispers. I shrug,
08
as if I am as stumped as she is. “I think the Zimmerman ver
09
dict came back,” Shelby whispers. “But that doesn’t seem to
10
be it.”
11
I nod, guessing this probably means Joshua lost the case,
12
and that Ezra’s anger over Bryda is really, doubly, anger about
13
that.
14
“Not everything is about money,” I hear Joshua saying
15
now. His voice is softer than his father’s, but it’s louder than
16
usual and infused with anger.
17
The door flies open and Ezra storms out, slamming the
18
door behind him hard enough for the wall by my desk to shake.
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I quickly pick up the phone, borrowing Shelby’s trick, but
20
he doesn’t even glance my way on the way by.
21
“Miss McKinney,” Ezra barks, and Shelby says a pretend
22
good-bye into her pretend phone call. “Where’s my schedule
23
for the day?”
24
“I’ll have it right on your desk,” Shelby says quickly.
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Ezra Rosenstein is a businessman at heart, who does not
S28
seem to appreciate Joshua even though he is smart and kind
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01
and filled with goodness. I do not understand why Ezra can
02
not look at him and see the wonderful man that I do, and for
03
this reason, I hate Ezra, even though he’ll be the one keeping
04
Bryda Korzynski away.
05
After Shelby takes Ezra’s schedule into his office, I walk
06
to the break room, pour Joshua a cup of coffee, black with
07
two sugars, and bring it to his office.
08
“Oh, Margie,” he says, taking the cup and having a sip.
09
“You always know just what to do, don’t you?” He smiles and
10
runs his hand through his curls.
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I nod and turn to leave, shining a bit with his compliment
12
and keeping my hands taut at my side, but then Joshua invites
13
me to have a seat across from his desk, so I do.
14
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, so I say, “The Zim
15
merman verdict came back?”
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He nods, then shrugs. “You can’t win them all.” He is in a
17
black suit today, with a white shirt and straight black tie, and
18
somehow, as I am sitting closer to him now, he appears smaller
19
than when I watch him through the glass. Is it that the suit is
20
too big, and he is like a boy trying on his father’s clothes, or
21
that Ezra’s harsh words have somehow shrunk him?
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“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
23
He shakes his head, opens his mouth to say something,
24
and then, as if he has thought better of it, he takes a sip of his
25
coffee. “Margie,” he says, when he is finished. “Can I ask you
26
something?”
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“Of course.” I nod.
28S
“What did you think of Miss Korzynski yesterday?”
29N
“Me?” I fix my eyes on the bronze placard at the front of
01
his large oak desk that reads
Joshua S. Rosenstein, Esquire.
02
The
S
stands for Samuel, I know, who was Ezra’s father, Josh
03
ua’s grandfather, one of the original founders of this firm. For
04
some reason, I think of Samuel in the Bible, the great uniter
05
against the Philistines. But wasn’t it Joshua, in the Bible,
06
who led the Israelites into the Promised Land? Or was that
07
Peter? No, I remember. Peter was the fisherman, who for a
08
moment walked on water, until he lost his faith and he began
09
to sink.
10
“Yes,” Joshua is saying now. “I’d like your opinion.”
11
I don’t know why Joshua is suddenly so keen to have my
12
opinion, but it could be because he knows I will not yell at
13
him as his father just did. “Well,” I say, choosing my words
14
very carefully. “Her story was very sad . . .” I have a but.
But,
15
there are many people with sad stories,
I would say.
And they
16
cannot all be helped
. My sister knew this about me, used to
17
tease me about it even.
There is always a but with you, Mar-
18
gola!
Joshua doesn’t know me well enough to ask, or if he
19
does, he doesn’t actually want to hear it.
20
“Yes,” he says. “It was very sad, wasn’t it? I should help her,
21
shouldn’t I? I mean, I owe her something, don’t I?” He seems
22
to be talking more to himself than to me.
23
“Why is that?” I ask.
24
“Because,” he says, but I know what he really means is
25
because he is also a Jew but he hasn’t suffered for it, not the
26
way that she has, or the way Margot had. Also, Joshua likes
27
to help people. “Anyway.” He clears his throat. “Bring my
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