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schedule in for the day, will you?” I nod, and as I turn to walk
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out, I hear the sound of Joshua’s giant sigh, floating past me.
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As I reach my desk, I sigh, too.
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Bryda Korzynski, I think, she is just like that night in the
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annex, that burglar. For a moment Peter held on to the knife,
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tracing a circle in the air with his voice. And then the moment
09
passed. And once again we were safe.
10
At least, for a little while longer.
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Chapter Twelve
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At lunchtime, Shelby and I take the elevator down
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to the lobby, where she purchases a ham sandwich from the
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cart, and then I follow her out to the sidewalk, where she sits
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on the bench and pulls a box of Kent cigarettes from her
17
satchel. Shelby has told me this is her favorite brand because
18
it is also the brand Marilyn Monroe smokes. The sun is shin
19
ing, and the feel of it on my face is still, even now, like bril
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liance.
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“Here.” Shelby hands a cigarette to me, and I roll it around
22
in my fingers. Another time, another place, one that I do not
23
like to go back to.
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I hand the cigarette back to her. She shrugs, lights her
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own, takes a puff, and leans back against the bench and
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closes her eyes as if she is dreaming. “You know what I don’t
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get,” she says to me, holding her pale freckled arm out with
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the cigarette dangling loosely from her fingers, as if wishing
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to catch the rays of late-April sunlight and smoke them.
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“What’s that?” I ask.
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“Joshua and Ezra.”
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“What’s not to get?” I say.
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She shrugs. “I mean, I would never work for my father if
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he treated me like that. Why doesn’t Joshua just go work at
08
some other law firm?”
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“I don’t know,” I say, but I am thinking that it is not as easy
10
as Shelby thinks, that Shelby’s missing sense of duty to her
11
father might not be an American thing, but a Gentile one.
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“Who can you trust if you can’t trust your own father?” I swal
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low the words as I say them, worried they might choke me.
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She shrugs. “Did I tell you I’m missing a glove?” she asks.
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And there she goes, with the attention span the size of a
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pinhead.
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“A glove?” I murmur.
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But I am thinking about the way Ezra yelled at Joshua, not
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so dissimilar to the way my mother and sister used to yell at
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each other. You have to love someone to yell at them so
21
intensely; you have to care so unbelievably much that your
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anger explodes and burns across the sky like the Soviet’s
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Sputnik
I’ve read so much about. My sister always thought
24
they fought because Mother hated her, but I knew better.
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“I think Ron took the glove,” Shelby is saying now.
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“What?” I shake my head. “Why would he do that? To give
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to his hussy?”
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She laughs. “No. To find my ring size, silly.” She holds the
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cigarette in her left hand, out in the sunlight, as if admiring
a diamond. “And besides that. What you said about trusting
01
one’s father, it reminded me.” I’m surprised that she has
02
brought the conversation back full circle—I have misjudged
03
her attention span after all.
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“Reminded you of what?” I ask.
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“My father is acting funny. I think he knows something. I
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think Ron has already asked him if he can marry me.”
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“But what about his hussy?” I ask her.
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She shrugs. “I’m sure it was just all a big mistake.” She
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smiles and takes a drag on her cigarette, but I wonder, how
10
can she be so sure? She seems so excited about her missing
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glove, and I do not want to burst her delicate bubble, so I do
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not press her further. Instead I find myself thinking again
13
about the woman’s voice on the phone last night, and in the
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sunlight, now, I wonder if she might be a mistake as well. Did
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I simply dial wrong?
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Shelby crushes her cigarette with her foot and grabs on to
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my hand. “Can you imagine it?” she asks me. “Me as some
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body’s wife?”
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“No,” I say. “I cannot.” I smile at her, so she will know I am
20
teasing. Because in truth, I can see Shelby as someone’s wife.
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I believe Shelby would be much like that Donna Reed, who
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Ilsa had me watch on TV with her one evening when I was
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there at her house for dinner, bright and charming and hos
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pitable and capable of running a busy household. Much like
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the Margie Pelt, of my fantasy world.
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“Oh, hush,” Shelby says, but she smiles too, so I under
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stand she is not really cross. She stands and throws the
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remains of her sandwich in the trash. I do the same with my
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apple core. And then Shelby takes my arm so we can walk
02
back inside the building together.
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My father is a good businessman, just like Ezra Rosen
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stein. Even now, I imagine him in Switzerland with his new
05
wife, spending his days drowning in correspondence from the
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book he edited and put out into the world, and which, I imag
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ine, has made him a millionaire several times over.
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Even before the war, we always lived well, and after we
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were hiding, he worried about his business, Opekta, a com
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pany that distributed pectin used to make jams. One time
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there was an important meeting down in the office below us,
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and he wanted nothing more than to attend. “Why don’t you
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listen at the floor?” I suggested, and his wide smile was my
14
reward. The space was too tight for him, though; he grew
15
cramped, so I offered to listen for him. Of course, my sister
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insisted on coming along. She fought so much with Mother,
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but Father was hers; she couldn’t give him to me, even for a
18
moment.
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I strained my ears and forced myself to record the conver
20
sation, boring as it was. All the talk about the price of pectin
21
and importing and such. I recorded it in shorthand in a note
22
book.
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My sister fell asleep, her head lounging against my knee,
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and I dared not move for fear I’d startle her awake, she’d
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make a noise, and we’d be discovered. Finally, she awoke, and
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sat up, and she immediately grabbed the notebook, and off
27
she went to find him.
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“Pim,” she said cheerily. “Oh, Pim, we have conducted
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business on your behalf today.” Father kissed and hugged her
01
and read the notes, that he seemed to assume were her notes,
02
and I thought they meant a lot to him because he mumbled
03
things to himself and took down some notes of his own to tell
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Mr. Kuglar the next time he came up.
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“Did I do well, Pim?” my sister asked.
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“Indeed you did,” he told her, smiling at her, and only her,
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as if he had forgotten that I was even in the room. He kissed
08
the top of her head. “Indeed you did, my little Anna.”
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I think of that moment even now, when I think about my
12
father, as I often find myself doing. I have written him a letter
13
in my head many times in the past few years. He is my father,
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the only piece of my family left, and when I realized he was
15
alive after I discovered my sister’s book, I had the urge to
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reach across the ocean and pull him back to me. But when
17
ever I sit down and try to write the words I think, I find
18
myself looking through my sister’s book again, and I cannot
19
bring myself to commit a single word to paper.
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The problem is this: I am not his daughter anymore. I am
21
not even a Jew. And if he were to know I am still here, I would
22
not go back. I could not. I do not want the world to know me,
23
as they know him, and my sister.
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And also, there is something else. I think of how he looked
25
right past me that morning, just at her and her only. Father
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and I did not fight. We did not yell. But still, it was so clear to
27
me, even then, how he felt about my sister.
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I am still afraid of many things in my American life, but
02
what I am most afraid of now is how my father might look at
03
me if he were to know what I have done. If he were to know
04
the truth about what happened with the two of us, me and
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my sister, just before the very end.
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Chapter Thirteen
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On Thursday morning, Joshua buzzes me into his office
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and asks me to shut the door behind me. “I want you to do
15
something for me, Margie,” he says. “But you can’t mention it
16
to anyone else here, especially not my father, or Miss McK
17
inney.”
18
“Okay,” I say slowly, not sure yet whether to be excited or
19
upset about what he is going to ask of me. My brain is foggy
20
again, since I’d stayed up late last night, then fallen into rest
21
less sleep after dialing P. Pelt’s number once more, just to
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make sure I had not, indeed, made a mistake dialing. The
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same woman answered, and I’d hung up. Then I’d called the
24
operator back to double-check I’d written the number down
25
right. I had.
It still could be a mistake,
I’d been telling myself
26
as I’d been tossing and turning in bed all night. Though what
27
kind of mistake, I cannot wrap my brain around now.
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“I’m going to write down the address,” Joshua is saying
02
now, and I realize I have missed a bit of his instructions.
03
“The address?” I ask.
04
“Miss Korzynski’s address,” he says, and my heart falls
05
into my stomach, a place it is so often used to tumbling. “I
06
want you to stop by and see her after work today. Find out
07
how many others she thinks will join her suit. Get their
08
names and contact information and bring them back to me,
09
okay?”
10
“But your father . . .” I say, my voice breaking.
11
“Don’t worry about my father,” he says quickly. He picks
12
up his pen, writes Bryda’s address on the yellow legal pad on
13
his desk, tears the sheet off, and then holds it out to me.
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I hesitate before taking it, because I do not want to seek
15
out Bryda Korzynski, to watch the way her brown eyes call me
16
a liar by looking through me. Maybe she looks at everyone
17
that way. Maybe her eyes are dead too.
18
“Couldn’t we just call her instead?” I finally say.
19
He shakes his head. “Let’s keep this all out of the office, all
20
right?” He pauses. “And besides, it’s always better to do these
21
things in person.” He thrusts the paper closer to me, and I
22
have no choice but to take it from him. “I’d like to get the ball
23
rolling. Leave a little early this afternoon so you’re not working
24
any later than usual, all right?” My whole body tells me to say
25
no, to run out of his office, to quit my job and move back to
26
the safety of Ilsa’s house in Levittown. But I love working here,
27
in this office, for Joshua, and I cannot really imagine leaving
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it all behind just because of one crazy woman. I have survived
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