Margot: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

would prob 20
ably be happy about that. 21
For the longest time, I have lived in fear of walking by 22
Robin’s Books and seeing my own face staring back at me as 23
well as my sister’s. I have been full of fear, wondering what 24
would happen if everyone knew, if my father knew, that I am 25
still here. At first, I became Margie Franklin, the Gentile, 26
because it was Peter’s plan, but then it became about survival, 27
all over again. I did not want people to know that in so many S28
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    01 ways I was that girl too: that Jew trapped like a rat, deeply in
02 love, stolen away by the Green Police. That I am that girl.
03 That Jew.
04 About a year into my life in Philadelphia, I began to notice
05 articles in the Inquirer about terrible things that had been
06 done to Jews. A gang of hoodlums went after Jewish children
07 in a very “Jewish section of the city,” my sponsor, Ilsa,
08 informed me. Then a few weeks later, a flaming flare was
09 nailed to a house nearby, just because a Jewish woman was
10 thought to live there. With the flare, the Nazis left a message
11 that said der Jude, the German word for Jew, and Deutschland
12 über alles.
13 Ilsa looked over my shoulder as I read the articles and
14 clucked her tongue. “It is terrible,” she said to me. “And with
15 the firebomb thrown into that synagogue last fall.”
16 “Firebomb in the synagogue?” I asked, the words feeling
17 like rubber on my tongue. Synagogues being bombed, in the
18 city of Philadelphia? Jewish children being attacked?
19 It was late spring 1954. The air had just begun to grow
20 warm and heavy. I put my sweater on. And I have worn it,
21 tightly, ever since.
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Chapter Seven 04
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“I think Ron has another girl on the side.” Shelby 14
whispers this to me, across the desks. It is Friday again, and by 15
now, I have almost forgotten about both her teary entrance on 16
Tuesday and her talk of the movie, which she has dropped in 17
favor of a new concern over Rock Hudson and Doris Day: are 18
they an item or no? Shelby believes they are, especially because 19
she saw the poster for their new movie, Pillow Talk, coming out 20
in the fall, and she thinks they just look like an item. 21
“A girl can always tell these things,” she told me as I’d nod 22
ded and half listened, thinking instead about the tiniest 23
square of paper still folded inside my satchel. It was one thing 24
to know Peter might be here, but another thing all together, to 25
actually call the number. After all this time. 26
Now Shelby’s voice has taken on an unusually serious 27
tone, and her normal smile is gone from her face as she men S28
tions that she thinks Ron is not being faithful to her. N29
01 “Why do you think that?” I ask her, looking up from my
02 typing.
03 “He’s been lying to me. Telling me he’s working late, when
04 really he’s not,” Shelby says.
05 This Friday morning Joshua has come in for a few hours
06 before heading to Margate, but Ezra is already gone and
07 Joshua doesn’t mind when Shelby plays her radio softly. I hear
08 the strains of Mr. Frankie Avalon’s “Venus” floating across the
09 desks. Frankie croons, and I glance through the glass window
10 at Joshua, who is talking on the phone and scribbling some
11 thing at his desk. He runs his fingers through his chestnut
12 curls and smiles as he says something to the caller. He is
13 hunched over his desk, but still, his shoulders look wide and
14 strong in his dark brown suit, a near exact color match to his
15 curls. For a moment I think about Peter, about whether he
16 wears a suit to work now, like Joshua, and whether his shoul
17 ders now are just as broad. And then I quickly look away from
18 the window, from Joshua.
19 “Perhaps you’re mistaken?” I murmur, and I notice now
20 Shelby is chewing on her fingernails, the way she always