I WAS LYING ON MY BACK, WATCHING THE ICICLE-drop chandelier throw rainbow darts on the wall, when Mom called.
“Hi, sweetie,” she whispered.
I bolted upright. “Mom! I thought it was against the rules to call me.”
“I borrowed a friend’s phone, but they’re giving mine back soon for good behavior. Anyway, I miss you so much that I had to call and say hi.”
“It feels like you’ve been gone for so long.”
“I know, but I’m almost done. I’m flying back a week from tomorrow. My flight gets in at two fifteen on Friday.”
I wanted to ask how rehab had gone. Had it helped? Would it stick this time? “That’s great, Mom.”
There was an awkward silence. I tried to come up with something neutral to say but drew a blank. Finally Mom asked, “How was your Halloween?”
Yes! That was a safe subject. “One of my friends, Elizabeth, was a singing water bottle—she just got the lead in our school musical—and I was her sidekick, a recycle bin. You know Kermit’s song, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’? Elizabeth sang it all over school, only she gave it a cool environmental twist, and I danced around—well, as much as I could in a trash can costume.” I ran out of air and had to take a breath. “We actually raised one hundred and three dollars and forty-two cents for the Trash Museum in Berkeley,” I finished.
“I’d love to meet her. She sounds great.”
“I’d like that, too,” I said, thinking how Mom would love Franklin D. and his outspoken personality. I almost told her about him but didn’t. I couldn’t handle a ton of nosy questions right now. “So, what’s it like in Vermont?” I asked.
“Gorgeous. The leaves look like they’re on fire. The best part is, I don’t have to rake them.”
I was the one who’d done the raking. “Can we afford this place? Evergreen, I mean.”
“Mr. Laramie’s arranged everything. It will come out of my trust.”
“But you haven’t gotten it yet.” I didn’t like to think about that part, no matter how it would make our lives easier. Getting that money would mean my grandmother wouldn’t be around anymore.
“This is an advance.” Her businesslike voice brought back the pathetic relationship between her and Oma. I thought about all Mom and I had gone through in the past month—the vodka bottle behind the armchair, the harrowing ride through Pacific Heights, her arrest. Her drinking problem didn’t have to ruin us. I couldn’t let our relationship turn out like theirs.
“This place would be a perfect vacation if it weren’t for all the work they make me do,” she said.
“They make you work?” I pictured Anne Frank’s family, hands black from grimy old batteries. I shook my head, wishing the images would leave me alone.
Mom giggled. “On myself, silly. Therapy’s a bitch.”
“Oh.”
“So how’s it going on the West Coast? Are you managing?”
“It’s okay.” I filled her in on Oma’s condition, how she’d lost some agility and balance. I explained how she never let me dress her, even though it took her a half hour to put her blouse on.
“Liv, I just want to say thank you for all you’ve done. For her, for us. I know it hasn’t been easy.”
The worst part was watching Oma deteriorate. But I knew Mom saw it through a different lens, and the last thing I wanted to hear right now was how it would all be better soon. “Everything’s fine,” I said.
Mom heard someone and gave a clipped good-bye. A second later my cell rang again. I propped myself on an elbow and switched the phone to my other ear. “Hello?”
“Dan dropped the rest of the translation off. It’s killing me not to look.”
“Don’t you dare!” I told Franklin D. “I want to see it with you.”
“Then I’m coming over right now.”
“Don’t your parents wonder why you’re at my house so much?”
“I’ve found a way around that problem. I said I was dating a Jewish girl, so now my mom’s willing to drive me anywhere, anytime.”
“You didn’t!”
“Yeah, um, I kind of did. They were thrilled, Liv. You won them over at Shabbat.”
I paused. “Now I can’t come to your house without them thinking … well, you know.”
“Is that so bad?”
That stopped me. Was it? I didn’t know.
“I’ll bring the entries over right now. See you soon.” He hung up before I could think of an answer.
I heard Vickie rustling in the hallway, getting ready to leave. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about her big ears when Franklin D. and I looked over the new translation. The reshelving of the books still bugged me. It had to have been her—who else?
When I came out of my room, she was zipping up her coat. “So, what are you up to tonight?” she asked.
My first instinct was to lie, but there was nothing to hide. “Franklin D.’s coming over for a while.”
Her mouth puckered in disapproval. “Did you tell your mom that you have a guy coming over all the time?”
Why did it feel like Vickie was looking for ways to get me into trouble? Did she really think that because my mom wasn’t around, Franklin D. and I were going to act like animals in perpetual mating season? “Not yet. But Mom has bigger issues to deal with. Besides, she trusts me.”
“Well I left the laptop in the living room so you and Franklin D. can work on your homework.”
“We’re just friends, Vickie.”
“Very, very good friends,” she said, imitating Franklin D.
When she strode out the door, I kicked it shut behind her.
The temperature outside had dropped in the past week. Now it was drizzling. Drops of water beaded in Franklin D.’s hair, capturing the porch light.
We put Oma to bed, and then I went to the kitchen to make us hot chocolate, leaving Franklin D. to light a fire in the fireplace. When I came back, I handed him today’s newspaper from the recycle bin and watched him stuff sections under a log. I wasn’t sure how to make a fire, having grown up with the electric variety. Our old fireplace was a lot easier to operate, though I loved the smoky wood scent that floated through Oma’s living room.
Franklin D. was about to crumple up the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle when he said, “Did you see this?” He handed it to me.
I read the headline. Startled, I shook my head.
“Swastikas were painted on the walls of two synagogues in the Sunset district,” he said. “Another one on the Jewish Community Center.”
“You think it might be a prank?”
“Joke or not, it’s anti-Semitic. I hope they nail the bastards.”
“But neo-Nazis … in San Francisco?” I said. “I picture them hiding in the backwoods somewhere, not hanging out in the most liberal city in the United States.”
“Even assholes take vacations,” Franklin D. said. I couldn’t tell from his solemn expression whether he was kidding or not.
He tossed the rest of the newspaper into the fire. I was glad to see it burn. We moved to the couch, where Dan’s new notes waited, this time scrawled on the back of a junk mail envelope.
“For seventy-five bucks, you’d think he’d at least spring for some notebook paper,” Franklin D. said. He rested his head against the unyielding cushion and shut his eyes.
I took a moment to prepare myself before we read the next entry, dated February 1945. It seemed that “A” had found an old friend. This was the same entry Franklin D. had mentioned earlier—the one with Anne’s nickname for her father. She mentioned Pim when she told her friend about the deaths in the family
I sagged back on the couch, dropping my elbows to my knees. Franklin D. laid a hand on my shoulder.
“If only she’d known her father was alive,” I whispered. “She might have fought harder to survive.”
I knew how naïve that sounded. Typhus was a powerful disease. Stronger than willpower. The fact was that thousands of people had died during the epidemic, despite thousands of reasons to live.
Franklin D. was kind enough not to comment.
From there, the notes touched on Margot’s illness. Dan had translated an entire sentence: If she dies, I will be all alone in the world.
In several places, Dan had crossed out his first guess and written a different interpretation above it. I gathered that Anne had returned to meet her friend. The girl brought extra rations for Margot, but another prisoner snatched the package and ran off, leaving Anne empty-handed.
I cringed. I could only imagine how desperate Anne had been to help her sister.
I looked at Franklin D., glad to have finished the page, though I knew there was more to go. “I can’t stand reading this, knowing how it will end,” I said. Dan’s translation of the last entry wasn’t dated. “You read it.” I thrust it at him.
Franklin D. began to interpret the skeletal outline. “I think this is the part where her sister dies,” he said. “She just fell out of the bunk, dead on the floor, and the ‘vultures’”—he looked up—“I’m guessing that refers to some prisoners. Anyway, they grabbed Margot’s shoes and a heel of bread under her pillow.” It took two roll calls that day before the head count matched the roster.
I skipped ahead to some words Dan had written in quotes. “What does that say?” My eyes were too blurred to read it myself. Also, it seemed less frightening when sifted through Franklin D.’s voice.
He took a deep breath. “It says, ‘I asked everyone, Have you seen my sister? I asked again and again, despite getting the same answer each time.’”
I was silent as Franklin D. kept reading.
“She’s not well,” he told me. “She says she wants to be remembered for more than the numbers on her arm.”
I brushed my fingers up my own arm.
“Wait a sec …,” he said, a spark of hope in his voice.
“What?”
“Hold on.” I watched his eyes skip back and forth over the same sentences. “She might get on a train. I think she has a new friend. Maybe from the infirmary, because she’s sick now. She’s telling the friend that the train is her last hope, only …”
“Only what?”
Franklin D. looked up at me, the hope stamped out. “Dan doesn’t say.”
“Oh my God,” I gasped, flipping the paper over. “Where’s the rest? Where is it?” I searched Franklin D.’s eyes for the unanswerable.
Unanswerable, because there wasn’t any more.
This was all there was.