Anne Frank and Me (26 page)

Nicole searched her mind for more. But the train had passed. It felt so true, that she had known Anne Frank, been on a transport with her. But how could it be, when none of it was real?

When she stood again, the world remained intact. She got Anne's diary from her desk. It wasn't very long; she could read the entire thing tonight. She opened to the first page. Whether or not what she thought had happened to Nicole Bernhardt was real, at least she would know everything that had happened to Anne.

She read for hours. When her mother called her for dinner, she said she wasn't hungry. When she finished the actual diary, she read an afterword that explained what had happened to Anne and her family after their arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau. There was also a lengthy appendix, a report by an independent Dutch commission, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that the diary was genuine.

She fell asleep with the book in her hands.

Nicole woke up gasping, soaked with perspiration. From down the hall she heard her parents' television, the laugh-track from a sitcom. She was completely safe, at home in her own bed, in the burbs of America, in the twenty-first century.

But she had been there, too. She had.

 

 

Nicole closed her eyes again. She could still see Paulette, with her long golden hair. It was so clear in her mind now. The girl who had tried to save her life at Birkenau had also helped Claire escape from the Vel. Against the darkness of Nicole's eyelids, Paulette's face aged, like a time-lapse photograph, until she became a woman in her seventies standing before a tenth-grade English class.

Of course! Nicole had felt a connection to Paulette when they'd met after Zooms' class. Now she felt giddy, electrified, vindicated. Zooms was wrong. Nicole really had been there, with Paulette. She had to call Mrs. Litzger-Gold immediately; she ran to get the phone directory from her closet.

She reached for her phone and glimpsed at her clock. It was past midnight, far too late to call. What would she say: “Sorry to wake you, Mrs. Litzger-Gold, but could we chat about how we went through the Holocaust together?”

She'd have to wait until tomorrow. What she could do now, at least, was record everything she remembered. She went to boot up her computer. The printer caught her attention. Its power was off, but she never turned it off. Obviously someone else had been using her equipment without permission. Guess who?

She turned the printer on and its red malfunction light blinked—that was why Little Bit had shut it down. Nicole opened the printer. A tiny wad of paper was jammed in the rollers, preventing them from turning smoothly. She plucked it out with her tweezers and closed the cover. What Little Bit had been writing printed out.

Nicole was enraged. How could her sister write this drivel? But she knew how. Little Bit had been right there when she'd chatted online with Dr. Butthole Bridgeman, too ignorant to refute a word he'd said. She felt like putting her fist through a wall. Better yet, through Bridgeman's face. In a blind fury, she hurled her math book at the wall, cursing at the top of her lungs.

“Nicole, sweetie, are you all right?” Her mother hurried into her room, her father close behind.

Nicole sat on her bed, gingerly rubbing her foot. “I'm fine,” she fibbed. “I stubbed my toe.”

“It's not your head?” her mother probed, tipping Nicole's face to hers. “No pain, nausea, double vision—”

“No. I'm fine, Mom. Really.” Suddenly she felt galvanized, and jumped to her feet. “I have to talk to Little Bit—”

“She's not here.” Her mother still looked concerned. “She's sleeping over at Britnee's.”

Nicole sank heavily onto her bed again. She couldn't tell Little Bit the truth until tomorrow. It was maddening.

“Are you sure your head doesn't hurt in any way?” her father asked. “Because your behavior is very erratic, Nicole.”

“Maybe I'm just weird.”

“Are you on drugs?” her father asked sharply.

“No, Dad, drug-free.” She held up Anne Frank's diary. “In fact, I'm the only girl in the neighborhood doing homework on a Saturday night. You should be proud.”

After five more minutes of parental quizzing on the state of her head and mental health, they left. Nicole stared at Anne's photo on the book cover for a while. Then she reopened the diary and started to read it again, from the beginning.

thirty-nine

Nicole awakened to birds singing. The clock read 7:45, which meant she'd slept less than five hours, yet felt as energized as if she'd slept for ten. She showered, pulled on some jeans and a flannel shirt, and tore out the phone book page with Paulette's number and address.

Her father was at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper and sipping coffee, when Nicole walked in. “My eldest is up before ten on a Sunday morning? What's the occasion?”

“None.” As if she could even begin to explain. Nicole poured herself some coffee and checked the time again. Eight-thirty. She planned to call Paulette at nine. How slowly time passed when you wanted it to speed up; how quickly it fled when you wanted it to linger.

She could already imagine her fingers pushing Paulette's number into the phone, imagine the miracle of their conversation. Yes, she'd say, I understand now about things unspoken, things only the heart knows.

“Dad,” she began, sitting across from him. “Did you ever read Anne Frank's diary?”

He was momentarily taken aback. “I'm sure I must have. Years ago.”

“Meaning you don't remember? How could you not remember?”

He put the paper down. “Is this an interrogation?”

She stirred sugar into her coffee. “Maybe. You interrogate me about school all the time.”

“What has gotten into you, Nicole?”

She had no idea. But she did know this: She felt reckless and brave enough to say things she usually only thought.

“I've just been thinking, Dad. We don't ever talk to each other. Not really.”

“That is entirely untrue. We spend more time together than any other family I know.”

“That's not what I mean.” She had to make him understand. “Dad, you don't even know who I—” She paled. Her eyes had caught a small teaser at the bottom of the front page of the Sunday newspaper.

 

LOCAL HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR

LITZGER-GOLD, 74, DEAD. P. F-12.

 

“What is it, Nicole?”

Nicole rifled through the sections on the table, searching frantically for section F. “She can't be dead.”

“Someone you know died?” her father asked gently.

“It just can't be.” Nicole found the obituaries. There was a small photo of Paulette and an article about her. She had died the day before of a heart attack. The funeral was set for ten o‘clock this morning at Congregation Beth El. Nicole noted the address. It was on the other side of town. She'd have to take two buses to get there. She lurched up from her seat, looking around for her backpack. “I have to go.”

“Where?” her father asked, bewildered. She spotted her backpack in the corner and grabbed it. “Nicole,” he repeated, “where are you going?”

“To see my friend.”

forty

Nicole stood outside Congregation Beth El and watched several conservatively well-dressed latecomers scurry inside. She glanced down at her jeans and flannel shirt—maybe they wouldn't even let her in dressed like that. Maybe it didn't even matter. Paulette's body was in there, but Paulette wasn't.

Unbidden, the lyrics to a retro song her mother always sang when she was doing the bills filled Nicole's head, a song Nicole didn't even like. Something like, “Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention.”

Funny. She had almost too many regrets to mention: not listening when Paulette spoke, missing the chance to tell Paulette that she finally understood about things the heart knows, about their connection. Paulette had helped Claire escape from the Vel. She'd tried to save Nicole's life at Birkenau. But Nicole would never get to thank her. She'd have to carry her regrets around forever, because the only person who could ease her burden was now dead.

A man in a rumpled suit started to close the synagogue doors. Impulsively, Nicole hurried past his surprised face into the building. The main hallway was flanked by recessed windows and office doors. Beyond that was a circular foyer and the rear doors to the sanctuary.

She went in and stood in the back. The ceiling soared to a great height, inlaid with stained glass streaked by the sun. Near the front wall, above the raised stage, hung a burning orange light. Paulette's closed casket was on a stand below the stage. It was unpainted pinewood—plain and stark.

The seats of the synagogue were filled by hundreds of people. Nicole recognized Ms. Zooms in the crowd, even from the back. Everyone listened intently as a man spoke at the podium. He looked to be about the age of Nicole's parents.

“I can't remember exactly how old I was when my mother first told me about what had happened to her,” he was saying. “She was a Jewish girl born and raised in Paris, a teenager during the Occupation. She lived a most extraordinary life. There is too much to tell, so the family has gathered some artifacts from her life for you to see and contemplate. They are displayed in a case in the social hall.

“Maman told me so many stories from the war years. Many of them were tragic, to be sure, but she would want you to remember her for so much more than that. She was very beautiful, and, by her own admission, quite a flirt. I remember her recounting how she had been madly in love with a Gentile boy named Charles. Because Jews were forbidden to attend movies, she used to cover her yellow star with her book bag so that she could sneak into the cinema with him. She was most afraid of getting caught not by the Nazis, but by her very strict mother.”

Sad chuckles rippled through the sanctuary.

“She also used to tell me that when things got very bad, when she was the most scared and wanted to give up, some little thing would come along to give her hope again. Signs, she called them.”