The White Rose by Jean Hanff Korelitz Read Free Book Online Page A

exclaims. “And to whom?”
    “Valerie?” interrupts Marian. “A quick drink?”
    “No, darling.” She doesn’t take her eyes off Barton. She does not want her concentration disturbed.
    “Sophie Klein,” says Barton, with crudely attempted indifference. “She is the daughter of Mort Klein.”
    There is silence. The silence is impressive. Even Marian, crouched at the liquor cabinet, can feel it, like pricks along her spine. Finally, the contents of Valerie’s lungs are expelled in a rush. “Well, this is…I offer you my congratulations, Mr. Ochstein.”
    “Barton,” he reassures her. “ Please. ”
    “Barton,” replies Valerie. “Well, this is just lovely. ”
    “Thank you,” says Barton, but it’s directed to Marian, as he accepts his drink. “I’m delighted, myself.”
    “Miss Klein is in the family business?” Valerie asks.
    “Oh no. A student. Sophie is at Columbia.”
    Marian looks at him. The fact that Barton, barely cognizant of her massive best-seller, is also, apparently, unaware that she holds a chair at Columbia should not surprise her, but it does.
    “Columbia?” Marian asks, nearly wounded. “Your fiancée is at Columbia?”
    “Undergraduate?” Valerie leans in. “That’s adorable.”
    “No, no,” he chuckles, enjoying their attention. “Sophie’s writing a thesis in the history department.”
    “That’s my department,” Marian says, and she is shocked to hear it come out a whine.
    The others look at her for a perplexed moment, then turn back to each other.
    “How fascinating. What about?” Valerie has leaned back against the cushion.
    “Oh,” he says and waves his hand, “Germany in the forties. She gave me the rundown, but it’s very complicated.”
    Marian sinks onto the opposite couch and sets down her load of mail on the rug. How many people, she reflects, could wield the phrase “Germany in the forties” with the apparent abandon her cousin has just used? The Holocaust, the Shoah, the Third Reich…even the war, yes, but “Germany in the forties”? Does he even know, she wonders, what happened in “Germany in the forties”?
    Vaguely, and from a not unwelcome distance, she watches them, the two of them, fanning their mutual flame. Sophie Klein! Daughter of Mort Klein! As in Kaplan Klein! She hears Barton tell again the story of his meeting with Klein père at The Retreat, c. 1830, and his now distinctly offensive appraisal of his future father-in-law’s accent. She is happy for them to take up these minutes with their exchange. Minutes spent on each other are minutes Oliver will be forgotten—or in Valerie’s case, undiscovered—and minutes that will lend legitimacy when she kicks them out, a prospect now tantalizingly near. Idly, discreetly enough not to break their spell, she nudges the teetering stack of mail with her foot, toppling a cascade of shiny opulence onto the Aubusson—Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, Tiffany. Beneath these is a large envelope from none other than Kaplan Klein, and then the charitable appeals: first the mass mailings with their computer-generated pseudo-handwriting, which she can safely ignore, then the more exclusive supplications, addressed in cool script, for the New York City Ballet, Goddard-Riverside, and Women in Need, to which she will inevitably respond.
    “He’s not a well man, you know,” her cousin says.
    “No,” Valerie coos, rapt. “I didn’t know.”
    Marian closes her eyes. When she was a child, the solicitations her Irish nanny received daily made even this cacophony of requests seem muted by comparison. Every Catholic mission from Korea to Zimbabwe had had Mary’s address, and appeals arrived continually from around the globe, each and every one of them to be answered with a crisp one dollar bill. Marian smiles, remembering the afternoon routine of letter opener, coil of stamps, and stack of bills. How much of Mary’s salary had gone into those envelopes? Marian wonders. How many Park Avenue