The Last Embrace

Charlie turned to Stephanie, who had come up behind him. “Do you know Addie?” Of course not. Girls like her would never even see me—nor would Charlie if it hadn’t been for the shore. “Addie’s like family,” he said. The words, intended with kindness, stung. Not family—like family. There was always that one step separating me from them. Stephanie sniffed, unimpressed, and turned and walked down the hall. Charlie looked after her, as if he wanted to follow.

But he did not.

Warmth surged through me. I loved him. Loved. I had realized it late one afternoon near summer’s end as I watched the boys play in the lot between beach houses, sunlight streaming down. I knew he did not feel the same, but the very idea seemed to change things. It wasn’t just his image—he was smart and sure and he had a way of making everything safe and all right when he was in the room. I had begun to dream about him, too. The previous night I dreamed that he had pulled me from the water, rescuing me as he had last summer. In my fantasy, though, he did not set me down, but held me, bringing his lips to mine. I’d woken up breathless, my skin damp.

I had other dreams too, not the kind that came unbidden at night but the film that ran all day in my head: What if Charlie really saw me? We could go steady, be a couple. I imagined myself on his arm. No, it wasn’t that he didn’t quite think of me as family that I minded. I wanted him to think of me as something more.

He looked over his shoulder, then lowered his voice. “I saw you with that colored girl before in the cafeteria.” I was flooded with confusion. I always looked for Charlie, but I hadn’t known he’d noticed me as well.

“Rhonda?” He shrugged, as though her name was unimportant. “What about it?”

“It’s just that colored and whites, they keep to themselves here.”

“Why?” I demanded. He blinked. Charlie was not used to being challenged.

“I don’t know,” he said, revealing a crevice of doubt that he could not show as the oldest always trying to protect the others.

“You play football with some of the colored boys, don’t you?”

“That’s different.” He glanced uneasily over his shoulder. “Maybe we should discuss it at home.”

“Whose home?” I liked Charlie, and the last thing I wanted to do was fight. But I couldn’t let it go. “Because if what you are saying is true, then perhaps the Jews and the Irish, they should keep to themselves too.”

I was right and he knew it. But he clenched his jaw, as though admitting he was wrong would somehow be a weakness or flaw. Charlie saw the world in terms of black and white. “It isn’t that simple.”

We stood facing one another squarely. He was clearly surprised that I’d stood up to him in a way that few people had. But he would not back down either. There was a light in his eyes, a respect that I hadn’t before seen.

“Anyway...” Charlie cleared his throat, retreating. His eyes softened, holding mine. “I’m glad to see you.” My stomach flipped. Had he somehow guessed the truth about how I felt?

From across the hallway, I heard a snicker, unmistakably aimed in my direction. My face flushed. The fact that I did not fit in here, it was always bubbling beneath the surface with my accent, my slightly darker skin. Kids simply could not imagine why the Connally boys, especially Charlie, wanted to be friends with me. Charlie did not seem to hear it or notice—things like that were below his line of sight. My anger grew. “They’re laughing at us.” This, coupled with the girls laughing at Rhonda and me in the cafeteria, was too much to take. I started down the hall.

“Addie,” Charlie cautioned, wanting me to just leave it alone for the sake of peace. But I had never been able to look away from unfairness.

My mind reeled back to one of the first mornings on the ship when I had awoken to find the chain which perpetually hung around my neck, holding the mizpah, gone. Across the narrow galley, I saw an older girl palming it casually.

“Give it back,” I’d demanded. When the girl ignored me, I lunged for it. I was on the ground then, pinned under the larger girl, nails gouging like fire at my cheeks. With all my might, I lifted my knee and pushed the girl off of me, grabbing the necklace that had skittered across the deck. I put it back on, defying the other girl to try to take it again.

I hadn’t been able to leave it alone then, and I couldn’t now. I approached the boy who had laughed at us. “Something funny?”

His eyes widened, unaccustomed to being called out for his bullying. “Why don’t you go back where you came from?”

As I opened my mouth to answer, the bell rang. “Come on,” another boy said, urging him outside. I started toward class. But as I neared the end of the tunnel there was a clamoring outside, and I saw Liam crossing the playground with swift, long strides toward the boy whom I’d confronted minutes earlier. I opened the door in time to hear the other kid say, “...Jew lover?” Liam drew back his arm. I heard a sickening crunch, flesh splitting, as Liam’s fist connected with the boy’s face. “Liam!” I cried, running toward him. He had a quick temper, an Irish temper, his mother had called it. He was forever getting into arguments. This was the first actual fight I had seen him in, though. The last thing he needed was further trouble.

But Liam was on top of the boy who lay on the ground now, both hands around the boy’s neck. “Apologize,” he commanded. The boy gurgled helplessly, blood trickling from his nose.

“Liam, he can’t apologize if he can’t breathe.” I tugged at his shoulder. “Let him up.”

Teachers and lunch aides surged forward, pulling Liam and the other boy apart. Charlie rushed up beside us. “What were you thinking?” he admonished.

The principal, Mr. Owens, crossed the schoolyard. “I should expel you!”

Charlie stepped forward quickly. “Respectfully, Mr. Owens, that isn’t necessary. I will take him home right now myself.”

The principal paused, then acquiesced. “Fine.” Charlie was a student leader, someone he trusted. He wagged a finger in Liam’s direction. “But next time, you’re outta here.”

“Dad’s going to wallop you.” Charlie scowled once the principal and other teachers were out of earshot. My heart ached that Liam would be punished simply for sticking up for me—again. I wanted to run after him and explain to his parents. “And now I’m going to be late for class.” Liam’s face fell. He could handle expulsion or whatever punishment his folks might hand out. It was Charlie’s disapproval that was too much to bear.

“But he was only trying to stick up for me,” I began.

“I don’t need your help,” Liam cut me off tersely. He did not care about punishment, or what the other kids thought of him—except for Charlie.

“Come on.” Charlie started to lead Liam from the schoolyard, then turned back. “Addie?”

My heart lifted as it did every time he said my name, wondering if maybe this time he would mean it differently. Was he finally noticing?

I spun back hopefully. “Yes?”

“Will you stop by the science lab and tell Mrs. Ferguson I’m going to be late?”

They set off across the parking lot, leaving me behind. “Sure.” I turned away, dejected. How could I possibly have thought he would say something more?

I had always been able to sense change, like the way Nonna’s leg used to ache before a storm. My neck would tighten and stay tense for days. My appetite would fade to nonexistent and I’d grow tired, sleeping long, restless nights that were full of vivid dreams, even darker and stranger than usual. I’d awaken more exhausted than I’d ever gone to sleep, as though I had traveled great distances in my dreams.

I’d been that way for more than a week now and I yawned as I stood in my wool coat on the porch, which was still damp from the night’s rain. I hadn’t seen the boys since school on Friday. I still went to the Connallys’ most nights during the week. Charlie (or Jack, during football season when Charlie had practice) would call for me after dinner and then bring me home. My aunt and uncle had stopped fighting me about visiting the Connallys, as long as my homework was done.

They insisted, though, that I stay home on Shabbes. Back in Trieste, my family had been secular, attending the large synagogue in our neighborhood only on high holidays. But here the block quieted Friday nights and Saturdays, the men making their way to shul and the women keeping the children busy without putting on the radio. It was always a long, sluggish day in the tiny house, and I filled it as well as I could, doing my assignments for school and writing letters to my parents.

“They haven’t written back,” I fretted the day before at lunch.

“The mail is disrupted,” Aunt Bess said, speaking authoritatively, though she could not possibly have known for sure. “I’m sure they’re fine.”

“But what if they aren’t?’ I’d pressed. They could be trying to get word out, or even want to leave now, and we would have no way of knowing. My question hung unanswered in the air.

It was Sunday now and I could leave the house. But there was no sign of Charlie. Perhaps he had forgotten about me. Did I dare to find my way to the Connallys’ on my own? “I’m going out,” I called inside to Aunt Bess, who was getting ready for her Hadassah meeting. Then I closed the door before she could stop me. Pulling on my stocking cap and gloves, I hurried down the steps and ran, past the drugstore and the shoeshine boy at the corner until my feet hurt beneath the stiffness of my Mary Janes and my blouse grew damp, finding my own way for the first time.

The sun shone down brightly on the worn pavement. But a breeze, sharp for early December, cut across the street. I walked south, past shops on the bottom floor of buildings, shoe stores and a dry cleaner’s. I turned east toward Pennsport, the Irish neighborhood where the Connallys lived. Soon the streets began to change, like an unmarked border crossing between countries. Breathless, I slowed to a walk. Though Christmas was nearly three weeks away, almost every house sparkled with lights, one brighter than the next. I passed a tavern, noisy through its open door even before lunchtime. Older, noisy boys played stickball on a corner lot. My skin prickled as I recalled Uncle Meyer’s admonition months earlier about the dangers of this strange neighborhood. Perhaps coming alone had been a mistake.

But soon I reached the Connallys’ and knocked. No one answered. The house was usually bustling with activity, so it had not occurred to me that no one would be home. I considered leaving. Instead, I turned the doorknob and stepped inside the house, looking around the empty living room uncertainly. “Hello?” I called out. “Mrs. Connally?” I eyed the piano in the corner, as I had so many times on my past visits. I made my way toward it, taking off my coat and then stroking the keyboard. It was a grand piano, so much bigger than the creaky old upright we’d had wedged into the dining room back in Trieste. I sat and played now, a simple piece that Papa had taught me back before his arrest when he still played. The notes rose above me like bubbles.

Hearing the door, I stopped abruptly. Mrs. Connally walked in and removed her coat, revealing her cornflower-blue dress. “Addie!” she said, taking off her hat. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

I stood hurriedly. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have come in.”

“Not at all.” She waved away my concern. “We were at church for the O’Neill baby’s baptism and there was lunch and the boys stayed to help with the nativity. They should be home soon.” Church. The Connallys went so infrequently and so it had not occurred to me that was where they might have been. But now the word seemed to magnify the differences between the Connallys and myself, which were otherwise so easy to forget. “Do you like it?” Mrs. Connally asked, gesturing to the piano. “I had hoped one of the boys would take it up, but none of them did—they can’t sit still long enough.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t ask first.”

Mrs. Connally waved her hand. “Don’t be. It does my heart good to hear it make music again. You should come play it whenever you want, and I hope that will be often. I’m going to change out of my good clothes. Why don’t you play something else for me?”

I sat and began to play again, “Torna a Surriento,” a song that Papa knew could always get my mother to smile. Once I had struggled with the notes, but now my fingers seemed to move of their own will, as if he was here, leading me. I finished the piece, the last notes echoing through the house.

There was a noise behind me and I looked up, expecting Mrs. Connally. But Charlie stood watching me from the doorway, more handsome than ever in his navy church suit. How long had he been there? Our eyes met. Several seconds passed, my throat too dry to speak.

He took a step toward the piano bench. “Hey.” Something seemed to shift with that single word, in the quiet space between us. At school, he was larger than life. But here it was just the two of us away from the eyes and remarks of the other kids. Despite my fantasies of being his girl, this was the part I really wanted, the two of us alone, away from our families and the world.

“That was just beautiful, Addie,” Mrs. Connally said as she appeared on the stairwell. Then she stopped. “Charlie, I thought you were helping with your father.”

He tore his gaze from me, then cleared his throat. “I was, but I ran into Coach and he said there’s a scout from Georgetown coming tomorrow. I want to get in some extra practice.” Though football season had ended weeks earlier, Charlie continued to work on his game with a few of the fellows, hoping to catch the eye of one of the colleges.

“Georgetown? That’s great, honey, but...” Conflict washed across Mrs. Connally’s face. I suspected they couldn’t afford a school like that. “Maybe somewhere closer.”

“There are scholarships, Mom.” I knew Charlie had never even contemplated forgoing college for a job at the factory as his father had, or even applying to a lesser school. He had always known he was meant for something great. “I’ve gotta go.” He disappeared upstairs.

A minute later Jack walked in with Robbie in tow. “Dad’s still at church finishing up,” he told his mother. “Hi, Ad.”

I followed them to the kitchen. “Addie, the boys had sandwiches at church. Have you eaten?” I nodded, thinking of the leftover gefilte fish and reheated soup from Shabbes that was a Sunday staple at my aunt and uncle’s. She pulled a carton from the icebox. “Chocolate or vanilla?”

“Both!” Robbie interjected.

“Not too much. I’m putting in the roast and dinner is at four.” Mrs. Connally handed me a bowl.

“Thank you.” I broke off a bit with my spoon. Ice cream here was harder than Nonna’s creamy gelato. It almost needed to be cut.

“I spilled!” Robbie wailed as his ice-cream bowl tipped, sending a creamy pool onto the linoleum.

Jack quickly set the bowl straight and scooped some of his own into it, evening things out as he so often did. “Want some help with the science homework after this?” he asked me.

“Sure,” I said, grateful for the excuse for having come over later.

“Can I help, too?” Robbie asked eagerly.

Jack knelt by his brother. “How ’bout you give us a little while, and then maybe we can all play dominoes?”

“Marbles,” Robbie sniffed.

“All right, but no cheating,” Jack teased.

But Robbie’s face was serious. “I’m going to beat you, fair and square.”

“Why don’t you let the dog out first?” Mrs. Connally suggested to Robbie.

He leapt up, whistling for Beau. “Come on, boy.”

When he was out of earshot, Mrs. Connally turned to Jack. “Have you seen your brother?”

“Which one?”

“Haha, wise guy. Where’s Liam?”

Jack shrugged. “I’m not his babysitter.” But worry creased his face. Though Liam hadn’t been in any more trouble since the fight in school nearly two months earlier, he was more withdrawn and absent than ever.

“Jackie,” his mother pressed. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know. He was hanging out with some of the fellas.” He did not sound as though he was talking about the kids from church.

Mrs. Connally cringed. “I told him to come home right after you were finished.”

“I know. I reminded him. He told me to mind my own business.” I followed Jack up the stairs. Through an open door, I could see where Robbie had constructed a giant city out of his blocks, using cardboard boxes when he ran out. He loved to build and Jack loved to read, and Charlie loved football—but what did Liam love? Perhaps it was the lack of a passion that stirred him to trouble.

“I’m worried about Liam,” Jack confided when we reached the room he and his twin shared.

“You should be. He’s gone from school more often than he’s there and those kids he hangs out with are awful. We have to do something.”

“Like what?”

I searched for an answer. Liam wouldn’t listen to us. Telling the Connallys and getting him in further trouble would only make things worse. “I’ll be right back.”

I raced downstairs and outside after Charlie, who had changed into his practice jersey and was climbing on his bike, shoulder pads slung over the handlebars. He turned and my breath caught, as it always did when he was near. “What is it, Ad?” he asked. “I’ve got to practice.” But his eyes were soft, his voice warm. What would he do if I kissed him right now?

“I’m worried about Liam.” He cocked his head, not following. How could he not have noticed? “He’s missing school a lot.”

“He’s always been a wild kid, Addie. He just loves to give Mom and Dad the business.”

“But it’s different now. He could be drinking.” Though I had not seen Liam with beer or liquor, I knew from conversations I’d overheard at school that some of the wilder kids drank. “Or worse.”

“It’s a phase. He’ll get over it.”

“What if he doesn’t?” I pressed.

Charlie’s brow wrinkled fleetingly. “I’ll talk to him, I promise. But right now I’ve got to get to practice.” He rose up on the pedals and started forward. “Don’t worry,” he called over his shoulder as he pedaled away, his voice fading in the wind. Longing tugged at my stomach. If only he would see what was going on with Liam. If only he would see me.

I started back through the living room toward the stairs. “Addie,” Robbie called in a stage whisper, though no one else was around to see or hear. His head stuck out from a doorway beneath the stairs. He’d first shown me his secret hiding place in early fall, waving me in from the dining room during one of my visits while the others were busy debating the Lend-Lease Act to a small door that I had always assumed was a broom closet. I lowered my head and peered inside. “Come in,” he’d urged. The tiny space with its low ceiling was barely big enough for the two of us, but he had decorated it with photos and pictures he had done at school and put two pillows on the floor. I’d squeezed onto one of them. “My hideaway.” I understood. The house was so overrun, two boys to a bedroom, noise in every corner. This was the one place he could call his own. “No one else knows,” he’d whispered. Though quite sure his mother did, I nodded solemnly, flattered that I was the one with whom he had shared his secret.

I hesitated as he waved me in now; Jack was waiting for me upstairs to finish homework. But I slid into the closet and Robbie curled up under the crook of my arm in a way he surely would not do for much longer.

“Look,” he said, pointing to the sloped ceiling of the closet. He’d stretched black paper across it and in white he’d sketched the stars, trying to replicate the constellations. “I don’t have them quite right,” he fretted. I imagined how he’d worked on the design, biting his lip with grim concentration as he tried to get the positioning of the stars just right.

“You should ask Liam.” Last summer at the beach, Liam was forever pointing out the different patterns of stars visible in the night sky. His eyes would light up as he explained a particular constellation; it was the closest I’d seen him to taking an interest in something.

“He’s never around anymore.” Robbie’s words were a refrain of my earlier conversations with Jack and Charlie. Even at eleven, Robbie could see the change in his brother. My anger toward Liam rose: couldn’t he see that Robbie looked up to him, and needed him in the same way that he needed Charlie? “Charlie’s always practicing, and you and Jack are busy with homework.” Robbie’s voice was dangerously close to a whine now. “I’m bored.”

“Wait here.” I walked to the living room and picked up the chess set that the Connallys had given me. I’d left it here for the occasional game with Jack, since neither my aunt nor uncle played.

Robbie’s eyes widened as I lowered the chess set into his hideaway. “Dad says I’m too young.”

“Not at all. I started playing when I was seven.” I held up the first piece. “This is the pawn and it moves a single space straight ahead, but diagonally...”

From outside the closet there came a clattering. At first, I thought it was Jack, coming to see where I had gone. But Mr. Connally’s voice, low and urgent, rose from the entranceway. “What on earth?” I unfolded myself from the closet, meeting Jack as he came down the stairs. We found Mr. Connally in the kitchen with his wife. His usually jovial expression was dark as a storm and he did not greet me. A rock formed in my stomach. “What’s happened?”

Grim-faced, he turned on the radio: “The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air... The attack also was made on all military and naval activities on the principal island of Oahu...”

“America will enter the war for sure now,” Jack said.

My heart lifted: surely the United States would declare war on the Germans, too. But Mrs. Connally was gripping the counter, knuckles white. “What’s wrong?” I asked, forgetting not to be forward. “Don’t you want the Americans to help? I know that the Quakers don’t believe in fighting but surely now that it’s for good reason...”

“It’s not that,” Mrs. Connally replied quietly.

“Then what?”

“Our boys are too young,” Mr. Connally soothed, reading her unspoken thought. “And it will be over quickly.”

“Yes, of course.”

Charlie ran in breathless, still wearing shoulder pads under his practice jersey. “The Japs bombed...” He stopped, realizing we had already heard. We stood huddled for several minutes, listening to the reports of the devastation in Hawaii, ships destroyed, casualties possibly in the thousands. I had seen the edges of war in Italy, homes burned and shop windows smashed, people arrested. But the scope of the damage described on the radio was simply unfathomable.

Charlie cleared his throat. “Will you go down to the enlistment center with me tomorrow, Dad?” he asked. His mother’s face seemed to fold with horror, as though her worst nightmare had come true.

“You’ll be eighteen soon,” his father said grudgingly. “I suppose you’ll need to register.”

Charlie shook his head. “Not just register. I want to join up.” My heart stopped. Charlie could not go to war.

“Charlie, no. You need to finish school. You may not even get drafted.”

“You don’t understand. I want to go now.” His eyes burned bright with an idealism that made me love him even more. “There’s a chance to make a difference and really help.”

Liam slammed through the door. “Mom, I was just...” Then, seeing us gathered, he stopped short. “What gives?”

“The Japanese attacked our base in Hawaii,” Mrs. Connally said. “And your brother wants to enlist.” She did not have to say which one.

Liam rolled his eyes. “Figures.”

“There’s no need to enlist. The war won’t last long,” Mrs. Connally said. This was the first time I had seen the Connallys disagree. As much as I wanted to be part of their family, I felt like an intruder listening in.

“Exactly. I want to go now, while I can help.” As the debate went back and forth like a ping-pong match, I watched Liam. He was looking at Charlie, rapt, his face a strange mix of adoration and resentment.