The Last Embrace

I was losing the battle to stay awake in civics class as Mrs. Lowenstein droned on about wartime production in Britain. I blinked against heavy eyelids, but the polka dots of her dress seemed to blend together, making my vision swim. Normally I enjoyed the class, which purported to be about the past two centuries of history, but in fact focused unabashedly on the war in Europe. But Mrs. Lowenstein’s monotone recitation of facts about steel manufacturing today hardly seemed relevant.

The rest of summer had passed much like that first day with the Connallys, afternoons on the beach with the boys and trips to the boardwalk in the evening. But then the days began to shorten and we only had a bit of time on our Schwinn bikes after dinner before the sun dropped low to the bay. There was a tiny release in the humidity, like air leaking from a balloon.

One day I spied Aunt Bess taking out a large box. “What are you doing?”

“Packing. It’s only a week until we return to the city and we have to register you for school.” Life at the shore was all that I had known here. I had almost forgotten about Philadelphia.

“What grade will I be in?”

Aunt Bess looked confused. “I suppose they’ll have to test you.”

“Will I need to bring my own school supplies? How will I get there?” I piled my questions on top of one another, realizing from her expression that she did not know the answer. She had not done this before either.

She paused to set down the pile of shirts she’d been packing, then swiped at her brow. “I suppose,” she said, “we will have to figure out all of this together.”

“I don’t want to go,” I had burst out to Jack as he helped me through Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men on the porch of his family’s beach house that evening.

“We’re not that far from you in the city,” Jack offered. “We might even have classes together.” But I was not consoled—it was not the same as being next door, hearing their laughter through the open window as I fell asleep.

I waited until a few days after we returned to the city to ask. “I want to go see the Connallys.” We had just finished supper at Aunt Bess and Uncle Meyer’s house on Porter Street in the small dining room sandwiched in between the parlor in front and kitchen in back. The row house was so narrow I could almost touch both sides with my arms outstretched.

We’d moved into the parlor after eating, sitting three across on the flowered, slip-covered sofa, facing the fireplace we never used. Aunt Bess may have tried to seem American outside, but the house was filled with tarnished framed photos of grandparents and other relatives from the old country and the Shabbes candlesticks and Kiddush cup sat on the mantel.

Aunt Bess was reading Home Chat magazine while Uncle Meyer smoked his cigar and listened studiously to the news on the radio. I had waited until after the weather report to bring up the Connallys. Uncle Meyer followed the forecasts and their accuracy as studiously as though he was embarking on a great sea voyage. Even Aunt Bess, who spoke at him constantly, did not talk during the weather. But I had to ask quickly; after the news, Uncle Meyer would retreat to the basement, where he’d constructed an elaborate model railroad, complete with farms and a town, stretching nearly the length of the parlor above. I wondered if he wished I’d been a boy so he might have someone to share it with.

“I have their address,” I added hopefully.

“You can’t go,” Aunt Bess replied distractedly, bending to smooth the area rug which was a bit frayed at the edges. “It’s practically across town.”

I had looked at a street map and knew this wasn’t true. “It’s no farther than walking to school. I can do it.” It was the first time since coming here that I had spoken up for something I wanted and it felt good.

“The Irish neighborhood is dangerous,” Aunt Bess replied.

“Why?” I pressed. I did not want to be rude to my aunt and uncle, who had done so much for me, but I could not leave it alone.

“They don’t like Jews,” she replied bluntly. So she had not been speaking of crime, but of the hatred of Jews that existed here as surely as it had back home in Italy.

“But the Connallys aren’t like that.” She shook her head, unconvinced. My heart sank. “Uncle Meyer?” He lowered the newspaper, blinking with surprise at being included in the conversation. Normally it was Aunt Bess who did all the talking. My uncle could not be more different from Papa, who was a decade younger and so fiery—or had been, at least, before his arrest. “Do you think I can go?”

My uncle adjusted one of the two pens that always protruded from his shirt pocket, then glanced over at Aunt Bess before answering. “It’s different here,” he said, his voice stilted. “This isn’t like at the shore. The goyim and the Jews...people are separate.”

“Why?”

He took off his glasses and rubbed at a speck of dirt, fumbling for an answer. “That’s just the way it is. There are lots of nice kids right here on the block. You should be with your own kind, especially now.” He stopped awkwardly. He was talking, of course, of the things that were going on in Europe. The Germans had continued their march across the continent, seeming to occupy another country each week. Hitler hated the Jews, was banning them from schools and professions and even the streetcars. There were stories of arrests. And Italy had allied itself with Germany, which meant things were worse now, too, in Trieste. My stomach tightened. My parents had been persecuted for their political activity—they were hardly religious at all. But Hitler would not see it that way—a Jew was a Jew.

“About that...” I licked my lips, changing to the other subject I’d been wanting to ask them about. “I heard on the radio about a program offering visas for some refugees. Maybe my mother and father would qualify.”

My aunt and uncle exchanged a look. “Getting visas for your parents isn’t the problem,” Uncle Meyer said gently. My spirits lifted. “We offered to arrange it a long time ago. They want to stay in Trieste and keep doing their work.” Uncle Meyer’s voice was even scratchier than usual. He had left Italy when he was fifteen and made his way here alone. His skin was a shade more olive than most here, but beyond that did not have the slightest accent or trace of the old country. He had not looked back. He still cared for his brother, though, and it pained him that he could not bring my father to safety.

“Oh.” I looked away. All this time I’d assumed that Mamma and Papa could not come, and that they would follow when their papers were ready, like Mamma had said. But the truth was that their work mattered more than I did. It always had.

“When all of the fighting is over, I’m sure they’ll come.” Aunt Bess spoke as though the war was wrapping up. She had not seen, though, the things I had before leaving, the way people over there were stocking up supplies and digging hiding spots ahead of the armies rolling in.

I swiped at my stinging eyes, then stood and walked upstairs to my room. It was tiny, no more than a large closet that could just hold a twin bed and dresser. But Aunt Bess prepared the way she thought a girl my age would like, with pink flowered sheets and curtains. She and Uncle Meyer were trying their best, but it wasn’t the same as my own family.

I reached for the photograph of my mother and father, which sat in a frame on the corner of the dresser. When we’d come to Philadelphia from the beach, I’d been surprised to see this photo of my parents by the seaside on the mantel above the fireplace. “They sent it right after they were married,” Aunt Bess had told me. “Why don’t you put it in your room?” I ran my finger over the image. They looked so young and carefree.

So my parents wanted to stay in Italy—or had anyway, the last time we’d been able to reach them. I wrote to them each week, but so far there had been no reply. “Overseas post is so unreliable,” Uncle Meyer offered, to try to explain the lack of a response. I was not consoled. Things might have worsened for them and they could be trying desperately to leave.

I set down the photo. There was a section of newspaper from yesterday’s Bulletin on the top of the dresser as well. I picked it up, along with the dictionary beside it. I’d been working through the paper at Jack’s suggestion as a way to improve my English. But the story, about refugees displaced by fighting in France, just made my heart ache worse. In my memories, my childhood in Trieste was idyllic. That was gone now, though, and the reality, of war and violence and suffering, leapt off the pages at me. What was life like for Mamma and Papa now?

The doorbell rang and I looked up from the paper. Visitors were constant on Porter Street, neighboring women dropping by to borrow a cup of sugar or share the latest bit of gossip, and men from the tiny shul on the corner of Porter Street needing Uncle Meyer for the minyan, the ten men required to pray on Shabbes. “Good evening, sir.” Joy surged through me as Charlie’s rich, familiar voice flowed up the stairwell. I dropped the dictionary and leapt up, then smoothed my hair, hoping the smell of Uncle Meyer’s cigar did not linger about me.

“I was just in the area,” I heard Charlie explain. It was, of course, a lie. He had no cause to be in our neighborhood, far from his own home. It was as if he’d heard me calling out for him. “And I thought...” He stopped midsentence as he saw me at the top of the stairs. I had seen him just days earlier at the beach, but here, dressed more formally in chinos and a collared shirt with his hair held in place by a bit of pomade, he seemed somehow older—and even more handsome. “Hi, Addie. Would you like to come over for ice cream?”

Trying to contain my excitement, I turned to my aunt. “May I?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at Uncle Meyer uncertainly, hesitant to be rude to Charlie by saying no outright. “It’s so far, and she doesn’t know the neighborhood.” Her voice was heavy with concern. My heart sank. They were going to say no.

“I will walk her there and back personally, sir,” Charlie said, voice solemn and low. There was something about him that could be trusted.

Uncle Meyer relented. “Fine, but have her home by eight.”

“Don’t overstay your welcome,” my aunt cautioned in a low voice, and I wondered if she was just talking about the Connallys or if I had somehow been a burden here, too. I tried to stay neat and out of the way, not cause extra work or expense.

Charlie held the door and I hurried past before my aunt and uncle could change their minds. Outside, it was still warm and neighbors sat on their porches or marble steps, smoking and watching the children play handball in the street. They stared curiously as we made our way down the block. Everyone knew about the immigrant girl from Italy who had come this summer to live here—but who was this goy walking with her?

Charlie seemed not to notice, whistling a bit as we reached the corner, passing the barbershop where Uncle Meyer and the other men played cards. I glanced at Charlie out of the corner of my eye, trying not to stare. “Mom thought you might like to come over.”

“Oh.” I’d wanted it to be his idea.

“But I offered to be the one to come get you.” My spirits lifted again, riding the endless roller coaster I’d boarded the day I’d spied the Connallys across the rooming house yard.

I followed him northeast and the streets grew wide and unfamiliar. The Irish neighborhood ran close to the shipyard and soot-covered dockworkers made their way home, empty lunch tins in hand. “Careful.” Charlie grabbed my arm to guide me around a pothole at the curb. I shivered at the contact. Then the sidewalk grew even and he let go of my arm once more. Finally he stopped at a corner house with bright yellow curtains and a small garden of flowers beside the front step. “This is it.”

But the lights of the house in front of us were darkened. Perhaps the others had gone out. I followed Charlie inside uncertainly. Did he mean for us to be alone? “Surprise!” Lights flickered on and the Connallys stood around their dining room table, a cake before them aglow with candles.

“Got her,” Charlie said, sounding as if he’d gone to the grocery store for milk.

“Addie!” Robbie cried, running to me and wrapping himself around my waist.

I was too surprised to respond. Robbie had asked me once at the shore when my birthday was, but I hadn’t thought anyone else had heard, or might remember. As they sang to me, a chorus of smiling faces, illuminated by candlelight, my mind whirled. September 9, my seventeenth birthday, was still three days away and Aunt Bess had mentioned something vaguely about going out to dinner on Sunday to celebrate.

But I hadn’t expected this. Mrs. Connally served the cake. It was just big enough to hold the candles that had been crammed on top, and there was a tiny slice for each of us when it was cut up, none leftover for seconds. It was homemade, though, right down to the wobbly writing that said Robbie had helped. I had not had a real cake since Nonna made one for my twelfth birthday in Trieste. After she was gone Mamma had been too busy with her causes to manage more than tiramisu from the café down the street. And Aunt Bess, for all of her good intentions, could not bake and relied on store-bought Entenmann’s. This was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.

Scraping the icing from my plate, I looked around. The Connallys’ house seemed a smaller replica of their place at the beach: casual furniture, piles of paper and toys stacked haphazardly. A grand piano occupied one corner of the room.

When we finished the cake, Mr. Connally handed me a box with a bow. “Happy birthday, Addie.”

I’d finally met Mr. Connally a few days after the rest of the family had arrived at the shore. The boys and I had come home from the beach to find a man stepping from the car in a crisp white shirt, short-sleeved and a bit wrinkled from the trip. The boys flocked to him, calling out excitedly, and he lifted Robbie high up in the air. Mrs. Connally had returned to the house early and as she greeted him in a ruffled pink cap-sleeved dress there was a warmth between her and her husband that reminded me of my parents in earlier days. I’d stood back, an outsider as their circle was now complete. But Mr. Connally welcomed me just as readily as the rest of the family. A large man, reminiscent of a grizzly bear, he seemed to be always smiling. The mustache above his mouth was yellowed from the pipe his wife would not let him smoke in the house.

“You didn’t have to get me anything.” I opened the box and inside sat a chess set. I lifted it out. Though it was not an exact replica, the pieces were iron just like the ones back home in Trieste.

Mr. Connally cleared his throat. “I saw you admiring ours several times, and I remembered you mentioning something like this.”

“It’s perfect.” They had thought, really thought about what I wanted. My eyes stung with happy tears.

“Help me with the dishes, Addie?” Mrs. Connally asked, and I followed her to the kitchen, pleased to be of use.

After we cleaned up, we all settled in to listen to Abbott and Costello on the radio. Mrs. Connally sat on a long sofa, Robbie and Jack on one side, Mr. Connally on the end.

Liam hung at the edge of the room, seeming uncomfortable in his own house. I started toward him, wanting to draw him in. “Game of chess?” He had a smart, analytical way of looking at the world and something told me he would be good at it.

“Nah, I’ve got plans. Happy birthday, Ad.” He slipped from the house, leaving an emptiness in the otherwise perfect night.

“Come sit.” Mrs. Connally patted the small triangular wedge of sofa beside her. I looked uncertainly toward Charlie, wishing there was room for him too. But he had already dropped comfortably to the rug. I slipped in close to Mrs. Connally on one side, my leg pressing against Jack’s on the other. Beau ambled into the room and nestled on my feet.

And just like that, I was home.

What was it the Connallys liked about me? I wondered now as I recalled that special night nearly six weeks earlier. They already had enough kids, as Liam once pointed out. How strange that in this family that was already so full there seemed to be a place waiting for me. Over the summer I had become something different to each of them: the daughter that Mrs. Connally never had, a friend to Jack, and the one who would listen to Robbie when the others were all too busy. But what was I to Charlie exactly: a little sister, or something else?

A loud siren blared unexpectedly, cutting through Mrs. Lowenstein’s lesson. I sat bolt upright, suddenly wide-awake. Boys and girls looked around, uncertain how to react to the unfamiliar sound, more shrill than the fire alarm. “This is an air raid drill. Under your desks, everyone,” Mrs. Lowenstein instructed calmly. “Put your heads beneath a book.” The others obeyed slowly, joking and talking as they went. But I scrambled under my desk, trembling.

Mrs. Lowenstein (“Roberta” I’d heard another teacher call her once) crouched down and put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s only a drill.” America was not at war; we were only practicing. But the fact that the drills like we had back home had begun here seemed to signal something ominous. The siren droned on relentlessly. The hard linoleum floor pressed unpleasantly against my knees. The exercise seemed futile—if bombs actually came, a desk would not protect me. A minute later the siren ended and there was a beep signaling the all clear. We climbed out.

Mrs. Lowenstein smiled reassuringly at me as I took my seat. “With respect to shipbuilding...” she continued, resuming her lecture.

I jumped when the bell rang ten minutes later, but this time it was just signaling that class was over. “Have a nice weekend,” Mrs. Lowenstein called over the din of chatter and desks slamming. I gathered my books and walked down the hall, which was covered in student-made Halloween decorations and smelled from a mixture of Clorox disinfectant and leftover lunches. I put my books in my locker and grabbed my coat and lunch bag, then closed the door again and leaned against it. The sharp knob cut into my back as I pressed against the wall to escape the surge of students, laughing and talking as they jostled roughly past between classes. I drew my cardigan more tightly around myself like armor. I still could not get used to the size and chaos of Southern High.

I looked longingly in the direction of the tunnel. Southern was in fact two schools, one for the boys and one for girls, and our homeroom, cafeteria and gym were separate. But they were connected by an enclosed walkway so kids could take classes together on either side.

When there was a gap in the crowd, I started for the cafeteria. I eyed the swarming lunchroom warily from the doorway. The girls seemed to camp in clusters, Italians in the far right corner, Irish on the far side of the room, as if trying to recreate the divisions of the local neighborhoods. A few of the girls from Porter and Ritner Streets sat at the first long table in a tight circle. Aunt Bess tried to help me fit in, buying me the popular plaid wool skirts and sturdy saddle shoes, so unlike the loose, flowing dresses and sandals I’d worn most of the year back home. “Maybe you could invite a friend over after school,” she’d suggested more than once—as if it were that simple. My olive skin was still darker than the others, my accent undeniable. The girls from the Jewish neighborhood, who had grown up together, had no room for a foreigner.

I carried my lunch box toward a nearly empty table on the far edge of the room. At the end a little girl with skin even darker than mine sat by herself, staring straight ahead, chewing purposefully. “Coloreds,” Liam called the small group of black kids at Southern. They, too, kept to their own group—except for this girl, who was alone like me.

“Mind if I sit?” The girl shrugged. “I’m Addie.”

“I’m Rhonda. You talk funny.” The girl’s tone was matter-of-fact. “Where you come from?”

“Italy. I moved here a few months ago, but we were at the shore for the summer.”

A harsh laugh came from two tables over. A few of the Irish girls were looking at Rhonda and me, making jokes.

Rhonda finished her lunch and stood, casting the remnants of her lunch in a trash can. “See you.” I watched her go, wondering what Aunt Bess’s reaction would be if Rhonda was the friend I invited over. Not wanting to remain at the table alone, I took the rest of my sandwich and folded it back in the wax paper. I still could not get used to the amount of waste—or take for granted that there would be food tomorrow.

My science class was in the boys’ school so I started down the tunnel. Unsupervised, the long, dim corridor was the one place boys and girls could meet and I averted my eyes from the couples that loitered close to one another against the walls, necking. I didn’t know much about sex, other than what I’d gleaned from a few books and whispers in the girls’ bathroom. But I sure saw some things here.

I glimpsed Liam at the far end of the tunnel. Seeing just one Connally boy was always strange, like a game piece that had been separated from the rest of the chessboard. My eyes caught his and I started toward him, hoping we might talk before class; I didn’t even mind if he teased me. But Liam had become more aloof since returning from the beach, not just from me but from his brothers. I saw him hanging on the shadowy outskirts at the edge of the playground with kids who smoked and more often than not had only one parent at home—a place he didn’t belong.

As I neared the boys’ school, Charlie appeared from behind the open door of a locker. Happiness flooded me as it always did when I saw him. But it quickly disappeared. Looking up at him adoringly from beneath his arm was Stephanie Weidman, a blonde senior who led the cheerleading squad. Her hair was neatly rolled and pinned back and the cuffs of a crisp white blouse peeked out beneath her pink cashmere sweater.

I should not have been surprised. It had not taken me long to figure out that Charlie was very popular with the girls. “Why are you giggling?” I’d demanded of the girl at the locker next to mine the very first day when he’d passed by. I would not have anyone make fun of him.

“He’s Charlie Connally,” the girl explained, her voice hollow with awe. “The quarterback.”

At the shore he had just been Charlie. Here, though, he was larger than life, the “bee’s knees,” one of the girls called him. Crowds seemed to part as he passed and girls looked at him in a way that I had not understood before. Even those who didn’t like football and didn’t understand the game, including myself, sat in the stands, shivering, with their hands around a paper cup of metallic-tasting cocoa just to see Charlie in all his glory.

I started to duck away now but Charlie’s head swiveled in my direction and he started over, leaving Stephanie standing alone. There was a hushed silence in the tunnel around us, then whispers and stares as the school’s star quarterback walked over to talk to the small, foreign girl who nobody knew. “Hi, Addie.” Charlie smiled brightly, as though we were at the beach and it was just the two of us. He wore his varsity letter sweater, black with the red S. He’d grown taller since summer and wore his hair in a neat comb-back with pomade, not loose and curly as it had been at the beach.

Behind him I noticed Liam watching our exchange, eyes longing. He always seemed so separate from the rest of us, in a way he just didn’t have to be. Join us, I pleaded silently. If I went to him, he just might. But my feet remained planted, not wanting to give up this one moment with Charlie.