The Last Embrace

The smell of marsh grass baked in the late-August sun rose from the ground as I walked down the steps from our rooms at the beach house, brushing at some sand that lingered on my knee. A faint breeze, cooler than the day before, threatened to lift the hem of my pale yellow sundress, then set it down with a swirl.

I ran my fingers over the shell bracelet which Robbie had won for me from a boardwalk ring toss a few weeks earlier. It was hard to believe summer had come and gone again. We had arrived just before the Fourth of July, a day after the Connallys. Here there was no rushing home across the city after dinner, or worrying about the long walk between neighborhoods. Instead we had fallen back into our familiar routine of leisurely days on the beach and jitney rides up to the boardwalk some evenings. It was as if we had never left.

But everything was not the same. The country had been at war for more than eight months now. Life had changed in a thousand small ways, from the blackout curtains that lined the windows to the things like white sugar and sometimes butter that we were all meant do without for the war effort.

One day, just after the war had broken out, my name was called over the intercom when I was in Mrs. Lowenstein’s class, asking me to come to the principal’s office. This had never happened before and I hurried down the linoleum corridor, trying to figure out what I had done wrong. I was surprised to find my aunt and uncle waiting for me. They seldom ventured beyond the neighborhood. “We need you to come with us,” Aunt Bess said. They were both wearing their best clothes and their expressions were somber.

My apprehension rose. “Is it my parents? Have you had word?” Uncle Meyer shook his head and I followed them as we boarded the trolley downtown. Immigration and Naturalization, read a sign over the door of the office building at Fifth and Market to which Uncle Meyer led us.

Despite my uncle’s denial, hope flickered in me for a second: perhaps my parents were coming after all and we needed to get them visas. I turned to Aunt Bess questioningly. “Your citizenship paperwork came through,” she said. Annoyance rose in me. They had not asked if I wanted to be American; they had just presumed and filed the application without asking me. For a minute, I considered refusing. “It will make things easier,” Aunt Bess added. Easier for whom?

We sat in a waiting room with a dozen other people where a clock ticked above a water fountain. Finally, my name was called and we walked into an office. Would I have to take a test like I’d heard about in civics class? But the bald man behind the desk just asked me to repeat after him words I did not quite hear over the buzz in my ears, something about defending the Constitution. “Congratulations.” He handed me a certificate with coarse dry hands. Was that it? My heart sank a bit as I passed the paper to Aunt Bess, who folded it neatly and tucked it in her purse.

“That was wonderful,” Aunt Bess said, hugging me as though I had won an award, though I had in fact done nothing at all. “Wonderful.” I was not so sure. More and more lately, I had wanted to be like the Connallys and others here in America. I even dreamed in English, a transition that had happened so subtly I couldn’t say when. But now a small piece of me slipped away permanently, widening the gulf between me and my parents and the world I had left behind.

After leaving the immigration office, we went for a late lunch at Famous Deli and ate our corned-beef sandwiches silently. “Now that I’m not an Italian citizen anymore...” I began.

“Shhh,” Aunt Bess said, sneaking quick glances in both directions. I understood then the rush to naturalize me. With war raging overseas, people were growing more suspicious of foreigners here by the day. It was important to simply fit in, especially for a girl from Italy, which had declared war on America just days after Germany. Even on Porter Street, the chatter between porches that had mostly been Yiddish had become almost all English.

“I’m American now,” I’d told the Connallys when I’d visited them afterward.

“Congratulations!” Jack exclaimed brightly.

“Great,” Liam, on a rare evening home, remarked wryly. “You’re just like everyone else.” His words echoed my own misgivings. It was as if the part of me he’d admired—the part that was different—was gone.

The shore had changed, too—Atlantic City and the surrounding towns seemed to have been swallowed by the war. Fresh-faced young men in crisp new uniforms were everywhere and Convention Hall had been taken over as a training center. “Camp Boardwalk,” they called it. In the morning, troops marched and drilled in neat lines before scores of onlookers. Though bathers still took to the beaches, they scanned the horizon as if a German U-boat might appear at any second.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go to the shore this summer,” Mrs. Connally had fretted in early spring. Hearing that, my heart sank. The long summer days at the shore without the Connallys were unthinkable.

“The Germans won’t attack the coast,” her husband replied gently. He spoke with confidence, certain the war could not possibly reach America. But I had thought that once in Italy, too. Now newspaper stories ran pictures of fighting in the cities and villages, ordinary people arrested. My parents were smart, I told myself. They would have left and gone into hiding if things got too bad. It did little to ease my fears.

Thankfully the Connallys had come. I crossed the yard and Beau bounded out around the side of the wrapped porch in greeting. I knocked, not waiting for a response before opening the door. Though it was dinnertime, the smell of bacon and eggs filled the air. Boxes were strewn across the floor, much as they had been the day I’d met them. But this time they were packing to leave. At the base of the stairwell stood a small trunk. A lump formed in my throat at the bag that would go with Charlie when I would not.

They were all gathered in the kitchen, Robbie and the twins picking at the dishes their mother was cooking before she could swat their hands away. A radio played on the counter, President Roosevelt talking about how each American could help the war effort. “Addie, we’ve got eggs!” Robbie exclaimed, excited about the dinner he once might have scoffed at. I ruffled his hair, noting Mrs. Connally’s pained expression over his head. With rationing it was hard to get enough food for four growing boys, and even the ordinary things had become occasional treats.

Charlie sat at the table with his father, sharing sections of the newspaper. He wore a white T-shirt and his hair was still damp from his post-beach shower. Though I had seen him just an hour earlier, my stomach jumped.

Charlie looked up and his eyes seemed to hold mine just a beat longer than usual. “Hello, Addie,” he said. Did I imagine the odd twinge to his voice? There were moments, just a few, where I wondered if he might like me as well. Like back in the city last winter, when I had gone with all of the boys to see The Wizard of Oz downtown at the Stanley. About three-quarters of the way through the movie, right about when Dorothy tried to go home in a hot-air balloon, something brushed my hand in the darkness and I lifted it, thinking it was a fly. Charlie’s fingers hovered just above mine, then settled on them lightly. I wondered if it was intentional, but he stared intently at the movie, seeming not to notice. I did not breathe for fear of interrupting the moment. A few minutes later the lights came on and he stood, leaving me confused. As we made our way down the street to Horn & Hardart for hot cocoa, I searched his face for an explanation. But his expression was impassive and conversation ordinary, so ordinary I might have imagined it.

Things like that made me think that maybe he could like me, too. Why not? He was only a year and a bit older. But then he would retreat into his world of senior friends and dances and football, and I knew he would never feel the same way about me. He had spoken to me less recently, too, avoiding my eyes in a way reminiscent of Liam. I had wondered more than once if he was angry, though about what I could not fathom.

“Sit, sit,” Mrs. Connally urged, setting a plate before me. Guilt nagged at me as I inhaled the savory bacon smell. My aunt and uncle kept kosher at home. They didn’t ask what I ate at school or with the Connallys, but I felt fairly sure they hadn’t contemplated anything so trayf. My stomach grumbled. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. I took a bite.

“We’re going to the boardwalk while Mom and Dad pack up,” Jack offered. He’d gone a bit pimply around the chin, an awkward phase that the other boys seemed to have been spared. “I promised Robbie one last carousel ride.”

“Two,” Robbie corrected.

“Want to come?”

“Sure.” I wanted to buy a box of saltwater taffy to bring back for Rhonda. We’d become friends in a way. I didn’t see her outside of school—she had a gaggle of five younger brothers and sisters to babysit and I was busy with the Connallys. But we sat together at lunch every day and partnering up for relay races in gym. The other girls had either grown tired of mocking us or simply stopped noticing.

I took a sip of the juice Mrs. Connally had set before me, secretly studying Charlie as I ate. He was reading about a particularly difficult campaign that the army was waging in North Africa.

“I should be there,” he burst out, slamming his hand onto the table with uncharacteristic frustration. He had gone to register for the draft, waiting more than two hours in the line that snaked around Federal Street. He had not enlisted, though, in accordance with his parents’ wishes.

“Next year when I join the army—” Jack began. Gentle Jack was not a fighter, but he would do anything he could to be like his older brother.

“Next year the fighting will be over,” his father interrupted firmly.

“Please, God,” Mrs. Connally mumbled. “This may be the only time that I wish I had daughters instead.”

“You’re lucky you’re going to college,” Liam pointed out. Charlie had been accepted at Georgetown on the full football scholarship, just like he’d hoped. I’d been helping Mrs. Connally plant her victory plot last April when he’d come home with the news. Mrs. Connally had always made the tiny garden into an oasis, roses climbing trellises stubbornly looking for sun in the shaded patch of green, honeysuckle giving off a fragrant smell. When the war had come, she had reluctantly dug out some of her prized flowers to plant vegetables.

Charlie had run down the sidewalk, whooping. “I got into Georgetown.”

“But how do you know?” his mother had asked. “There hasn’t been a letter.”

“There will be. Coach found out.” He’d lifted me and spun me around. Then he’d set me down to hug his mother and I stood motionless, emotions cascading over me. His dream had come true, and he was going to school, not war. But I was still losing him. Charlie had talked about going away since the day we met. The neighborhood simply could not hold him.

But his excitement about college had not staved off the fact that part of him—a big part—felt duty-bound to go and fight. “Maybe you can get a part-time job in Washington with the War Department when you’re at Georgetown,” I offered now, trying to ease his frustration.

His face relaxed and he smiled slightly. “That’s an idea.” But I couldn’t tell if he meant it or was just humoring me.

“Thanks, Addie,” Mrs. Connally said in a low voice as Charlie walked from the room.

When we finished eating, Jack, Liam and Robbie spilled outside with their football, tossing it in the grass yard between the two houses. The boys were outpacing me now, I noticed. The twins were as tall as Charlie had been the day we met. Even Robbie’s shoulders now nearly matched my own. And Charlie... I looked back at the Connally house. Why hadn’t he come out yet?

From our rooms above, I heard the scrape of a window screen and saw a curtain move. Aunt Bess had been watching me with the Connallys, her expression undoubtedly one of disapproval. Though I had been friends with the Connallys for over a year, it seemed to bother her and Uncle Meyer now more than ever. They were forever trying to push me toward Jewish kids back in the city. “There’s a dance at the Y,” Aunt Bess had said tentatively at dinner about a month before we’d come down the shore. “I thought that maybe you would like to go.” I had not answered. It wasn’t that I disliked the Jewish kids, but even if they would have accepted me, I didn’t want to go. I had the Connallys. I didn’t need anyone else.

“You’re almost eighteen now,” Aunt Bess had pressed. “You need to meet some nice boys.”

“And the Connallys aren’t?” I demanded. Uncle Meyer blinked in surprise at the forcefulness of my voice.

“It’s not that. But being Jewish matters. After everything that you’ve seen, I would have thought that you would appreciate that.”

I pushed aside my aunt’s disapproval and watched the boys play as they had done dozens of evenings this summer. But this time was different: it was the last time. Tomorrow it would all be gone. Swatting back a tear, I ran up the stairs to my room and grabbed the camera that Uncle Meyer had given to me as a birthday present. “I noticed you admiring it,” he’d confessed. It was smaller than the one Papa had let me use and not as new. But I didn’t mind; I took it everywhere, capturing bits of the city, like the shopkeepers beneath the sagging awnings at the Italian market and the old men who fed pigeons in Mifflin Park. I saved a bit of my allowance each week to buy film and had gotten permission to use the darkroom at school, rinsing the images until the contrast was just right.

I stood on the stairs, snapping shots of the boys as they tackled one another, their hair and skin golden in the late-day sun.

“Hey!” Liam scowled at the clicking sound. “No pictures.”

I lowered the camera and walked down the steps. “Why not?” I challenged.

“You gotta be careful with that. Someone might think you’re an Axis spy.”

“Liam!” Jack cautioned.

“I didn’t mean anything by it.” His face flushed. But there was some truth to what he’d said: people looked at me differently since the war began. Even though I was an American citizen now and my accent had faded with time, my past meant I would never truly be one of them. I was an outsider, foreign once more.

“I doubt the Germans would want a photo of you anyway,” Jack chided his twin, trying to break the tension. Liam did not answer but stormed off around the side of the house.

“But, Liam, we’re going to the boardwalk!” Robbie could not imagine anyone passing up on that. His voice was drowned out by the choky rev of Liam’s dirt-bike engine, then tires squealing. Seeing Robbie’s face fall, I walked over and squeezed his hand, which was still a bit slick with bacon grease. Jack looked at me helplessly. Liam was so much moodier and more distant than a year ago. We had hoped that the summer away from the city, where trouble was so easy to find, would have done something to calm Liam’s wild ways. There were moments when he seemed his old self, playing with his brothers in the surf. But his darkness always returned.

Mrs. Connally stepped from the house, shielding her eyes as she scanned the side yard. “Where’s Liam?”

“Gone—on his bike. He said something earlier about meeting some friends at the beach.”

Mrs. Connally’s face fell. “I hate that thing,” she said bluntly. The bike had been a reward—Liam was allowed to buy it with the allowance he’d saved in exchange for finishing the semester with no Fs. But it had backfired, allowing him to roam farther and longer than ever before. “He’s having such a hard time.” She seemed to be pleading with me to do something, though what I did not know.

Before I could ask, Jack came to my side with Robbie in tow. “Ready?”

“What about the others?” I asked, purposefully vague.

But the point of my question could not have been more obvious. “Charlie’s got plans.”

“A date,” Robbie piped up cheerfully.

“Robbie, don’t.” Jack shifted uncomfortably. He had been trying to spare my feelings. A foot seemed to kick me in the stomach. I had seen Charlie talking to the girl who worked the concession stand by the beach a couple of times, a strawberry blonde a year or two older than me. But I had not actually thought he would go out with her tonight of all nights. It was our last night at the shore, for goodness’ sake. How could he waste it with someone he hardly knew?

A few minutes later, the jitney came and we paid a nickel each to board. Our nights had changed since last summer when the whole Connally family had made the trek to the boardwalk on Saturday nights to ride the Ferris wheel and watch the lights twinkle along the hazy coastline below. On the Fourth of July, we’d crowded together on a blanket, sharing caramel corn as fireworks exploded above and an orchestra played on the pier.

Now everything was different. Liam was off getting into trouble and Charlie was with that red-haired girl. My mind was flooded with images. Where was he taking her tonight? So those moments I’d glimpsed between me and Charlie had just been my imagination. How foolish of me! I had no right to stop him from dating, but it still felt like a betrayal—and it hurt worse than I could have imagined.

“We’re here.” Robbie tugged at my arm and we climbed off, then walked the last few steps to the wide promenade of the boardwalk. The shops and arcades stood in a row beneath brightly colored awnings. The heady aroma of taffy and funnel cake and caramel corn, which I normally savored, seemed stifling now. Roller coasters and other amusements rose on the massive piers that jutted out like freighters into the sea. Across the boardwalk, a serviceman who had not yet shipped out yet stole a kiss from the girl on his arm.

We walked passed the Warner Theater, its marquee alight touting a Gary Cooper film. Once the boardwalk would have come alive with twinkling lights even before dusk, but now they were dimmed out, lights covered with a special blue film in a precaution to make the coast less visible in case of an attack. “The Miss America pageant is coming,” Robbie announced as they passed a poster of a striking woman in a swim costume.

“She sure is a dish,” Jack chimed in, but the words sounded forced and silly.

“Hey!” Normally I didn’t mind the boys’ rough banter. “That’s rude to say in front of me.”

“Sorry, Ad,” Jack said, chastened.

But his apology did no good. My frustration, with Charlie and Liam and all of it, suddenly boiled over. The lights and merriment only seemed to amplify my sadness. I could stand it no longer. “I’m a girl, too, you know. Maybe it’s time you remembered that!”

I turned away blindly. Ignoring the boys’ calls, I dodged through children licking ice-cream cones and the wicker rickshaws pushed by colored men. I ran south, my sandals flapping against the boards until the sound and lights faded behind me.

Finally, I slowed a bit, breathing heavily. The sun was setting in great layers of pink, like wide swaths of strawberry frosting on a cake I’d once admired through a bakery window. The boardwalk grew quiet except for the cry of a few gulls and the rhythmic thunder of the waves. When I reached Chelsea Avenue, I saw a cluster of kids sitting around a fire down on the beach and Liam’s dirt bike propped against the side of the boardwalk. Before I knew it, I was going after him.

I took off my sandals and then stepped onto the beach. The sand, still warm, grew damp and harder beneath my feet as I neared the water. About fifteen feet away from the group, I stopped. Seven or eight kids sat in the surf smoking and drinking out of glass soda bottles that I guessed contained something stronger. Liam was not among them, and for a moment I was grateful I had been wrong. Then a familiar whoop came across the water. Liam was almost fifty feet out paddling on a surfboard, scarcely visible at dusk. It wasn’t accurate anymore to say that Liam had no hobbies. He had the dirt bike and surfing, which he had picked up earlier this summer. He was drawn, it seemed, to anything dangerous. He rose up and the water seemed to dance beneath him. I momentarily forgot my fear of the water and stood transfixed.

As Liam played to his audience, he scanned the coastline. Seeing me, he lurched in surprise. The board few out from under him and his legs went flying through the air. “Liam!” I called, panic surging through me. Seconds passed and I watched the surface, willing him to appear.

A minute later he emerged in shallow water, his hair dark and slicked with water. As he saw me, a light came to his eyes and for a moment he almost smiled. Then his face seemed to close again and he turned from me, starting toward the group by the fire. “Liam, wait.” As he neared, I noticed an odd smell mingling with the salt water, and his eyes were glassy.

“Hey, Ad.” He reached into his bag and held out a flask to me. His look was daring, sure that I would say no. “I didn’t think so,” he sneered when I hesitated. I took the flask from him and as I raised it, the acidic smell took me back to the glass of vodka Nonna always had before supper. Wanting him to trust me but knowing better than to sip, I took a swig, cringing at the burn.

The others kids were packing up now and I feared Liam would follow, leaving me behind. I shivered. He pulled out a shirt and passed it to me, and I could smell the sweat and smoke and beer it had seen as I rolled up the too-long sleeves. He dropped to the sand and I followed, leaning back. There was a great white streak of cloud across the night sky, seeming to light it, as if someone had taken a piece of chalk and brushed it sideways. One of Robbie’s ceiling sketches come to life.