Pam Jenoff - The Last Embrace

A second later Jack reached us. “Addie, are you okay?”

“That was so cool,” Robbie exclaimed, dog-paddling up from behind. He and Jack followed Charlie as he carried me to shore.

Charlie neared the beach blanket and set me down gently. Mrs. Connally wrapped a towel around me. “Liam, how could you?” she demanded. “Addie, are you all right, dear?”

“It was a joke,” Liam replied defensively.

“You idiot,” Charlie swore. Liam’s face crumpled and he slumped forward, as though he had been punched in the stomach. Clearly his older brother’s opinion meant everything.

I nodded and assured Mrs. Connally I was fine. A man carrying a white ice cooler on his back walked down the beach calling out, “Ice cream!” Mrs. Connally fished in her bag for coins. “Come with me, boys,” she said, standing. Robbie and Jack started after her. Liam hung back, watching Charlie, as if wanting to make what he had done all right. But Charlie did not look away from me, until finally Liam followed the others reluctantly.

Charlie put a hand on my shoulder and slid closer. “You want to talk about it?”

My trembling eased slightly. “There’s nothing to tell.” I fought the urge to put my head on his shoulder. Though I’d only just met Charlie, he seemed to have a way of making everything okay—even the beach.

“But Trieste is on the coast, isn’t it? You’ve lived by the water your whole life. You can’t swim at all?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed, pulling the towel closer around me. “I can’t even breathe when I get near the ocean.”

“I could try to help you.”

“No, thanks.”

“You’re not ready. I understand.” I wanted to tell him I never would be. “I hope you’ll come to the beach with us anyway. ’Cause I promise,” he added, shooting a murderous look down the beach toward Liam, “that what happened today will never happen again.”

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.