The Last Embrace - Pam Jenoff

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don’t you dare!” his mother began to admonish, but it was too late. Her voice faded as Liam carried me toward the water. “Please put me down,” I begged, flailing. But he stared straight ahead, not listening. The boy who just hours earlier had protected me from a neighbor’s wrath over a broken window was now my tormentor.

      I closed my eyes, knowing what was coming next. The waves thundered in my ears, a sound I had heard thousands of times in my nightmares. Water splashed around Liam’s ankles as they reached the surf, kicking up the icy spray against my bare skin. Then he let me go. I screamed as cold darkness enveloped me. I reached wildly for the bottom, trying without success to find my footing. A powerful wave slammed into me from behind, tossing me like a ball until I could no long figure out which way was up. I flailed my arms, panicking. Water filled my nose and mouth, salt where air should have been.

      Suddenly I was lifted to the surface. “Hey.” Charlie’s strong arms encircled me, holding me close as I coughed the water from my burning lungs. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.” He had reached me in a few long strokes. “Easy.” His voice was soothing. He raised me higher as a wave lifted them so it would not break on me. “I’ve got you.” I did not answer, but leaned my head against the wetness of his chest, still trying to catch my breath.

      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

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