The Last Embrace. Pam Jenoff
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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,