The Last Embrace. Pam Jenoff
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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