The Last Embrace. Pam Jenoff
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I neared the boys’ school, Charlie appeared from behind the open door of a locker. Happiness flooded me as it always did when I saw him. But it quickly disappeared. Looking up at him adoringly from beneath his arm was Stephanie Weidman, a blonde senior who led the cheerleading squad. Her hair was neatly rolled and pinned back and the cuffs of a crisp white blouse peeked out beneath her pink cashmere sweater.
I should not have been surprised. It had not taken me long to figure out that Charlie was very popular with the girls. “Why are you giggling?” I’d demanded of the girl at the locker next to mine the very first day when he’d passed by. I would not have anyone make fun of him.
“He’s Charlie Connally,” the girl explained, her voice hollow with awe. “The quarterback.”
At the shore he had just been Charlie. Here, though, he was larger than life, the “bee’s knees,” one of the girls called him. Crowds seemed to part as he passed and girls looked at him in a way that I had not understood before. Even those who didn’t like football and didn’t understand the game, including myself, sat in the stands, shivering, with their hands around a paper cup of metallic-tasting cocoa just to see Charlie in all his glory.
I started to duck away now but Charlie’s head swiveled in my direction and he started over, leaving Stephanie standing alone. There was a hushed silence in the tunnel around us, then whispers and stares as the school’s star quarterback walked over to talk to the small, foreign girl who nobody knew. “Hi, Addie.” Charlie smiled brightly, as though we were at the beach and it was just the two of us. He wore his varsity letter sweater, black with the red S. He’d grown taller since summer and wore his hair in a neat comb-back with pomade, not loose and curly as it had been at the beach.
Behind him I noticed Liam watching our exchange, eyes longing. He always seemed so separate from the rest of us, in a way he just didn’t have to be. Join us, I pleaded silently. If I went to him, he just might. But my feet remained planted, not wanting to give up this one moment with Charlie.
Charlie turned to Stephanie, who had come up behind him. “Do you know Addie?” Of course not. Girls like her would never even see me—nor would Charlie if it hadn’t been for the shore. “Addie’s like family,” he said. The words, intended with kindness, stung. Not family—like family. There was always that one step separating me from them. Stephanie sniffed, unimpressed, and turned and walked down the hall. Charlie looked after her, as if he wanted to follow.
But he did not.
Warmth surged through me. I loved him. Loved. I had realized it late one afternoon near summer’s end as I watched the boys play in the lot between beach houses, sunlight streaming down. I knew he did not feel the same, but the very idea seemed to change things. It wasn’t just his image—he was smart and sure and he had a way of making everything safe and all right when he was in the room. I had begun to dream about him, too. The previous night I dreamed that he had pulled me from the water, rescuing me as he had last summer. In my fantasy, though, he did not set me down, but held me, bringing his lips to mine. I’d woken up breathless, my skin damp.
I had other dreams too, not the kind that came unbidden at night but the film that ran all day in my head: What if Charlie really saw me? We could go steady, be a couple. I imagined myself on his arm. No, it wasn’t that he didn’t quite think of me as family that I minded. I wanted him to think of me as something more.
He looked over his shoulder, then lowered his voice. “I saw you with that colored girl before in the cafeteria.” I was flooded with confusion. I always looked for Charlie, but I hadn’t known he’d noticed me as well.
“Rhonda?” He shrugged, as though her name was unimportant. “What about it?”
“It’s just that colored and whites, they keep to themselves here.”
“Why?” I demanded. He blinked. Charlie was not used to being challenged.
“I don’t know,” he said, revealing a crevice of doubt that he could not show as the oldest always trying to protect the others.
“You play football with some of the colored boys, don’t you?”
“That’s different.” He glanced uneasily over his shoulder. “Maybe we should discuss it at home.”
“Whose home?” I liked Charlie, and the last thing I wanted to do was fight. But I couldn’t let it go. “Because if what you are saying is true, then perhaps the Jews and the Irish, they should keep to themselves too.”
I was right and he knew it. But he clenched his jaw, as though admitting he was wrong would somehow be a weakness or flaw. Charlie saw the world in terms of black and white. “It isn’t that simple.”
We stood facing one another squarely. He was clearly surprised that I’d stood up to him in a way that few people had. But he would not back down either. There was a light in his eyes, a respect that I hadn’t before seen.
“Anyway...” Charlie cleared his throat, retreating. His eyes softened, holding mine. “I’m glad to see you.” My stomach flipped. Had he somehow guessed the truth about how I felt?
From across the hallway, I heard a snicker, unmistakably aimed in my direction. My face flushed. The fact that I did not fit in here, it was always bubbling beneath the surface with my accent, my slightly darker skin. Kids simply could not imagine why the Connally boys, especially Charlie, wanted to be friends with me. Charlie did not seem to hear it or notice—things like that were below his line of sight. My anger grew. “They’re laughing at us.” This, coupled with the girls laughing at Rhonda and me in the cafeteria, was too much to take. I started down the hall.
“Addie,” Charlie cautioned, wanting me to just leave it alone for the sake of peace. But I had never been able to look away from unfairness.
My mind reeled back to one of the first mornings on the ship when I had awoken to find the chain which perpetually hung around my neck, holding the mizpah, gone. Across the narrow galley, I saw an older girl palming it casually.
“Give it back,” I’d demanded. When the girl ignored me, I lunged for it. I was on the ground then, pinned under the larger girl, nails gouging like fire at my cheeks. With all my might, I lifted my knee and pushed the girl off of me, grabbing the necklace that had skittered across the deck. I put it back on, defying the other girl to try to take it again.
I hadn’t been able to leave it alone then, and I couldn’t now. I approached the boy who had laughed at us. “Something funny?”
His eyes widened, unaccustomed to being called out for his bullying. “Why don’t you go back where you came from?”
As I opened my mouth to answer, the bell rang. “Come on,” another boy said, urging him outside. I started toward class. But as I neared the end of the tunnel there was a clamoring outside, and I saw Liam crossing the playground with swift, long strides toward the boy whom I’d confronted minutes earlier. I opened the door in time to hear the other kid say, “...Jew lover?” Liam drew back his arm. I heard a sickening crunch, flesh splitting, as Liam’s fist connected with the boy’s face. “Liam!” I cried, running toward him. He had a quick temper, an Irish temper, his mother had called it. He was forever getting into arguments. This was the first actual fight I had seen him in, though. The last thing he needed was further trouble.
But Liam was on top of the boy who lay on the ground now, both hands around the boy’s neck. “Apologize,” he commanded. The boy gurgled helplessly, blood trickling from his nose.
“Liam, he can’t apologize if he can’t breathe.” I tugged at his shoulder. “Let him up.”
Teachers and lunch aides surged forward, pulling Liam and the other boy apart. Charlie rushed up beside us. “What were you thinking?” he admonished.
The principal, Mr. Owens, crossed the schoolyard. “I should expel you!”
Charlie stepped forward quickly. “Respectfully, Mr. Owens, that isn’t necessary. I will take him home right now myself.”