The Last Embrace. Pam Jenoff

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СКАЧАТЬ to come?”

      “Sure.” I wanted to buy a box of saltwater taffy to bring back for Rhonda. We’d become friends in a way. I didn’t see her outside of school—she had a gaggle of five younger brothers and sisters to babysit and I was busy with the Connallys. But we sat together at lunch every day and partnering up for relay races in gym. The other girls had either grown tired of mocking us or simply stopped noticing.

      I took a sip of the juice Mrs. Connally had set before me, secretly studying Charlie as I ate. He was reading about a particularly difficult campaign that the army was waging in North Africa.

      “I should be there,” he burst out, slamming his hand onto the table with uncharacteristic frustration. He had gone to register for the draft, waiting more than two hours in the line that snaked around Federal Street. He had not enlisted, though, in accordance with his parents’ wishes.

      “Next year when I join the army—” Jack began. Gentle Jack was not a fighter, but he would do anything he could to be like his older brother.

      “Next year the fighting will be over,” his father interrupted firmly.

      “Please, God,” Mrs. Connally mumbled. “This may be the only time that I wish I had daughters instead.”

      “You’re lucky you’re going to college,” Liam pointed out. Charlie had been accepted at Georgetown on the full football scholarship, just like he’d hoped. I’d been helping Mrs. Connally plant her victory plot last April when he’d come home with the news. Mrs. Connally had always made the tiny garden into an oasis, roses climbing trellises stubbornly looking for sun in the shaded patch of green, honeysuckle giving off a fragrant smell. When the war had come, she had reluctantly dug out some of her prized flowers to plant vegetables.

      Charlie had run down the sidewalk, whooping. “I got into Georgetown.”

      “But how do you know?” his mother had asked. “There hasn’t been a letter.”

      “There will be. Coach found out.” He’d lifted me and spun me around. Then he’d set me down to hug his mother and I stood motionless, emotions cascading over me. His dream had come true, and he was going to school, not war. But I was still losing him. Charlie had talked about going away since the day we met. The neighborhood simply could not hold him.

      But his excitement about college had not staved off the fact that part of him—a big part—felt duty-bound to go and fight. “Maybe you can get a part-time job in Washington with the War Department when you’re at Georgetown,” I offered now, trying to ease his frustration.

      His face relaxed and he smiled slightly. “That’s an idea.” But I couldn’t tell if he meant it or was just humoring me.

      “Thanks, Addie,” Mrs. Connally said in a low voice as Charlie walked from the room.

      When we finished eating, Jack, Liam and Robbie spilled outside with their football, tossing it in the grass yard between the two houses. The boys were outpacing me now, I noticed. The twins were as tall as Charlie had been the day we met. Even Robbie’s shoulders now nearly matched my own. And Charlie... I looked back at the Connally house. Why hadn’t he come out yet?

      From our rooms above, I heard the scrape of a window screen and saw a curtain move. Aunt Bess had been watching me with the Connallys, her expression undoubtedly one of disapproval. Though I had been friends with the Connallys for over a year, it seemed to bother her and Uncle Meyer now more than ever. They were forever trying to push me toward Jewish kids back in the city. “There’s a dance at the Y,” Aunt Bess had said tentatively at dinner about a month before we’d come down the shore. “I thought that maybe you would like to go.” I had not answered. It wasn’t that I disliked the Jewish kids, but even if they would have accepted me, I didn’t want to go. I had the Connallys. I didn’t need anyone else.

      “You’re almost eighteen now,” Aunt Bess had pressed. “You need to meet some nice boys.”

      “And the Connallys aren’t?” I demanded. Uncle Meyer blinked in surprise at the forcefulness of my voice.

      “It’s not that. But being Jewish matters. After everything that you’ve seen, I would have thought that you would appreciate that.”

      I pushed aside my aunt’s disapproval and watched the boys play as they had done dozens of evenings this summer. But this time was different: it was the last time. Tomorrow it would all be gone. Swatting back a tear, I ran up the stairs to my room and grabbed the camera that Uncle Meyer had given to me as a birthday present. “I noticed you admiring it,” he’d confessed. It was smaller than the one Papa had let me use and not as new. But I didn’t mind; I took it everywhere, capturing bits of the city, like the shopkeepers beneath the sagging awnings at the Italian market and the old men who fed pigeons in Mifflin Park. I saved a bit of my allowance each week to buy film and had gotten permission to use the darkroom at school, rinsing the images until the contrast was just right.

      I stood on the stairs, snapping shots of the boys as they tackled one another, their hair and skin golden in the late-day sun.

      “Hey!” Liam scowled at the clicking sound. “No pictures.”

      I lowered the camera and walked down the steps. “Why not?” I challenged.

      “You gotta be careful with that. Someone might think you’re an Axis spy.”

      “Liam!” Jack cautioned.

      “I didn’t mean anything by it.” His face flushed. But there was some truth to what he’d said: people looked at me differently since the war began. Even though I was an American citizen now and my accent had faded with time, my past meant I would never truly be one of them. I was an outsider, foreign once more.

      “I doubt the Germans would want a photo of you anyway,” Jack chided his twin, trying to break the tension. Liam did not answer but stormed off around the side of the house.

      “But, Liam, we’re going to the boardwalk!” Robbie could not imagine anyone passing up on that. His voice was drowned out by the choky rev of Liam’s dirt-bike engine, then tires squealing. Seeing Robbie’s face fall, I walked over and squeezed his hand, which was still a bit slick with bacon grease. Jack looked at me helplessly. Liam was so much moodier and more distant than a year ago. We had hoped that the summer away from the city, where trouble was so easy to find, would have done something to calm Liam’s wild ways. There were moments when he seemed his old self, playing with his brothers in the surf. But his darkness always returned.

      Mrs. Connally stepped from the house, shielding her eyes as she scanned the side yard. “Where’s Liam?”

      “Gone—on his bike. He said something earlier about meeting some friends at the beach.”

      Mrs. Connally’s face fell. “I hate that thing,” she said bluntly. The bike had been a reward—Liam was allowed to buy it with the allowance he’d saved in exchange for finishing the semester with no Fs. But it had backfired, allowing him to roam farther and longer than ever before. “He’s having such a hard time.” She seemed to be pleading with me to do something, though what I did not know.

      Before I could ask, Jack came to my side with Robbie in tow. “Ready?”

      “What about the others?” I asked, purposefully vague.

      But the point of my question could not have been more СКАЧАТЬ