The Last Embrace

  “I don’t say that to be mean,” he adds. “I say it because it is the truth. What is so wrong with the truth? He’s happy actually, living with someone outside of Philadelphia.” In some ways, he is more accepting of his brother than Charlie was.

  I finish my iced tea and stand to carry the glass back inside. On the low table by the door there is a notebook and pencil. I pick it up. “Is this yours?”

  “Yeah.” He jumps up and takes it from me, a guarded look crossing his face. “When I was coming through it all, I started keeping a journal. I liked it, so now I’m working on a story.”

  “You’re writing,” I marvel. “I had no idea.”

  He shrugs. “It’s nothing much.” As he returns the notebook to the house, I wonder if he’s writing about everything that happened, and whether I might be in it.

  He returns a minute later, finishes his iced tea and sets down the glass. “I should get back to work. You don’t have to help me. I know you’ve got to get through those boxes for your aunt.”

  “I should get those finished so I can head back,” I concede reluctantly. I’ve enjoyed working here and I’m not ready to go.

  “Well, come back over for dinner,” he said, seeming to read my mind. “I caught some fresh bass and there’s plenty. We’ll have a good meal before you go.” He ends on a downward note.

  By dinnertime, I think, I should be packed up and on my way back to the city. But his face looks so hopeful, I cannot refuse.

  * * *

  The sun has sunk low in that late summer way, casting long shadows of the houses on the pavement, as I make my way, hours later, across the patch that separates the boardinghouse from the Connallys’. I’ve showered to rinse off the packing dust and put on a fresh cotton dress, pinning my hair back at the temple where my bangs have started to fall in my eyes again. I walk around the side of the Connally house. Liam is grilling fresh fish over the old grill in the backyard. I study him, noticing the way his hair curls at the collar, the lean silhouette of his cheekbones and jaw. Has he grown handsomer in the time we were apart, or had he been that way all along and I had just been so blinded by Charlie I had not noticed?

  He carries over two plates and we sit on the porch, watching the last embers of the fire die, crackling upward into the darkness of night. A kind of awkwardness seems to hover above us. We never had easy conversations, even in the old days.

  “There’s wine, if you’d like some.”

  “No, thanks.” I notice he does not have any for himself. That part of him, I can only hope, is gone forever. “It’s quiet,” I say.

  He nods in agreement. “Even after all of these years, I’m not sure I can get used to it. Growing up with three brothers was rough, though. I know it seemed like a party to you, but there was always someone faster, smarter, bigger. I just didn’t know how to make my way in a place like that.” He’d run away because it had been too much, just like Robbie hiding under the stairs. “Sometimes I actually envied you, being alone.”

  “I wasn’t alone. I had you all.” He does not respond. “I saw Charlie,” I offer, unable to keep it to myself any longer.

  Something flickers across his face, though whether it is anger or pain or something else I cannot tell. “Where?”

  “Washington, and then London. He was wounded.”

  “Yeah,” he says gruffly. “Mom and Dad keep me in the loop.” So the Connallys had stayed in touch with each other, but not me. I am an outsider to the family once more.

  “He’s okay now.”

  He always is, Liam’s cursory nod seems to say. “You and Charlie were together, weren’t you?” There is a catch to his voice. “Never mind, it’s none of my business.”

  I don’t want to answer. But his eyes are probing, needing the truth. “Yes. Before it all happened—and a bit in London, too. How did you know?”

  “You notice a lot from the sidelines,” he remarks wryly. “I always knew. I could tell from the day we met you. What happened?” He looks at me squarely.

  “Just one bad start too many.” I struggle to keep my voice nonchalant. “Maybe some part of me knew that it wasn’t right, that if I was with him I could truly never be free. Anyway, he’s engaged now.”

  “Grace.”

  So he knows about that, too. Of course he does—she’s his brother’s fiancée, after all. My stomach roils as I picture Grace: blonde, winsome. Not Jewish. Everything Charlie is supposed to have. I swallow against my pain. “Charlie and I, it was impossible. It just wasn’t meant to be.”

  He shakes his head. “It was a choice. Look at me—after it all happened I could have gone another way, but I chose not to. We have a choice—it is up to us whether or not we take it.”

  I consider this. I might have claimed Charlie back from Grace and said to hell with the consequences. But there was part of me that was stifled under the weight of him, his plans and dreams, and all that had happened. No, Liam is right: I had walked away, made the choice and left. I clear my throat. “It was over when he left Philly after the funeral. It just took a lot longer for us to realize it.”

  “I,” he says stiffly, “would not have left you.” I open my mouth to tell him that it had not been Charlie’s fault with everything that had happened, the impulse to defend him as strong as it had been years ago. I want to say that it had been circumstances, grief, anything but Charlie’s own choice to go. But Liam is right: he would not have left. Emotions too deep to describe stir in me as I remember that he was the one by my side, defending me. In a funny way, he still is.

  He is staring out across the fence at the bay where the sun has dropped from view. I am seized with the urge to take his chin and turn it toward me, to kiss him. I stop, caught off guard by the notion. It had never been that way between me and Liam, had it? I was recovering from Charlie and it would not be fair to make him a substitute for his brother.

  “It’s late,” he says, following my gaze.

  “Yes.” For a second it seems as though we are talking about something else. I peer over his should at the clock in the kitchen, surprised to see it is almost nine.

  “And there’s a storm coming.” I think of the clouds I’d noticed gathering to the west before sunset. I’m not a good enough driver to manage the roads in bad weather.

  “Why don’t you stay here?” he suggests. “Your old rooms can’t be comfortable. You’ve got nothing there.” I hesitate, looking up at the Connally house and feeling the memories that threaten to swallow me whole. Another night at the shore, when I hadn’t planned to stay at all. I want to get in the car and drive, as far and fast as I can. There was a reason I left all of this behind. “It’s Friday. Labor Day weekend. There’s no rush.” My shoulders sag and a wave of sudden exhaustion overcomes me. Staying here is exactly what I want to do, I realize. But can I really, alone with Liam and all of the awkwardness between us? I study him. His eyes are clear now and his complexion healthy. Behind the surface, though, is the hauntedness that will always remain.

  “Aunt Bess will worry.” The coffee shop, where I’d called her earlier, is surely closed.

  “You can call her from here. I had a phone put in.” His eyes are searching, not wanting me to leave.

  “All right, but let me get a few of my things from next door.”

  I return to our rooms for my nightgown and toothbrush. When I return to the Connally house, I ring Aunt Bess. “Hello,” she answers, her voice fuzzy despite the early hour. I imagine her sleeping to try and outrun her memories and grief.

  “I’m sorry to have woken you. I’m going to stay another night to finish packing up.” I do not mention Liam, not ready to talk about finding him with anyone.

  “Okay, just be careful.” Something in her voice suggests she already knew. Had Aunt Bess sent me here on purpose, wanting me to find Liam? It seems unlikely, given how hard she and Uncle Meyer
worked to keep me from Charlie and how they felt about me being with someone who was not Jewish. But perhaps she has changed, too.

  Liam comes inside as I hang up. “I’ll get you settled.” I follow him upstairs. He leads me past several bedrooms draped in cloth, in various states of painting and repair, and up a second flight of stairs to the attic loft Charlie and Robbie once shared. My chest tightens.

  “It’s the only room I have ready,” he says, almost apologetic. There is only one bed now, a big one that he’s made up with crisp sheets. He must have been sleeping there himself.

  “I can’t possibly take your room,” I protest.

  “I like sleeping on the sunporch,” he replies, and I remember that he always had. He lingers for several seconds in the doorway.

  “Good night, Addie. It’s great having you here.” I wonder if he might kiss me goodnight. But he starts down the stairs.

  After he’s gone, I wash and change, then climb into bed. I lie in the semidarkness, beneath the sheets that contain a hint of Liam’s aftershave. Rain begins to patter against the rooftop. It seems odd to be here, this place I had not even thought still existed. This had been Charlie’s room and I see things as he once had, looking out at the boardinghouse where I used to sleep. Moonlight reflects against the whitewashed plaster, illuminating the crack where Robbie had hit the ceiling with a Frisbee. Thinking of him still hurts, but differently now. My thoughts turn to Liam. I wanted to kiss him—out on the porch and now. The impulse surprises me. Is it just being back here and trying to make sense of all of the memories, or is it something more?

  I see him once and then let him go and drift off to sleep.

  The next morning, I awaken to the sounds of the gulls calling to one another above the bay. I sit and stretch. Light fills the high open space. It has to be at least ten. I pad barefoot downstairs through the house to the sunporch. The blankets at the foot of the divan are folded neatly and the smell of brewed coffee and eggs tickle my nose. I look up at the house that Liam is repairing with such care. What have I done to make amends for my own misdeeds?

  Outside Liam is busily sanding a long plank. The sandy earth is damp from the storm that has come and gone. “There’s breakfast if you’re hungry.” He does not look up. I notice suddenly the urgency in his work.

  At the far end of the yard, freshly washed sheets hang drying on the line, more than are needed for just him and me. “Liam, you aren’t doing this just to live here yourself, are you?”

  “No.” He stops, eyes meeting mine. “We’ve got to get most of this done before they arrive.”

  My breath catches. “They?”

  “Mom and Dad and the others. I asked them to come,” he says, looking away. Hope rises, then falls in my chest at the idea of seeing all of the Connallys again. Would it really be that simple to get them to come home? “It’s just all so broken. Mom and Dad nearly split, the rest of us scattered to the wind. The house in the city is gone, but it was always about this place. I thought maybe if I fixed it up, they’d come.” He’s trying to repair the damage he had done and bring the family back together.

  “Charlie should be coming, too, with his family.” I tilt my head, confused. Liam and myself and the others, we are Charlie’s family. But Liam is referring to Grace. She’s Charlie’s family now. Will I ever get used to reality as it now exists? “Do you mind?”

  Even though I had left of my own accord and really, truly set Charlie free, to have to watch him and Grace together would be torture. I swallow. “Of course not. They’re family.” I had just seen Charlie days ago in the hospital, but he had not mentioned coming home, even after he remembered who I was.

  So Liam had invited all of the Connallys back purposefully. But my arrival had been happenstance. He had not included me. “I didn’t think you’d come if I asked you directly,” he adds. Would I have? Being here just with Liam was hard enough, but the whole family would be unbearable. For a minute I consider leaving before they arrive. No one expects more of me, really. I do not even belong anymore.

  Liam waves his arm up at the house. “That’s why I’m doing this. I’m trying to bring the family back together.” I stop, stunned by the audacity of his plan—not just to fix up the house and live here. He is trying to reunite the family he had destroyed and undo the heartbreak he had caused. He looks at me hopefully. “We can do this. We just have to get them all back in one place.”

  We. Suddenly I’m his partner in all of this. I want to tell him that with or without me he cannot do it, that it is impossible to rewrite the past. That, above all else, is what I had learned about my own life these past months in London. There is something in his eyes, though, that says he needs this, needs to try to make things right. He is clinging desperately to this one hope and I cannot take it from him.

  But still I need to warn him. “We can’t go back.”

  “I’m not trying to go back,” he replies firmly. The past is not a place to which he wants to return. “I’m trying to build a future. If you have to go, I understand.” There is a sudden guardedness to his voice, the lone, defensive Liam of old.

  “We should get working,” I say.

  His eyes widen. “You’ll help me?” He sounds too scared to hope. I nod. “Does that mean you’re staying?”

  “I don’t know.” Panic rises in me. I was supposed to be here a day, get Aunt Bess’s things and go again. Yet I feel myself being drawn back in slowly. I can go, now, pile the boxes in the car and sort them back in the city. There is nothing stopping me. But Liam’s face is hopeful now, more so than I’ve ever seen. I cannot destroy that. “I’ll stay—at least through the weekend,” I add hastily.

  Liam looks as if he wants to argue for more than that. But he swallows, backing down. “Only if you want to.”

  I do want to stay, I realize. I hold out my hand. “Then I guess we’d better get started.”

  * * *

  “Try this.” It is nearly evening and we have been painting for hours, first inside the house and now out.

  “Can’t,” I reply, distracted. I hold a dripping paintbrush in one hand and a roller in the other; my forearms are uniformly covered in white paint. But we hadn’t stopped for lunch and the scent from the plate he holds under my nose is tantalizing. “Mmm, what is it?”

  “Gumbo. I traveled some after everything happened, and I learned how to make it when I was down in New Orleans. Tried out the recipe the other day, but I had to substitute a few ingredients I couldn’t get.” He lifts a spoonful to my mouth, and the warm, spicy sauce floods my tongue with flavor, warming me on the way down.

  “Delicious.” I nearly miss the second mouthful which he aims at me as I speak. He holds the spoon beneath my lower lip for a second to catch the drip. “Let me wash up and we’ll break for dinner.”

  “No time to break,” he answers earnestly. “It might rain tonight and I want to get as much done as possible.”

  “But I’m hungry,” I protest, an almost whine. “You can’t tease me with something that good and not let me eat.”

  “I’ll feed you,” he offers.

  “Okay.” I turn back to my painting, not taking my eyes from my work as he spoons the gumbo for me. It is the oddest feeling of helplessness. I dip my head to meet the spoon and let the soft pieces slide down my throat. Small drops of brown sauce fall from the fork, grazing the edge of the paint bucket.

  And all the while, I am intently aware of Liam. He feeds me slowly and with great care, not taking his eyes from me in between bites. His forearm grazes my cheek each time he brings the spoon to my mouth. I want to lean across the soppy bowl and kiss him. I stop, surprised at the thought. It is the third time I’ve had it in two days. Something is drawing me to him now, strong and unexpected.

  “Thanks,” I say, when he has scraped the bottom of the bowl. “Aren’t you going to have some?”

 
He shakes his head. “Not hungry. It was fun watching you, though.” He grins wickedly and I can feel my cheeks flush.

  “Liam!” I swat at him playfully, sending drops of paint cascading through the air. Then I wait for him to retaliate, but he does not.

  “It won’t change things,” he says, suddenly somber. I stop, brush suspended midair. “I can fix this house all I want, but unless Robbie is gonna come bounding through that door, it won’t change what I did. I know that.” I shift, not answering. We are getting to it now, that deep place we’d been circling since seeing one another. The attraction I’d been feeling for him these past two days seems to evaporate and I see him once again as the boy, whose selfish recklessness caused his little brother to die.

  There is a moment of painful silence between us. “I should wash the dishes.” He jumps up and the bucket between us on the deck tips and spills.

  “Oh!” I scramble to right it and reach for a cloth. As we wipe the mess, I look down at his hands. “Dammit, Liam.” This was bigger than spilled paint. I am angry at him still for all that he had done years ago. I beat at his chest and he does not try to stop me, but absorbs the blows with sharp silent, breath. A moment later I stop and crash my head against his chest sobbing. “Why?” I ask, over and over, demanding answers he does not have. Then exhausted, I lean on him silently. Forgiveness, it seems, is harder than I might have thought—perhaps because it is not mine to give.

  “After I was released from the hospital, I tried to turn myself in to be arrested.” His words spill out. “But the police wouldn’t take me because it was an accident. I’ll answer for my crimes in another way.” His voice is hollow. For all of his healing, there is a place inside him that would never be whole.

  “I’ve tried a million times to figure out who I was and how I could have done those things. I was just so lost and I never quite fit in. I went lower afterward,” he confesses. “More drinking and drugs. I was on the street. Jack found me and got me into a program. He saved my life.”