The Last Embrace

  When I return from dressing for dinner, Liam has set out cold roast-beef sandwiches. The talk has turned to politics. “And now with Stalin making moves,” Mr. Connally is saying. One war was not yet over, and another already beginning.

  “All that planning for war, but no one has planned for peace.” As Charlie talks about politics, a light dances in his eyes that I have not seen since before it all happened. I know then that he will go to Washington.

  Sitting around the kitchen table, warmth envelops me anew and my spirits soar. Home is bigger than Charlie and what had happened between us. My story may have started with him, but it didn’t end there. In this most solemn of places, I am happy again in a way that I thought the war had ended for good.

  My hand runs over something—the old groove in the edge of the table that Robbie had worn with his pocketknife—he’d gotten grounded for a week for making it. It is still there—but he isn’t. Robbie and Jack are both missing. We are here, but not whole. Regret washes over me. My stomach turns. I had let myself depend on the Connallys once before, a trap I would not fall into again by getting too close. The room is suddenly warm and I step from the house, gulping for air.

  Outside the sun has nearly set and Liam is working on the porch swing in the semidarkness. “Hey.” I move toward him. “You disappeared.” He had escaped, so quietly I had not seen him go. Concern pushes through me that he is feeling excluded again and might return to his old ways.

  But when he looks up, his face is peaceful. “I just wanted to get this finished before tonight.” No, he is not alienated as he had once been. Rather, despite his happiness at having them all back, he just finds the quiet easier. He straightens and draws me close. I press up against him, growing warm and wishing that it was just the two of us alone at the house once more.

  “It’s great having everyone back, isn’t it?” he asks.

  “Yes.” It isn’t easy all being together again to be sure, but it feels right in a way things haven’t in years.

  “Mom and Dad seem different somehow.” So he had noticed, too.

  “It’s hard—for everyone. A lot of people and memories in one place.”

  “Is that why you’ve been keeping your distance?”

  I look up at him, surprised. “My distance?”

  “When you didn’t come to me last night, I thought you didn’t want this anymore.” He does not finish.

  “I was waiting for you to come to me.” We laugh, realizing the irony of our misunderstanding.

  “I thought Charlie coming back had stirred up feelings.”

  “If anything, it is the opposite.” I wrap my arms around his waist, watching first his surprise. It is quickly followed by relief as he realizes I have chosen him. That I want to be here with him, not just wound up but actually picked, like kids choosing kids for a kickball game, seems to matter to him a great deal.

  “How are you doing?” I ask.

  “Happy, angry, sad, relieved,” he rattles off in a monotone. “I don’t know what I was expecting.”

  “Well, they’re here and that’s something.”

  “Doesn’t look like they’re planning to stay very long, though.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to change their minds.”

  “Do you think I can? Both of them, Mom especially, just seem so far beyond reach.”

  I search for an optimistic response. Finding none, I squeeze his shoulder. “First things first. Let’s get this damned paint job finished already.”

  But he stands motionless, staring at me. “What is it?” I ask, sensing his uneasiness. He has dreamed for so long of having his family here. Is it now too much, bringing back all of the pain and memories?

  “I love having them here,” he whispers. “But I can’t stop thinking about being alone with you.” His voice is husky, sending heat searing through me. He reaches for me and we fumble in the darkness like teenagers afraid of getting caught. Hearing the voices of the others inside, I start to protest. But I am swept under by his touch. He pulls me around the side of the house and I stand paralyzed with disbelief as he lifts my skirt. He enters me against the side of the deck, moving silently in the darkness, and I bite into his forearm so I will not scream.

  “Addie, I need your help with something.” It is not long after breakfast and the others have gone to the beach. The Connallys have all been back a few days and life has lost its vacation-like feel, everyone falling into a kind of routine. I enjoy watching Mrs. Connally readjust to her old home, placing things this way and that, “where they belong.”

  I follow her up the stairs to the storeroom adjacent to the loft where I have been staying. I avert my eyes as we pass my bed, flushing as I recall Liam slipping up here the night before, as he had each night since our secret tryst on the deck. “When we left the city, I had many things sent here,” she explains, ducking low under the sloped storeroom ceiling. Boxes lie untouched, with a thick coating of dust. “I can’t bring myself to throw anything out.”

  “I don’t think you should. This will be a treasure trove for your grandchildren someday.”

  “Or a fire hazard.”

  I open one of the boxes. Inside is a stack of framed photographs. The top portrait is of one of the boys, not older than two, propped up on a sofa amidst some stuffed animals. As I pick it up, Robbie’s laugh leaps out at me. “Oh!” I drop the photo back in the box.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” I tuck it under some other pictures before she can see. Standing hurriedly, I bump into something hard and black. Mrs. Connally lifts it up.

  “My old typewriter. I wanted to be a writer.”

  “I had no idea. Liam’s been writing a lot.”

  “Charlie told me. I should have given this to Liam years ago.” She rubs a bit of dust from the keys, then runs her fingers over them affectionately.

  “He was too young. He wouldn’t have appreciated it then.”

  “But he will now.” She looks over at me. “He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?”

  “More than okay.” My words sound like a promise.

  “I had to lose one son to save another.” Her voice is close to breaking. “God help me, I’ll never know why.”

  She goes on. “I had a child a long time ago.” It takes me a minute to realize that she means before the boys...and not with Mr. Connally. I struggle to mask my surprise. “A little girl. I was sixteen and I gave her up.” She chokes back a sob. “She would have been just about your age. So when we met you that day at the shore, I almost felt as though you were her. I know you weren’t, of course, but in some ways it was like a second chance.”

  “That’s what Liam’s looking for. A second chance.” I use her words, gently urging her to give him what she found in me.

  She clears her throat. “You two are together now.” Her tone drops a bit at the end.

  “Do you mind?”

  “No,” replies Mrs. Connally quickly, brushing the hair from her eyes. “I guess I was a bit surprised is all.” Because we did not fit? “I always thought you and Charlie would wind up together. But I’m glad. Liam’s always had so much less,” Mrs. Connally adds, her face brightening. “I’m just so happy that he has you.”

  Relief floods me. But Mrs. Connally’s words echo in my mind. Has you. What does that mean anyway? I have only just run away from the tug-of-war between Charlie and Teddy and her words sound dangerously close to the detestable sensation of ownership I’d fled.

  “Did your aunt Bess ever talk to you about...” Mrs. Connally falters. “Things between a man and a woman?”

  I fought the urge to laugh aloud. When I was seventeen, Aunt Bess had wordlessly handed me a book that talked about baby chicks and showed a picture of Michelangelo’s David, but that just gave me more questions than it answered. But that seemed so long ago, I think, recall
ing my one night with Charlie in London—and the passion that Liam and I share now. I swallow. “I understand a bit.”

  “I just want to make sure that you are careful.” Was she speaking out of concern for me or her son? “Just don’t lose yourself—or what you want for yourself.” She is speaking of something bigger now than getting pregnant, and her voice contains a deeper note of experience.

  I see the Connallys more clearly then. They are not perfect, and never have been. Their father is depressed and once drank. Mrs. Connally, with her own hidden past, had done her best to keep them together through it all without enough help or money.

  “Come on.” I take the typewriter gently from her hands, then lead her to the stairs. “I think Liam is waiting for this.”

  As we reach the second floor the phone in the kitchen rings.

  I set down the typewriter. “I’ll get it,” I say to Mrs. Connally, not wanting her to rush. I walk downstairs and pick up the phone. “Connally house.”

  “Addie!” Jack’s voice floods the line.

  “Oh, Jack! We miss you.”

  “Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Picturing all of you around the table without me feels a little strange.”

  So come home, I want to say. But he doesn’t belong here anymore.

  “How’s everyone?”

  “The same—only a little less so.”

  “Except Liam. He’s a whole new man.”

  Not really, I think. The good bits of Liam had been there all along, just needing to be polished so they would shine. “I hope you give yourself some credit for that, Jack. He told me what you did for him.”

  I can almost hear him shrug. “Liam had to save himself. What about you, Addie? Who’s saving you?”

  I laugh. “I’m a lost cause.”

  “Is it hard being around Charlie and Grace?” His voice is solemn. Same Jack, worrying about everyone else.

  “No, it’s kind of normal. I don’t think we’re quite friends yet, but we’re getting there. But enough of this—you always manage to talk about everyone except yourself. How are you?”

  “I’ve got a life now, Addie, one I think you would like. I’ve got someone. He’s really nice.” I can hear him holding his breath, waiting for my reaction.

  “I’m happy for you.”

  “Thanks. I’m done with the half-truths now. I’ve got friends who have never heard of our street. I wonder, though, if I’ll ever eat a meal without tasting sand in my food or stop smelling salt in the air when I’m a hundred miles from the sea.”

  “Or stop hearing waves on street corners. Or stop seeing gulls,” I finish for him. “I wonder the same thing. I guess it’s just part of us, like our skin and our hair. I tried to outrun it for a long time, but it’s part of me now. And you want to know the strangest thing? The farther I ran, the worse it seemed to get. But now that I’m home, I really don’t notice at all.”

  “So you’re staying?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t realize it is true until I said it. There are people who went, like Jack and Charlie, and people who stayed. I went as far as I could and still came back here. I would not go again.

  We talk a few more moments about nothing. “Well, I should let you go.”

  I clasp the receiver, not wanting to let go. “Don’t be a stranger.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I won’t let you.” Tears come to my eyes, spilling over with the click on the other end of the line.

  As I set down the receiver, Grace rushes into the kitchen. “Thank goodness you’re here!”

  Hurriedly, I dry my eyes. “What is it?”

  “Charlie and Liam are trying to kill each other.”

  I run out the back door just in time to see Charlie, still in his bathing suit, take a swing at his brother. Liam ducks and tackles him at the waist and they both fall to the ground. As they struggle, they roll off the deck, crashing to the muddy earth beneath.

  Stop it! I want to shout. But I hold back, knowing this is what they need to do.

  “This had to happen,” Mr. Connally murmurs, echoing my thoughts. Liam will never truly be able to let go of his guilt until he makes his peace with each of them; Charlie, who still clings to his rage, is the last and toughest person with whom Liam needs to reconcile.

  “What set them off?” I ask.

  “You,” Grace says stiffly. “Charlie warning Liam not to hurt you.” Just as he had warned me not to hurt Liam. He was trying to protect us all, even now. “Charlie’s too weak for this,” she frets, but I shake my head. Even with Charlie’s injury, the brothers are closely matched in strength and anger. Though the struggle seems to go on endlessly, it does not get bloodier.

  “Let’s go inside,” Mr. Connally says. We cannot see the fight from here, but only hear the soft thuds and expletives, which at last give way to heavy breathing and hoarse words.

  I can stand it no longer. I step back out onto the deck and peer over the edge. The boys still lie on the ground, entangled but no longer fighting, “I’m sorry, pal.” Liam’s fingers are still clenched in his brother’s hair. Satisfied, I return to the house.

  “What happened?” Grace demands.

  “They found each other,” I reply, not caring whether or not she understands. I return to the kitchen to help Mrs. Connally prepare dinner.

  No one mentions the incident later when we sit down to eat. The signs are there, though. Liam and Charlie, freshly showered, sport a range of cuts and bruises they had inflicted on one another.

  “I love what you’ve done with the upstairs,” Charlie says, as he passes the rolls. “When we come back at Christmas, we could add some shelves.”

  “You mean you aren’t staying?” Sadness washes over Liam’s face as he realizes the truth. Part of him had really believed that he could bring them all back permanently, to live here together as they once had. “I thought you’d stay. Even if you don’t want to live at the shore, they’ve put up some new places that are really nice by the Navy Yard in the city.”

  Charlie shakes his head gently. “My future is in Washington. Grace and I have talked about it, and we’re going to get a place there. But we’ll visit often now. I promise.” He has gone too far to ever really come back.

  “What are you going to do?” Liam asks his parents.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that this is your house.” I can hear the exasperation in Liam’s voice. “You don’t belong in Florida like a couple of old fogeys. You belong here.”

  “Excuse me,” Grace says, standing and clearing some plates as a pretext to leave the room.

  Mr. Connally shakes his head. “It’s too hard, son.”

  “Why? Because I’m here? I’ll leave. I never really belonged here anyway.”

  “Is that what you think? That we don’t want to be around our children?” Mrs. Connally’s voice rises. “You boys are the only thing that matter.”

  “Not me.”

  “Even you, Liam. If we learned anything from what happened it is that we don’t have much time. For Christ’s sake...” I am stunned to hear her curse. “Your father had a heart attack last year.”

  “What?”

  “Dear,” Mr. Connally protests. “That’s not important now.”

  “Not important?” Liam’s nostrils flare. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’m your son!” He turns to Charlie. “Did you know?” Charlie shakes his head. He would have been off training.

  “We didn’t want to worry you.”

  “I’m fine.” Mr. Connally dismisses the topic with a wave of his hand. “I’ve given up my pipe and I’m taking care of myself. The point is we shouldn’t be throwing away the time we’ve got.”

  “Exactly,” Liam persists. “So move back up here.”

  “I don’t know.” Mrs. Connally dabs
at her eyes. “I keep seeing him everywhere.” No one has to ask whom she means. “Being here is hard.”

  “Being everywhere is hard,” I interject then without meaning to. “Running doesn’t make the pain stop. You take it with you.” I can feel Charlie’s eyes on me then.

  There is a long pause. “She always was the smartest of us,” Charlie says at last. I am grateful that Grace isn’t in the room to hear him.

  “Actually, Liam told me that,” I reply. He clears his throat, unused to receiving the credit.

  “Mom and Dad, you would be closer to me and Grace here than you are in Florida,” Charlie says. “That would mean a lot to us, especially now.”

  “So?” Liam turns to his parents.

  “Let us talk about it,” his mother says. She walks to her husband and puts her hand on his arm. He looks up and blinks, as though her touch is unfamiliar. Something softens imperceptibly between them. “I think that’s fair.”

  Grace reenters the room and Charlie’s face brightens as she nears. Once I would have hated another girl making him smile. But I am glad for him now, happy about the life he has created for himself.

  But something is still not right. Finally I can longer remain silent. “Why,” I demand, “is no one talking about Robbie?” There is no response. “I want to tell stories and laugh. It’s the closest we can get to having him with us.”

  My question is only met with silence.

  * * *

  The next morning we walk outside to the Connallys’ car. I climb into the backseat. “I feel like I’m ten years old again,” I remark and Liam, who has slid in beside me from the other side, pulls my hair for effect. “Hey, quit it! Liam’s bothering me,” I mock whine.

  “Liam,” Mr. Connally tries to sound stern as pulls the car from the curb. “Don’t make me turn this car around.” We erupt into laughter.