The Last Embrace

by Pam Jenoff

  “Are you sure it’s really him? It could be another pilot.” There was an unmistakable note of hope in Teddy’s voice.

  “I put two and two together and checked. It is definitely him.”

  We soon reached a military base reminiscent of Portsmouth with the same barbed wire-capped fence and sense of non-stop activity. At the gate, the car stopped and driver rolled down the window. Claire reached over to show her pass. We drove on past large tents and makeshift barracks, stopping in front of a two-story redbrick building with hospital markings. I started out of the car, but she stopped me, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Addie, wait. There’s something you should know. Charlie took a terrible blow to the head and he has trouble remembering.” So that was why he had not sent for me the second he returned. It seemed inconceivable, though, that he would not know me at all. “You must prepare yourself.”

  “It won’t matter,” I insisted. Once he saw me, everything would be fine. I was sure of it.

  Claire led me and Teddy into the hospital and we followed her in the direction an orderly pointed in response to her query about Charlie. There was just one door at the end of the hall. I pushed past Claire, running now. My footsteps pounded against the tile, echoing against the walls.

  Not pausing, I burst through the door. At the sight of Charlie lying in bed, my heart stopped. It was really him. His face was marred with cuts and bruises that had begun to heal in the weeks since he crashed. But underneath his eyes were clear, his face the same one that I had known for so long and loved with every breath—and that I had thought I would never see again. He was pale and shaken but still whole. Alive. Even here in this darkest of places, stripped of all glory, he was magnificent, all I ever wanted. My heart soared.

  “Charlie?” I took a step toward him, arms outstretched. But his face was blank. A pain shot through me sharper than the night I thought him dead, or the night we lost Robbie, worse than anything I’d ever felt. Charlie did not know me. His eyes were cloudy and he blinked as though just waking up.

  I licked my lips, and tried again. “It’s me, Addie.” He did not respond, but smiled as one might to a stranger, his expression vague and pleasant. My heart sank. “We know each other from back home in America. We’re neighbors at the shore and we went to the same high school and then when we met in London...” I faltered. It was so strange to be telling him the history between us, to have to remind him of what we once had.

  I reached for his hand. “Charlie, please.” Something inside him seemed to shift slightly. His eyes flickered, great thunderclouds rolling over him as he struggled to remember who he was and all that had happened. But he gulped for air, swallowed. “Addie?”

  Joy rose within me. “It’s me.”

  “You’re real.” He leaned his head back, overwhelmed by the strain. “All this time I thought I dreamed you.” His hand pulled from mine.

  “I’m really here.” I fought the urge to throw myself into Charlie’s arms, lest I injure him. Instead I put my hand on his chest, feeling as it rose and fell. He winced and I pulled back. Was he in pain? “Charlie, thank goodness you’re all right. They said you were missing and presumed dead.” Outside the door to his hospital room, I saw Claire and Teddy watching us.

  “They thought that because my plane crashed and I wasn’t found.” A look of terror came over his face as he remembered for the first time, reliving what had happened. “But I was able to make it away from the crash site and over the border. It was all part of the plan, Addie.”

  “Plan? You mean you crashed on purpose?’

  “Sort of. Another plane was dropping special operations troops at a site in Slovakia to rendezvous with the partisans. I was supposed to set it down hard to distract the Germans from where they had gone and then flee on foot. But I landed a bit harder than expected—crashed, really—and I was off target.”

  “That was a suicide mission.” Perhaps because he felt he no longer had that much to lose.

  “It worked.”

  “That was a very brave thing you did. Brave and stupid.”

  “I could say the same about you.” He was talking, of course, about my foray across the Channel to help the orphans. But how could he possibly know? He held up a newspaper by his bedside. I took it from him, surprised to see my own image staring back. It was a story Teddy had run in the Post about my work with the orphans, my efforts to help them. I hadn’t wanted him to write it, but he said raising awareness would help more children just like them. The Times must have picked it up on the wire. “I didn’t realize at the time that it was you.” His eyes filled with admiration, then clouded again. “You could have been killed.”

  “Yes, well, we’re both fine now.” I held my hand out to him, willing him to take it. But he did not. It was as if there was an invisible wall between us. Something flickered across his face. Why was he hesitating? Behind me came a shuffling sound. I turned to see a nurse standing behind me, tall and thin with pale blond hair wisping out from beneath a white cap, coming in to fix his blankets. I stepped back, the delay in our reunion unbearable as she tended to him. I expected the nurse to leave, but when she was finished, she lingered, fingers resting lightly on Charlie’s shoulder. I exhaled silently, waiting for her to do something else to examine or help him, something to justify her presence—and that touch.

  “He hit his head badly when the plane crashed,” the nurse explained. “His memory loss was severe, but it’s been coming back a bit at a time.”

  Charlie looked up at the nurse. “I remember a lot more now.”

  “How wonderful.” Her voice was flat. I waited for her to run to fetch a doctor and share the news. But she remained planted at Charlie’s side.

  “They airlifted me here. I couldn’t remember anything, but Grace nursed me back to health.” The way he said the nurse’s name made my heart twinge. He looked up at her and grimaced at the pain the movement caused.

  Grace. The name ricocheted around my head as she hurried to adjust his pillows. “Is that better, darling?” she asked, the last word exploding in my ears. Darling. I knew then why he had pulled back from my touch.

  “Yes, thank you. Addie is an old friend from home,” he said. I cringed at the description, so reminiscent of the time at Southern when he’d described me as being like family. How had we gotten back there? Perhaps part of his memory was still missing and he did not remember all that we had been to one another. “Addie, I’d like you to meet Grace.” He reached up and took her hand.

  My ears rang. So they were together. It must have been some kind of passing infatuation while she nursed him back to health while his memory was gone—something that could be easily undone now that I had found him.

  “Lovely to meet you,” Grace said. Her English accent was posh, bespeaking years of governesses and boarding school. I could not answer over the dryness in my throat. “I haven’t had the chance to meet any of Charlie’s friends since he proposed.”

  My heart stopped. “You’re engaged?”

  Grace smiled. “Only just.” My mind whirled. Charlie was mine, just months ago, before he left London. What happened to forever?

  Of course he had not known that. He had lost his memory and been caught in a fog where the past and all we had shared together did not exist. But he remembered now, didn’t he? I waited for him to tell her that it had all been a terrible mistake.

  Silence filled the room. “I’ll give the two of you a few minutes to catch up,” Grace said, patting his shoulder before walking from the room.

  Charlie stared at me uneasily. He understood all that had been between us, and he knew what this meant to me. “I should be going,” I said. But my legs were leaden.

  “When I crashed, I lost my memory. Grace cared for me and, well, she’s a good woman.” It would be too easy to dismiss Grace as the one who had been there by his side when it all happened, a product of t
iming. But the way he looked at her told me it was something more.

  I was angry at him suddenly, not just for Grace, but all of it. “So was this some kind of a payback?”

  “No, it was nothing like that. Addie, you didn’t show up at the chapel. What was I to think?”

  “I was caught on the underground on a stuck train. When I got there you were gone.” Great waves of regret rose up, crashing down upon me. “So that’s it, then.” He did not answer. We’d had a second chance and thrown it away. There would not, it seemed, be a third. I saw it then, the life we might have had together. It was so real that if I reached out I might have touched it. But it would never be, like a land too far to reach, or a place we had missed along the way.

  Charlie reached into the drawer of the nightstand beside his hospital bed. He pulled something out and extended his hand to me. The mizpah. I had nearly forgotten. Somehow through everything, he had managed to hold on to it. “You keep it,” I said. He shook his head. It wasn’t his to have anymore. In that one gesture I knew that he was setting me free and that it was over between us forever. I took it and started for the door.

  “Wait, don’t go.”

  “What? You don’t want me for yours anymore but you don’t want to let me leave. You can’t have it both ways.” He bit his lip, unable to disagree.

  He turned away, his face haggard and inconsolable. He would leave Grace if I asked him to. If I reached out and took Charlie’s hand, he would be mine again. In fact, there was a desperate, pleading look in his eyes that said that was exactly what he wanted me to do. It could all be mine, and the old Addie who had wanted nothing but him would have taken it. I wasn’t that girl anymore, though, and it would make him somehow less the man that I loved. From the doorway, I caught a glimpse of Grace, holding her breath, her eyes pained and fearful.

  I stepped back from Charlie, an inch and a lifetime, an ocean rising and filling between us.

  Teddy came into the room. I looked over my shoulder, hoping that Claire would come in and not leave me alone with the two men. But she had disappeared from the corridor. “Good to see that you’re all right,” Teddy said, walking to Charlie and shaking his hand. I imagined what a blow it must have been for him, hearing the news that Charlie was alive and knowing it could not help but destroy any chance that something might develop between us. Teddy smiled, but beneath the mask, he was crumbling, certain that with Charlie now back, he had lost me. Then he turned to me. “Adelia, I’ve checked and there is a liner that sails from Plymouth tomorrow.”

  “A ship?” Charlie asked.

  “Yes, my uncle’s taken ill and I have to get back to Philadelphia.” Charlie’s face fell. He did not want me to leave.

  Then something behind his eyes shifted and his shoulders went slack. “He’s a good man, Addie,” he whispered, nodding toward Teddy, who stood close to the door, as if I needed his permission. Letting me go. “Safe travels. And give my love to everyone at home,” he added, as though nothing had changed and his family might still be there waiting.

  “Goodbye, Charlie,” I said. I kissed his cheek, savoring the smell of his skin for the last time.

  “I’ve arranged for the car to take us back to Claire’s to get my car and then we can go to London for our things. Are you ready to go?” There was a note of ownership in Teddy’s voice as some part of him still hoped I might be his. I felt that pull again, being tugged between the two men and I knew if it went on any longer I would be ripped to bits until there was simply nothing left of me.

  Frustration exploded in me then. I was caught between them, when the truth was I didn’t want—or need—to belong to anyone.

  Teddy and I started from the room. As we reached the hospital lobby, I stopped. “Teddy, wait. About this trip—”

  “You want to do this alone,” he said.

  “Yes.” I glimpsed Claire watching us from across the parking lot.

  “Marry me, Ad,” Teddy said, and as he looked up at me, his eyes were bright and hopeful as a child on Christmas morning. He stood before me, palms raised plaintively. I saw then the life that could be mine. A normal life. Not boring—Teddy would undoubtedly keep traveling and getting into the scrapes chasing stories for which he was known and I could go along with him. Or we might have a family. He would love me unconditionally. Why couldn’t I take that and run with it?

  I opened my mouth to tell him yes. The life he offered appeared once again, gleaming like a shiny jewel. But something stopped me, seeming to hold me back, the dream just beyond reach.

  “Teddy...”

  “You’re not coming back, are you?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, realizing even as I spoke that I was not.

  “I’ve known for some time I couldn’t win,” he admitted.

  I tried to ignore the feeling of being a prize at a fair. “Since when?”

  “When you were in the hospital. You were calling out in your sleep,” he said, and I could tell by the skip in his voice that it wasn’t his name I had been calling.

  But that had been weeks ago. Even after, he had played along and said nothing, just happy to have my company. For everything that I had done, he still loved me and wanted me to be his. Remorse filled me then. He deserved so much better than this. He deserved someone who could love him wholly.

  But I could not hide in his affections either. It was time for me to know myself instead. I reached out and Teddy’s eyes lifted with hope in a way that broke my heart. I bypassed his lips and kissed him firmly on the cheek. Then I stepped sideways, moving away from him and Charlie both.

  “I’m sorry.” And I walked from the hospital by myself, knowing it was time, finally, to go home.

  Atlantic City

  August 1944

  I sit at the top of the street, gazing out at the row of shore houses, still lost in memories. What am I doing back here? I should be in London, working at the paper and starting a life with Teddy. I start the engine and turn the wheel, headed back. But something steadies me. You made the right choice, a voice too calm and sure to be my own seems to say. I start forward.

  It has been more than a week since I’d walked from the hospital in England. I had not gone alone: Claire had followed me as the guard hailed a taxi for me just outside the base. “So you’re leaving?” I cringed, waiting for her to rebuke me for throwing away Teddy’s love so callously and running again. But she had smiled. “I’m proud of you, lass. You’re standing on your own two feet now. I don’t know what you’re looking for. But I hope you find it.”

  I’d left Claire with kisses and gratitude and promises to write, and made my way north over her insistence that I could not possibly go alone. I stopped at my flat to pack a bag, but there had not been time to visit the orphanage. As my train pulled from Waterloo Station, I looked in the direction of Theed Street. Leo’s sister and the others should be arriving anytime now and I wouldn’t be here to see them, or his joy at their reunion. I’d done what I could. I sent up a prayer for them and imagined it blowing north with the wind.

  During those long days as we crossed the Atlantic, Charlie’s face kept appearing in my mind. Though I had chosen to leave, I could not help but be angry at him. He had professed to love me, but he had fallen in with Grace so easily. And not just a fling—he had asked her to marry him.

  It was late when we docked in New York, the Statue of Liberty shrouded in fog. I cleared Immigration easily this time with a wave of my US passport, so different than my arrival as a girl. I made my way into the city and found a room. The next morning I caught the first bus from the Port Authority to Philadelphia. I approached Porter Street in the still of pre-dawn and found the slanted row houses unchanged. I let myself into the house. Perhaps Aunt Bess was at the hospital. I dreaded the notion of going there and reliving that most awful of nights when we lost Robbie. But I found Aunt Bess in the living room. She sat
on a low chair, wearing a dark dress. The clocks and mirrors were covered with black cloth.

  “Oh, honey,” Aunt Bess cried, standing up. I was too late. Uncle Meyer had died before my aunt’s telegram ever reached me. The neighbors who had come for shivah had departed, leaving now-dried-out kugel and desserts in good dishes they would collect later.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, putting my arms around her. “I wish I could have gotten back from London in time.” My voice was suffused with guilt.

  “That’s all right. It wouldn’t have changed anything.” Aunt Bess’s face was pale and drawn, eyes ringed from days without sleep. She looked older and fragile. I had never before stopped to think about my aunt and uncle’s relationship. But in her grief, I saw the richness of their marriage that had played out alongside me while I had been oblivious, caught up in my own life. I remembered Uncle Meyer as he followed me to the bus stop the day I left. How I wished I might have the chance to thank him once more for the camera and letting me go.

  It was too late for my relationship with him, but not for Aunt Bess, who suddenly looked so small. “I love you.” I put my arms around her. “We’re the only family we’ve got.”

  I helped Aunt Bess clean up the shivah dishes and persuaded her to rest while I returned the special low chair she’d sat in during the eight days of mourning to the shul. When I was done, I found myself walking the old familiar path to Pennsport, winding past the kosher deli and across the trolley tracks. The neighborhood was the same, only with new products in the old shop windows, advertisements touting cigarettes and new appliances instead of war bonds. Closer to the Irish neighborhood there were more cars, some sleeker models I did not recognize.

  I pushed on, assaulted by the old smells of onions cooking in houses and too-warm garbage rising from the curb. Walking the familiar streets, I felt renewed. Whole, in a way I hadn’t for years or maybe ever. But as I reached the Connallys’ block, I stopped. Ghosts of the boys were everywhere, playing stickball in the street, sitting on the porch. Robbie might come bounding down the stairs as he always had, not sullen and sleepy like his brothers, but bright-eyed and hungry for breakfast and the day that lay beyond.