The Last Summer at Chelsea Beach (16 page)

The doors at the back of the church swung open. Aunt Bess cried softly into her hand at the sight of the small casket, borne by men I did not recognize.

The Connallys followed. Charlie and Jack each held their parents’ arms to keep them upright. I thought I caught Charlie’s eye, but he looked away. We had not spoken since that night at the hospital, but I was sure he would find me after the funeral. When we were seated, a priest began to chant the Mass. I craned my neck to see the front row. The Connallys had sat reflexively in their usual order, leaving spaces for Robbie and also for Liam, alone in the hospital with his guilt and grief. I looked to the back, half expecting to see Robbie bound in and interrupt the service noisily. He could not be in that tiny box.

As the priest went on, my thoughts turned improbably to the Connallys’ next-door neighbors who had also lost a son. The blue star in the Dennison window was gone, a gold one hung crookedly in its place. There would be no stars for a boy like Robbie who had died in an ordinary, if tragic, way. The Connallys had tried to do all the right things to keep their family safe. They had worried about the war being fought thousands of miles away, all the while never guessing that danger and death might be lurking right around the corner on a street they had walked or ridden down hundreds of times.

And now Robbie was dead. I clasped at the shell bracelet he had given me at the beach last summer. Icy water seemed to swirl up around me now, as if I was there with him. He must have been so afraid. Had he called for his mother or one of the boys? Or perhaps he had blacked out and not known anything at all. He could not have possibly survived more than a few minutes.

There were more prayers in Latin and English and then it was over and we all rose as the casket was carried from the church. Someone should have spoken about the wonderful twelve-year-old who loved blocks and chess and his dog, Beau. But the family was in no shape to do it and they had not asked me. In other times the Irish would have had a wake where everyone came back after to drink and reminisce. Here there was only pain, and this quiet funeral where words failed.

By the time I reached the door of the church, the Connallys had already gotten into the long, black car that would take them to the cemetery close to the shore for a private burial. No one had asked me to go. I watched Charlie through the window of the limousine, remembering the hospital after the medics had taken Robbie from his arms and raced away in a last futile attempt to save him, even though we knew it was too late. Charlie had stood, soaked and shivering, apart from the rest of us. I had rushed to his side. “Charlie...” I waited for him to tell me it would be all right, to take charge as he always did. But he remained silent, arms still limply outstretched, wings broken. Nothing, not that night on the dock at Trieste or any since, had terrified me more.

Anger rose in me as I watched him seated in the limousine, remembering. He was supposed to be able to make things okay, but he had failed, even when I had tried to warn him about Liam. But I had failed, too, and so had Jack, who always tried to fix everything, and their parents—and now Robbie was dead. We were all a little bit to blame, except for that sweet, innocent boy lying in the cedar box.

I stepped forward toward the limousine to go to Charlie. But Aunt Bess was holding my arm and guiding me away. “Give them time.” I was too numb to argue, so I stood watching as the car door closed.

The window opened and Charlie looked up at me with hollow eyes I hardly knew. For a second, my heart lifted, hopeful despite it all. I took a step forward. “Wait for me,” he mouthed. And then he was gone.

The next morning I rose early, the awfulness of what had happened knocking into me anew. Outside the air was icy, hinting at more snow to come. As I crossed through the neighborhoods, chin tucked against the wind, I tried to figure out exactly what to say, the words that could make things if not right then just a bit better. I reached Second Street and steeled myself as I neared the Connally house. Then I stopped. Though it was after eight o’clock, the front curtains were still drawn. They must have been exhausted after the drive back from the cemetery. For a minute, I considered going home and coming back later. But maybe I could make them breakfast. I walked up the steps to let myself in as I often did and tried to open the door, but it was locked. I reached under the flowerpot for the spare key. The door did not budge. The second lock, the one they’d never used, was bolted. I peered through a crack in the curtains. The house was dark and still, as it had been that first night Charlie brought me here to surprise me for my birthday.

“They’ve gone,” an unfamiliar voice said from behind, causing me to jump. I turned and recognized Mrs. Dennison, whose eyes were still hollow from her own loss.

“Gone?” My mind raced. Perhaps they’d taken a room by the cemetery, or even stayed at the beach house.

“The boys packed a lot of bags and left first thing this morning. Asked me to tell the milkman they won’t be coming back.” A hard lump formed in my throat. There had to be some mistake. Charlie would not have just left. “They’ve gone,” Mrs. Dennison repeated flatly, before turning and walking back into her own house.

I had returned home and, with Aunt Bess’s help, called the hospital and learned that Liam had been discharged the previous night. Neither he nor Jack returned to school after that and the guidance counselor would tell me nothing. Rumors swirled about where they had gone. I went by the house every day after school, hoping that I would see Beau in the front window, Mrs. Connally at the door waiting for me. But the house remained dark and a few weeks later, I gave up. There was simply nowhere else to look.

“They couldn’t have just disappeared,” I burst out one night at dinner in frustration.

My aunt and uncle exchanged knowing looks and Uncle Meyer patted my hand. “I think,” he said gently, “they just don’t want to be found.”

The rest of the school year was a blur, the halls and streets filled unbearably with ghosts. As I sat in class, it played over and over again in my head: the moments before the police had come, so filled with joy and anticipation, and then everything that happened after. Even images I had not actually seen, like Robbie laid out motionless on the gurney after they had pulled him from Charlie’s arms, his face crooked and faintly blue, had gone through my mind so many times it had grown fuzzy, a record warped from being played too many times on a phonograph. What if Robbie had never gone after his brother? Liam would have come home, late and maybe drunk to be sure. Charlie and I would have shared our news, seeing the surprise and (hopefully) happiness on their faces. But that moment would now never be.

And in the darkness, the nightmares always returned. Most nights, I sat bolt upright, trying to clear the nonexistent water from my lungs, gasping for breath. Sometimes there was a moment in the haze of awakening I could forget. Then the reality would wash over me like ice. Robbie wasn’t back home, playing in the yard with Beau. He was in that box I’d seen at the church, now buried underground.

I went to graduation because Aunt Bess insisted on it. She and Uncle Meyer sat somberly, clapping as hard as they could when my name was called. They’d brought me a too-large bouquet of carnations and planned a fancy dinner at Stouffer’s, trying to fill the empty space left by the Connallys. There would be no great whooping crowd as there would have been if the Connallys had been there to cheer on me and the twins. Were Jack and Liam graduating somewhere else? A few weeks earlier when we had gotten our yearbooks, I’d opened to the page where their photos should have been, half-expecting to see Jack’s gentle smile beside Liam’s taunting grin, or at least a blank space where their images might have been. But the spots had been filled in by the pictures of other classmates, as though they had never existed.

“I should start packing,” Aunt Bess said, the day after graduation.

I looked at her blankly. “For what?” The days ahead stretched before me like a blank canvas. I would have to do something: take some classes (though I had not formally applied to college, there were night classes in which I could still enroll) and find a job, hopefully somewhere other than the plants.

“The shore,” she replied. “We can get into the house tomorrow. I thought it would do you some good to get away.”

I had noticed the warm weather, of course, but I had not actually considered that we would return to the shore after all that had happened. Something lifted at the corners of my heart. “Perhaps the Connallys will be coming?” I scarcely dared to hope that our other world still existed.

Aunt Bess shook her head. “I’m sorry, honey. I asked the landlord. The house next door is closed up and she doesn’t think anyone will be there this year.”

I ran upstairs and threw myself across the bed, sobbing. The city without them was bad enough, but how could I face the shore without the Connallys?

I looked across at the corner of my dresser where, under a paperweight, I’d kept all things Charlie—the ticket from the movie we’d seen, a scrap of paper on which he’d written me a note. It all seemed so silly now. He’d never think things were special just because they were from me.

My hand grazed something under the bed. I pulled out the box that I had nearly forgotten putting there, shortly after arriving nearly two years earlier. Neatly folded inside were a change of clothes and a pair of shoes, and foodstuffs that would not spoil, like a can of milk. How I would open it exactly I had not figured out. Things that, as a scared little girl just off the boat, I had thought I might need just in case. I had learned well that night Mamma had plucked me from our apartment to always be ready to go.

I lifted up the old shoes. There had not been a suitcase the night I left Trieste. Mamma had rushed me from the house, and it was not until we neared the docks and she set me down to catch my breath that I noticed I was not wearing shoes.

“Mamma...” I looked down. Desperately she had taken her own shoes, two sizes larger, from her feet, and put them on mine. Then she’d led me to the ship, heedless of the stones that cut into her own bare feet, causing them to leave a thin trail of blood.

I slipped the shoes onto my feet and felt the cracked leather, remembering. They fit almost perfectly now. Aunt Bess had bought me new shoes shortly after my arrival and other times since, dress Mary Janes and sneakers and sandals. But I kept Mamma’s shoes. It was one of the only pieces of my parents that I had. I slid the box back under the bed and left the room.

I slipped from the house without calling to Aunt Bess, who was in the kitchen. Outside I found myself headed north. At the turnoff for Pennsport, I stopped. I always walked slowly past that spot, because if I closed my eyes and imagined very hard, Charlie might just be there, waiting for me. But he was gone, and all that was left were the dark memories, looming large.
As long as I stay here, I’ll never be free
, a voice seemed to say. I turned and raced west, then north of 9th Street, skirting the edge of the Italian market where the smells of meat and cheese and garlic wafting from the open stalls were heady, even with wartime rationing. But I did not stop. Grief chased me, nipping at my heels. I pressed on, not quite sure where I was going, just wanting to get away from the neighborhood and all of its memories.

Almost an hour later, I neared Center City, the streets thick with the midday crowds. I crossed Market Street, enjoying the bustle of the city street and the feeling that nobody knew me. Flags flapped in the breeze above the display windows at Lit Brothers department store and a placard on a light post bore a woman sewing, exhorting passersby to support the war and “Make do or mend.” I looked west past the shop awnings toward the clock tower above city hall. A few blocks farther, the bus station loomed. I knew then that I was going. Somewhere. Away. From. Here.

I crossed the street. At the bus station, I navigated around the crowded benches and two soldiers sitting on their rucksacks, playing cards. I walked up to the ticket window. “Where to?” I peered uncertainly over my shoulder at the fronts of the Greyhound buses which sat idling, belching exhaust fumes. For a second I thought fleetingly of trying to find the Connallys, but I had no idea where they had gone. And, as Uncle Meyer had said, they did not want to be found. One bus was headed to Washington. Charlie had spoken so glowingly of the capital when he was applying to Georgetown, a city of new beginnings, “where the ground just seems to shake under your feet!” Impulsively, I opened my purse and counted the twenty-three dollars and fifty cents, all the money I had in this world. I hoped it would be enough.

“Addie?” I looked up. Uncle Meyer sat in his car by the curb. He must have seen me go and followed me to the station. Guilt washed over me. My aunt and uncle had given me everything and been so kind, and here I was about to go without so much as a goodbye or thank-you.

He stepped from the car and I walked toward him. “You’re leaving.” I remained silent, unable to deny it. Would he try to stop me? “Take this.” Uncle Meyer reached in his pocket and handed me a thick, neatly folded stack of bills.

“I can’t take that.”

“Think of it as a graduation present. I know we haven’t been a substitute for your folks and, well, I’m sorry.”

“You’ve both been very kind to me.” The fact that he cared was somehow enough.

“You forgot this.” He held out the camera, which I had left behind in my haste. I would not have felt right taking it from him without asking. “Where will you go?”

It filled my hands, the sureness giving me courage. “I’m going to Washington,” I said. My voice grew more certain with each word.

“Let us know when you get settled, and that you’re all right.”

“I will.” I kissed his cheek, touched. He and Aunt Bess had tried when I had nothing else and that was something. “Thank you.” I thought he might stay until the bus had left, but he turned and got back into his car.

I bought my ticket (which thankfully only cost eight dollars and forty cents) and climbed on the bus, then realized that once again I was going without a suitcase. The graduation money Uncle Meyer had given me and the camera were all that I had. That would have to be enough.