Free After the Reunion by Rona Jaffe Page A

remember that?” Elizabeth smiled and didn’t answer. “And guess what I brought you today,” Daphne continued brightly. She held out a brightly colored package, and helped Elizabeth open it. “Another doll for your collection.”
    “Say ‘thank you,’” Jane said.
    “Thank you.”
    “How much she’s learned,” Daphne said wistfully. “It used to seem so impossible. Sometimes I wish …”
    “That you could take her home?”
    “Or that we’d kept her. But it was all so impossible.”
    “You ought to remember,” Jane said kindly, “that this is a stubborn little girl and she’s her own person. She needs a lot of time, and sometimes she’s difficult. But mainly, she’s happy. She has friends. We’re her family.”
    “But I’m her family too,” Daphne said. “I was a stubborn little girl, and I’m sure my mother thought I was difficult when I insisted on doing things even though she was frightened to death because of my epilepsy.” How easily the word came out here … epilepsy. Nothing was embarrassing or forbidden here.
    “Why don’t we have lunch?” Jane said.
    In the dining room Elizabeth ran in her awkward little gait to sit with a favorite friend. Daphne followed her and sat beside her. Every time she came here she went through the same mental list: the pros and cons, why Elizabeth was here instead of with them, and always she had the distinct feeling that when she left it was she who grieved and never the child. And, of course, it was easy to be the visitor, not responsible. She could go away, and she always did. Life went on. You did the best you could. You did what you thought was right. The majority ruled. She had other children to worry about.
    But her other children seemed to require so little worry. She supposed Richard would say that was because she had done everything right.
    After lunch she had to leave. It was a long drive. She kissed Elizabeth good-bye and watched her go off cheerfully with Jane. Just like the first time. It would always be as painful as the first time … her smiling baby in a stranger’s arms. But then, at one point on the way home, as the scenery changed it seemed life changed too, and Daphne returned to her other world. Everybody was so happy in that other world, and it was she who had made them so.
    Richard came home very late. “How was your day?” he asked her.
    “Fine,” Daphne said. “Uneventful. And your business dinner?”
    “The only thing more boring than having to go through it would be having to describe it.”
    Neither one knew the other had lied.
    The days went by peacefully in their safe haven. It was Friday again, an extraordinarily beautiful summer afternoon. The sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue, and sunlight splashed on the polished wood floors of Daphne’s house and washed the pale, carpeted stairs in a golden glow. From the kitchen came the scent of a cake baking, and from the open windows the perfume of freshly cut grass brought in on the light breeze. Everything was clean: the silver-framed family photos with their dustless glass on the rich mahogany baby grand piano, the rows of books in their bright jackets in the large bookshelves, the polished silver coffee service that she often used. Those Radcliffe evenings so long ago flashed through Daphne’s mind; the demitasse served in the dorm living room after dinner, poured by the House Mother and whichever trembling girl had been chosen to help that evening, and she thought how without even being conscious of it her life had turned out to be the “Gracious Living” they had been taught. She had laughed at the idea at the time, but it had happened to her, and she liked it.
    It was very quiet. The boys were all occupied elsewhere, the dogs were asleep. Daphne went upstairs to her bedroom to read, feeling the security and peace of the house around her.
    When Richard came home and had changed into casual clothes the family gathered for dinner. All except Jonathan, still working