Free After the Reunion by Rona Jaffe Page B

in his attic photography studio. The dogs were barking at his door.
    “Stop that racket,” Richard called out, as if the dogs knew he was talking to them anyway.
    “Teddy, go get your brother,” Daphne said. “And put the dogs outside if they won’t behave.”
    “Yes, Mom.” Teddy was out of the room in a flash, up the stairs two at a time, twelve years old and overflowing with energy. The others went into the dining room and began to sit down at their places. And then they heard Teddy scream.
    “Mommy! Daddy!” He hadn’t called them Mommy and Daddy since he was four.
    “What the hell?” Richard said, frightened. They all ran up the stairs.
    The dogs had stopped barking. The attic door was open. Teddy was standing there, his small face drained of color. And inside the room … The first thing Daphne saw was Jonathan’s blue running shoes, dangling four feet above the floor, then his clean white socks and faded jeans, and all of his body, up to his fragile bent neck and distorted face; her son hanging dead from the noose he had made of a rope and tied around one of the ceiling beams.
    It was no longer Jonathan they were staring at, but her. She was lying on the floor, in a pool of her own bodily wastes, and she knew what had gone before: she had had a major seizure. She remembered that look on young faces—half horror, half revulsion—from her childhood, when the faces were those of her classmates, not her children. She had been writhing and groaning, eyes sightless, mind asleep. Her children had never seen this happen to her, neither had Richard, for it had been so long … For an instant she forgot what had made it happen, and then she remembered, and Daphne wished she could stay unconscious forever.
    No one touched her. Richard went over to Jonathan and very gently cut him down, holding his body in his arms as though he was not heavy at all. Then he put his son on the studio couch and carefully arranged a cushion under his head, as if he was not dead at all either. But he was dead.
    “Call the doctor,” Richard said. Matthew and Sam ran down the stairs.
    “Mom …?” Teddy said, in a scared little voice.
    “I’m all right,” Daphne said. Where had the courage come from, to speak, when she felt as if hands were squeezing her throat, choking her? That innocent white neck, bent and broken … Jonathan …“It was the shock; I’m all right now.” Teddy was afraid to touch her, and so, apparently, was Richard. Then Teddy walked over slowly and held out his hands to help her up.
    “Who’s the doctor for?” he asked.
    Who indeed? “Jonathan,” she said.
    Richard turned and walked out of the room.
    She could not believe he had done it; she felt as if he had stabbed her in the heart. She went over to where Jonathan was lying and put her arms around his body, and then she turned to look at Teddy. She knew she was still in a kind of shock because she had not shed a tear; she was holding on, denying it while she knew it was true, trying to keep Teddy from falling apart. The tears would come later. Perhaps they would never stop.
    “I’ll wait with you,” Teddy said.
    “You don’t have to,” Daphne said gently.
    “I’m not scared,” he said.
    “Thank you.”
    Holding her dead fourteen-year-old son, rocking his body as if he were a drowsy infant, Daphne thought how many years it had been since she had shown this depth of physical affection to any of the boys, and how long it had been since they had let her do so without embarrassment. Her busy, boisterous, healthy boys. Who had made them all so formal, so damn proper? Richard? Was it her fault? Jonathan , she thought, why did you leave us? What did I do to make you go? I didn’t even know you were unhappy .
    Richard hadn’t looked at her; he’d just run away. Was he overwhelmed by emotion because of his son, or repelled by his wife? At this moment, holding her dead child in her arms, Daphne didn’t even care. Teddy walked over, slowly,