After the Reunion

by Rona Jaffe

  There was about those perfect Caldwells a certain blandness that was a kind of denial of anything that was disruptive or weak. They gave enough of themselves to make you think you knew them, and for their circle of friends that was certainly enough. It never occurred to anyone that they kept as much secret from one another as they did from the world.

  Daphne was aware of this only in relation to herself. She knew she would always be the Golden Girl she had been at college, simply older. She knew Richard always gave away anything that wasn’t perfect. She had seen it, and denied it, and made excuses for it, just as he had. Richard’s whole life was Rashomon. He always had a persuasive reason for anything he did, and seemed bewildered, even annoyed, at the evidence that he had caused anyone pain. A gentleman was someone who never did anything hurtful by accident, and a Caldwell never would do it on purpose either. He tiptoed considerately through lives he had wrecked, smiling his glittering, winning smile. Daphne loved him. There was nothing else to know.

  It was another lovely summer. The boys were home from school: Matthew, sixteen, Sam, fifteen, Jonathan, fourteen, and Teddy, twelve. The huge old trees around their house were rich with cool leaves, her rock garden was filled with tiny colorful flowers which she arranged with pleasure in little vases, there were days filled with water-skiing and swimming and laughter, weekend picnics, friends, entertaining, movies, some jaunts to the city to the theater or a special restaurant for just her and Richard alone. The mirror in the dining room reflected six golden heads, Richard’s a little graying at the temples now, only making him more attractive. Daphne didn’t find it so attractive on herself, and had been coloring her hair for years. The boys all had her patrician, delicately sculpted face. She looked at them sometimes with awe that she had been able to create such wonderful creatures. They were her immortality, hers and Richard’s. This life—a comfortable home, happy children, and Richard—were all she had ever wanted. Although she did volunteer work for the Junior League, because that was what one did, she would have been quite happy staying home reading, running with the dogs, and sketching, her new hobby.

  Today was Sunday. Two couples were coming for an early dinner. Steaks were marinating; Richard would grill them later outdoors on the barbecue. He still enjoyed cooking as much as ever, but now he only had time to do it on weekends, and during the week they had a cook. Daphne had given him an ice cream maker, and he delighted in inventing new and exotic ice creams and sherbets, several of which they were going to have for dessert tonight. Sam and Matthew had gone jogging, Jonathan was up in the attic in the photography studio they had outfitted for his special interest, and Teddy was in his room doing who knew what. The two older boys and the two younger ones had paired off for years now, the older ones more outgoing, the younger two more interested in quiet, solitary pursuits, although all of them could keep up a conversation and were properly charming to adults.

  The evening was as nice as she had expected. There was only one tiny, unexpected sting of pain. After dinner, when the boys were playing touch football on the lawn in the last rays of the dying sun, the adults were talking about their various children, and Dan and Janet Mason, who were new to the neighborhood and had a precociously sexy and beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter, were complaining about the older boys who took her out. They gave her drugs, Janet was sure. It was so hard to control a girl who looked like a woman and acted like a child. They were thinking of sending her to a strict all-girl boarding school, but what would they do about vacations?

  “No matter what anyone says,” Richard commiserated, “the double standard still exists.”

  Everyone nodded. “The idea of a college girl trying to corrupt Sam or Jonathan …” Dan said, and laughed.

  “Matthew would love to have one corrupt him,” Richard said, and Daphne smiled.

  “You’re so lucky to have only boys,” Janet Mason said.

  “Yes, yes,” Richard said genially, and Daphne felt the stab.

  We have a daughter too, she wanted to say. But, of course, she didn’t.

  And that night in bed, when she and Richard were alone together at last, she didn’t mention it either. There were things they hadn’t talked about for years, and Elizabeth’s existence was one of them.

  “Another wonderful weekend over,” Richard said. “Oh, tomorrow night I have a dinner meeting in town. Just wanted to remind you.”

  “I remember.”

  “I won’t be home very late.”

  “All right.”

  He’d had quite a lot to drink, but still he made love to her. Or perhaps that was why. But Daphne, who was still addicted to Richard’s sexuality and her own, thought they were lucky that after all these years their passion for each other was still special. She had so little to complain about in her marriage. Other people had so much less happiness. She could see it on their faces, and they told her things she would have been embarrassed to tell to anyone. Now that she thought about it, it had surprised her a little that the Masons would talk that way about their daughter, even though everyone really knew.

  The next day, when Richard was in New York working, and the boys were amusing themselves, Daphne got into her car and drove on her semimonthly pilgrimage to see her own daughter.

  The road was so familiar by now that she drove it by rote. So many years had gone by, and yet she always had the same image before her eyes: the baby being carried away by a stranger, herself turning and driving home alone. Elizabeth, nine years old now, going on three. The baby, the little girl who would be another Daphne, the one Richard had persuaded her to have even though she was afraid she was too old, too tired, had pressed their luck too far. But Elizabeth was not epileptic like her mother. Elizabeth was retarded. And Richard, who had so begged and cajoled for her arrival, had with the same sweet reasonableness made Daphne put her into a very nice home for “special” children.

  Richard always gave away anything that wasn’t perfect.

  That’s why I was always afraid he would give me away.

  How many hugs and kisses she had stored up for her daughter, the only one of her children she was still allowed to cuddle.… Daphne lit up another of her too-frequent cigarettes. Her boys were “little men” now, and hugs and kisses were reserved for reunions and farewells. Sometimes she allowed her hand to linger for a moment on Teddy’s silky hair, her youngest boy, or touched Matthew’s broad shoulder lightly when she gave him money to go out with his friends and told him to drive carefully in her borrowed car. But Elizabeth would always be a baby; her feelings open, her needs direct, and her understanding limited to the world she knew, which did not include the tall, kindly woman who called herself Mother when she came to visit and bring presents. To Elizabeth, Mother was Jane, her cottage mother; the woman who took care of her at the home and showed her the most kindness. Other children sometimes were adopted, or went to foster homes, but Daphne would never allow that. Elizabeth would stay in this very expensive place, and when she was eighteen she would go to a group home with her friends. That time was so far away that Daphne could not even allow herself to imagine it.

  The home looked like a large country estate, with a main house and several small ones, painted in pale, cheerful pastel colors. They were expecting her; Elizabeth was wearing one of the many party dresses Daphne kept bringing. Jane had cut her blonde hair in bangs. Daphne felt a stab of resentment. I didn’t tell her she could cut my child’s hair. But Elizabeth looked so cute. She was small for her age now, and the dresses Daphne chose, decorated with flowers or ducks or rabbits, were always for a child much younger. Since the physical therapists had trained her to hold her tongue in, it sometimes occurred to Daphne in a flash of optimistic madness that Richard would accept her. You could see she was Daphne’s and Richard’s child. The coloring was the same. There were Daphne’s slanted cornflower-blue eyes, but the telltale eyelid flap made them not really Daphne’s eyes at all, but a sort of sad parody of them. Years ago, in the hospital when she was born, Richard had asked angrily
if Daphne thought normal meant being toilet trained at eight. Well, Elizabeth was toilet trained at nine, and could feed herself with a spoon, drink from a cup, and spoke in short phrases. To Daphne, who had seen the way she had been at the beginning, it was a miracle of progress. But Richard would find nothing to take pride in.

  “Look, here’s your mother!” Jane Baldwin said happily.

  “Say what?” said Elizabeth, and laughed.

  “Her favorite TV program,” Jane said. “Don’t you think she sounds like George Jefferson?”

  “I don’t know,” Daphne said, embarrassed. “I don’t watch much television.”

  “She’s become addicted to reruns. Do Mork. Elizabeth, what does Mork say?”

  “Na-noo, Na-noo!” Elizabeth said.

  “Good God,” said Daphne, and gathered her into her arms.

  The small body was soft and warm. Elizabeth wriggled away after a moment and pulled Daphne off to look at her dolls. They were perched on the pillow of her neatly made bed, and lined up on the bookcase filled with picture books. “Doll,” she said, as if patiently explaining, slowly putting her finger on each one. “Doll.” It was still difficult to understand her speech.

  “I know. They’re so pretty. I gave them to you, do you 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 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, noiselessly, and put his hand on her shoulder.

  And so that house, that safe, pretty house, was forever transformed into a house of horror; and the sun-splashed stairs would forever after lead upward not to restful rooms but to the memory of dark, terrible surprises.

  Chapter Five

  August, 1982

  My name is Teddy Caldwell and this is my secret journal. Nobody in this family ever talks about the things that really bother them or the things that really matter. I used to be able to talk about things with my brother Jonathan, but last week he killed himself, and now I have nobody to talk to, so I decided to start this journal and talk to it. The funeral was yesterday. It was the first funeral I ever went to, because when some relatives I didn’t really know well died I was too young to go. I think people should be able to go to minor funerals before they have to go to a big one, so they can get prepared. The funeral of my favorite brother was an awesomely horrible event for me. I kept thinking it wasn’t really happening, and I kept hoping it wasn’t, but I also knew it was. I felt dead too. Of course, I don’t know what dead is really like, but Jonathan does. I wonder what he thought it would be like to be dead before he killed himself. I’m sure he thought about it a lot. He wasn’t the kind of person who would kill himself on an impulse. We talked about a lot of private things but we never talked about either of us being dead. We didn’t like to talk about anybody we cared about being dead. Dying means your parents. At least that’s what I always thought it meant before.