(He leaves his daughter sitting alone in the orange lawn chair and sprints back up the stone path to the cabin. His heart is thumping. Some old terror is rushing through him that he doesn’t understand. The screen door slams behind him as he enters the kitchen. His wife is standing by the table with her back to him, stroking the hair of their son. The boy is sitting at the table digging into a fresh bowl of cereal. She turns to her husband but keeps stroking the soft hair of her son. The man goes to her and holds her around the waist. She turns into him and they embrace. They kiss for a very long time; a long deep kiss like the way they used to before the children arrived. The boy keeps slurping his cereal, not looking up. He’s not crying now. The crunching of Cheerios is the only sound. Then the clank of the spoon on the bowl. The man and woman stop kissing. He speaks.)

“Don’t go to France,” is what he says.

Convulsion

CONVULSION