Another Perfect Catastrophe Read Online Free PDF

question sent out that night: how I held the edge of the napkin in the flame, how the igniting brightened our faces, how I let it go and we watched as the paper fell, carried on faint breezes, burning down and down into the dark water that surrounds us all.

The Properties of Stainless Steel
    A single tree dominates our backyard, a tall white oak full of squirrel nests, the top flashing a Mylar balloon that settled in a few years ago. It’s one of those twin trees, the base split into two trunks grown up in a big V shape. I used to imagine making a slingshot of it, between the trunks, halfway up, taking aim on Winston-Salem and pelting them with baseballs, apples, cans of tuna fish. This big, unsolved mystery, the sky raining garbage, and me lurking at the bottom of it all. But those ideas wither away after Rhonda begins her habit of gazing out the kitchen screen door while she chain-smokes, pondering that tree and its separate trunks. I know what she’s up to in her mind. We used to talk about fitting a treehouse between those split trunks, how I would nail it up for a birthday surprise. Now I think Rhonda just sees the tree as us, sees it as everything that our first counseling session taught us was wrong with our marriage. I’ve thought of pointing out that the tree at its root is still connected, despite the split, but she would have no interest in hearing me try to explain her private notions.
    Before we left Family Services that first Wednesday, our counselor, Dr. Goodwin, told Rhonda and me that our “homework” was to find a common interest. Dr. Goodwin looked at us with her sad, practiced smile, the table beside our couch stacked with Kleenex dispensers and board games designed to coax different groups into talking about their troubles. One of the games, its cardboard box torn and faded, was called 1 … 2 … 3 … 12 Step! Another was Count on Me! I was thinking they were probably the kinds of games where everyone wins, and wondering just what the hell that’s supposed to teach anybody, when Dr. Goodwin interrupted my thoughts. She told Rhonda and me that we should search for ways to spend unstructured time together. Finding something you both like, she said, will keep you from healing in different directions. I nodded and said nothing, thinking that was our problem already: too much in common, nearly all of it sadness. Rhonda started the silent crying she did so easily after the months of practice, tears marking her face but not a sound from her. The way an actress cries on the screen, I thought. Only this was no acting. It was the baby we didn’t have anymore. Or it was me, never sad enough or the right way to suit her. She turned away. We sat, the three of us, trapped in our silences, in the fourth silence which had brought us all together here. We said nothing, as if waiting for the skies to begin their mysterious rain.
    The next morning Rhonda found—in the newspaper, the way you’d find a missing dog—our common interest.
    â€œFolk dancing,” she said. She laid the paper on the kitchen table and tapped it with her finger. “The Lower Cape Fear Dance Society presents. Live band, wooden floor…this is the one, Curt.”
    â€œWhat one?”
    â€œOur together thing. Folk dancing.”
    â€œSo we save our marriage by dancing to fiddle music.” I half laughed. “Think Dr. Goodwin will write us a prescription?”
    She watched me with those tired eyes. “It’s not a joke, Curt. We mess up this marriage, it can’t be repaired. We’re all we have anymore.”
    I nodded, reminding myself how well I knew this woman, how I could recognize the sound of her footsteps in a crowded mall. “So we just find a common interest at random.” I shrugged. “Just open the paper and grab one.”
    â€œPlanning has gotten us here,” she said. “I’m willing to try a blind stab or two.”
    The dance is