The Great Perhaps Read Online Free PDF Page A

to you right now,” Madeline whispers and hurries out of the car. Jonathan sits there, in the passenger seat, in the dark of his garage, holding his face in his hands.
    “Damn,” he mutters. “Damn, damn, damn.”
     
     
    T HE ARGUMENT IS NOT resolved, will not be resolved, by the time Madeline goes to bed. Jonathan stands beside her in the dark, trying to summon some words, an apology, something appropriate, but all he can do is mutter her name. “Madeline,” he says. “Madeline?”
    Madeline does not answer him. She is a white pile of pillows and blankets. He nods, after some time, then grabs his pillow and the spare sheets from the closet and quietly steps down the hallway to the cramped, disorganized den—papers and maps and charts left scattered about the room. Laying the sheet over the cluttered sofa, Jonathan closes his eyes, listening to the empty sounds of the house settling around him—the drip of the kitchen faucet, the wind whining against the windows, the dishes settling in the sink. He lies there for a long time, holding his breath, waiting for the echo of Madeline as she tiptoes down the hall, for the sound of her bare feet against the tile, for the shaky warmth of her voice, for the touch of her kiss upon his forehead, but, for some reason, it does not come.

Two
     
    A. Madeline Casper, age forty-five, does not like the way the world is going. She does not like the way things are at the moment—with Jonathan, with Amelia and Thisbe, with her ongoing dominance study at the research laboratory. Unlike her husband, unlike her two daughters, Madeline is not afraid of being direct. She is not afraid to admit that there are things she doesn’t understand. She sits behind the vinyl steering wheel of the Volvo the next morning, wondering what is wrong with the world, listening to NPR, waiting for her two daughters to stumble into the backseat already unhappy, already bickering.
     
     
    B. Madeline looks up quickly and sees a cloud, shaped like a figure, standing in the treetops, as she glances from behind the Volvo’s windshield. Madeline glimpses at the oak tree beside the gray garage and sees something moving in the empty air. There is something quietly shifting. She squints upward and sees it, hanging in the open space just above the garage’s flat roof, in the tentative morning light: it is in the shape of a man—arms, legs, head, hands, feet, but made of clouds, no face, no expression, just the shape—he is drifting above the treetops, as if he is stepping from the highest branch directly into the air. Madeline holds her hand above her eyes and sees the cloud is life-sized, the size of a person. It is slowly moving, expanding, somehow changing, like a blossom opening in place. Madeline stares up at it, her mouth open, as Amelia and Thisbe come hurrying from the house, the back door slamming behind them, the older sister referring to her younger sister as “an absolute savage.”
     
     
    C. Madeline does not know if either of her daughters notices the cloud. She keeps glancing in the rearview mirror at Amelia and Thisbe; Amelia has her headphones on and is adjusting her beret, staring at her own reflection in the window, and Thisbe has her eyes closed, trying to fall back asleep. Madeline looks through the dirty windshield as the cloud steps slowly from branch to branch. Then it is gone, hidden by the dark leaves, disappearing, one weird, early morning daydream. Madeline places the car into drive and the Volvo speeds away down the street.
     
     
    D. Madeline drives her girls to school as often as she can because she wants to. Though they usually prefer to walk, since their high school is only a few blocks away—part of the University of Chicago’s campus—Madeline likes to drive them, wishing them both a good day. Their neighborhood—shady, tree-lined streets, quaint-looking faculty homes, antique apartment buildings, collegial facilities of brick and mortar, modern-looking student housing