Another Perfect Catastrophe by Brad Barkley Read Free Book Online Page B

off the hook, relieved. Rhonda keeps dancing with him, but even from here I can see how shaken she is, her lips a thin white line.
    When they finish I watch her smile as he thanks her, bowing to her a little. She rushes over to me, her eyes already starting to rim up.
    â€œLet’s please go,” she says.
    â€œIt wasn’t your fault,” I tell her.
    â€œNo, it never is. Everything just crashes down all around me.”
    In the dark of the parking lot I hear the next song starting up, the sound of it muffled, made brittle by the cold.
    The next few days we don’t say much. There is no more talk of upcoming dances. Rhonda spends more time looking through the back window, past the tree with the split trunk, out into nothing. She doesn’t even seem to see the tree anymore. She cancels our next appointment with Dr. Goodwin, and silence settles over our house the way it did just after Sarah died. Wednesday would have been her second birthday, so, as planned, we head out to Greenview to visit her gravesite. We have stopped bringing flowers, saying it is because they are always stolen. What we don’t say is that it just seems so useless, the emptiest of gestures.
    At Greenview, a fast-food paper cup sits on the ground beside Sarah’s brass marker. Nearby are the leftovers from a campfire some kids have lit, sections of charred logs, blackened Coke cans and beer bottles. Down the hill below us, two boys are bundled up in denim jackets, fishing out of the small pond. We stand there a while, reading the words that seem so old by now.
    â€œI don’t know what to say anymore,” Rhonda says.
    I shrug. “I don’t think there is anything. There is no thing to say.”
    She slips her fingers into mine. “It stops seeming real after a time, I think. I keep telling myself I shouldn’t let that happen, let it become unreal. It’s the easy way out.”
    â€œWell, but it’s not real,” I say. I kick over the cup, and the leavings of a milkshake pour out. “ That’s more real. A milkshake. You can understand a milkshake, get your brain around it.”
    She nods. “When that man fell, I thought for a moment I’d killed him.”
    â€œHe fell because his legs are screwed up. They always have been, I bet. At least he knew what it meant when he fell, why it happens.”
    â€œYou don’t know that, Curt. He might cry every night of his life. He might put his fist through walls.”
    â€œHe might. I’d even say he should. But it does no good, for him or us. There’s no proper response. Hell, there is no response, proper or not. I don’t have one, do you?”
    She shakes her head.
    â€œHow about you?” I shout across the lawn. “You have one?” The kids look up from their fishing and then away from us. The wind picks up, our breath coming in white mists.
    â€œWhy don’t you come with me to work tonight,” I say. I take her hand.
    â€œYou never ask me.”
    â€œWell, I am now. It’s a party. Come be with me.”
    She nods. “Okay.”
    We stand for a while longer before we go. I leave the milkshake cup where it is.
    That night at Kmart, Rhonda right away starts in talking with Lisa, feeling her distended stomach, asking her about breastfeeding and epidurals. It’s like she wants to meet this head on, these moments I only want to avoid. With everyone pitching in we finish the floors by midnight, and then the boys and their wives and girlfriends, so practiced by now, start the music and the beer and the snacks all flowing through the store. We sit in the snack bar and drink beer, careful not to spill on our clean floors. Rhonda sits up close to me, the way all the girlfriends do, as if they can’t get enough of being close. A couple times I see Rhonda staring at the swelling in the front of Lisa’s dress, and I know she is thinking about wanting to try again. The thought of it seems