So Catherine slipped a little note under my door before she left for the cliff saying "In case you're wondering why I committed suicide, it was because of this large print that you had in your front hallway--not that I want to blame my problems on you--but I have to say it was this large print you had, you know, it was one of Kandinsky's improvisations, and there was a little piece of it that reminded me of my mother. I know you probably think this is a joke and don't believe it because it's too obvious and stupid and Freudian but it's true." And she signed it "Cat' (cata[po]strophe)."

She was right; I didn't believe it because it was too stupid and Freudian and obvious. And it turned out that I was right not to believe it; she didn't jump off the cliff to commit suicide, but to get some flying practice. She died anyway, of course, but because of an organic mishap and not from any deathwish, as she later informed me through a book I read by an up-and-coming young prose writer from the East Village with whom she had established a psychic bond.