"No," he said. "You're not there, and when I poured out that juice it went straight down to the carpet. It didn't go into your hair because you... aren't... real."
She took the glass and threw it against the wall. It shattered and fell. "Think the neighbors heard that?" she asked.
The shards of glass sparkled in the light from the kitchen.
She was crying. He was crying. "Madeleine," he said. "I'm so sorry, I'm—you wouldn't believe—these past few days without you—"
She held him. Her body fit perfectly against his, as it always had. "You think it was easy for me? I shouldn't have run out of there, but Grandmother—she hates me so much. I should have remembered, my love for you, it's stronger than anything, stronger than her hate, stronger than... Oh, Quentin, don't ever be angry with me again, please, it scares me, it hurts me..."
And as she spoke, he looked at the glittering bits of broken glass and remembered the shimmer of the perfect goblets on the table in the library. And then how bare and dirty the table looked, under its dustcover. The look of the water flowing out of the tap into the clean sink in the bathroom, and then the dirty dry sink with taps that didn't work.
"Tin, please let me call you that, please, let me come back and be your wife the way I should be. The way we promised before God that we would."
"You didn't want any cameras at our wedding, Mad," he said. "Why was that?"
She was toying with his hair. "I wanted to imagine that I was the perfect bride, beautiful as snow in sunlight." Her words were simple, and her voice was like low music. Her hand touched his skin, the same touch that had wakened him a few minutes ago and it was awakening him again. "I didn't want to see pictures that might contradict my dream. Do you believe all those Kodak ads? That nothing is real unless you have a picture of it to prove it to yourself? Maybe I should be giving you a Hallmark card right now, or calling you on AT&T so we can have a really touching moment."
He laughed. It was Madeleine, it was the woman he loved. The sound of her voice, the feel of her hair under his fingers.
Her hair.
And now suddenly her hair was sticky with orange juice. But a moment ago it hadn't been. His hand froze in place.
She looked into his eyes. "What?" she said. "What?"
He turned his face away. He thought of Lizzy. He thought of the false image of her, walking up to the townhouse that was rented to nobody.
He pushed her away and walked to the wall where the glass had fallen. He bent down and picked up a shard of glass and drew it along the wall. A scratch appeared in the wallpaper. Suddenly, without planning it, without knowing he was going to do it until he did, he jabbed the glass into the skin of his abdomen. Jabbed twice, three times. Only then did the pain come. He doubled over, it was so bad. Fell to one knee. But he knew it was a lie. He looked down at his belly. Blood was coming out, but there wasn't enough of it.
And then, suddenly, there was more. Too much. He hadn't hit an artery. There wasn't anything there that could bleed so much. In fact, he knew that there was no wound there to bleed. Nothing. No reason for pain. There wasn't even a piece of glass in his hand.
He still held the shard in his fingers.
Hadn't Lizzy told him he was stronger than most people? Why couldn't he fight off these illusions of hers?
On one knee, he sliced through the skin of the other. Sliced deeper and deeper. The glass cut deep. But all he could think of, all he let himself think of, was dissecting a frog in science class. The musculature of the leg when he peeled back the formaldehyde-soaked skin. And for the moment he thought of that, his leg was also a frog's leg. He peeled the skin off just as he had the frog's leg.
"No!" cried Madeleine.
There was no wound in his leg at all. No shard of glass in his hand. No stab wound in his belly. The orange juice glass lay on the floor where he must have dropped it when Madeleine made him think she had taken it out of his hand.
On all fours, he moved to the spot where she had been standing when he poured the orange juice over her head. There it was, a single puddle, spattered, but only one stream of juice had fallen, uninterrupted by a human body. He had recovered reality.
Which meant that he had lost her again.
"Madeleine," he whispered.
From the couch, her voice sounded cold and angry. "I'm still here."
He recoiled, fell back onto the carpet, looked at her. She was on the couch primping her hair, looking into a small vanity mirror. "So your dead sister told you that you were strong," said Madeleine. "Bully for you."
"Who are you really?" he said. "Just be honest with me, can't you? Who are you and why did you pick me?"
"I'm Madeleine Cryer Fears," she said. "I'm your wife."
"You don't exist and you never did."
"Oh? Then who have you been making love to in beds all over America?"
"A lie," he said. "I've been loving a lie."
"Wrong answer, Quentin," she said. "I am the truth. I am the deepest truth in the most secret places in your heart. I am all your dreams come true."
"What do you want from me?"
"What every wife wants. Someone to love. Someone who'll love me. Trust. Faith. A future. Your babies."
"Shut up!"
"Do I take it this means you've changed your mind about children? Men are like that, so changeable. But I can wait. I won't trick you—no babies till you're ready to be a daddy."
"You never let up, do you?"
She leaned forward until she was spread like a lizard on the couch, leaning over the arm so they were nearly face to face. "Let me tell you a secret, my darling," she whispered. "I'm as real as any wife. What do you think marriage is? It's all pretense. Your mother pretending that your father's temper doesn't scare her. Your father pretending that he doesn't hate it when she gets him all riled up about something and then suddenly can't understand why he's upset. Pretending to be happy with each other when they're both so desperately lonely because along about week three of their marriage they realized that they didn't really know each other and they never would, they'd be strangers together for the rest of their lives. But they couldn't live with that, nobody can, I've seen thousands of marriages and they can't face it that they're paired up with a stranger and so the decent ones, the ones who want to be good, they pretend to be whatever they think their partner wants them to be, and then they pretend that they believe in their partner's pretense. The only difference between them and me is that I'm so good at it. When I pretend to be exactly the wife you really want, I am that wife. I am. It is my whole existence. And when I pretend to love you exactly as you are, I do. I'm totally focused on you, I'm witty when you want witty, sexy when you want sexy, weepy when you want sentimental, beautiful when you want to show me off. I am your true wife."
"You don't know anything," said Quentin.
"I know you."
"You know how to get power over me. And it worked, yeah, you had me dancing. Eating out of your hand. Give the boy exactly what he dreams of and he'll sit up and beg."
"I'm the one who's begging now," she said.
"You're the one who doesn't leave footprints in the snow," he said. "You're the one that orange juice pours right through."
"You think you don't believe in me."
"I don't."
"Then why am I still here?"
"You're not," he said.
He got to his feet. At first, for just a moment, he limped on the leg he had carved with the shard of glass. Except he hadn't cut it, there was no injury; he forced himself to walk without a limp.
"Even when you aren't looking at me, I'm here," she said.