A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [137]
Jerome became aware that Malcolm had begun to speak again. “She confessed her imaginary life to me after she read the item in the paper, after she had read about you,” he paused, cleared his throat, “and about him. She couldn’t stop herself from speaking, actually, couldn’t help but confess; she was that distraught. Just because it didn’t happen does not mean that it does not, at certain times, seem real to her …” For the first time Malcolm showed some emotion, there was a tremor in his voice. “She has suffered a great deal.”
“Yes,” said Jerome. He was standing as far away as possible from the man, his arms crossed protectively over his lower ribs, his head down. Not since he had been a teenager had he shown such visible signs of sullenness, and he was peripherally aware of this and oddly embarrassed by it. Sensitivity, he thought, yes, his father had also been able to manifest sensitivity when it suited him, when he had something to gain from it. Any sign of male adult tears caused Jerome to close down completely; he had no faith in these displays. Only Mira’s tears could move him, but even then, even with her, he could feel his guts clenching once the tears began. He could feel himself wanting to escape.
He decided to speak. “It seems to me,” he said coldly, “that you are suggesting that she, that Sylvia, is telling lies.”
“Oh no,” Malcolm raised one hand in protest, “she believes, sometimes, that these episodes really took place. But it’s impossible.” He reddened slightly. “You must understand,” he said, “she has no real physical, we have no real physical life. It’s simply not possible, not with the condition. I accepted that when I married her.” He looked at Jerome as if gauging whether to go further.
Jerome was damned if he was going to continue this conversation, going to ask about their physical life, or demand that this doctor explain the ridiculous condition he had been making reference to.
“I love her, you see,” the doctor continued, “and that includes accepting everything she is. Everything that is wrong with her.”
“I don’t think there is anything wrong with her,” said Jerome. “I just don’t believe that. None of this is her fault.” He turned and walked into the other room, where he found Mira bent over a stuffed plastic bag and Sylvia sitting on the futon, her lap filled with colourful ribbons and scraps.
Both women looked up when he entered, Mira with a length of sparkling rickrack hanging from one small delicate hand as if she had been caught in the act of inventing lightning.
They were about to depart. Malcolm stood by the door clasping the fabric-filled plastic bag as if it were a large belly that he had miraculously grown in the last few minutes. Jerome was still refusing to look at him.
Sylvia was bending over the handbag into which she had placed the journals. She was looking for something, a frown of concentration in the centre of her forehead. Swimmer, unnoticed by her, was threading in and out between her legs. “Oh, here it is,” said Sylvia, pulling out a thick envelope.
Jerome approached her then, took her arm, and walked her to the opposite side of the room where the drawings she had noticed were pinned on the wall. He had added two or three to the set since then and on a bench beneath these were some of the photographs he had taken on the island—developed just that morning before Sylvia’s arrival. “You haven’t seen these ones yet,” he said. “This is what the floor of the island looked like,” he told her, “up close, under all that snow.”
“What’s this?” she asked, peering closely, then pointing to the feathers and the blood.
“Just a bird. Swimmer ate most of it.” Cock Robin entered his mind. “Swimmer killed him, not a sparrow.”
Sylvia smiled, and as she smiled Jerome leaned closer to her and whispered, “Don’t go back with him. Stay here, stay anywhere, but don’t go back. He’s got it … he’s got you all wrong.”
“Does he?” asked Sylvia.
“He doesn’t believe you. He thinks you are inventing everything.”
“Oh, that,”