"A Fears Building of Something on every campus, is that it?"

"Or a Cryer Building," he said. "They don't have to be named for me."

"Not that name," she said. "I don't want my name on anything."

"Too late. I've got it on a marriage certificate."

"You tricked me! Just to get my autograph!"

Christmas was wonderful, even though Mad complained a little about the green lawns and the lack of snow.

"We can't all live in the perfect climate of the Hudson Valley," said Dad.

"Californians are climate-deprived," said Mom. "The things that do go wrong aren't seasonal. There's no earthquake season, for instance."

"There's a mudslide season," suggested Dad.

"But not every year."

"Next year," said Dad, "Madeleine should invite us all to Christmas with her family. So we can tramp around on snowshoes. Do you have any nieces or nephews, Madeleine? Or—heavens, you're young enough—you might still have younger brothers and sisters at home!"

"No believers in Santa Claus, if that's what you mean," said Mad, laughing.

Quentin watched her, waited for her to sidestep the issue. But she didn't.

"Maybe I will have you all come out."

"No," said Dad immediately. "I was just joking. We don't go inviting ourselves to other people's Christmases!"

"Not Christmas Day, maybe," said Mad. "We don't do much for Christmas anyway, I think you'd be disappointed. But the week after. Don't you think, Quentin? Wouldn't that be a good holiday next year?"

"Sure," he said. "Sounds great."

But it bothered him. She wouldn't take him home to meet her family, after all these hints. And yet she'd invite Dad and Mom to come along with them. Of course, she was inviting them a year in advance—she might find a thousand excuses for canceling before then. Or maybe whatever she dreaded there might be easier if his parents came along with them. Or maybe she had simply overcome those fears, right now, today, in this conversation.

"You don't sound very enthusiastic," said Mom. "Are you afraid we'll use the wrong fork, Quen?"

"Oh, it's just that Mad has told me such terrible things about her family. Visitors have been known to arrive and... disappear."

Mad looked at him in consternation. "No such thing."

"That's why she's never taken me there. And her house is haunted. And it was built over an old chemical sludge factory. People get cancer just flying over, the airlines have to route around it."

"There were no factories making chemical sludge when the family manse was built," said Madeleine. "All the rest is true, though."

"Don't forget the Indian burial mound, Mad," said Quentin. "Her family bulldozed a whole burial mound because it blocked their view of the river. But on the spot where the mound was... nothing grows."

"That's not true," said Madeleine. "It's always a jungle of briars and poison ivy."

"Which your mother harvests and uses to make those unforgettable prickly salads."

"All right," said Madeleine, laughing. "I'll take you home first, to meet my folks."

Mom and Dad were appalled.

"Quentin hasn't even met your parents?" Dad asked. "How does he know idiocy doesn't run in your family?" He was trying to make a joke out of it.

Mom's reaction was sympathetic—but not to Madeleine and Quentin. "Oh, but your mother must be so hurt that you married without telling her!"

"Oh, don't worry. I told her. I just didn't invite her."

"Oh, worse and worse!" cried Mom.

"My family's very odd," said Madeleine. "You have to understand—they would have thought it presumptuous of me to expect them to come. You simply have to understand that... I mean, when I came here—did you people pose for Norman Rockwell or what?"

"That depends," said Dad. "Do you like Norman Rockwell paintings?"

"I dreamed of Norman Rockwell paintings when I was a child," said Mad. "I thought they were a wonderful fantasyland. Or heaven—if I died, that's where I'd go, to a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving or Christmas. Like the one we just had."

"Well, what does your family do, beat the servants and burn down the neighbors' house?" said Dad, carrying the joke too far, as usual.

Madeleine smiled wanly. "Servants always used to quit before we had time to beat them," she said. "They finally gave up hiring them."

Mom was outraged at Dad, though of course she put a jesting face on it. "I can't believe he's teasing about your family, Madeleine, dear, he just has no sense of tact, he never has." She playfully punched her husband on the arm; but Quentin could see that it hurt, and Dad didn't like it. It was a pattern already familiar from his childhood—Dad always got a small, painful bruise when he went too far. And yet it didn't stop him from going that far. As if painful jabs were the medium of exchange in the economy of their quarreling. Would he and Madeleine evolve ways of hurting each other and then ignoring it and going on?

"Oh, please," said Madeleine. "Let's just take it as a given that my family is weird. I'm simply the normal-looking one who can go around in public. But I'll tell you what. Quentin has been dying of curiosity and I think he's sort of hurt that I've never taken him, so this is it. Next week. After New Year's. We'll drive up the Hudson Valley and I'll take him into Château Cryer and when he comes back here he can tell you all the weird things he saw. Believe me, you can't stay there for three hours without having a dozen very bizarre tales to tell."

"Tell us some now," said Quentin.

"You see?" said Madeleine. "Now that I've actually agreed to take him, he's afraid and he wants me to prepare him in case he wants to back out. Well, I'm not going to tell him a thing. He'll just have to come with an open mind."

"I'm sure your family is perfectly wonderful," said Mom, "and that's what Quentin will tell us."

"Maybe," said Madeleine with a knowing smile. "And maybe not. But I'll tell you this. Nobody in my family makes a banana cream pie like yours, Mother Fears. And the half-pie in your fridge is moaning my name."

"The pie doesn't know your name," said Quentin. "That was me you were hearing. But we'll settle for the pie for now."

"Quentin," said Mom reprovingly. "You're not such a newlywed anymore that we should have to put up with your innuendos."

"Innuendo?" said Quentin. "Why, whatever do you mean, Mother dear?"

After the pie, as Mom cleaned up in the kitchen and Dad signed on to America Online to send after-Christmas e-mail to his brothers, Quentin gave Madeleine a chance to back out of her invitation.

"But I don't want to back out. I'd already decided it was time for you to meet them. I would have told you privately but then the conversation just went that way and—you don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all. In fact I'm relieved. That you trust me enough to take me home."

"It wasn't a matter of trusting you, Tin, my pet, my poo. I know you can handle it. They just have a way of getting under my skin. With you to hold on to as an island of sanity, I think I can get through a day with my family. Just a day, mind you."

"And then a night at the Holiday Inn?"

"Well, of course we have to stay overnight, but you know what I mean. Twenty-four hours and then we go, no matter how my family pleads with you to stay, do you understand me? Because even if I'm wearing a plastic smile on my face and saying, 'Oh, yes, Quentin, let's do stay,' trust me, I do not want to stay, I want you to get me out of there before we reach the witching hour."

"Which is?"

"If we arrive at noon, then by the next noon we must be gone or I will turn into a puddle of mucus on the floor."

"That's an attractive image. If I kiss it, does it turn back into a princess?"