Dreams offer The Man a false version of the world, and he constantly battles these mirages. This passage concerns his wife's suicide. In the version The Man would prefer, his wife takes ill and he cares for her. Once he shakes himself out of this falsehood, we get the facts: his wife died alone in the dark, and there isn't a way to sugarcoat it. There isn't an alternate reality or another story to tell. It makes us wonder, though, why is there so much animosity toward stories in a work of fiction? Is it that McCarthy just doesn't like certain types of fiction? (Can you imagine him reading romance novels?)