Gone Girl(13)

The Cape had been good to us. I remember discovering several months in that Amy, my girlfriend, was also quite wealthy, a treasured only child of creative-genius parents. An icon of sorts, thanks to a namesake book series that I thought I could remember as a kid. Amazing Amy. Amy explained this to me in calm, measured tones, as if I were a patient waking from a coma. As if she’d had to do it too many times before and it had gone badly – the admission of wealth that’s greeted with too much enthusiasm, the disclosure of a secret identity that she herself didn’t create.

Amy told me who and what she was, and then we went out to the Elliotts’ historically registered home on Nantucket Sound, went sailing together, and I thought: I am a boy from Missouri, flying across the ocean with people who’ve seen much more than I have. If I began seeing things now, living big, I could still not catch up with them. It didn’t make me feel jealous. It made me feel content. I never aspired to wealth or fame. I was not raised by big-dreamer parents who pictured their child as a future president. I was raised by pragmatic parents who pictured their child as a future office worker of some sort, making a living of some sort. To me, it was heady enough to be in the Elliotts’ proximity, to skim across the Atlantic and return to a plushly restored home built in 1822 by a whaling captain, and there to prepare and eat meals of organic, healthful foods whose names I didn’t know how to pronounce. Quinoa. I remember thinking quinoa was a kind of fish.

So we married on the beach on a deep blue summer day, ate and drank under a white tent that billowed like a sail, and a few hours in, I sneaked Amy off into the dark, toward the waves, because I was feeling so unreal, I believed I had become merely a shimmer. The chilly mist on my skin pulled me back, Amy pulled me back, toward the golden glow of the tent, where the Gods were feasting, everything ambrosia. Our whole courtship was just like that.

Boney leaned in to examine Amy. ‘Your wife is very pretty.’

‘She is, she’s beautiful,’ I said, and felt my stomach lilt.

‘What anniversary today?’ she asked.

‘Five.’

I was jittering from one foot to another, wanting to do something. I didn’t want them to discuss how lovely my wife was, I wanted them to go out and search for my f*cking wife. I didn’t say this out loud, though; I often don’t say things out loud, even when I should. I contain and I compartmentalize to a disturbing degree: In my belly-basement are hundreds of bottles of rage, despair, fear, but you’d never guess from looking at me.

‘Five, big one. Let me guess, reservations at Houston’s?’ Gilpin asked. It was the only upscale restaurant in town. You all really need to try Houston’s, my mom had said when we moved back, thinking it was Carthage’s unique little secret, hoping it might please my wife.

‘Of course, Houston’s.’

It was my fifth lie to the police. I was just starting.





AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE

JULY 5, 2008

I am fat with love! Husky with ardor! Morbidly obese with devotion! A happy, busy bumblebee of marital enthusiasm. I positively hum around him, fussing and fixing. I have become a strange thing. I have become a wife. I find myself steering the ship of conversations – bulkily, unnaturally – just so I can say his name aloud. I have become a wife, I have become a bore, I have been asked to forfeit my Independent Young Feminist card. I don’t care. I balance his checkbook, I trim his hair. I’ve gotten so retro, at one point I will probably use the word pocketbook, shuffling out the door in my swingy tweed coat, my lips painted red, on the way to the beauty parlor. Nothing bothers me. Everything seems like it will turn out fine, every bother transformed into an amusing story to be told over dinner. So I killed a hobo today, honey … hahahaha! Ah, we have fun!

Nick is like a good stiff drink: He gives everything the correct perspective. Not a different perspective, the correct perspective. With Nick, I realize it actually, truly doesn’t matter if the electricity bill is a few days late, if my latest quiz turns out a little lame. (My most recent, I’m not joking: ‘What kind of tree would you be?’ Me, I’m an apple tree! This means nothing!) It doesn’t matter if the new Amazing Amy book has been well and duly scorched, the reviews vicious, the sales a stunning plummet after a limp start. It doesn’t matter what color I paint our room, or how late traffic makes me, or whether our recycling really, truly does get recycled. (Just level with me, New York, does it?) It doesn’t matter, because I have found my match. It’s Nick, laid-back and calm, smart and fun and uncomplicated. Untortured, happy. Nice. Big penis.

All the stuff I don’t like about myself has been pushed to the back of my brain. Maybe that is what I like best about him, the way he makes me. Not makes me feel, just makes me. I am fun. I am playful. I am game. I feel naturally happy and entirely satisfied. I am a wife! It’s weird to say those words. (Seriously, about the recycling, New York – come on, just a wink.)

We do silly things, like last weekend we drove to Delaware because neither of us have ever had sex in Delaware. Let me set the scene, because now it really is for posterity. We cross the state line – Welcome to Delaware!, the sign says, and also: Small Wonder, and also: The First State, and also: Home of Tax-Free Shopping.

Delaware, a state of many rich identities.

I point Nick down the first dirt road I see, and we rumble five minutes until we hit pine trees on all sides. We don’t speak. He pushes his seat back. I pull up my skirt. I am not wearing undies, I can see his mouth turn down and his face go slack, the drugged, determined look he gets when he’s turned on. I climb atop him, my back to him, facing the windshield. I’m pressed against the steering wheel, and as we move together, the horn emits tiny bleats that mimic me, and my hand makes a smearing noise as I press it against the windshield. Nick and I can come anywhere; neither of us gets stage fright, it’s something we’re both rather proud of. Then we drive right back home. I eat beef jerky and ride with bare feet on the dashboard.