Gone Girl(36)

So I have my usual Poor Go face on when Nick emerges, the eggs hardened on the plate. I see him and know this isn’t just a Go problem.

‘My mom,’ he starts, and sits down. ‘Shit. My mom has cancer. Stage four, and it’s spread to the liver and bones. Which is bad, which is …’

He puts his face in his hands, and I go over and put my arms around him. When he looks up, he is dry-eyed. Calm. I’ve never seen my husband cry.

‘It’s too much for Go, on top of my dad’s Alzheimer’s.’

‘Alzheimer’s? Alzheimer’s? Since when?’

‘Well, a while. At first they thought it was some sort of early dementia. But it’s more, it’s worse.’

I think, immediately, that there is something wrong with us, perhaps unfixable, if my husband wouldn’t think to tell me this. Sometimes I feel it’s his personal game, that he’s in some sort of undeclared contest for impenetrability. ‘Why didn’t you say anything to me?’

‘My dad isn’t someone I like to talk about that much.’

‘But still—’

‘Amy. Please.’ He has that look, like I am being unreasonable, like he is so sure I am being unreasonable that I wonder if I am.

‘But now. Go says with my mom, she’ll need chemo but … she’ll be really, really sick. She’ll need help.’

‘Should we start looking for in-home care for her? A nurse?’

‘She doesn’t have that kind of insurance.’

He stares at me, arms crossed, and I know what he is daring: daring me to offer to pay, and we can’t pay, because I’ve given my money to my parents.

‘Okay, then, babe,’ I say. ‘What do you want to do?’

We stand across from each other, a showdown, as if we are in a fight and I haven’t been informed. I reach out to touch him, and he just looks at my hand.

‘We have to move back.’ He glares at me, opening his eyes wide. He flicks his fingers out as if he is trying to rid himself of something sticky. ‘We’ll take a year and we’ll go do the right thing. We have no jobs, we have no money, there’s nothing holding us here. Even you have to admit that.’

‘Even I have to?’ As if I am already being resistant. I feel a burst of anger that I swallow.

‘This is what we’re going to do. We are going to do the right thing. We are going to help my parents for once.’

Of course that’s what we have to do, and of course if he had presented the problem to me like I wasn’t his enemy, that’s what I would have said. But he came out of the door already treating me like a problem that needed to be dealt with. I was the bitter voice that needed to be squelched.

My husband is the most loyal man on the planet until he’s not. I’ve seen his eyes literally turn a shade darker when he’s felt betrayed by a friend, even a dear longtime friend, and then the friend is never mentioned again. He looked at me then like I was an object to be jettisoned if necessary. It actually chilled me, that look.

So it is decided that quickly, with that little of a debate: We are leaving New York. We are going to Missouri. To a house in Missouri by the river where we will live. It is surreal, and I’m not one to misuse the word surreal.

I know it will be okay. It’s just so far from what I pictured. When I pictured my life. That’s not to say bad, just … If you gave me a million guesses where life would take me, I wouldn’t have guessed. I find that alarming.

The packing of the U-Haul is a mini-tragedy: Nick, determined and guilty, his mouth a tight line, getting it done, unwilling to look at me. The U-Haul sits for hours, blocking traffic on our little street, blinking its hazard lights – danger, danger, danger – as Nick goes up and down the stairs, a one-man assembly line, carrying boxes of books, boxes of kitchen supplies, chairs, side tables. We are bringing our vintage sofa – our broad old chesterfield that Dad calls our pet, we dote on it so much. It is to be the last thing we pack, a sweaty, awkward two-person job. Getting the massive thing down our stairs (Hold on, I need to rest. Lift to the right. Hold on, you’re going too fast. Watch out, my fingers my fingers!) will be its own much-needed team-building exercise. After the sofa, we’ll pick up lunch from the corner deli, bagel sandwiches to eat on the road. Cold soda.

Nick lets me keep the sofa, but our other big items are staying in New York. One of Nick’s friends will inherit the bed; the guy will come by later to our empty home – nothing but dust and cable cords left – and take the bed, and then he’ll live his New York life in our New York bed, eating two a.m. Chinese food and having lazy-condomed sex with tipsy, brass-mouthed girls who work in PR. (Our home itself will be taken over by a noisy couple, hubby-wife lawyers who are shamelessly, brazenly gleeful at this buyers’-market deal. I hate them.)

I carry one load for every four that Nick grunts down. I move slowly, shuffling, like my bones hurt, a feverish delicacy descending on me. Everything does hurt. Nick buzzes past me, going up or down, and throws his frown at me, snaps, ‘You okay?’ and keeps moving before I answer, leaving me gaping, a cartoon with a black mouth-hole. I am not okay. I will be okay, but right now I am not okay. I want my husband to put his arms around me, to console me, to baby me a little bit. Just for a second.

Inside the back of the truck, he fusses with the boxes. Nick prides himself on his packing skills: He is (was) the loader of the dishwasher, the packer of the holiday bags. But by hour three, it is clear that we’ve sold or gifted too many of our belongings. The U-Haul’s massive cavern is only half full. It gives me my single satisfaction of the day, that hot, mean satisfaction right in the belly, like a nib of mercury. Good, I think. Good.