Gone Girl(70)
Not everyone was repulsed by me. In the past week, The Bar’s business was booming: Hundreds of customers packed in to sip beers and nibble popcorn at the place owned by Lance Nicholas Dunne, the maybe-killer. Go had to hire four new kids to tend The Bar; she’d dropped by once and said she couldn’t go again, couldn’t stand seeing how packed it was, f*cking gawkers, ghouls, all drinking our booze and swapping stories about me. It was disgusting. Still, Go reasoned, the money would be helpful if …
If. Amy gone six days, and we were all thinking in ifs.
We approached the park in a car gone silent except for Marybeth’s constant nail drumming on the window.
‘Feels almost like a double date.’ Rand laughed, the laughter curving toward the hysterical: high-pitched and squeaky. Rand Elliott, genius psychologist, best-selling author, friend to all, was unraveling. Marybeth had taken to self-medication: shots of clear liquor administered with absolute precision, enough to take the edge off but stay sharp. Rand, on the other hand, was literally losing his head; I half expected to see it shoot off his shoulders on a jack-in-the-box spring – cuckoooooo! Rand’s schmoozy nature had turned manic: He got desperately chummy with everyone he met, wrapping his arms around cops, reporters, volunteers. He was particularly tight with our Days Inn ‘liaison,’ a gawky, shy kid named Donnie who Rand liked to razz and inform he was doing so. ‘Ah, I’m just razzing you, Donnie,’ he’d say, and Donnie would break into a joyous grin.
‘Can’t that kid go get validation somewhere else?’ I groused to Go the other night. She said I was just jealous that my father figure liked someone better. I was.
Marybeth patted Rand’s back as we walked toward the park, and I thought about how much I wanted someone to do that, just a quick touch, and I suddenly let out a gasp-sob, one quick teary moan. I wanted someone, but I wasn’t sure if it was Andie or Amy.
‘Nick?’ Go said. She raised a hand toward my shoulder, but I shrugged her off.
‘Sorry. Wow, sorry for that,’ I said. ‘Weird outburst, very un-Dunne-y.’
‘No problem. We’re both coming undone-y,’ Go said, and looked away. Since discovering my situation – which is what we’d taken to calling my infidelity – she’d gotten a bit removed, her eyes distant, her face a constant mull. I was trying very hard not to resent it.
As we entered the park, the camera crews were everywhere, not just local anymore but network. The Dunnes and the Elliotts walked along the perimeter of the crowd, Rand smiling and nodding like a visiting dignitary. Boney and Gilpin appeared almost immediately, took to our heels like friendly pointer dogs; they were becoming familiar, furniture, which was clearly the idea. Boney was wearing the same clothes she wore to any public event: a sensible black skirt, a gray-striped blouse, barrettes clipping either side of her limp hair. I got a girl named Bony Moronie … The night was steamy; under each of Boney’s armpits was a dark smiley face of perspiration. She actually grinned at me as if yesterday, the accusations – they were accusations, weren’t they? – hadn’t happened.
The Elliotts and I filed up the steps to a rickety makeshift stage. I looked back toward my twin and she nodded at me and pantomimed a big breath, and I remembered to breathe. Hundreds of faces were turned toward us, along with clicking, flashing cameras. Don’t smile, I told myself. Do not smile.
From the front of dozens of Find Amy T-shirts, my wife studied me.
Go had said I needed to make a speech (‘You need some humanizing, fast’) so I did, I walked up to the microphone. It was too low, mid-belly, and I wrestled with it a few seconds, and it raised only an inch, the kind of malfunction that would normally infuriate me, but I could no longer be infuriated in public, so I took a breath and leaned down and read the words that my sister had written for me: ‘My wife, Amy Dunne, has been missing for almost a week. I cannot possibly convey the anguish our family feels, the deep hole in our lives left by Amy’s disappearance. Amy is the love of my life, she is the heart of her family. For those who have yet to meet her, she is funny, and charming, and kind. She is wise and warm. She is my helpmate and partner in every way.’
I looked up into the crowd and, like magic, spotted Andie, a disgusted look on her face, and I quickly glanced back at my notes.
‘Amy is the woman I want to grow old with, and I know this will happen.’
PAUSE. BREATHE. NO SMILE. Go had actually written the words on my index card. Happen happen happen. My voice echoed out through the speakers, rolling toward the river.
‘We ask you to contact us with any information. We light candles tonight in the hope she comes home soon and safely. I love you, Amy.’
I kept my eyes moving anywhere but Andie. The park sparkled with candles. A moment of silence was supposed to be observed, but babies were crying, and one stumbling homeless man kept asking loudly, ‘Hey, what is this about? What’s it for?,’ and someone would whisper Amy’s name, and the guy would say louder, ‘What? It’s for what?’
From the middle of the crowd, Noelle Hawthorne began moving forward, her triplets affixed, one on a hip, the other two clinging to her skirt, all looking ludicrously tiny to a man who spent no time around children. Noelle forced the crowd to part for her and the children, marching right to the edge of the podium, where she looked up at me. I glared at her – the woman had maligned me – and then I noticed for the first time the swell in her belly and realized she was pregnant again. For one second, my mouth dropped – four kids under four, sweet Jesus! – and later, that look would be analyzed and debated, most people believing it was a one-two punch of anger and fear.