flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 20
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She held out her hand, and I felt a ick ofalarm as Shawna’s friends started ambling down the trail, casting girl-clique glancesback toward us, the couple.I o ered what I had: my thanks, my water, my lip-swallowing awkwardness.Shawna didn’t make any move to leave, even though I was staring ahead, toward thetrail where her friends had disappeared.“I hope you have friends, relatives, who are looking out for you during this, Nick,”she said, swatting a horse y. “Men forget to take care of themselves. Comfort food iswhat you need.”“We’ve been eating mostly cold cuts—you know, fast, easy.” I could still taste thesalami in the back of my throat, the fumes oating up from my belly. I became awarethat I hadn’t brushed my teeth since the morning.“Oh, you poor man. Well, cold cuts, that won’t do it.” She shook her head, the goldhoops ickering sunlight. “You need to keep up your strength.
Now, you are lucky,because I make a mean chicken Frito pie. You know what? I am going to put thattogether and drop it by the volunteer center tomorrow. You can just microwave itwhenever you want a nice warm dinner.”“Oh, that sounds like too much trouble, really. We’re fine. We really are.”“You’ll be more fine after you eat a good meal,” she said, patting my arm.Silence. She tried another angle.“I really hope it doesn’t end up having anything to do … with our homeless problem,”she said. “I swear, I have filed complaint after complaint. One broke into my garden lastmonth. My motion sensor went o , so I peeked outside and there he was, kneeling inthe dirt, just guzzling tomatoes. Gnawing at them like apples, his face and shirt werecovered in juice and seeds.
I tried to scare him o , but he loaded up at least twentybefore he ran o . They were on the edge anyway, those Blue Book guys. No otherskills.”I felt a sudden a nity for the troop of Blue Book men, pictured myself walking intotheir bitter encampment, waving a white ag: I am your brother, I used to work in printtoo. The computers stole my job too.“Don’t tell me you’re too young to remember Blue Books, Nick,” Shawna was saying.She poked me in the ribs, making me jump more than I should have.“I’m so old, I’d forgotten about Blue Books until you reminded me.”She laughed: “What are you, thirty-one, thirty-two?”“Try thirty-four.”“A baby.”The trio of energetic elderly ladies arrived just then, tromping toward us, oneworking her cell phone, all wearing sturdy canvas garden skirts, Keds, and sleevelessgolf tops revealing wobbly arms.
They nodded at me respectfully, then icked a glanceof disapproval when they saw Shawna. We looked like a couple hosting a backyardbarbecue. We looked inappropriate.Please go away, Shawna, I thought.“So anyway, the homeless guys, they can be really aggressive, like, threatening,toward women,” Shawna said.
“I mentioned it to Detective Boney, but I get the feelingshe doesn’t like me very much.”“Why do you say that?” I already knew what she was going to say, the mantra of allattractive women.“Women don’t like me all that much.” She shrugged. “Just one of those things. Did—does Amy have a lot of friends in town?”A number of women—friends of my mom’s, friends of Go’s—had invited Amy to bookclubs and Amway parties and girls’ nights at Chili’s. Amy had predictably declined allbut a few, which she attended and hated: “We ordered a million little fried things anddrank cocktails made from ice cream.”Shawna was watching me, wanting to know about Amy, wanting to be groupedtogether with my wife, who would hate her.“I think she may have the same problem you do,” I said in a clipped voice.She smiled.Leave, Shawna.“It’s hard to come to a new town,” she said.
“Hard to make friends, the older you get.Is she your age?”“Thirty-eight.”That seemed to please her too.Go the fuck away.“Smart man, likes them older women.”She pulled a cell phone out of her giant chartreuse handbag, laughing. “Come here,”she said, and pulled an arm around me. “Give me a big chicken-Frito casserole smile.”I wanted to smack her, right then, the obliviousness, the girliness, of her: trying to getan ego stroke from the husband of a missing woman. I swallowed my rage, tried to hitreverse, tried to overcompensate and be nice, so I smiled robotically as she pressed herface against my cheek and took a photo with her phone, the fake camera-click soundwaking me.She turned the phone around, and I saw our two sunburned faces pressed together,smiling as if we were on a date at the baseball game.
Looking at my smarmy grin, myhooded eyes, I thought, I would hate this guy.AMY ELLIOTT DUNNESEPTEMBER 15, 2010DIARY ENTRYI am writing from somewhere in Pennsylvania. Southwest corner. A motel o thehighway. Our room overlooks the parking lot, and if I peek out from behind the stibeige curtains, I can see people milling about under the uorescent lights. It’s the kindof place where people mill about. I have the emotional bends again.
Too much hashappened, and so fast, and now I am in southwest Pennsylvania, and my husband isenjoying a de ant sleep amid the little packets of chips and candies he bought from thevending machine down the hall. Dinner. He is angry at me for not being a good sport. Ithought I was putting up a convincing front—hurray, a new adventure!—but I guess not.Now that I look back, it was like we were waiting for something to happen. LikeNick and I were sitting under a giant soundproof, windproof jar, and then the jar fellover and—there was something to do.Two weeks ago, we are in our usual unemployed state: partly dressed, thick withboredom, getting ready to eat a silent breakfast that we’ll stretch over the reading of thenewspaper in its entirety. We even read the auto supplement now.Nick’s cell phone rings at ten A.M., and I can tell by his voice that it is Go. He soundsspringy, boyish, the way he always does when he talks to her.
The way he used to soundwith me.He heads into the bedroom and shuts the door, leaving me holding two freshly madeeggs Benedicts quivering on the plates. I place his on the table and sit opposite,wondering if I should wait to eat. If it were me, I think, I would come back out and tellhim to eat, or else I’d raise a nger: Just one minute. I’d be aware of the other person,my spouse, left in the kitchen with plates of eggs. I feel bad that I was thinking that.Because soon I can hear worried murmurs and upset exclamations and gentlereassurances from behind the door, and I begin wondering if Go is having some backhome boy troubles.
Go has a lot of breakups. Even the ones that she instigates requiremuch handholding and goo-gawing from Nick.So I have my usual Poor Go face on when Nick emerges, the eggs hardened on theplate. 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’sspread 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 helooks 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 rst 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 un xable, if myhusband wouldn’t think to tell me this.
Sometimes I feel it’s his personal game, that he’sin some sort of undeclared contest for impenetrability. “Why didn’t you say anything tome?”“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 ambeing 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 o er topay, 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 ght and I haven’tbeen 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 icks hisngers out as if he is trying to rid himself of something sticky. “We’ll take a year, andwe’ll go do the right thing. We have no jobs, we have no money, there’s nothing holdingus 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 Iswallow.“This is what we’re going to do. We are going to do the right thing.
We are going tohelp my parents for once.”Of course that’s what we have to do, and of course if he had presented the problemto me like I wasn’t his enemy, that’s what I would have said. But he came out of the dooralready treating me like a problem that needed to be dealt with. I was the bitter voicethat needed to be squelched.My husband is the most loyal man on the planet until he’s not.
I’ve seen his eyesliterally turn a shade darker when he’s felt betrayed by a friend, even a dear longtimefriend, and then the friend is never mentioned again. He looked at me then like I wasan 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 issurreal, 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 moutha tight line, getting it done, unwilling to look at me. The U-Haul sits for hours, blockingtra c on our little street, blinking its hazard lights—danger, danger, danger—as Nickgoes up and down the stairs, a one-man assembly line, carrying boxes of books, boxes ofkitchen supplies, chairs, side tables.
We are bringing our vintage sofa—our broad oldchester eld that Dad calls our pet, we dote on it so much. It is to be the last thing wepack, 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 ngersmy ngers!) will be its own much-needed team-building exercise.
After the sofa, we’llpick 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 ofNick’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 Yorklife in our New York bed, eating two A.M.
Chinese food and having lazy-condomed sexwith tipsy, brass-mouthed girls who worked in PR. (Our home itself will be taken overby a noisy couple, hubby-wife lawyers who are shamelessly, brazenly gleeful at thisbuyers’-market deal. I hate them.)I carry one load for every four that Nick grunts down. I move slowly, shu ing, likemy bones hurt, a feverish delicacy descending on me. Everything does hurt. Nick buzzespast me, going up or down, and throws his frown at me, snaps “You okay?” and keepsmoving before I answer, leaves me gaping, a cartoon with a black mouth-hole.
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