flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 29
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So shesaid for my package, package A …”Go and I had a game inspired by our mom, who had a habit of telling suchoutrageously mundane, endless stories that Go was positive she had to be secretlyfucking with us. For about ten years now, whenever Go and I hit a conversation lull,one of us would break in with a story about appliance repair or coupon ful llment.
Gohad more stamina than I did, though. Her stories could drone on, seamlessly, forever—they went on so long that they became genuinely annoying and then swung backaround to hilarious.Go was moving on to a story about her refrigerator light and showed no signs offaltering. Filled with a sudden, heavy gratefulness, I leaned across the couch and kissedher on the cheek.“What’s that for?”“Just, thanks.” I felt my eyes get full with tears. I looked away for a second to blinkthem o , and Go said, “So I needed a triple-A battery, which, as it turns out, is di erentfrom a transistor battery, so I had to find the receipt to return the transistor battery …”We nished watching the game. Cards lost.
When it was over, Go switched the TV tomute. “You want to talk, or you want more distraction? Whatever you need.”“You go on to bed, Go. I’m just going to flip around. Probably sleep. I need to sleep.”“You want an Ambien?” My twin was a staunch believer in the easiest way. Norelaxation tapes or whale noises for her; pop a pill, get unconscious.“Nah.”“They’re in the medicine cabinet if you change your mind. If there was ever a timefor assisted sleep …” She hovered over me for just a few seconds, then, Go-like, trotteddown the hall, clearly not sleepy, and closed her door, knowing the kindest thing was toleave me alone.A lot of people lacked that gift: knowing when to fuck o . People love talking, and Ihave never been a huge talker.
I carry on an inner monologue, but the words often don’treach my lips. She looks nice today, I’d think, but somehow it wouldn’t occur to me to sayit out loud. My mom talked, my sister talked. I’d been raised to listen. So, sitting on thecouch by myself, not talking, felt decadent. I leafed through one of Go’s magazines,ipped through TV channels, nally alighting on an old black-and-white show, men infedoras scribbling notes while a pretty housewife explained that her husband was awayin Fresno, which made the two cops look at each other signi cantly and nod.
I thoughtof Gilpin and Boney and my stomach lurched.In my pocket, my disposable cell phone made a mini-jackpot sound that meant I hada text:im outside open the doorAMY ELLIOTT DUNNEAPRIL 28, 2011DIARY ENTRYJust got to keep on keeping on, that’s what Mama Mo says, and when she says it—hersureness, each word emphasized, as if it really were a viable life strategy—the clichéstops being a set of words and turns into something real. Valuable. Keep on keeping on,exactly! I think.I do love that about the Midwest: People don’t make a big deal about everything. Noteven death.
Mama Mo will just keep on keeping on until the cancer shuts her down, andthen she will die.So I’m keeping my head down and making the best of a bad situation, and I mean that inthe deep, literal Mama Mo usage. I keep my head down and do my work: I drive Mo todoctor’s appointments and chemo appointments. I change the sickly water in the owervase in Nick’s father’s room, and I drop o cookies for the sta so they take good care ofhim.I’m making the best of a really bad situation, and the situation is mostly bad becausemy husband, who brought me here, who uprooted me to be closer to his ailing parents,seems to have lost all interest in both me and said ailing parents.Nick has written o his father entirely: He won’t even say the man’s name.
I knowevery time we get a phone call from Comfort Hill, Nick is hoping it’s the announcementthat his dad is dead. As for Mo, Nick sat with his mom during a single chemo session andpronounced it unbearable. He said he hated hospitals, he hated sick people, he hated theslowly ticking time, the IV bag dripping molasses-slow. He just couldn’t do it. And whenI tried to talk him back into it, when I tried to sti en his spine with some gotta do whatyou gotta do, he told me to do it. So I did, I have.
Mama Mo, of course, takes on theburden of his blame. We sat one day, partly watching a romantic comedy on mycomputer but mostly chatting, while the IV dripped … so … slowly, and as the spunkyheroine tripped over a sofa, Mo turned to me and said, “Don’t be too hard on Nick.About not wanting to do this kind of thing.
I just always doted on him, I babied him—how could you not? That face. And so he has trouble doing hard things. But I truly don’tmind, Amy. Truly.”“You should mind,” I said.“Nick doesn’t have to prove his love for me,” she said, patting my hand. “I know heloves me.”I admire Mo’s unconditional love, I do. So I don’t tell her what I have found on Nick’scomputer, the book proposal for a memoir about a Manhattan magazine writer whoreturns to his Missouri roots to care for both his ailing parents.
Nick has all sorts ofbizarre things on his computer, and sometimes I can’t resist a little light snooping—itgives me a clue as to what my husband is thinking. His search history gave me thelatest: noir lms and the website of his old magazine and a study on the MississippiRiver, whether it’s possible to free- oat from here to the Gulf. I know what he pictures:oating down the Mississippi, like Huck Finn, and writing an article about it.
Nick isalways looking for angles.I was nosing through all this when I found the book proposal.Double Lives: A Memoir of Ends and Beginnings will especially resonate with Gen Xmales, the original man-boys, who are just beginning to experience the stress andpressures involved with caring for aging parents. In Double Lives, I will detail:• My growing understanding of a troubled, once-distant father• My painful, forced transformation from a carefree young man into thehead of a family as I deal with the imminent death of a much loved mother• The resentment my Manhattanite wife feels at this detour in herpreviously charmed life.
My wife, it should be mentioned, is Amy Elliott Dunne,the inspiration for the best-selling Amazing Amy series.The proposal was never completed, I assume because Nick realized he wasn’t goingto ever understand his once-distant father; and because Nick was shirking all “head ofthe family” duties; and because I wasn’t expressing any anger about my new life. A littlefrustration, yes, but no book-worthy rage. For so many years, my husband has laudedthe emotional solidity of midwesterners: stoic, humble, without a ectation! But thesearen’t the kinds of people who provide good memoir material. Imagine the jacket copy:People behaved mostly well and then they died.Still, it stings a bit, “the resentment my Manhattanite wife feels.” Maybe I dofeel … stubborn.
I think of how consistently lovely Maureen is, and I worry that Nickand I were not meant to be matched. That he would be happier with a woman whothrills at husband care and homemaking, and I’m not disparaging these skills: I wish Ihad them. I wish I cared more that Nick always has his favorite toothpaste, that I knowhis collar size o the top of my head, that I am an unconditionally loving woman whosegreatest happiness is making my man happy.I was that way, for a while, with Nick. But it was unsustainable. I’m not sel essenough.
Only child, as Nick points out regularly.But I try. I keep on keeping on, and Nick runs around town like a kid again. He’shappy to be back in his rightful prom-king place—he dropped about ten pounds, he gota new haircut, he bought new jeans, he looks freakin’ great. But I only know that fromthe glimpses of him coming home or going back out, always in a pretend hurry. Youwouldn’t like it, his standard response anytime I ask to come with him, wherever it is hegoes. Just like he jettisoned his parents when they were of no use to him, he’s droppingme because I don’t t in his new life. He’d have to work to make me comfortable here,and he doesn’t want to do that. He wants to enjoy himself.Stop it, stop it. I must look on the bright side.
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