flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 38
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“It seems like you’re really casting aboutfor someone to blame.”“Besides me? Yes, I am. Look, I did not marry Amy for her money. You really shouldtalk more with Amy’s parents. They know me, they know my character.” They don’t knoweverything, I thought, my stomach seizing. Boney was watching me; she looked sort ofsorry for me.
Gilpin didn’t even seem to be listening.“You bumped up the life insurance coverage on your wife to one-point-two million,”Gilpin said with mock weariness. He even pulled a hand over his long, thin-jawed face.“Amy did that herself!” I said quickly. The cops both just looked at me and waited. “Imean, I led the paperwork, but it was Amy’s idea. She insisted. I swear, I couldn’t careless, but Amy said—she said, given the change in her income, it made her feel moresecure or something, or it was a smart business decision.
Fuck, I don’t know, I don’tknow why she wanted it. I didn’t ask her to.”“Two months ago, someone did a search on your laptop,” Boney continued. “BodyFloat Mississippi River. Can you explain that?”I took two deep breaths, nine seconds to pull myself together.“God, that was just a dumb book idea,” I said. “I was thinking about writing a book.”“Hunh,” Boney replied.“Look, here’s what I think is happening,” I began. “I think a lot of people watch thesenews programs where the husband is always this awful guy who kills his wife, and theyare seeing me through that lens, and some really innocent, normal things are beingtwisted.
This is turning into a witch hunt.”“That’s how you explain those credit-card bills?” Gilpin asked.“I told you, I can’t explain the fucking credit-card bills because I have nothing to dowith them. It’s your fucking job to figure out where they came from!”They sat silent, side by side, waiting.“What is currently being done to nd my wife?” I asked. “What leads are youexploring, besides me?”The house began shaking, the sky ripped, and through the back window, we couldsee a jet shooting past, right over the river, buzzing us.“F-10,” Rhonda said.“Nah, too small,” Gilpin said. “It’s got to be—”“It’s an F-10.”Boney leaned toward me, hands entwined.
“It’s our job to make sure you are in thehundred percent clear, Nick,” she said. “I know you want that too. Now if you can justhelp us out with the few little tangles—because that’s what they are, they keep trippingus up.”“Maybe it’s time I got a lawyer.”The cops exchanged another look, as if they’d settled a bet.AMY ELLIOTT DUNNEOCTOBER 21, 2011DIARY ENTRYNick’s mom is dead.
I haven’t been able to write because Nick’s mom is dead, and herson has come unmoored. Sweet, tough Maureen. She was up and moving around untildays before she died, refusing to discuss any sort of slowdown. “I just want to live until Ican’t anymore,” she said. She’d gotten into knitting caps for other chemo patients (sheherself was done done done after one round, no interest in prolonging life if it meant“more tubes”), so I’ll remember her always surrounded by bright knots of wool: red andyellow and green, and her ngers moving, the needles click-clacking while she talked inher contented-cat voice, all deep, sleepy purr.And then one morning in September she woke but didn’t really wake, didn’t becomeMaureen.
She was a bird-size woman overnight, that fast, all wrinkles and shell, hereyes darting around the room, unable to place anything, including herself. So then camethe hospice, a gently lit, cheerful place with paintings of women in bonnets and rollinghills of bounty, and snack machines, and small co ees. The hospice was not expected tox her or help her but just to make sure she died comfortably, and just three days later,she did. Very matter-of-fact, the way Maureen would have wanted it (although I’m sureshe would have rolled her eyes at that phrase: the way Maureen would have wanted it).Her wake was modest but nice—with hundreds of people, her look-alike sister fromOmaha bustling by proxy, pouring co ee and Baileys and handing out cookies andtelling funny stories about Mo. We buried her on a gusty, warm morning, Go and Nickleaning in to each other as I stood nearby, feeling intrusive.
That night in bed, Nick letme put my arms around him, his back to me, but after a few minutes he got up,whispered, “Got to get some air,” and left the house.His mother had always mothered him—she insisted on coming by once a week andironing for us, and when she was done ironing, she’d say, “I’ll just help tidy,” and aftershe’d left, I’d look in the fridge and nd she’d peeled and sliced his grapefruit for him,put the pieces in a snap-top container, and then I’d open the bread and discover all thecrusts had been cut away, each slice returned half naked. I am married to a thirty-fouryear-old man who is still offended by bread crusts.But I tried to do the same those rst weeks after his mom passed. I snipped the breadcrusts, I ironed his T-shirts, I baked a blueberry pie from his mom’s recipe.
“I don’t needto be babied, really, Amy,” he said as he stared at the loaf of skinned breads. “I let mymom do it because it made her happy, but I know you don’t like that nurturing stuff.”So we’re back to black squares. Sweet, doting, loving Nick is gone. Gru , peeved,angry Nick is back. You are supposed to lean on your spouse in hard times, but Nickseems to have gone even farther away. He is a mama’s boy whose mama is dead. Hedoesn’t want anything to do with me.He uses me for sex when he needs to. He presses me against a table or over the backof the bed and fucks me, silent until the last few moments, those few quick grunts, andthen he releases me, he puts a palm on the small of my back, his one gesture ofintimacy, and he says something that is supposed to make it seem like a game: “You’reso sexy, sometimes I can’t control myself.” But he says it in a dead voice.Quiz: Your husband, with whom you once shared a wonderful sex life, has turneddistant and cold—he only wants sex his way, on his time.
You:a) Withhold sex further—he’s not going to win this game!b) Cry and whine and demand answers he’s not yet ready to give, furtheralienating him.c) Have faith that this is just a bump in a long marriage—he is in a darkplace—so try to be understanding and wait it out.Answer: C. Right?It bothers me that my marriage is disintegrating and I don’t know what to do. You’dthink my parents, the double psychologists, would be the obvious people to talk to, but Ihave too much pride.
They would not be good for marital advice: They are soul mates,remember? They are all peaks, no valleys—a single, in nite burst of marital ecstasy. Ican’t tell them I am screwing up the one thing I have left: my marriage. They’dsomehow write another book, a ctional rebuke in which Amazing Amy celebrated themost fantastic, fulfilling, bump-free little marriage ever … because she put her mind to it.But I worry. All the time. I know I’m already too old for my husband’s tastes.
BecauseI used to be his ideal, six years ago, and so I’ve heard his ruthless comments aboutwomen nearing forty: how pathetic he nds them, overdressed, out at bars, oblivious totheir lack of appeal. He’d come back from a night out drinking, and I’d ask him how thebar was, whatever bar, and he’d so often say: “Totally inundated by Lost Causes,” hiscode for women my age. At the time, a girl barely in her thirties, I’d smirked along withhim as if that would never happen to me. Now I am his Lost Cause, and he’s trappedwith me, and maybe that’s why he’s so angry.I’ve been indulging in toddler therapy.
I walk over to Noelle’s every day and I let hertriplets paw at me. The little plump hands in my hair, the sticky breath on my neck. Youcan understand why women always threaten to devour children: She is just to eat! I couldeat him with a spoon! Although watching her three children toddle to her, sleep-stainedfrom their nap, rubbing their eyes while they make their way to Mama, little handstouching her knee or arm as if she were home base, as if they knew they were safe … ithurts me sometimes to watch.Yesterday I had a particularly needful afternoon at Noelle’s, so maybe that’s why Idid something stupid.Nick comes home and nds me in the bedroom, fresh from a shower, and pretty soonhe is pushing me against the wall, pushing himself inside me.
When he is done andreleases me, I can see the wet kiss of my mouth against the blue paint. As he sits on theedge of the bed, panting, he says, “Sorry about that. I just needed you.”Not looking at me.I go to him and put my arms around him, pretending what we’d just done wasnormal, a pleasant marital ritual, and I say, “I’ve been thinking.”“Yeah, what’s that?”“Well, now might be the right time.
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