flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 39
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To start a family. Try to get pregnant.” I knowit’s crazy even as I say it, but I can’t help myself—I have become the crazy woman whowants to get pregnant because it will save her marriage.It’s humbling, to become the very thing you once mocked.He jerks away from me. “Now? Now is about the worst time to start a family, Amy.You have no job—”“I know, but I’d want to stay home with the baby anyway at first—”“My mom just died, Amy.”“And this would be new life, a new start.”He grips me by both arms and looks me right in the eye for the rst time in a week.“Amy, I think you think that now that my mom is dead, we’ll just frolic back to NewYork and have some babies, and you’ll get your old life back.
But we don’t have enoughmoney. We barely have enough money for the two of us to live here. You can’t imaginehow much pressure I feel, every day, to x this mess we’re in. To fucking provide. I can’thandle you and me and a few kids. You’ll want to give them everything you hadgrowing up, and I can’t. No private schools for the little Dunnes, no tennis and violinlessons, no summer homes. You’d hate how poor we’d be. You’d hate it.”“I’m not that shallow, Nick—”“You really think we’re in a great place right now, to have kids?”It is the closest we’ve gotten to discussing our marriage, and I can see he alreadyregrets saying something.“We’re under a lot of pressure, baby,” I say. “We’ve had a few bumps, and I know alot of it is my fault.
I just feel so at loose ends here …”“So we’re going to be one of those couples who has a kid to x their marriage?Because that always works out so well.”“We’ll have a baby because—”His eyes go dark, canine, and he grabs me by the arms again.“Just … No, Amy. Not right now. I can’t take one more bit of stress. I can’t handleone more thing to worry about. I am cracking under the pressure. I will snap.”For once I know he’s telling the truth.NICK DUNNESIX DAYS GONEThe rst forty-eight hours are key in any investigation. Amy had been gone, now,almost a week. A candlelight vigil would be held this evening in Tom Sawyer Park,which, according to the press, was “a favorite place of Amy Elliott Dunne’s.” (I’d neverknown Amy to set foot in the park; despite the name, it is not remotely quaint.
Generic,bereft of trees, with a sandbox that’s always full of animal feces; it is utterly unTwainy.) In the last twenty-four hours, the story had gone national—it was everywhere,just like that.God bless the faithful Elliotts. Marybeth phoned me last night, as I was trying torecover from the bombshell police interrogation.
My mother-in-law had seen the EllenAbbott show and pronounced the woman “an opportunistic ratings whore.” Nevertheless,we’d spent most of today strategizing how to handle the media.The media (my former clan, my people!) was shaping its story, and the media lovedthe Amazing Amy angle and the long-married Elliotts. No snarky commentary on thedismantling of the series or the authors’ near-bankruptcy—right now it was all heartsand flowers for the Elliotts. The media loved them.Me, not so much. The media was already turning up items of concern. Not only thestu that had been leaked—my lack of alibi, the possibly “staged” crime scene—butactual personality traits.
They reported that back in high school, I’d never dated one girllonger than a few months and thus was clearly a ladies’ man. They found out we had myfather in Comfort Hill and that I rarely visited, and thus I was an ingrate dadabandoner. “It’s a problem—they don’t like you,” Go said after every bit of newscoverage. “It’s a real, real problem, Lance.” The media had resurrected my rst name,which I’d hated since grade school, sti ed at the start of every school year when theteacher called roll: “It’s Nick, I go by Nick!” Every September, an opening-day rite:“Nick-I-go-by-Nick!” Always some smart-ass kid would spend recess parading around likea mincing gallant: “Hi, I’m Laaaance,” in a owy-shirted voice.
Then it would beforgotten again until the following year.But not now. Now it was all over the news, the dreaded three-name judgmentreserved for serial killers and assassins—Lance Nicholas Dunne—and there was no one Icould interrupt.Rand and Marybeth Elliott, Go, and I carpooled to the vigil together. It was unclearhow much information the Elliotts were receiving, how many damning updates abouttheir son-in-law. I knew they were aware of the “staged” scene: “I’m going to get someof my own people in there, and they’ll tell us just the opposite—that it clearly was thescene of a struggle,” Rand said con dently. “The truth is malleable; you just need to pickthe right expert.”Rand didn’t know about the other stu , the credit cards and the life insurance andthe blood and Noelle, my wife’s bitter best friend with the damning claims: abuse, greed,fear.
She was booked on Ellen Abbott tonight, post-vigil. Noelle and Ellen could bemutually disgusted by me for the viewing audience.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 byLance 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 packedit was, fucking 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 naildrumming on the window.“Feels almost like a double date.” Rand laughed, the laughter curving toward thehysterical: high-pitched and squeaky. Rand Elliott, genius psychologist, best-sellingauthor, friend to all, was unraveling.Marybeth had taken to self-medication: shots of clear liquor administered withabsolute precision, enough to take the edge o but stay sharp. Rand, on the other hand,was literally losing his head; I half expected to see it shoot o his shoulders on a jack-inthe-box spring—cuckoooooo! Rand’s schmoozy nature had turned manic: He gotdesperately chummy with everyone he met, wrapping his arms around cops, reporters,volunteers.
He was particularly tight with our Days Inn “liaison,” a gawky, shy kidnamed Donnie whom Rand liked to razz and inform he was doing so. “Ah, I’m justrazzing 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 abouthow much I wanted someone to do that, just a quick touch, and I suddenly let out agasp-sob, one quick teary moan.
I wanted someone, but I wasn’t sure if it was Andie orAmy.“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. Sincediscovering my situation—which is what we’d taken to calling my in delity—she’d gottena bit removed, her eyes distant, her face a constant mull. I was trying very hard not toresent it.As we entered the park, the camera crews were everywhere, not just local anymorebut 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 almostimmediately, 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 toany public event: a sensible black skirt, a gray-striped blouse, barrettes clipping eitherside of her limp hair.
I got a girl named Bony Moronie … The night was steamy; undereach of Boney’s armpits was a dark smiley face of perspiration. She actually grinned atme as if yesterday, the accusations—they were accusations, weren’t they?—hadn’thappened.The Elliotts and I led up the steps to a rickety makeshift stage. I looked backtoward my twin and she nodded at me and pantomimed a big breath, and I rememberedto breathe. Hundreds of faces were turned toward us, along with clicking, ashingcameras. 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, Iwalked up to the microphone. It was too low, mid-belly, and I wrestled with it a fewseconds, and it raised only an inch, the kind of malfunction that would normallyinfuriate me, but I could no longer be infuriated in public, so I took a breath and leaneddown and read the words that my sister had written for me: “My wife, Amy Dunne, hasbeen 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 isthe 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 herface, 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 theriver.“We ask you to contact us with any information. We light candles tonight in the hopeshe comes home soon and safely. I love you, Amy.”I kept my eyes moving anywhere but Andie.
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