flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 4
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Go is slender andstrange-faced, which is not to say unattractive. Her features just take a moment to makesense: the broad jaw; the pinched, pretty nose; the dark globe eyes. If this were a periodmovie, a man would tilt back his fedora, whistle at the sight of her, and say, “Now,there’s a helluva broad!” The face of a ’30s screwball-movie queen doesn’t alwaystranslate in our pixie-princess times, but I know from our years together that men likemy sister, a lot, which puts me in that strange brotherly realm of being both proud andwary.“Do they still make pimento loaf?” she said by way of greeting, not looking up, justknowing it was me, and I felt the relief I usually felt when I saw her: Things might notbe great, but things would be okay.My twin, Go.
I’ve said this phrase so many times, it has become a reassuring mantrainstead of actual words: Mytwingo. We were born in the ’70s, back when twins wererare, a bit magical: cousins of the unicorn, siblings of the elves. We even have a dash oftwin telepathy. Go is truly the one person in the entire world I am totally myself with. Idon’t feel the need to explain my actions to her. I don’t clarify, I don’t doubt, I don’tworry. I don’t tell her everything, not anymore, but I tell her more than anyone else, byfar.
I tell her as much as I can. We spent nine months back to back, covering each other.It became a lifelong habit. It never mattered to me that she was a girl, strange for adeeply self-conscious kid. What can I say? She was always just cool.“Pimento loaf, that’s like lunch meat, right? I think they do.”“We should get some,” she said. She arched an eyebrow at me. “I’m intrigued.”Without asking, she poured me a draft of PBR into a mug of questionable cleanliness.When she caught me staring at the smudged rim, she brought the glass up to her mouthand licked the smudge away, leaving a smear of saliva.
She set the mug squarely infront of me. “Better, my prince?”Go rmly believes that I got the best of everything from our parents, that I was theboy they planned on, the single child they could a ord, and that she sneaked into thisworld by clamping onto my ankle, an unwanted stranger. (For my dad, a particularlyunwanted stranger.) She believes she was left to fend for herself throughout childhood, apitiful creature of random hand-me-downs and forgotten permission slips, tightenedbudgets and general regret.
This vision could be somewhat true; I can barely stand toadmit it.“Yes, my squalid little serf,” I said, and fluttered my hands in royal dispensation.I huddled over my beer. I needed to sit and drink a beer or three. My nerves werestill singing from the morning.“What’s up with you?” she asked. “You look all twitchy.” She icked some suds at me,more water than soap. The air-conditioning kicked on, ru ing the tops of our heads.We spent more time in The Bar than we needed to.
It had become the childhoodclubhouse we never had. We’d busted open the storage boxes in our mother’s basementone drunken night last year, back when she was alive but right near the end, when wewere in need of comfort, and we revisited the toys and games with much oohing andahhing between sips of canned beer. Christmas in August. After Mom died, Go movedinto our old house, and we slowly relocated our toys, piecemeal, to The Bar: aStrawberry Shortcake doll, now scentless, pops up on a stool one day (my gift to Go). Atiny Hot Wheels El Camino, one wheel missing, appears on a shelf in the corner (Go’s tome).We were thinking of introducing a board game night, even though most of ourcustomers were too old to be nostalgic for our Hungry Hungry Hippos, our Game of Lifewith its tiny plastic cars to be lled with tiny plastic pinhead spouses and tiny plasticpinhead babies. I couldn’t remember how you won.
(Deep Hasbro thought for the day.)Go re lled my beer, re lled her beer. Her left eyelid drooped slightly. It was exactlynoon, 12:00, and I wondered how long she’d been drinking. She’s had a bumpy decade.My speculative sister, she of the rocket-science brain and the rodeo spirit, dropped outof college and moved to Manhattan in the late ’90s. She was one of the original dot-comphenoms—made crazy money for two years, then took the Internet bubble bath in 2000.Go remained un appable. She was closer to twenty than thirty; she was ne. For acttwo, she got her degree and joined the gray-suited world of investment banking.
Shewas midlevel, nothing flashy, nothing blameful, but she lost her job—fast—with the 2008nancial meltdown. I didn’t even know she’d left New York until she phoned me fromMom’s house: I give up. I begged her, cajoled her to return, hearing nothing but peevedsilence on the other end. After I hung up, I made an anxious pilgrimage to herapartment in the Bowery and saw Gary, her beloved cus tree, yellow-dead on the reescape, and knew she’d never come back.The Bar seemed to cheer her up. She handled the books, she poured the beers.
Shestole from the tip jar semi-regularly, but then she did more work than me. We nevertalked about our old lives. We were Dunnes, and we were done, and strangely contentabout it.“So, what?” Go said, her usual way of beginning a conversation.“Eh.”“Eh, what? Eh, bad? You look bad.”I shrugged a yes; she scanned my face.“Amy?” she asked. It was an easy question. I shrugged again—a con rmation thistime, a whatcha gonna do? shrug.Go gave me her amused face, both elbows on the bar, hands cradling chin, hunkeringdown for an incisive dissection of my marriage.
Go, an expert panel of one. “Whatabout her?”“Bad day. It’s just a bad day.”“Don’t let her worry you.” Go lit a cigarette. She smoked exactly one a day. “Womenare crazy.” Go didn’t consider herself part of the general category of women, a word sheused derisively.I blew Go’s smoke back to its owner.
“It’s our anniversary today. Five years.”“Wow.” My sister cocked her head back. She’d been a bridesmaid, all in violet—“thegorgeous, raven-haired, amethyst-draped dame,” Amy’s mother had dubbed her—butanniversaries weren’t something she’d remember. “Jeez. Fuck. Dude.
That came fast.”She blew more smoke toward me, a lazy game of cancer catch. “She going to do one ofher, uh, what do you call it, not scavenger hunt—”“Treasure hunt,” I said.My wife loved games, mostly mind games, but also actual games of amusement, andfor our anniversary she always set up an elaborate treasure hunt, with each clue leadingto the hiding place of the next clue until I reached the end, and my present. It was whather dad always did for her mom on their anniversary, and don’t think I don’t see thegender roles here, that I don’t get the hint. But I did not grow up in Amy’s household, Igrew up in mine, and the last present I remember my dad giving my mom was an iron,set on the kitchen counter, no wrapping paper.“Should we make a wager on how pissed she’s going to get at you this year?” Goasked, smiling over the rim of her beer.The problem with Amy’s treasure hunts: I never gured out the clues.
Our rstanniversary, back in New York, I went two for seven. That was my best year. Theopening parley:This place is a bit of a hole in the wall,But we had a great kiss there one Tuesday last fall.Ever been in a spelling bee as a kid? That snowy second after the announcement ofthe word as you sift your brain to see if you can spell it? It was like that, the blankpanic.“An Irish bar in a not-so-Irish place,” Amy nudged.I bit the side of my lip, started a shrug, scanning our living room as if the answermight appear. She gave me another very long minute.“We were lost in the rain,” she said in a voice that was pleading on the way topeeved.I finished the shrug.“McMann’s, Nick. Remember, when we got lost in the rain in Chinatown trying tond that dim sum place, and it was supposed to be near the statue of Confucius but itturns out there are two statues of Confucius, and we ended up at that random Irish barall soaking wet, and we slammed a few whiskeys, and you grabbed me and kissed me,and it was—”“Right! You should have done a clue with Confucius, I would have gotten that.”“The statue wasn’t the point.
The place was the point. The moment. I just thought itwas special.” She said these last words in a childish lilt that I once found fetching.“It was special.” I pulled her to me and kissed her. “That smooch right there was myspecial anniversary reenactment. Let’s go do it again at McMann’s.”At McMann’s, the bartender, a big, bearded bear-kid, saw us come in and grinned,poured us both whiskeys, and pushed over the next clue.When I’m down and feeling blueThere’s only one place that will do.That one turned out to be the Alice in Wonderland statue at Central Park, which Amyhad told me—she’d told me, she knew she’d told me many times—lightened her moods asa child.
I do not remember any of those conversations. I’m being honest here, I justdon’t. I have a dash of ADD, and I’ve always found my wife a bit dazzling, in the purestsense of the word: to lose clear vision, especially from looking at bright light. It wasenough to be near her and hear her talk, it didn’t always matter what she was saying. Itshould have, but it didn’t.By the time we got to the end of the day, to exchanging our actual presents—thetraditional paper presents for the first year of marriage—Amy was not speaking to me.“I love you, Amy. You know I love you,” I said, tailing her in and out of the familypacks of dazed tourists parked in the middle of the sidewalk, oblivious andopenmouthed.
Amy was slipping through the Central Park crowds, maneuveringbetween laser-eyed joggers and scissor-legged skaters, kneeling parents and toddlerscareering like drunks, always just ahead of me, tight-lipped, hurrying nowhere. Metrying to catch up, grab her arm. She stopped nally, gave me a face unmoved as Iexplained myself, one mental nger tamping down my exasperation: “Amy, I don’t getwhy I need to prove my love to you by remembering the exact same things you do, theexact same way you do.
It doesn’t mean I don’t love our life together.”A nearby clown blew up a balloon animal, a man bought a rose, a child licked an icecream cone, and a genuine tradition was born, one I’d never forget: Amy always goingoverboard, me never, ever worthy of the effort. Happy anniversary, asshole.“I’m guessing— ve years—she’s going to get really pissed,” Go continued. “So I hopeyou got her a really good present.”“On the to-do list.”“What’s the, like, symbol, for five years? Paper?”“Paper is rst year,” I said.
At the end of Year One’s unexpectedly wrenchingtreasure hunt, Amy presented me with a set of posh stationery, my initials embossed atthe top, the paper so creamy I expected my ngers to come away moist. In return, I’dpresented my wife with a bright red dime-store paper kite, picturing the park, picnics,warm summer gusts. Neither of us liked our presents; we’d each have preferred theother’s. It was a reverse O. Henry.“Silver?” guessed Go. “Bronze? Scrimshaw? Help me out.”“Wood,” I said. “There’s no romantic present for wood.”At the other end of the bar, Sue neatly folded her newspaper and left it on the bartopwith her empty mug and a ve-dollar bill.
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