flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 45
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Do this because you never know. You alwaystake the extra step that others don’t, that’s who you are.Item 29: Say goodbye to Bleecker. Smell his little stinky cat breath one last time. Fillhis kibble dish in case people forget to feed him once everything starts.Item 33: Get the fuck out of Dodge.Check, check, check.I can tell you more about how I did everything, but I’d like you to know me rst.
NotDiary Amy, who is a work of ction (and Nick said I wasn’t really a writer, and why didI ever listen to him?), but me, Actual Amy. What kind of woman would do such a thing?Let me tell you a story, a true story, so you can begin to understand.To start: I should never have been born.My mother had five miscarriages and two stillbirths before me.One a year, in the fall, as if it were a seasonal duty, like crop rotation. They were allgirls; they were all named Hope. I’m sure it was my father’s suggestion—his optimisticimpulse, his tie-dyed earnestness: We can’t give up hope, Marybeth.
But give up Hope isexactly what they did, over and over again.The doctors ordered my parents to stop trying; they refused. They are not quitters.They tried and tried, and nally came me. My mother didn’t count on my being alive,couldn’t bear to think of me as an actual baby, a living child, a girl who would get tocome home. I would have been Hope 8, if things had gone badly.
But I entered the worldhollering—an electric, neon pink. My parents were so surprised, they realized they’dnever discussed a name, not a real one, for a real child. For my rst two days in thehospital, they didn’t name me. Each morning my mother would hear the door to herroom open and feel the nurse lingering in the doorway (I always pictured her vintage,with swaying white skirts and one of those folded caps like a Chinese take-out box). Thenurse would linger, and my mother would ask without even looking up, “Is she stillalive?”When I remained alive, they named me Amy, because it was a regular girl’s name, apopular girl’s name, a name a thousand other baby girls were given that year, so maybethe gods wouldn’t notice this little baby nestled among the others. Marybeth said if shewere to do it again, she’d name me Lydia.I grew up feeling special, proud.
I was the girl who battled oblivion and won. Thechances were about 1 percent, but I did it. I ruined my mother’s womb in the process—my own prenatal Sherman’s March. Marybeth would never have another baby. As achild, I got a vibrant pleasure out of this: just me, just me, only me.My mother would sip hot tea on the days of the Hopes’ birth-deaths, sit in a rockerwith a blanket, and say she was just “taking a little time for myself.” Nothing dramatic,my mother is too sensible to sing dirges, but she would get pensive, she would removeherself, and I would have none of it, needful thing that I was. I would clamber onto mymother’s lap, or thrust a crayoned drawing in her face, or remember a permission slipthat needed prompt attention. My father would try to distract me, try to take me to amovie or bribe me with sweets. No matter the ruse, it didn’t work.
I wouldn’t give mymother those few minutes.I’ve always been better than the Hopes, I was the one who made it.But I’ve always been jealous too, always—seven dead dancing princesses. They get tobe perfect without even trying, without even facing one moment of existence, while Iam stuck here on earth, and every day I must try, and every day is a chance to be lessthan perfect.It’s an exhausting way to live. I lived that way until I was thirty-one.And then, for about two years, everything was okay. Because of Nick.Nick loved me.
A six-o kind of love: He looooooved me. But he didn’t love me, me.Nick loved a girl who doesn’t exist. I was pretending, the way I often did, pretending tohave a personality. I can’t help it, it’s what I’ve always done: The way some womenchange fashion regularly, I change personalities. What persona feels good, what’scoveted, what’s au courant? I think most people do this, they just don’t admit it, or elsethey settle on one persona because they’re too lazy or stupid to pull off a switch.That night at the Brooklyn party, I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl aman like Nick wants: the Cool Girl.
Men always say that as the de ning compliment,don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funnywoman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games,drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgersinto her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehowmaintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. CoolGirls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their mendo whatever they want.
Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women arewilling to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl o ended me. I used to seemen—friends, coworkers, strangers—giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’dwant to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating awoman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like tobelieve that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them.
I’d want to grab the poor guy byhis lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much—noone loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re noteven pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the womana man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe thatyour man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly di erent version—maybe he’sa vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipsterartist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics.
There arevariations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basicallythe girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do youknow you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he saysthat to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” iscode for “I hate strong women.”)I waited patiently—years—for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to startreading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbookparties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we’d say, Yeah, he’s aCool Guy.But it never happened. Instead, women across the nation colluded in ourdegradation! Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl.
Men believed she existed—she wasn’t just a dreamgirl one in a million. Every girl was supposed to be this girl, andif you weren’t, then there was something wrong with you.But it’s tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it’s temptingto want to be the girl every guy wants. When I met Nick, I knew immediately that waswhat he wanted, and for him, I guess I was willing to try. I will accept my portion ofblame. The thing is, I was crazy about him at rst.
I found him perversely exotic, a goodole Missouri boy. He was so damn nice to be around. He teased things out in me that Ididn’t know existed: a lightness, a humor, an ease. It was as if he hollowed me out andlled me with feathers. He helped me be Cool Girl—I couldn’t have been Cool Girl withanyone else. I wouldn’t have wanted to. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy some of it: I ate aMoonPie, I walked barefoot, I stopped worrying. I watched dumb movies and atechemically laced foods.
I didn’t think past the rst step of anything, that was the key. Idrank a Coke and didn’t worry about how to recycle the can or about the acid puddlingin my belly, acid so powerful it could strip clean a penny. We went to a dumb movieand I didn’t worry about the o ensive sexism or the lack of minorities in meaningfulroles. I didn’t even worry whether the movie made sense. I didn’t worry about anythingthat came next. Nothing had consequence, I was living in the moment, and I could feelmyself getting shallower and dumber. But also happy.Until Nick, I’d never really felt like a person, because I was always a product.Amazing Amy has to be brilliant, creative, kind, thoughtful, witty, and happy. We justwant you to be happy.
Rand and Marybeth said that all the time, but they neverexplained how. So many lessons and opportunities and advantages, and they nevertaught me how to be happy. I remember always being ba ed by other children. I wouldbe at a birthday party and watch the other kids giggling and making faces, and I wouldtry to do that too, but I wouldn’t understand why. I would sit there with the tight elasticthread of the birthday hat parting the pudge of my underchin, with the grainy frostingof the cake bluing my teeth, and I would try to figure out why it was fun.With Nick, I understood nally. Because he was so much fun.
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