flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 53
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Mizzou Football: A History in Pictures. WeRemember 9/11. Something Dumb with Kittens. I knew I needed a pliant friend for myplan, someone I could load up with awful stories about Nick, someone who wouldbecome overly attached to me, someone who’d be easy to manipulate, who wouldn’tthink too hard about anything I said because she felt privileged to hear it. Noelle wasthe obvious choice, and when she told me she was pregnant again—triplets weren’tenough, apparently—I realized I could be pregnant too.A search online: how to drain your toilet for repair.Noelle invited for lemonade.
Lots of lemonade.Noelle peeing in my drained, unflushable toilet, each of us so terribly embarrassed!Me, a small glass jar, the pee in my toilet going into the glass jar.Me, a well-laid history of needle/blood phobia.Me, the glass jar of pee hidden in my purse, a doctor’s appointment (oh, I can’t do ablood test, I have a total phobia of needles … urine test, that’ll do fine, thank you).Me, a pregnancy on my medical record.Me, running to Noelle with the good news.Perfect.
Nick gets another motive, I get to be sweet missing pregnant lady, myparents su er even more, Ellen Abbott can’t resist. Honestly, it was thrilling to beselected nally, o cially for Ellen among all the hundreds of other cases. It’s sort of likea talent competition: You do the best you can, and then it’s out of your hands, it’s up tothe judges.And, oh, does she hate Nick and love me. I wished my parents weren’t getting suchspecial treatment, though. I watch them on the news coverage, my mom thin and reedy,the cords in her neck like spindly tree branches, always exed. I see my dad grownruddy with fear, the eyes a little too wide, the smile squared. He’s a handsome man,usually, but he’s beginning to look like a caricature, a possessed clown doll. I know Ishould feel sorry for them, but I don’t. I’ve never been more to them than a symbolanyway, the walking ideal.
Amazing Amy in the esh. Don’t screw up, you are AmazingAmy. Our only one. There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child—you grow up knowing you aren’t allowed to disappoint, you’re not even allowed todie. There isn’t a replacement toddling around; you’re it. It makes you desperate to beflawless, and it also makes you drunk with the power. In such ways are despots made.This morning I stroll over to Dorothy’s o ce to get a soda. It’s a tiny wood-paneledroom. The desk seems to have no purpose other than holding Dorothy’s collection ofsnow globes from places that seem unworthy of commemoration: Gulf Shores, Alabama.Hilo, Arkansas.
When I see the snow globes, I don’t see paradise, I see overheatedhillbillies with sunburns tugging along wailing, clumsy children, smacking them withone hand, with the other clutching giant nonbiodegradable Styrofoam cups of warmcorn-syrupy drinks.Dorothy has one of those ’70s kitten-in-a-tree posters—Hang in There! She posts herposter with all sincerity. I like to picture her running into some self-impressedWilliamsburg bitch, all Bettie Page bangs and pointy glasses, who owns the same posterironically.
I’d like to listen to them try to negotiate each other. Ironic people alwaysdissolve when confronted with earnestness, it’s their kryptonite. Dorothy has anothergem taped to the wall by the soda machine, showing a toddler asleep on the toilet—TooTired to Tinkle. I’ve been thinking about stealing this one, a ngernail under the oldyellow tape, while I distract-chat with Dorothy. I bet I could get some decent cash for iton eBay—I’d like to keep some cash coming in—but I can’t do it, because that wouldcreate an electronic trail, and I’ve read plenty about those from my myriad true-crimebooks.
Electronic trails are bad: Don’t use a cell phone that’s registered to you, becausethe cell towers can ping your location. Don’t use your ATM or credit card. Use onlypublic computers, well tra cked. Beware of the number of cameras that can be on anygiven street, especially near a bank or a busy intersection or bodegas.
Not that there areany bodegas down here. There are no cameras either, in our cabin complex. I know—Iasked Dorothy, pretending it was a safety issue.“Our clients aren’t exactly Big Brother types,” she said. “Not that they’re criminals,but they don’t usually like to be on the radar.”No, they don’t seem like they’d appreciate that. There’s my friend Je , who keeps hisodd hours and returns with suspicious amounts of undocumented sh that he stores inmassive ice chests.
He is literally shy. At the far cabin is a couple who are probably intheir forties, but meth-weathered, so they look at least sixty. They stay inside most of thetime, aside from occasional wild-eyed treks to the laundry room—darting across thegravel parking lot with their clothes in trash bags, some sort of tweaky spring cleaning.Hellohello, they say, always twice with two head nods, then continue on their way. Theman sometimes has a boa constrictor wrapped around his neck, though the snake isnever acknowledged, by me or him. In addition to these regulars, a goodly amount ofsingle women straggle through, usually with bruises. Some seem embarrassed, othershorribly sad.One moved in yesterday, a blond girl, very young, with brown eyes and a split lip.She sat on her front porch—the cabin next to mine—smoking a cigarette, and when wecaught each other’s eye, she sat up straight, proud, her chin jutted out.
No apology inher. I thought: I need to be like her. I will make a study of her: She is who I can be for a bit—the abused tough girl hiding out until the storm passes over.After a few hours of morning TV—scanning for any news on the Amy Elliott Dunnecase—I slip into my clammy bikini. I’ll go to the pool. Float a bit, take a vacation frommy harpy brain. The pregnancy news was gratifying, but there is still so much I don’tknow. I planned so hard, but there are things beyond my control, spoiling my vision ofhow this should go. Andie hasn’t done her part.
The diary may need some help beingfound. The police haven’t made a move to arrest Nick. I don’t know what they’ve alldiscovered, and I don’t like it. I’m tempted to make a call, a tip-line call, to nudge themin the right direction. I’ll wait a few more days. I have a calendar on my wall, and Imark three days from now with the words CALL TODAY. So I know that’s how long I’veagreed to wait. Once they find the diary, things will move quickly.Outside, it’s jungle-hot once again, the cicadas closing in. My in atable raft is pinkwith mermaids on it and too small for me—my calves dangle in the water—but it keepsme floating aimlessly for a good hour, which is something I’ve learned “I” like to do.I can see a blond head bobbing across the parking lot, and then the girl with the splitlip comes through the chain-link gate with one of the bath towels from the cabins, nobigger than a tea towel, and a pack of Merits and a book and SPF 120.
Lung cancer butnot skin. She settles herself and applies the lotion carefully, which is di erent from theother beat-up women who come here—they slather themselves in baby oil, leave greasyshadows on the lawn chairs.The girl nods to me, the nod men give each other when they sit down at a bar. She isreading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.
A sci- girl. Abused women likeescapism, of course.“Good book,” I toss over to her, a harmless conversational beach ball.“Someone left it in my cabin. It was this or Black Beauty.” She puts on fat, cheapsunglasses.“Not bad either. Black Stallion’s better, though.”She looks up at me with sunglasses still on. Two black bee-eyed discs. “Hunh.”She turns back to her book, the pointed I am now reading gesture usually seen oncrowded airplanes. And I am the annoying busybody next to her who hogs the armrestand says things like “Business or pleasure?”“I’m Nancy,” I say. A new name—not Lydia—which isn’t smart in these crampedquarters, but it comes out.
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