flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 72

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You really think she can go that fast from hating you so much to falling inlove with you again?”It was the fifth anniversary of our conversation on this topic.“Go, yeah, I do. Amy was never a person with any sort of bullshit detector. If yousaid she looked beautiful, she knew that was a fact. If you said she was brilliant, itwasn’t attery, it was her due. So yeah, I think a good chunk of her truly believes that ifI can only see the error of my ways, of course I’ll be in love with her again. Because whyin God’s name wouldn’t I be?”“And if it turns out she’s developed a bullshit detector?”“You know Amy; she needs to win. She’s less pissed o that I cheated than that Ipicked someone else over her. She’ll want me back just to prove that she’s the winner.Don’t you agree? Just seeing me begging her to come back so I can worship herproperly, it will be hard for her to resist.

Don’t you think?”“I think it’s a decent idea,” she said in the way you might wish someone good luck onthe lottery.“Hey, if you’ve got something better, by all fucking means.”We snapped like that at each other now. We’d never done that before. After thepolice found the woodshed, they grilled Go, hard, just as Tanner had predicted: Did sheknow? Did she help?I’d expected her to come home that night, brimming with curse words and fury, butall I got was an embarrassed smile as she slipped past me to her room in the house shehad double-mortgaged to cover Tanner’s retainer.I had put my sister in nancial and legal jeopardy because of my shitty decisions.The whole situation made Go feel resentful and me ashamed, a lethal combination fortwo people trapped in small confines.I tried a different subject: “I’ve been thinking about phoning Andie now that—”“Yeah, that would be genius-smart, Nick.

Then she can go back on Ellen Abbott—”“She didn’t go on Ellen Abbott. She had a press conference that Ellen Abbott carried.She’s not evil, Go.”“She gave the press conference because she was pissed at you. I sorta wish you’d justkept fucking her.”“Nice.”“What would you even say to her?”“I’m sorry.”“You are definitely fucking sorry,” she muttered.“I just— I hate how it ended.”“The last time you saw Andie, she bit you,” Go said in an overly patient voice. “Idon’t think the two of you have anything else to say. You are the prime suspect in amurder investigation.

You have forfeited the right to a smooth breakup. For fuck’s sake,Nick.”We were growing sick of each other, something I never thought could happen. It wasmore than basic stress, more than the danger I’d deposited on Go’s doorstep. Those tenseconds just a week ago, when I’d opened the door of the woodshed, expecting Go toread my mind as always, and what Go had read was that I’d killed my wife: I couldn’tget over that, and neither could she.

I caught her looking at me now and then with thesame steeled chill with which she looked at our father: just another shitty male taking upspace. I’m sure I looked at her through our father’s miserable eyes sometimes: justanother petty woman resenting me.I let out a gust of air, stood up, and squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.“I think I should head home,” I said.

I felt a wave of nausea. “I can’t stand thisanymore. Waiting to be arrested, I can’t stand it.”Before she could stop me, I grabbed my keys, swung open the door, and the camerasbegan blasting, the shouts exploded from a crowd that was even larger than I’d feared:Hey, Nick, did you kill your wife? Hey, Margo, did you help your brother hide evidence?“Fucking shitbags,” Go spat. She stood next to me in solidarity, in her ButtholeSurfers T-shirt and boxers. A few protesters carried signs. A woman with stringy blondhair and sunglasses shook a poster board: Nick, where is AMY?The shouts got louder, frantic, baiting my sister: Margo, is your brother a wife killer?Did Nick kill his wife and baby? Margo, are you a suspect? Did Nick kill his wife? Did Nick killhis baby?I stood, trying to hold my ground, refusing to let myself step back into the house.Suddenly, Go was crouching behind me, cranking the spigot near the steps.

She turnedon the hose full-bore—a hard, steady jet—and blasted all those cameramen andprotesters and pretty journalists in their TV-ready suits, sprayed them like animals.She was giving me covering re. I shot into my car and tore o , leaving themdripping on the front lawn, Go laughing shrilly.It took ten minutes for me to nudge my car from my driveway into my garage,inching my way slowly, slowly forward, parting the angry ocean of human beings—there were at least twenty protesters in front of my home, in addition to the cameracrews.

My neighbor Jan Teverer was one of them. She and I made eye contact, and sheaimed her poster at me: WHERE IS AMY, NICK?Finally, I was inside, and the garage door came buzzing down. I sat in the heat of theconcrete space, breathing.Everywhere felt like a jail now—doors opening and closing and opening and closing,and me never feeling safe.I spent the rest of my day picturing how I’d kill Amy. It was all I could think of:nding a way to end her. Me smashing in Amy’s busy, busy brain.

I had to give Amy herdue: I may have been dozing the past few years, but I was fucking wide awake now. Iwas electric again, like I had been in the early days of our marriage.I wanted to do something, make something happen, but there was nothing to bedone. By late evening, the camera crews were all gone, though I couldn’t risk leavingthe house. I wanted to walk. I settled for pacing. I was wired dangerously tight.Andie had screwed me over, Marybeth had turned against me, Go had lost a crucialmeasure of faith. Boney had trapped me. Amy had destroyed me. I poured a drink.

Itook a slug, tightened my ngers around the curves of the tumbler, then hurled it at thewall, watched the glass burst into reworks, heard the tremendous shatter, smelled thecloud of bourbon. Rage in all five senses. Those fucking bitches.I’d tried all my life to be a decent guy, a man who loved and respected women, a guywithout hang-ups. And here I was, thinking nasty thoughts about my twin, about mymother-in-law, about my mistress.

I was imagining bashing in my wife’s skull.A knock came at the door, a loud, furious bang-bang-bang that rattled me out of mynightmare brain.I opened the door, flung it wide, greeting fury with fury.It was my father, standing on my doorstep like some awful specter summoned by myhatefulness. He was breathing heavily and sweating. His shirtsleeve was torn and hishair was wild, but his eyes had their usual dark alertness that made him seem viciouslysane.“Is she here?” he snapped.“Who, Dad, who are you looking for?”“You know who.” He pushed past me, started marching through the living room,trailing mud, his hands balled, his gravity far forward, forcing him to keep walking orfall down, muttering bitchbitchbitch. He smelled of mint. Real mint, not manufactured,and I saw a smear of green on his trousers, as if he’d been stomping through someone’sgarden.Little bitch that little bitch, he kept muttering.

Through the dining room, into thekitchen, flipping on lights. A waterbug scuttled up the wall.I followed him, trying to get him to calm down, Dad, Dad, why don’t you sit down,Dad, do you want a glass of water, Dad … He stomped downstairs, clumps of mud fallingo his shoes. My hands turtled into sts. Of course this bastard would show up andactually make things worse.“Dad! Goddammit, Dad! No one is here but me. Just me.” He ung open the guestroom door, then went back up to the living room, ignoring me—“Dad!”I didn’t want to touch him.

I was afraid I’d hit him. I was afraid I’d cry.I blocked him as he tried to go upstairs to the bedroom. I placed one hand on thewall, one on the banister—human barricade. “Dad! Look at me.”His words came out in a furious spittle. “You tell her, you tell that little ugly bitch it’snot over. She’s not better than me, you tell her. She’s not too good for me. She doesn’tget to have a say.

That ugly bitch will have to learn—”I swear I saw a blank whiteness for just a second, a moment of complete, jarringclarity. I stopped trying to block my father’s voice for once and let it throb in my ears. Iwas not that man: I didn’t hate and fear all women. I was a one-woman misogynist. If Idespised only Amy, focused all my fury and rage and venom on the one woman whodeserved it, that didn’t make me my father. That made me sane.Little bitch little bitch little bitch.I had never hated my father more for making me truly love those words.Fucking bitch fucking bitch.I grabbed him by the arm, hard, and herded him into the car, slammed the door. Herepeated the incantation all the way to Comfort Hill.

I pulled up to the home in theentry reserved for ambulances, and I went to his side, swung open the door, yanked himout by the arm, and walked him just inside the doors.Then I turned my back and went home.Fucking bitch fucking bitch.But there was nothing I could do except beg. My bitch wife had left me with nothingbut my sorry dick in my hand, begging her to come home. Print, online, TV, wherever,all I could do was hope my wife saw me playing good husband, saying the words shewanted me to say: capitulation, complete.

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