flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 8

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Gilpin gotdown on his knees, eyeing the overturned ottoman.“Uh, I’m a little freaked out, obviously,” I started.“I don’t blame you at all, Nick,” Gilpin said earnestly. He had pale blue eyes thatjittered in place, an unnerving tic.“Can we do something? To find my wife. I mean, because she’s clearly not here.”Boney pointed at the wedding portrait on the wall: me in my tux, a block of teethfrozen on my face, my arms curved formally around Amy’s waist; Amy, her blond hairtightly coiled and sprayed, her veil blowing in the beach breeze of Cape Cod, her eyesopen too wide because she always blinked at the last minute and she was trying so hardnot to blink. The day after Independence Day, the sulfur from the reworks minglingwith the ocean salt—summer.The Cape had been good to us. I remember discovering several months in that Amy,my girlfriend, was also quite wealthy, a treasured only child of creative-genius parents.An icon of sorts, thanks to a namesake book series that I thought I could remember as akid.

Amazing Amy. Amy explained this to me in calm, measured tones, as if I were apatient waking from a coma. As if she’d had to do it too many times before and it hadgone badly—the admission of wealth that’s greeted with too much enthusiasm, thedisclosure of a secret identity that she herself didn’t create.Amy told me who and what she was, and then we went out to the Elliotts’ historicallyregistered home on Nantucket Sound, went sailing together, and I thought: I am a boyfrom Missouri, ying across the ocean with people who’ve seen much more than I have. If Ibegan seeing things now, living big, I could still not catch up with them. It didn’t make mefeel jealous. It made me feel content.

I never aspired to wealth or fame. I was not raisedby big-dreamer parents who pictured their child as a future president. I was raised bypragmatic parents who pictured their child as a future o ce worker of some sort,making a living of some sort. To me, it was heady enough to be in the Elliotts’proximity, to skim across the Atlantic and return to a plushly restored home built in1822 by a whaling captain, and there to prepare and eat meals of organic, healthfulfoods whose names I didn’t know how to pronounce. Quinoa.

I remember thinkingquinoa was a kind of fish.So we married on the beach on a deep blue summer day, ate and drank under awhite tent that billowed like a sail, and a few hours in, I sneaked Amy o into the dark,toward the waves, because I was feeling so unreal, I believed I had become merely ashimmer. The chilly mist on my skin pulled me back, Amy pulled me back, toward thegolden glow of the tent, where the gods were feasting, everything ambrosia. Our wholecourtship was just like that.Boney leaned in to examine Amy.

“Your wife is very pretty.”“She is, she’s beautiful,” I said, and felt my stomach lilt.“What anniversary today?” she asked.“Five.”I was jittering from one foot to another, wanting to do something. I didn’t want themto discuss how lovely my wife was, I wanted them to go out and search for my fuckingwife. I didn’t say this out loud, though; I often don’t say things out loud, even when Ishould.

I contain and compartmentalize to a disturbing degree: In my belly-basementare hundreds of bottles of rage, despair, fear, but you’d never guess from looking at me.“Five, big one. Let me guess, reservations at Houston’s?” Gilpin asked. It was theonly upscale restaurant in town. You all really need to try Houston’s, my mom had saidwhen we moved back, thinking it was Carthage’s unique little secret, hoping it mightplease my wife.“Of course, Houston’s.”It was my fifth lie to the police. I was just starting.AMY ELLIOTT DUNNEJULY 5, 2008DIARY ENTRYI am fat with love! Husky with ardor! Morbidly obese with devotion! A happy, busybumblebee of marital enthusiasm.

I positively hum around him, fussing and xing. Ihave become a strange thing. I have become a wife. I nd myself steering the ship ofconversations—bulkily, unnaturally—just so I can say his name aloud. I have become awife, I have become a bore, I have been asked to forfeit my Independent YoungFeminist card.

I don’t care. I balance his checkbook, I trim his hair. I’ve gotten so retro,at one point I will probably use the word pocketbook, shu ing out the door in myswingy tweed coat, my lips painted red, on the way to the beauty parlor. Nothing bothersme. Everything seems like it will turn out ne, every bother transformed into anamusing story to be told over dinner. So I killed a hobo today, honey … hahahaha! Ah, wehave fun!Nick is like a good sti drink: He gives everything the correct perspective. Not adi erent perspective, the correct perspective.

With Nick, I realize it actually, trulydoesn’t matter if the electricity bill is a few days late, if my latest quiz turns out a littlelame. (My most recent, I’m not joking: “What kind of tree would you be?” Me, I’m anapple tree! This means nothing!) It doesn’t matter if the new Amazing Amy book hasbeen well and duly scorched, the reviews vicious, the sales a stunning plummet after alimp start. It doesn’t matter what color I paint our room, or how late tra c makes me,or whether our recycling really, truly does get recycled.

(Just level with me, New York,does it?) It doesn’t matter, because I have found my match. It’s Nick, laid-back and calm,smart and fun and uncomplicated. Untortured, happy. Nice. Big penis.All the stu I don’t like about myself has been pushed to the back of my brain.Maybe that is what I like best about him, the way he makes me. Not makes me feel, justmakes me. I am fun. I am playful.

I am game. I feel naturally happy and entirelysatis ed. I am a wife! It’s weird to say those words. (Seriously, about the recycling, NewYork—come on, just a wink.)We do silly things, like last weekend we drove to Delaware because neither of ushave ever had sex in Delaware.

Let me set the scene, because now it really is forposterity. We cross the state line—Welcome to Delaware!, the sign says, and also: SmallWonder, and also: The First State, and also: Home of Tax-Free Shopping.Delaware, a state of many rich identities.I point Nick down the rst dirt road I see, and we rumble ve minutes until we hitpine trees on all sides.

We don’t speak. He pushes his seat back. I pull up my skirt. I amnot wearing undies, I can see his mouth turn down and his face go slack, the drugged,determined look he gets when he’s turned on. I climb atop him, my back to him, facingthe windshield. I’m pressed against the steering wheel, and as we move together, thehorn emits tiny bleats that mimic me, and my hand makes a smearing noise as I press itagainst the windshield. Nick and I can come anywhere; neither of us gets stage fright,it’s something we’re both rather proud of.

Then we drive right back home. I eat beefjerky and ride with bare feet on the dashboard.We love our house. The house that Amazing Amy built. A Brooklyn brownstone myparents bought for us, right on the Promenade, with the big wide-screen view ofManhattan. It’s extravagant, it makes me feel guilty, but it’s perfect. I battle the spoiledrich-girl vibe where I can. Lots of DIY.

We painted the walls ourselves over twoweekends: spring green and pale yellow and velvety blue. In theory. None of the colorsturned out like we thought they would, but we pretend to like them anyway. We ll ourhome with knickknacks from ea markets; we buy records for Nick’s record player. Lastnight we sat on the old Persian rug, drinking wine and listening to the vinyl scratches asthe sky went dark and Manhattan switched on, and Nick said, “This is how I alwayspictured it. This is exactly how I pictured it.”On weekends, we talk to each other under four layers of bedding, our faces warmunder a sunlit yellow comforter.

Even the oorboards are cheerful: There are two oldcreaky slats that call out to us as we walk in the door. I love it, I love that it is ours, thatwe have a great story behind the ancient oor lamp, or the misshapen clay mug that sitsnear our co eepot, never holding anything but a single paper clip. I spend my daysthinking of sweet things to do for him—go buy a peppermint soap that will sit in hispalm like a warm stone, or maybe a slim slice of trout that I could cook and serve tohim, an ode to his riverboat days.

I know, I am ridiculous. I love it, though—I neverknew I was capable of being ridiculous over a man. It’s a relief. I even swoon over hissocks, which he manages to shed in adorably tangled poses, as if a puppy carried themin from another room.It is our one-year anniversary and I am fat with love, even though people kepttelling and telling us the rst year was going to be so hard, as if we were naive childrenmarching o to war. It wasn’t hard. We are meant to be married.

It is our one-yearanniversary, and Nick is leaving work at lunchtime; my treasure hunt awaits him. Theclues are all about us, about the past year together:Whenever my sweet hubby gets a coldIt is this dish that will soon be sold.Answer: the tom yum soup from Thai Town on President Street. The manager will bethere this afternoon with a taster bowl and the next clue.Also McMann’s in Chinatown and the Alice statue at Central Park. A grand tour ofNew York. We’ll end at the Fulton Street sh market, where we’ll buy a pair of beautifullobsters, and I will hold the container in my lap as Nick jitters nervously in the cabbeside me. We’ll rush home, and I will drop them in a new pot on our old stove with allthe nesse of a girl who has lived many Cape summers while Nick giggles and pretendsto hide in fear outside the kitchen door.I had suggested we get burgers.

Nick wanted us to go out— ve-star, fancy—somewhere with a clockwork of courses and namedropping waiters. So the lobsters are aperfect in-between, the lobsters are what everyone tells us (and tells us and tells us) thatmarriage is about: compromise!We’ll eat lobster with butter and have sex on the oor while a woman on one of ourold jazz records sings to us in her far-side-of-the-tunnel voice.

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