Gone Girl (18 page)

And then suddenly there was a date, and the date was today, and Dunne family and friends were shaking off the October drizzle from umbrellas and carefully, conscientiously wiping their feet on the floor mat Maureen had brought for us this morning. The rug says:
All Are Friends Who Enter Here
. It is from Costco. I have learned about bulk shopping in my four weeks as a Mississippi River resident. Republicans go to Sam’s Club, Democrats go to Costco. But everyone buys bulk because – unlike Manhattanites – they all have space to store twenty-four jars of sweet pickles. And – unlike Manhattanites – they all have uses for twenty-four jars of sweet pickles. (No gathering is complete without a lazy Susan full of pickles and Spanish olives right from the jar. And a salt lick.)

I set the scene: It is one of those big-smelling days, when people bring the outdoors in with them, the scent of rain on their sleeves, in their hair. The older women – Maureen’s friends – present varying food items in plastic, dishwasher-safe containers they will later ask to be returned. And ask and ask. I know, now, that I am supposed to wash out the containers and drop each of them back by their proper homes – a Ziploc carpool – but when I first came here, I was unaware of the protocol. I dutifully recycled all the plastic containers, and so I had to go buy all new ones. Maureen’s best friend, Vicky, immediately noticed her container was brand-new, store-bought, an imposter, and when I explained my confusion, she widened her eyes in amazement:
So
that’s
how they do it in New York
.

But the housewarming: The older women are Maureen’s friends from long-ago PTA meetings, from book clubs, from the Shoe-Be-Doo-Be at the mall, where she spent forty hours a week slipping sensible block heels onto women of a certain age. (She can size a foot on sight – women’s 8, narrow! – it’s her go-to party trick.) All
Mo’s friends love Nick, and they all have stories about sweet things Nick has done for them over the years.

The younger women, the women representing the pool of possible Amy-friends, all sport the same bleached-blond wedge haircut, the same slip-on mules. They are the daughters of Maureen’s friends, and they all love Nick, and they all have stories about sweet things Nick has done for them over the years. Most of them are out of work from the mall closings, or their husbands are out of work from the mall closings, so they all offer me recipes for ‘cheap and easy eats’ that usually involve a casserole made from canned soup, butter, and a snack chip.

The men are nice and quiet and hunker in circles, talking about sports and smiling benevolently toward me.

Everyone is nice. They are literally
as nice as they can be
. Maureen, the tristate’s hardiest cancer patient, introduces me to all her friends the same way you’d show off a slightly dangerous new pet: ‘This is Nick’s wife, Amy, who was
born and raised
in New York City.’ And her friends, plump and welcoming, immediately suffer some strange Tourettesian episode: They repeat the words –
New York City
! – with clasped hands and say something that defies response:
That must have been neat
. Or, in reedy voices, they sing ‘
New York, New York
,’ rocking side to side with tiny jazz hands. Maureen’s friend from the shoe store, Barb, drawls ‘
Nue
York
Ceety
! Get a rope,’ and when I squint at her in confusion, she says, ‘Oh, it’s from that old salsa commercial!’ and when I still fail to connect, she blushes, puts a hand on my arm, and says, ‘I wouldn’t really hang you.’

Ultimately, everyone trails off into giggles and confesses they’ve never been to New York. Or that they’ve been – once – and didn’t care for it much. Then I say something like:
You’d like it
or
It’s definitely not for everyone
or
Mmm
, because I’ve run out of things to say.

‘Be friendly, Amy,’ Nick spits into my ear when we’re refilling drinks in the kitchen (midwesterners love two liters of soda, always two liters, and you pour them into big red plastic Solo cups, always).

‘I
am
,’ I whine. It really hurts my feelings, because if you asked anyone in that room whether I’d been friendly, I know they’d say yes.

Sometimes I feel like Nick has decided on a version of me that doesn’t exist. Since we’ve moved here, I’ve done girls’ nights out and charity walks, I’ve cooked casseroles for his dad and helped sell tickets for raffles. I tapped the last of my money to give to Nick and
Go so they could buy the bar they’ve always wanted, and I even put the check inside a card shaped like a mug of beer –
Cheers to You!
– and Nick just gave a flat begrudging thanks. I don’t know what to do. I’m trying.

We deliver the soda pops, me smiling and laughing even harder, a vision of grace and good cheer, asking everyone if I can get them anything else, complimenting women on ambrosia salads and crab dips and pickle slices wrapped in cream cheese wrapped in salami.

Nick’s dad arrives with Go. They stand silently on the doorstep, Midwest Gothic, Bill Dunne wiry and still handsome, a tiny Band-Aid on his forehead, Go grim-faced, her hair in barrettes, her eyes averted from her father.

‘Nick,’ Bill Dunne says, shaking his hand, and he steps inside, frowning at me. Go follows, grabs Nick, and pulls him back behind the door, whispering, ‘I have no idea where he is right now, headwise. Like if he’s having a bad day or if he’s just being a jackass. No idea.’

‘Okay, okay. Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him.’

Go shrugs pissily.

‘I’m serious, Go. Grab a beer and take a break. You are relieved of Dad duty for the next hour.’

I think:
If that had been me, he’d complain that I was being too sensitive
.

The older women keep swirling around me, telling me how Maureen has always said what a wonderful couple Nick and I are and she is right, we are clearly made for each other.

I prefer these well-meant cliche´s to the talk we heard before we got married.
Marriage is compromise and hard work, and then more hard work and communication and compromise. And then work
. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

The engagement party back in New York was the worst for this, all the guests hot with wine and resentment, as if every set of spouses had gotten into an argument on the way to the club. Or they remembered some argument. Like Binks. Binks Moriarty, my mom’s best friend’s eighty-eight-year-old mother, stopped me at the bar – bellowed, ‘Amy! I must talk to you!’ in an emergency-room voice. She twisted her precious rings on overknuckled fingers – twist, turn, creak – and fondled my arm (that old-person grope – cold fingers coveting your nice, soft, warm, new skin), and then Binks told me how her late husband of sixty-three years had trouble ‘keeping it in his pants.’ Binks said this with one of those
I’m almost dead, I can say this kind of stuff
grins and cataract-clouded eyes. ‘He just couldn’t keep it in his pants,’ the old lady said urgently, her hand
chilling my arm in a death grip. ‘But he loved me more than any of them.
I
know it, and
you
know it.’ The moral to the story being: Mr Binks was a cheating dickweasel, but, you know, marriage is compromise.

I retreated quickly and began circulating through the crowd, smiling at a series of wrinkled faces, that baggy, exhausted, disappointed look that people get in middle age, and all the faces were like that. Most of them were also drunk, dancing steps from their youth – swaying to country-club funk – and that seemed even worse. I was making my way to the French windows for some air, and a hand squeezed my arm. Nick’s mom, Mama Maureen, with her big black laser eyes, her eager pug-dog face. Thrusting a wad of goat cheese and crackers into her mouth, Maureen managed to say: ‘It’s not easy, pairing yourself off with someone forever. It’s an admirable thing, and I’m glad you’re both doing it, but, boy-oh-girl-oh, there will be days you wish you’d never done it. And those will be the good times, when it’s only
days
of regret and not
months
.’ I must have looked shocked – I was definitely shocked – because she said quickly: ‘But then you have good times, too. I know you will.
You two
. A
lot
of good times. So just … forgive me, sweetheart, what I said before. I’m just being a silly old divorced lady. Oh, mother of pearl, I think I had too much
wine
.’ And she fluttered a goodbye at me and scampered away through all the other disappointed couples.

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ Bill Dunne was suddenly saying, and he was saying it to me. ‘Why are you here? You’re not allowed here.’

‘I’m Amy,’ I say, touching his arm as if that might wake him. Bill has always liked me; even if he could think of nothing to say to me, I could tell he liked me, the way he watched me like I was a rare bird. Now he is scowling, thrusting his chest toward me, a caricature of a young sailor ready to brawl. A few feet away, Go sets down her food and gets ready to move toward us, quietly, like she is trying to catch a fly.

‘Why are you in our house?’ Bill Dunne says, his mouth grimacing. ‘You’ve got some nerve, lady.’

‘Nick?’ Go calls behind her, not loudly but urgently.

‘Got it,’ Nick says, appearing. ‘Hey, Dad, this is my wife, Amy. Remember Amy? We moved back home so we could see you more. This is our new house.’

Nick glares at me: I was the one who insisted we invite his dad.

‘All I’m saying, Nick,’ Bill Dunne says, pointing now, jabbing an
index finger toward my face, the party going hushed, several men moving slowly, cautiously, in from the other room, their hands twitching, ready to move, ‘is
she
doesn’t belong here. Little bitch thinks she can do whatever she wants.’

Mama Mo swoops in then, her arm around her ex-husband, always, always rising to the occasion. ‘Of course she belongs here, Bill. It’s her house. She’s your son’s wife. Remember?’

‘I want her out of here, do you understand me, Maureen?’ He shrugs her off and starts moving toward me again. ‘Dumb bitch. Dumb bitch.’

It’s unclear if he means me or Maureen, but then he looks at me and tightens his lips. ‘She doesn’t
belong
here.’

‘I’ll go,’ I say, and turn away, walk straight out the door, into the rain.
From the mouths of Alzheimer’s patients
, I think, trying to make light. I walk a loop around the neighborhood, waiting for Nick to appear, to guide me back to our house. The rain spackles me gently, dampening me. I really believe Nick will come after me. I turn toward the house and see only a closed door.

NICK DUNNE

FOUR DAYS GONE

R
and and I sat in the vacant Find Amy Dunne headquarters at five in the morning, drinking coffee while we waited for the cops to check out Lonnie. Amy stared at us from her poster perch on the wall. Her photo looked distressed.

‘I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t say something to you if she was afraid,’ Rand said. ‘Why wouldn’t she tell you?’

Amy had come to the mall to buy a gun on Valentine’s Day, of all days, that’s what our friend Lonnie had said. She was a little abashed, a little nervous:
Maybe I’m being silly, but … I just really think I need a gun
. Mostly, though, she was scared. Someone was unnerving her, she told Lonnie. She gave no more details, but when he asked her what kind of gun she wanted, she said:
One that stops someone fast
. He told her to come back in a few days, and she did. He hadn’t been able to get her one (‘It’s not really my bag, man’), but now he wished he had. He remembered her well; over the months, he’d wondered how she was now and then, this sweet blonde with the fearful face, trying to get a gun on Valentine’s Day.

‘Who would she be afraid of?’ Rand asked.

‘Tell me about Desi again, Rand,’ I said. ‘Did you ever meet him?’

‘He came to the house a few times.’ Rand frowned, remembering. ‘He was a nice-looking kid, very solicitous of Amy – treated her like a princess. But I just never liked him. Even when things were good with them – young love, Amy’s first love – even then I disliked him. He was very rude to me, inexplicably so. Very possessive of Amy, arms around her at all times. I found it strange, very strange, that he wouldn’t try to be nice to us. Most young men want to get in good with the parents.’

‘I wanted to.’

‘And you did!’ He smiled. ‘You were just the right amount of nervous, it was very sweet. Desi wasn’t anything but nasty.’

‘Desi’s less than an hour out of town.’

‘True. And Hilary Handy?’ Rand said, rubbing his eyes. ‘I don’t want to be sexist here – she was scarier than Desi. Because that Lonnie guy at the mall, he didn’t say Amy was afraid of a man.’

‘No, he just said she was afraid,’ I said. ‘There
is
that Noelle Hawthorne girl – the one who lives near us. She told the police she was best friends with Amy when I know she wasn’t. They weren’t even
friends
. Her husband says she’s been in hysterics. That she was looking at pictures of Amy, crying. At the time I thought they were Internet photos, but … what if they were actual photos she had of Amy? What if she was stalking Amy?’

‘She tried to talk with me when I was a little busy yesterday,’ Rand said. ‘She quoted some
Amazing Amy
stuff at me.
Amazing Amy and the Best Friend War
, actually. “Best friends are the people who know us best.”’

‘Sounds like Hilary,’ I said. ‘All grown up.’

We met Boney and Gilpin just after seven a.m. at an IHOP out along the highway for a showdown: It was ridiculous that we were doing their job for them. It was insane that we were the ones discovering leads. It was time to call in the FBI if the local cops couldn’t handle it.

A plump, amber-eyed waitress took our orders, poured us coffee, and, clearly recognizing me, lingered within eavesdropping distance until Gilpin scatted her away. She was like a determined housefly, though. Between drink refills and dispensing of utensils and the magically quick arrival of our food, our entire harangue came in limp bursts.
This is unacceptable … no more coffee, thanks … it’s unbelievable that … uh, sure, rye is fine
…