AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
FEBRUARY 15, 2012
– Diary entry –
What a strange time this is. I have to think that way, try to examine it from a distance: Ha-ha, what an odd period this will be to look back on, won’t I be amused when I’m eighty, dressed in faded lavender, a wise, amused figure swilling martinis, and won’t this make a story? A strange, awful story of something I survived.
Because something is horribly wrong with my husband, of that I am sure now. Yes, he’s mourning his mother, but this is something more. It feels directed at me, not a sadness but … I can feel him watching me sometimes, and I look up and see his face twisted in disgust, like he’s walked in on me doing something awful, instead of just eating cereal in the morning or combing my hair at night. He’s so angry, so unstable, I’ve been wondering if his moods are linked to something physical – one of those wheat allergies that turn people mad, or a colony of mold spores that has clogged his brain.
I came downstairs the other night and found him at the dining room table, his head in his hands, looking at a pile of credit-card bills. I watched my husband, all alone, under the spotlight of a chandelier. I wanted to go to him, to sit down with him and figure it out like partners. But I didn’t, I knew that would piss him off. I sometimes wonder if that is at the root of his distaste for me: He’s let me see his shortcomings, and he hates me for knowing them.
He shoved me. Hard. Two days ago, he shoved me, and I fell and banged my head against the kitchen island and I couldn’t see for three seconds. I don’t really know what to say about it. It was more shocking than painful. I was telling him I could get a job, something freelance, so we could start a family, have a real life …
‘What do you call this?’ he said.
Purgatory, I thought. I stayed silent.
‘What do you call this, Amy? Huh? What do you call this? This isn’t life, according to Miss Amazing?’
‘It’s not my idea of life,’ I said, and he took three big steps toward me, and I thought: He looks like he’s going to … And then he was slamming against me and I was falling.
We both gasped. He held his fist in the other hand and looked like he might cry. He was beyond sorry, he was aghast. But here’s the thing I want to be clear on: I knew what I was doing, I was punching every button on him. I was watching him coil tighter and tighter – I wanted him to finally say something, do something. Even if it’s bad, even if it’s the worst, do something, Nick. Don’t leave me here like a ghost.
I just didn’t realize he was going to do that.
I’ve never considered what I would do if my husband attacked me, because I haven’t exactly run in the wife-beating crowd. (I know, Lifetime movie, I know: Violence crosses all socioeconomic barriers. But still: Nick?) I sound glib. It just seems so incredibly ludicrous: I am a battered wife. Amazing Amy and the Domestic Abuser.
He did apologize profusely. (Does anyone do anything profusely except apologize? Sweat, I guess.) He’s agreed to consider counseling, which was something I never thought could happen. Which is good. He’s such a good man, at his core, that I am willing to write it off, to believe it truly was a sick anomaly, brought on by the strain we’re both under. I forget sometimes, that as much stress as I feel, Nick feels it too: He bears the burden of having brought me here, he feels the strain of wanting mopey me to be content, and for a man like Nick – who believes strongly in an up-by-the-bootstraps sort of happiness – that can be infuriating.
So the hard shove, so quick, then done, it didn’t scare me in itself. What scared me was the look on his face as I lay on the floor blinking, my head ringing. It was the look on his face as he restrained himself from taking another jab. How much he wanted to shove me again. How hard it was not to. How he’s been looking at me since: guilt, and disgust at the guilt. Absolute disgust.
Here’s the darkest part. I drove out to the mall yesterday, where about half the town buys drugs, and it’s as easy as picking up a prescription; I know because Noelle told me: Her husband goes there to purchase the occasional joint. I didn’t want a joint, though, I wanted a gun, just in case. In case things with Nick go really wrong. I didn’t realize until I was almost there that it was Valentine’s Day. It was Valentine’s Day and I was going to buy a gun and then cook my husband dinner. And I thought to myself: Nick’s dad was right about you. You are a dumb bitch. Because if you think your husband is going to hurt you, you leave. And yet you can’t leave your husband, who’s mourning his dead mother. You can’t. You’d have to be a bibilically awful woman to do that, unless something were truly wrong. You’d have to really believe your husband was going to hurt you.
But I don’t really think Nick would hurt me.
I just would feel safer with a gun.
NICK DUNNE
SIX DAYS GONE
Go pushed me into the car and peeled away from the park. We flew past Noelle, who was walking with Boney and Gilpin toward their cruiser, her carefully dressed triplets bumping along behind her like kite ribbons. We screeched past the mob: hundreds of faces, a fleshy pointillism of anger aimed right at me. We ran away, basically. Technically.
‘Wow, ambush,’ Go muttered.
‘Ambush?’ I repeated, brain-stunned.
‘You think that was an accident, Nick? Triplet Cunt already made her statement to the police. Nothing about the pregnancy.’
‘Or they’re doling out bombshells a little at a time.’
Boney and Gilpin had already heard my wife was pregnant and decided to make it a strategy. They clearly really believed I killed her.
‘Noelle will be on every cable broadcast for the next week, talking about how you’re a murderer and she’s Amy’s best friend out for justice. Publicity whore. Publicity fucking whore.’
I pressed my face against the window, slumped in my seat. Several news vans followed us. We drove silently, Go’s breath slowing down. I watched the river, a tree branch bobbing its way south.
‘Nick?’ she finally said. ‘Is it – uh … Do you—’
‘I don’t know, Go. Amy didn’t say anything to me. If she was pregnant, why would she tell Noelle and not tell me?’
‘Why would she try to get a gun and not tell you?’ Go said. ‘None of this makes sense.’
We retreated to Go’s – the camera crews would be swarming my house – and as soon as I walked in the door my cell phone rang, the real one. It was the Elliotts. I sucked in some air, ducked into my old bedroom, then answered.
‘I need to ask you this, Nick.’ It was Rand, the TV burbling in the background. ‘I need you to tell me. Did you know Amy was pregnant?’
I paused, trying to find the right way to phrase it, the unlikelihood of a pregnancy.
‘Answer me, goddammit!’
Rand’s volume made me get quieter. I spoke in a soft, soothing voice, a voice wearing a cardigan. ‘Amy and I were not trying to get pregnant. She didn’t want to be pregnant, Rand, I don’t know if she ever was going to be. We weren’t even … we weren’t even having relations that often. I’d be … very surprised if she was pregnant.’
‘Noelle said Amy visited the doctor to confirm the pregnancy. The police already submitted a subpoena for the records. We’ll know tonight.’
I found Go in the living room, sitting with a cup of cold coffee at my mother’s card table. She turned toward me just enough to show she knew I was there, but she didn’t let me see me her face.
‘Why do you keep lying, Nick?’ she asked. ‘The Elliotts are not your enemy. Shouldn’t you at least tell them that it was you who didn’t want kids? Why make Amy look like the bad guy?’
I swallowed the rage again. My stomach was hot with it. ‘I’m exhausted, Go. Goddamn. We gotta do this now?’
‘We gonna find a time that’s better?’
‘I did want kids. We tried for a while, no luck. We even started looking into fertility treatments. But then Amy decided she didn’t want kids.’
‘You told me you didn’t.’
‘I was trying to put a good face on it.’
‘Oh, awesome, another lie,’ Go said. ‘I didn’t realize you were such a … What you’re saying, Nick, it makes no sense. I was there, at the dinner to celebrate The Bar, and Mom misunderstood, she thought you guys were announcing that you were pregnant, and it made Amy cry.’
‘Well, I can’t explain everything Amy ever did, Go. I don’t know why, a fucking year ago, she cried like that. Okay?’
Go sat quietly, the orange of the streetlight creating a rock-star halo around her profile. ‘This is going to be a real test for you, Nick,’ she murmured, not looking at me. ‘You’ve always had trouble with the truth – you always do the little fib if you think it will avoid a real argument. You’ve always gone the easy way. Tell Mom you went to baseball practice when you really quit the team; tell Mom you went to church when you were at a movie. It’s some weird compulsion.’
‘This is very different from baseball, Go.’
‘It’s a lot different. But you’re still fibbing like a little boy. You’re still desperate to have everyone think you’re perfect. You never want to be the bad guy. So you tell Amy’s parents she didn’t want kids. You don’t tell me you’re cheating on your wife. You swear the credit cards in your name aren’t yours, you swear you were hanging out at a beach when you hate the beach, you swear your marriage was happy. I just don’t know what to believe right now.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Since Amy has disappeared, all you’ve done is lie. It makes me worry. About what’s going on.’
Complete silence for a moment.
‘Go, are you saying what I think you’re saying? Because if you are, something has fucking died between us.’
‘Remember that game you always played with Mom when we were little: Would you still love me if? Would you still love me if I smacked Go? Would you still love me if I robbed a bank? Would you still love me if I killed someone?’
I said nothing. My breath was coming too fast.
‘I would still love you,’ Go said.
‘Go, do you really need me to say it?’
She stayed silent.
‘I did not kill Amy.’
She stayed silent.
‘Do you believe me?’ I asked.
‘I love you.’
She put her hand on my shoulder and went to her bedroom, shut the door. I waited to see the light go on in the room, but it stayed dark.
Two seconds later, my cell phone rang. This time, it was the disposable cell that I needed to get rid of and couldn’t because I always, always, always had to pick up for Andie. Once a day, Nick. We need to talk once a day.
I realized I was grinding my teeth.
I took a breath.
Far out on the edge of town were the remains of an Old West fort that was now yet another park that no one ever went to. All that was left was the two-story wooden watchtower, surrounded by rusted swing sets and teeter-totters. Andie and I had met there once, groping each other inside the shade of the watchtower.
I did three long loops around town in my mom’s old car to be sure I was not tracked. It was madness to go – it wasn’t yet ten o’clock – but I had no say in our rendezvous anymore. I need to see you, Nick, tonight, right now, or I swear to you, I will lose it. As I pulled up to the fort, I was hit by the remoteness of it and what it meant: Andie was still willing to meet me in a lonely, unlit place, me the pregnant wife killer. As I walked toward the tower through the thick, scratchy grass, I could just see her outline in the tiny window of the wooden watchtower.
She is going to undo you, Nick. I quick-stepped the rest of the way.
An hour later I was huddled in the paparazzi-infested house, waiting. Rand said they’d know before midnight whether my wife was pregnant. When the phone rang, I grabbed it immediately only to find it was goddamn Comfort Hill. My father was gone again. The cops had been notified. As always, they made it sound as if I were the jackass. If this happens again, we are going to have to terminate your father’s stay with us. I had a sickening chill: My dad moving in with me – two pathetic, angry bastards – it would surely make for the worst buddy comedy in the world. The ending would be a murder-suicide. Ba-dum-dum! Cue the laff track.
I was getting off the phone, peering out the back window at the river – stay calm, Nick – when I saw a huddled figure down by the boathouse. I thought it must be a stray reporter, but then I recognized something in those balled fists and tight shoulders. Comfort Hill was about a thirty-minute walk straight down River Road. He somehow remembered our house when he couldn’t remember me.
I went outside into the darkness to see him dangling a foot over the bank, staring into the river. Less bedraggled than before, although he smelled tangy with sweat.
‘Dad? What are you doing here? Everyone’s worried.’
He looked at me with dark brown eyes, sharp eyes, not the glazed-milk color some elderly acquire. It would have been less disconcerting if they’d been milky.
‘She told me to come,’ he snapped. ‘She told me to come. This is my house, I can come whenever I want.’
‘You walked all the way here?’
‘I can come here anytime. You may hate me, but she loves me.’
I almost laughed. Even my father was reinventing a relationship with Amy.
A few photographers on my front lawn began shooting. I had to get my dad back to the home. I could picture the article they’d have to cook up to go along with this exclusive footage: What kind of father was Bill Dunne, what kind of man did he raise? Good God, if my dad started in on one of his harangues against the bitches … I dialed Comfort Hill, and after some finagling, they sent an orderly to retrieve him. I made a display of walking him gently to the sedan, murmuring reassuringly as the photographers got their shots.
My dad. I smiled as he left. I tried to make it seem very proud-son. The reporters asked me if I killed my wife. I was retreating to the house when a cop car pulled up.
It was Boney who came to my home, braving the paparazzi, to tell me. She did it kindly, in a gentle-fingertip voice.
Amy was pregnant.
My wife was gone with my baby inside her. Boney watched me, waiting for my reaction – make it part of the police report – so I told myself, Act correctly, don’t blow it, act the way a man acts when he hears this news. I ducked my head into my hands and muttered, Oh God, oh God, and while I was doing it, I saw my wife on the floor of our kitchen, her hands around her belly and her head bashed in.