Gone Girl

right now.’

‘Oh! You guys got kids, then?’ Boney chirped, as if she had discovered good news.

‘No.’

‘Oh. So then what does she do most days?’

That was my question too. Amy was once a woman who did a little of everything, all the time. When we moved in together, she’d made an intense study of French cooking, displaying hyper-quick knife skills and an inspired boeuf bourguignon. For her thirty-fourth birthday, we flew to Barcelona, and she stunned me by rolling off trills of conversational Spanish, learned in months of secret lessons. My wife had a brilliant, popping brain, a greedy curiosity. But her obsessions tended to be fueled by competition: She needed to dazzle men and jealous-ify women: Of course Amy can cook French cuisine and speak fluent Spanish and garden and knit and run marathons and day-trade stocks and fly a plane and look like a runway model doing it. She needed to be Amazing Amy, all the time. Here in Missouri, the women shop at Target, they make diligent, comforting meals, they laugh about how little high school Spanish they remember. Competition doesn’t interest them. Amy’s relentless achieving is greeted with open-palmed acceptance and maybe a bit of pity. It was about the worst outcome possible for my competitive wife: A town of contented also-rans.

‘She has a lot of hobbies,’ I said.

‘Anything worrying you?’ Boney asked, looking worried. ‘You’re not concerned about drugs or drinking? I’m not speaking ill of your wife. A lot of housewives, more than you’d guess, they pass the day that way. The days, they get long when you’re by yourself. And if the drinking turns to drugs – and I’m not talking heroin but even prescription painkillers – well, there are some pretty awful characters selling around here right now.’

‘The drug trade has gotten bad,’ Gilpin said. ‘We’ve had a bunch of police layoffs – one fifth of the force, and we were tight to begin with. I mean, it’s bad, we’re overrun.’

‘Had a housewife, nice lady, get a tooth knocked out last month over some Oxycontin,’ Boney prompted.

‘No, Amy might have a glass of wine or something, but not drugs.’

Boney eyed me; this was clearly not the answer she wanted. ‘She have some good friends here? We’d like to call some of them, just make sure. No offense. Sometimes a spouse is the last to know when drugs are involved. People get ashamed, especially women.’

Friends. In New York, Amy made and shed friends weekly; they were like her projects. She’d get intensely excited about them: Paula who gave her singing lessons and had a wicked good voice (Amy went to boarding school in Massachusetts; I loved the very occasional times she got all New England on me: wicked good); Jessie from the fashion-design course. But then I’d ask about Jessie or Paula a month later, and Amy would look at me like I was making up words.

Then there were the men who were always rattling behind Amy, eager to do the husbandly things that her husband failed to do. Fix a chair leg, hunt down her favorite imported Asian tea. Men who she swore were her friends, just good friends. Amy kept them at exactly an arm’s distance – far enough away that I couldn’t get too annoyed, close enough that she could crook a finger and they’d do her bidding.

In Missouri … good God, I really didn’t know. It only occurred to me just then. You truly are an asshole, I thought. Two years we’d been here, and after the initial flurry of meet-and-greets, those manic first months, Amy had no one she regularly saw. She had my mom, who was now dead, and me – and our main form of conversation was attack and rebuttal. When we’d been back home for a year, I’d asked her faux gallantly: ‘And how are you liking North Carthage, Mrs Dunne?’ ‘New Carthage, you mean?’ she’d replied. I refused to ask her the reference, but I knew it was an insult.

‘She has a few good friends, but they’re mostly back east.’

‘Her folks?’

‘They live in New York. City.’

‘And you still haven’t called any of these people?’ Boney asked, a bemused smile on her face.

‘I’ve been doing everything else you’ve been asking me to do. I haven’t had a chance.’ I’d signed away permission to trace credit cards and ATMs and track Amy’s cell phone, I’d handed over Go’s cell number and the name of Sue, the widow at The Bar, who could presumably attest to the time I arrived.

‘Baby of the family.’ She shook her head. ‘You really do remind me of my little brother.’ A beat. ‘That’s a compliment, I swear.’

‘She dotes on him,’ Gilpin said, scribbling in a notebook. ‘Okay, so you left the house at about seven-thirty a.m., and you showed up at The Bar at about noon, and in between, you were at the beach.’

There’s a beachhead about ten miles north of our house, a not overly pleasant collection of sand and silt and beer-bottle shards. Trash barrels overflowing with Styrofoam cups and dirty diapers. But there is a picnic table upwind that gets nice sun, and if you stare directly at the river, you can ignore the other crap.

‘I sometimes bring my coffee and the paper and just sit. Gotta make the most of summer.’

No, I hadn’t talked to anyone at the beach. No, no one saw me.

‘It’s a quiet place midweek,’ Gilpin allowed.

If the police talked to anyone who knew me, they’d quickly learn that I rarely went to the beach and that I never sometimes brought my coffee to just enjoy the morning. I have Irish-white skin and an impatience for navel-gazing: A beach boy I am not. I told the police that because it had been Amy’s idea, for me to go sit in the spot where I could be alone and watch the river I loved and ponder our life together. She’d said this to me this morning, after we’d eaten her crepes. She leaned forward on the table and said, ‘I know we are having a tough time. I still love you so much, Nick, and I know I have a lot of things to work on. I want to be a good wife to you, and I want you to be my husband and be happy. But you need to decide what you want.’

She’d clearly been practicing the speech; she smiled proudly as she said it. And even as my wife was offering me this kindness, I was thinking, Of course she has to stage-manage this. She wants the image of me and the wild running river, my hair ruffling in the breeze as I look out onto the horizon and ponder our life together. I can’t just go to Dunkin’ Donuts.

You need to decide what you want. Unfortunately for Amy, I had decided already.

Boney looked up brightly from her notes: ‘Can you tell me what your wife’s blood type is?’ she asked.

‘Uh, no, I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know your wife’s blood type?’

‘Maybe O?’ I guessed.

Boney frowned, then made a drawn-out yoga-like sound. ‘Okay, Nick, here are the things we are doing to help.’ She listed them: Amy’s cell was being monitored, her photo circulated, her credit cards tracked. Known sex offenders in the area were being interviewed. Our sparse neighborhood was being canvassed. Our home phone was tapped, in case any ransom calls came in.

I wasn’t sure what to say now. I raked my memory for the lines: What does the husband say at this point in the movie? Depends on whether he’s guilty or innocent.

‘I can’t say that reassures me. Are you – is this an abduction, or a missing persons case, or what exactly is going on?’ I knew the statistics, knew them from the same TV show I was starring in: If the first forty-eight hours didn’t turn up something in a case, it was likely to go unsolved. The first forty-eight hours were crucial. ‘I mean, my wife is gone. My wife: is gone!’ I realized it was the first time I’d said it the way it should have been said: panicked and angry. My dad was a man of infinite varieties of bitterness, rage, distaste. In my lifelong struggle to avoid becoming him, I’d developed an inability to demonstrate much negative emotion at all. It was another thing that made me seem like a dick – my stomach could be all oiled eels, and you would get nothing from my face and less from my words. It was a constant problem: too much control or no control at all.

‘Nick, we are taking this extremely seriously,’ Boney said. ‘The lab guys are over at your place as we speak, and that will give us more information to go on. Right now, the more you can tell us about your wife, the better. What is she like?’

The usual husband phrases came into my mind: She’s sweet, she’s great, she’s nice, she’s supportive.

‘What is she like how?’ I asked.

‘Give me an idea of her personality,’ Boney prompted. ‘Like, what did you get her for your anniversary? Jewelry?’

‘I hadn’t gotten anything quite yet,’ I said. ‘I was going to do it this afternoon.’ I waited for her to laugh and say ‘baby of the family’ again, but she didn’t.

‘Okay. Well, then, tell me about her. Is she outgoing? Is she – I don’t know how to say this – is she New Yorky? Like what might come off to some as rude? Might rub people the wrong way?’

‘I don’t know. She’s not a never-met-a-stranger kind of person, but she’s not – not abrasive enough to make someone … hurt her.’

This was my eleventh lie. The Amy of today was abrasive enough to want to hurt, sometimes. I speak specifically of the Amy of today, who was only remotely like the woman I fell in love with. It had been an awful fairy-tale reverse transformation. Over just a few years, the old Amy, the girl of the big laugh and the easy ways, literally shed herself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and out stepped this new, brittle, bitter Amy. My wife was no longer my wife but a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, nervous fingers. Country fingers. Flyover fingers untrained in the intricate, dangerous work of solving Amy. When I’d hold up the bloody stumps, she’d sigh and turn to her secret mental notebook on which she tallied all my deficiencies, forever noting disappointments, frailties, shortcomings. My old Amy, damn, she was fun. She was funny. She made me laugh. I’d forgotten that. And she laughed. From the bottom of her throat, from right behind that small finger-shaped hollow, which is the best place to laugh from. She released her grievances like handfuls of birdseed: They are there, and they are gone.

She was not the thing she became, the thing I feared most: an angry woman. I was not good with angry women. They brought something out in me that was unsavory.

‘She bossy?’ Gilpin asked. ‘Take-charge?’

I thought of Amy’s calendar, the one that went three years into the future, and if you looked a year ahead, you would actually find appointments: dermatologist, dentist, vet. ‘She’s a planner – she doesn’t, you know, wing anything. She likes to make lists and check things off. Get things done. That’s why this doesn’t make sense—’

‘That can drive you crazy,’ Boney said sympathetically. ‘If you’re not that type. You seem very B-personality.’

‘I’m a little more laid-back, I guess,’ I said. Then I added the part I was supposed to add: ‘We round each other out.’

I looked at the clock on the wall, and Boney touched my hand.

‘Hey, why don’t you go ahead and give a call to Amy’s parents? I’m sure they’d appreciate it.’

It was past midnight. Amy’s parents went to sleep at nine p.m.; they were strangely boastful about this early bedtime. They’d be deep asleep by now, so this would be an urgent middle-of-the-night call. Cells went off at 8:45 always, so Rand Elliott would have to walk from his bed all the way to the end of the hall to pick up the old heavy phone; he’d be fumbling with his glasses, fussy with the table lamp. He’d be telling himself all the reasons not to worry about a late-night phone call, all the harmless reasons the phone might be ringing.

I dialed twice and hung up before I let the call ring through. When I did, it was Marybeth, not Rand, who answered, her deep voice buzzing my ears. I’d only gotten to ‘Marybeth, this is Nick’ when I lost it.

‘What is it, Nick?’

I took a breath.

‘Is it Amy? Tell me.’

‘I uh – I’m sorry I should have called—’

‘Tell me, goddamn it!’

‘We c-can’t find Amy,’ I stuttered.

‘You can’t find Amy?’

‘I don’t know—’

‘Amy is missing?’

‘We don’t know that for sure, we’re still—’

‘Since when?’

‘We’re not sure. I left this morning, a little after seven—’

‘And you waited till now to call us?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to—’

‘Jesus Christ. We played tennis tonight. Tennis, and we could have been … My God. Are the police involved? You’ve notified them?’

‘I’m at the station right now.’

‘Put on whoever’s in charge, Nick. Please.’

Like a kid, I went to fetch Gilpin. My mommy-in-law wants to talk to you.

Phoning the Elliotts made it official. The emergency – Amy is gone – was spreading to the outside.

I was heading back to the interview room when I heard my father’s voice. Sometimes, in particularly shameful moments, I heard his voice in my head. But this was my father’s voice, here. His words emerged in wet bubbles like something from a rancid bog. Bitch bitch bitch. My father, out of his mind, had taken to flinging the word at any woman who even vaguely annoyed him: bitch bitch bitch. I peered inside a conference room, and there he sat on a bench against the wall. He had been a handsome man once, intense and cleft-chinned. Jarringly dreamy was how my aunt had described him. Now he sat muttering at the floor, his blond hair matted, trousers muddy and arms scratched, as if he’d fought his way through a thornbush. A line of spittle glimmered down his chin like a snail’s trail, and he was flexing and unflexing arm muscles that had not yet gone to seed. A tense female officer sat next to him, her lips in an angry pucker, trying to ignore him: Bitch bitch bitch I told you bitch.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked her. ‘This is my father.’

‘You got our call?’

‘What call?’

‘To come get your father.’ She overenunciated, as if I were a dim ten-year-old.

‘I – My wife is missing. I’ve been here most of the night.’

She stared at me, not connecting in the least. I could see her debating whether to sacrifice her leverage and apologise, inquire. Then my father started up again, bitch bitch bitch, and she chose to keep the leverage.

‘Sir, Comfort Hill has been trying to contact you all day. Your father wandered out a fire exit early this morning. He’s got a few scratches and scrapes, as you can see, but no damage. We picked him up a few hours ago, walking down River Road, disoriented. We’ve been trying to reach you.’

‘I’ve been right here,’ I said. ‘Right goddamn next door, how did no one put this together?’

Bitch bitch bitch, said my dad.

‘Sir, please don’t take that tone with me.’

Bitch bitch bitch.

Boney ordered an officer – male – to drive my dad back to the home so I could finish up with them. We stood on the stairs outside the police station, watched him get settled into the car, still muttering. The entire time he never registered my presence. When they drove off, he didn’t even look back.

‘You guys not close?’ she asked.

‘We are the definition of not close.’

The police finished with their questions and hustled me into a squad car at about two a.m. with advice to get a good night’s sleep and return at eleven a.m. for a 12-noon press conference.

I didn’t ask if I could go home. I had them take me to Go’s, because I knew she’d stay up and have a drink with me, fix me a sandwich. It was, pathetically, all I wanted right then: a woman to fix me a sandwich and not ask me any questions.

‘You don’t want to go look for her?’ Go offered as I ate. ‘We can drive around.’

‘That seems pointless,’ I said dully. ‘Where do I look?’

‘Nick, this is really fucking serious.’

‘I know, Go.’

‘Act like it, okay, Lance? Don’t fucking myuhmyuhmyuh.’ It was a thick-tongued noise, the noise she always made to convey my indecisiveness, accompanied by a dazed rolling of the eyes and the dusting off of my legal first name. No one who has my face needs to be called Lance. She handed me a tumbler of Scotch. ‘And drink this, but only this. You don’t want to be hungover tomorrow. Where the fuck could she be? God, I feel sick to my stomach.’ She poured herself a glass, gulped, then tried to sip, pacing around the kitchen. ‘Aren’t you worried, Nick? That some guy, like, saw her on the street and just, just decided to take her? Hit her on the head and—’

I started. ‘Why did you say hit her on the head, what the fuck is that?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to paint a picture, I just … I don’t know, I just keep thinking. About some crazy person.’ She splashed some more Scotch into her tumbler.

‘Speaking of crazy people,’ I said, ‘Dad got out again today, they found him wandering down River Road. He’s back at Comfort now.’

She shrugged: okay. It was the third time in six months that our dad had slipped out. Go was lighting a cigarette, her thoughts still on Amy. ‘I mean, isn’t there someone we can go talk to?’ she asked. ‘Something we can do?’

‘Jesus, Go! You really need me to feel more fucking impotent than I do right now?’ I snapped. ‘I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. There’s no “When Your Wife Goes Missing 101.” The police told me I could leave. I left. I’m just doing what they tell me.’

‘Of course you are,’ murmured Go, who had a long-stymied mission to turn me into a rebel. It wouldn’t take. I was the kid in high school who made curfew; I was the writer who hit my deadlines, even the fake ones. I respect rules, because if you follow rules, things go smoothly, usually.

‘Fuck, Go, I’m back at the station in a few hours, okay? Can you please just be nice to me for a second? I’m scared shitless.’

We had a five-second staring contest, then Go filled up my glass one more time, an apology. She sat down next to me, put a hand on my shoulder.

‘Poor Amy,’ she said.





AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE

APRIL 21, 2009

– Diary entry –

Poor me. Let me set the scene: Campbell and Insley and I are all down in Soho, having dinner at Tableau. Lots of goat-cheese tarts, lamb meatballs and rocket greens, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. But we are working backward: dinner first, then drinks in one of the little nooks Campbell has reserved, a mini-closet where you can lounge expensively in a place that’s not too different from, say, your living room. But fine, it’s fun to do the silly, trendy things sometimes. We are all overdressed in our little flashy frocks, our slasher heels, and we all eat small plates of food bites that are as decorative and unsubstantial as we are.

We’ve discussed having our husbands drop by to join us for the drinks portion. So there we are, post-dinner, tucked into our nook, mojitos and martinis and my bourbon delivered to us by a waitress who could be auditioning for the small role of Fresh-faced Girl Just Off the Bus.

We are running out of things to say; it is a Tuesday, and no one is feeling like it is anything but. The drinks are being carefully drunk: Insley and Campbell both have vague appointments the next morning, and I have work, so we aren’t gearing up for a big night, we are winding down, and we are getting dull-witted, bored. We would leave if we weren’t waiting for the possible appearance of the men. Campbell keeps peeking at her BlackBerry, Insley studies her flexed calves from different angles. John arrives first – huge apologies to Campbell, big smiles and kisses for us all, a man just thrilled to be here, just delighted to arrive at the tail-end of a cocktail hour across town so he can guzzle a drink and head home with his wife. George shows up about twenty minutes later – sheepish, tense, a terse excuse about work, Insley snapping at him, ‘You’re forty minutes late,’ him nipping back, ‘Yeah, sorry about making us money.’ The two barely talking to each other as they make conversation with everyone else.

Nick never shows; no call. We wait another forty-five minutes, Campbell solicitous (‘Probably got hit with some last-minute deadline,’ she says, and smiles toward good old John, who never lets last-minute deadlines interfere with his wife’s plans); Insley’s anger thawing toward her husband as she realizes he is only the second-biggest jackass of the group (‘You sure he hasn’t even texted, sweetie?’).

Me, I just smile: ‘Who knows where he is – I’ll catch him at home.’ And then it is the men of the group who look stricken: You mean that was an option? Take a pass on the night with no nasty consequences? No guilt or anger or sulking?

Well, maybe not for you guys.

Nick and I, we sometimes laugh, laugh out loud, at the horrible things women make their husbands do to prove their love. The pointless tasks, the myriad sacrifices, the endless small surrenders. We call these men the dancing monkeys.

Nick will come home, sweaty and salty and beer-loose from a day at the ballpark, and I’ll curl up in his lap, ask him about the game, ask him if his friend Jack had a good time, and he’ll say, ‘Oh, he came down with a case of the dancing monkeys – poor Jennifer was having a “real stressful week” and really needed him at home.’

Or his buddy at work, who can’t go out for drinks because his girlfriend really needs him to stop by some bistro where she is having dinner with a friend from out of town. So they can finally meet. And so she can show how obedient her monkey is: He comes when I call, and look how well groomed!

Wear this, don’t wear that. Do this chore now and do this chore when you get a chance and by that I mean now. And definitely, definitely, give up the things you love for me, so I will have proof that you love me best. It’s the female pissing contest – as we swan around our book clubs and our cocktail hours, there are few things women love more than being able to detail the sacrifices our men make for us. A call-and-response, the response being: ‘Ohhh, that’s so sweet.’