Jacqueline was indeed ushered out of the room into another, where her statement would be recorded and she would be kept out of the way of the much better story: the Triumphant Return of Amazing Amy.
When Amy was released to us, it all began again. The photos and the tears, the hugging and the laughter, all for strangers who wanted to see and to know: What was it like? Amy, what does it feel like to escape your captor and return to your husband? Nick, what does it feel like to get your wife back, to get your freedom back, all at once?
I remained mostly silent. I was thinking my own questions, the same questions I’d thought for years, the ominous refrain of our marriage: What are you thinking, Amy? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?
It was a gracious, queenly act for Amy to want to come home to our marriage bed with her cheating husband. Everyone agreed. The media followed us as if we were a royal wedding procession, the two of us whizzing through the neon, fast-food-cluttered streets of Carthage to our McMansion on the river. What grace Amy has, what moxie. A storybook princess. And I, of course, was the lickspittle hunchback of a husband who would bow and scrape the rest of my days. Until she was arrested. If she ever got arrested.
That she was released at all was a concern. More than a concern, an utter shock. I saw them all filing out of the conference room where they questioned her for four hours and then let her go: two FBI guys with alarmingly short hair and blank faces; Gilpin, looking like he’d swallowed the greatest steak dinner of his life; and Boney, the only one with thin, tight lips and a little V of a frown. She glanced at me as she walked past, arched an eyebrow, and was gone.
Then, too quickly, Amy and I were back in our home, alone in the living room, Bleecker watching us with shiny eyes. Outside our curtains, the lights of the TV cameras remained, bathing our living room in a bizarrely lush orange glow. We looked candlelit, romantic. Amy was absolutely beautiful. I hated her. I was afraid of her.
“We can’t really sleep in the same house—” I began.
“I want to stay here with you.” She took my hand. “I want to be with my husband. I want to give you the chance to be the kind of husband you want to be. I forgive you.”
“You forgive me? Amy, why did you come back? Because of what I said in the interviews? The videos?”
“Wasn’t that what you wanted?” she said. “Wasn’t that the point of the videos? They were perfect—they reminded me of what we used to have, how special it was.”
“What I said, that was just me saying what you wanted to hear.”
“I know—that’s how well you know me!” Amy said. She beamed. Bleecker began figure-eighting between her legs. She picked him up and stroked him. His purr was deafening. “Think about it, Nick, we know each other. Better than anyone in the world now.”
It was true that I’d had this feeling too, in the past month, when I wasn’t wishing Amy harm. It would come to me at strange moments—in the middle of the night, up to take a piss, or in the morning pouring a bowl of cereal—I’d detect a nib of admiration, and more than that, fondness for my wife, right in the middle of me, right in the gut. To know exactly what I wanted to hear in those notes, to woo me back to her, even to predict all my wrong moves … the woman knew me cold. Better than anyone in the world, she knew me. All this time I’d thought we were strangers, and it turned out we knew each other intuitively, in our bones, in our blood.
It was kind of romantic. Catastrophically romantic.
“We can’t just pick up where we were, Amy.”
“No, not where we were,” she said. “Where we are now. Where you love me and you’ll never do wrong again.”
“You’re crazy, you’re literally crazy if you think I’m going to stay. You killed a man,” I said. I turned my back to her, and then I pictured her with a knife in her hand and her mouth growing tight as I disobeyed her. I turned back around. Yes, my wife must always be faced.
“To escape him.”
“You killed Desi so you had a new story, so you could come back and be beloved Amy and not ever have to take the blame for what you did. Don’t you get it, Amy, the irony? It’s what you always hated about me—that I never dealt with the consequences of my actions, right? Well, my ass has been well and duly consequenced. So what about you? You murdered a man, a man I assume loved you and was helping you, and now you want me to step in his place and love you and help you, and … I can’t. I cannot do it. I won’t do it.”
“Nick, I think you’ve gotten some bad information,” she said. “It doesn’t surprise me, all the rumors that are going about. But we need to forget all that. If we are to go forward. And we will go forward. All of America wants us to go forward. It’s the story the world needs right now. Us. Desi’s the bad guy. No one wants two bad guys. They want to like you, Nick. The only way you can be loved again is to stay with me. It’s the only way.”