“Play nice? That’s your advice? My one-man legal dream team: Play nice? Fuck you.”
I hung up in full fury.
I’ll kill her, I thought. I will fucking kill the bitch.
I plunged into the dark daydream I’d indulged over the past few years when Amy had made me feel my smallest: I daydreamed of hitting her with a hammer, smashing her head in until she stopped talking, finally, stopped with the words she suctioned to me: average, boring, mediocre, unsurprising, unsatisfying, unimpressive. Un, basically. In my mind, I whaled on her with the hammer until she was like a broken toy, muttering un, un, un until she sputtered to a stop. And then it wasn’t enough, so I restored her to perfection and began killing her again: I wrapped my fingers around her neck—she always did crave intimacy—and then I squeezed and squeezed, her pulse—
“Nick?”
I turned around, and Amy was on the bottom stair in her nightgown, her head tilted to one side.
“Play nice, Nick.”
AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
THE NIGHT OF THE RETURN
He turns around, and when he sees me standing there, he looks scared. That’s something useful. Because I’m not going to let him go. He may think he was lying when he said all those nice things to lure me home. But I know different. I know Nick can’t lie like that. I know that as he recited those words, he realized the truth. Ping! Because you can’t be as in love as we were and not have it invade your bone marrow. Our kind of love can go into remission, but it’s always waiting to return. Like the world’s sweetest cancer.
You don’t buy it? Then how about this? He did lie. He didn’t mean a fucking thing he said. Well, then, screw him, he did too good a job, because I want him, exactly like that. The man he was pretending to be—women love that guy. I love that guy. That’s the man I want for my husband. That’s the man I signed up for. That’s the man I deserve.
So he can choose to truly love me the way he once did, or I will bring him to heel and make him be the man I married. I’m sick of dealing with his bullshit.
“Play nice,” I say.
He looks like a child, a furious child. He bunches his fists.
“No, Amy.”
“I can ruin you, Nick.”
“You already did, Amy.” I see the rage flash over him, a shiver. “Why in God’s name do you even want to be with me? I’m boring, average, uninteresting, uninspiring. I’m not up to par. You spent the last few years telling me this.”
“Only because you stopped trying,” I say. “You were so perfect, with me. We were so perfect when we started, and then you stopped trying. Why would you do that?”
“I stopped loving you.”
“Why?”
“You stopped loving me. We’re a sick, fucking toxic Möbius strip, Amy. We weren’t ourselves when we fell in love, and when we became ourselves—surprise!—we were poison. We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way. You don’t really love me, Amy. You don’t even like me. Divorce me. Divorce me, and let’s try to be happy.”
“I won’t divorce you, Nick. I won’t. And I swear to you, if you try to leave, I will devote my life to making your life as awful as I can. And you know I can make it awful.”
He begins pacing like a caged bear. “Think about it, Amy, how bad we are for each other: the two most needful human beings in the world stuck with each other. I’ll divorce you if you don’t divorce me.”
“Really?”
“I will divorce you. But you should divorce me. Because I know what you’re thinking already, Amy. You’re thinking it won’t make a good story: Amazing Amy finally kills her crazed-rapist captor and returns home to … a boring old divorce. You’re thinking it’s not triumphant.”
It’s not triumphant.
“But think of it this way: Your story is not some drippy, earnest survivor story. TV movie circa 1992. It’s not. You are a tough, vibrant, independent woman, Amy. You killed your kidnapper, and then you kept on cleaning house: You got rid of your idiot cheat of a husband. Women would cheer you. You’re not a scared little girl. You’re a badass, take-no-prisoners woman. Think about it. You know I’m right: The era of forgiveness is over. It’s passé. Think of all the women—the politicians’ wives, the actresses—every woman in the public who’s been cheated on, they don’t stay with the cheat these days. It’s not stand by your man anymore, it’s divorce the fucker.”
I feel a rush of hate toward him, that he’s still trying to wriggle out of our marriage even though I’ve told him—three times now—that he can’t. He still thinks he has power.