“And if I don’t divorce you, you’ll divorce me?” I ask.
“I don’t want to be married to a woman like you. I want to be married to a normal person.”
Piece of shit.
“I see. You want to revert to your lame, limp loser self? You want to just walk away? No! You don’t get to go be some boring-ass middle American with some boring-ass girl next door. You tried it already—remember, baby? Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t do that now. You’ll be known as the philandering asshole who left his kidnapped, raped wife. You think any nice woman will touch you? You’ll only get—”
“Psychos? Crazy psycho bitches?” He’s pointing at me, jabbing the air.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Psycho bitch?”
It’d be so easy, for him to write me off that way. He’d love that, to be able to dismiss me so simply.
“Everything I do, I do for a reason, Nick,” I say. “Everything I do takes planning and precision and discipline.”
“You are a petty, selfish, manipulative, disciplined psycho bitch—”
“You are a man,” I say. “You are an average, lazy, boring, cowardly, woman-fearing man. Without me, that’s what you would have kept on being, ad nauseam. But I made you into something. You were the best man you’ve ever been with me. And you know it. The only time in your life you’ve ever liked yourself was pretending to be someone I might like. Without me? You’re just your dad.”
“Don’t say that, Amy.” He balls up his fists.
“You think he wasn’t hurt by a woman too, just like you?” I say it in my most patronizing voice, as if I’m talking to a puppy. “You think he didn’t believe he deserved better than he got, just like you? You really think your mom was his first choice? Why do you think he hated you all so much?”
He moves toward me. “Shut up, Amy.”
“Think, Nick, you know I’m right: Even if you found a nice, regular girl, you’d be thinking of me every day. Tell me you wouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“How quickly did you forget little Able Andie once you thought I loved you again?” I say it in my poor-baby voice. I even stick out my lower lip. “One love note, sweetie? Did one love note do it? Two? Two notes with me swearing I loved you and I wanted you back, and I thought you were just great after all—was that it for you? You are WITTY, you are WARM, you are BRILLIANT. You’re so pathetic. You think you can ever be a normal man again? You’ll find a nice girl, and you’ll still think of me, and you’ll be so completely dissatisfied, trapped in your boring, normal life with your regular wife and your two average kids. You’ll think of me and then you’ll look at your wife, and you’ll think: Dumb bitch.”
“Shut up, Amy. I mean it.”
“Just like your dad. We’re all bitches in the end, aren’t we, Nick? Dumb bitch, psycho bitch.”
He grabs me by the arm and shakes me hard.
“I’m the bitch who makes you better, Nick.”
He stops talking then. He is using all his energy to keep his hands at his side. His eyes are wet with tears. He is shaking.
“I’m the bitch who makes you a man.”
Then his hands are on my neck.
NICK DUNNE
THE NIGHT OF THE RETURN
Her pulse was finally throbbing beneath my fingers, the way I’d imagined. I pressed tighter and brought her to the ground. She made wet clucking noises and scratched at my wrists. We were both kneeling, in face-to-face prayer for ten seconds.
You fucking crazy bitch.
A tear fell from my chin and hit the floor.
You murdering, mind-fucking, evil, crazy bitch.
Amy’s bright blue eyes were staring into mine, unblinking.
And then the strangest thought of all clattered drunkenly from the back of my brain to the front and blinded me: If I kill Amy, who will I be?
I saw a bright white flash. I dropped my wife as if she were burning iron.
She sat hard on the ground, gasped, coughed. When her breath came back, it was in jagged rasps, with a strange, almost erotic squeak at the end.
Who will I be then? The question wasn’t recriminatory. It wasn’t like the answer was the pious: Then you’ll be a killer, Nick. You’ll be as bad as Amy. You’ll be what everyone thought you were. No. The question was frighteningly soulful and literal: Who would I be without Amy to react to? Because she was right: As a man, I had been my most impressive when I loved her—and I was my next best self when I hated her. I had known Amy only seven years, but I couldn’t go back to life without her. Because she was right: I couldn’t return to an average life. I’d known it before she’d said a word. I’d already pictured myself with a regular woman—a sweet, normal girl next door—and I’d already pictured telling this regular woman the story of Amy, the lengths she had gone to—to punish me and to return to me. I already pictured this sweet and mediocre girl saying something uninteresting like Oh, nooooo, oh my God, and I already knew part of me would be looking at her and thinking: You’ve never murdered for me. You’ve never framed me. You wouldn’t even know how to begin to do what Amy did. You could never possibly care that much. The indulged mama’s boy in me wouldn’t be able to find peace with this normal woman, and pretty soon she wouldn’t just be normal, she’d be substandard, and then my father’s voice—dumb bitch—would rise up and take it from there.