She emerged a few minutes later, just in time for the local five o’clock news from St. Louis, which led with Amy’s disappearance. “Perfect photo,” Marybeth murmured at the screen, where Amy peered back at us. “People will see it and really know what Amy looks like.”
I’d thought the portrait—a head shot from Amy’s brief fling with acting—beautiful but unsettling. Amy’s pictures gave a sense of her actually watching you, like an old-time haunted-house portrait, the eyes moving from left to right.
“We should get them some candid photos too,” I said. “Some everyday ones.”
The Elliotts nodded in tandem but said nothing, watching. When the spot was done, Rand broke the silence: “I feel sick.”
“I know,” Marybeth said.
“How are you holding up, Nick?” Rand asked, hunched over, hands on both knees, as if he were preparing to get up from the sofa but couldn’t quite do it.
“I’m a goddamn mess, to tell the truth. I feel so useless.”
“You know, I gotta ask, what about your employees, Nick?” Rand finally stood. He went to the minibar, poured himself a ginger ale, then turned to me and Marybeth. “Anyone? Something? Anything?” I shook my head; Marybeth asked for a club soda.
“Want some gin with it too, babe?” Rand asked, his deep voice going high on the final word.
“Sure. Yes. I do.” Marybeth closed her eyes, bent in half, and brought her face between her knees; then she took a deep breath and sat back up in her exact previous position, as if it were all a yoga exercise.
“I gave them lists of everyone,” I said. “But it’s a pretty tame business, Rand. I just don’t think that’s the place to look.”
Rand put a hand across his mouth and rubbed upward, the flesh of his cheeks bunching up around his eyes. “Of course, we’re doing the same with our business, Nick.”
Rand and Marybeth always referred to the Amazing Amy series as a business, which on the surface never failed to strike me as silly: They are children’s books, about a perfect little girl who’s pictured on every book cover, a cartoonish version of my own Amy. But of course they are (were) a business, big business. They were elementary-school staples for the better part of two decades, largely because of the quizzes at the end of every chapter.
In third grade, for instance, Amazing Amy caught her friend Brian overfeeding the class turtle. She tried to reason with him, but when Brian persisted in the extra helpings, Amy had no choice but to narc on him to her teacher: “Mrs. Tibbles, I don’t want to be a tattletale, but I’m not sure what to do. I’ve tried talking to Brian myself, but now … I guess I might need help from a grown-up …” The fallout:
1) Brian told Amy she was an untrustworthy friend and stopped talking to her.
2) Her timid pal Suzy said Amy shouldn’t have told; she should have secretly fished out the food without Brian knowing.
3) Amy’s archrival, Joanna, said Amy was jealous and just wanted to feed the turtle herself.
4) Amy refused to back down—she felt she did the proper thing.
Who is right?!
Well, that’s easy, because Amy is always right, in every story. (Don’t think I haven’t brought this up in my arguments with my real Amy, because I have, more than once.)
The quizzes—written by two psychologists, who are also parents like you!—were supposed to tease out a child’s personality traits: Is your wee one a sulker who can’t stand to be corrected, like Brian? A spineless enabler, like Suzy? A pot-stirrer, like Joanna? Or perfect, like Amy? The books became extremely trendy among the rising yuppie class: They were the Pet Rock of parenting. The Rubik’s Cube of child rearing. The Elliotts got rich. At one point it was estimated that every school library in America had an Amazing Amy book.
“Do you have worries that this might link back to the Amazing Amy business?” I asked.
“We do have a few people we thought might be worth checking out,” Rand began.
I coughed out a laugh. “Do you think Judith Viorst kidnapped Amy for Alexander so he wouldn’t have any more Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days?”
Rand and Marybeth turned matching surprised-disappointed faces toward me. It was a gross, tasteless thing to say—my brain had been burping up such inappropriate thoughts at inopportune moments. Mental gas I couldn’t control. Like, I’d started internally singing the lyrics to “Bony Moronie” whenever I saw my cop friend. She’s as skinny as a stick of macaroni, my brain would bebop as Detective Rhonda Boney was telling me about dragging the river for my missing wife. Defense mechanism, I told myself, just a weird defense mechanism. I’d like it to stop.