Gone Girl

uniform. ‘They’re clearly very old. Vintage.’ She flipped their clothing upside down to reveal the club handle of the male. The female had only a square-shaped gap at her head. ‘Is this supposed to be sexual? The male has this giant wooden handle, like a dick. And the female is missing hers. She just has the hole.’
    ‘It’s a fairly obvious statement: Men have penises and women have vaginas?’
    Go put a finger inside the female puppet’s gap, swept around to make sure there was nothing hidden. ‘So what is Amy saying?’
    ‘When I first saw them, I thought: She bought children’s toys . Mom, dad, baby. Because she was pregnant.’
    ‘Is she even pregnant?’
    A sense of despair washed over me. Or rather, the opposite. Not a wave coming in, rolling over me, but the ebb of the sea returning: a sense of something pulling away, and me with it. I could no longer hope my wife was pregnant, but I couldn’t bring myself to hope she wasn’t either.
    Go pulled out the male doll, scrunched her nose, then lightbulb popped. ‘You’re a puppet on a string.’
    I laughed. ‘I literally thought those exact words too. But why a male and female? Amy clearly isn’t a puppet on a string, she’s the puppetmaster.’
    ‘And what’s: That’s the way to do it ? To do what ?’
    ‘Fuck me for life?’
    ‘It’s not a phrase Amy used to say? Or some quote from the Amy books, or …’ She hurried over to her computer and searched for That’s the way to do it . Up came lyrics for ‘That’s the Way to Do It’ by Madness. ‘Oh, I remember them,’ Go said. ‘Awesome ska band.’
    ‘Ska,’ I said, swerving toward delirious laughter. ‘Great.’
    The lyrics were about a handyman who could do many types of home-improvement jobs – including electrical and plumbing – and who preferred to be paid in cash.
    ‘God, I fucking hate the eighties,’ I said. ‘No lyrics ever made sense.’
    ‘“The reflex is an only child,”’ Go said, nodding.
    ‘“He’s waiting by the park,”’ I muttered back automatically.
    ‘So if this is it, what does it mean?’ Go said, turning to me, studying my eyes. ‘It’s a song about a handyman. Someone who might have access to your house, to fix things. Or rig things. Who would be paid in cash so there’s no record.’
    ‘Someone who installed video cameras?’ I asked. ‘Amy went out of town a few times during the – the affair. Maybe she thought she’d catch us on tape.’
    Go shot a question at me.
    ‘No, never, never at our house.’
    ‘Could it be some secret door?’ Go suggested. ‘Some secret false panel Amy put in where she’s hidden something that will … I don’t know, exonerate you?’
    ‘I think that’s it. Yes, Amy is using a Madness song to give me a clue to my own freedom, if only I can decipher their wily, ska-infused codes.’
    Go laughed then too. ‘Jesus, maybe we’re the ones who are bat-shit crazy. I mean, are we? Is this totally insane?’
    ‘It’s not insane. She set me up. There is no other way to explain the warehouse of stuff in your backyard. And it’s very Amy to drag you into it, smudge you a little bit with my filth. No, this is Amy. The gift, the fucking giddy, sly note I’m supposed to understand. No, and it has to come back to the puppets. Try the quote with the word marionettes .’
    I collapsed on the couch, my body a dull throb. Go played secretary. ‘Oh my God. Duh! They’re Punch and Judy dolls. Nick! We’re idiots. That line, that’s Punch’s trademark. That’s the way to do it !’
    ‘Okay. The old puppet show – it’s really violent, right?’ I asked.
    ‘This is so fucked up.’
    ‘Go, it’s violent, right?’
    ‘Yeah. Violent. God, she’s fucking crazy.’
    ‘He beats her, right?’
    ‘I’m reading … okay. Punch kills their baby.’ She looked up at me. ‘And then when Judy confronts him, he beats her. To death.’
    My throat got wet with saliva.
    ‘And each time he does something awful and gets away with it, he says, “That’s the way to do it!”’ She grabbed Punch and placed him in her lap, her fingers grasping the wooden hands as if she were holding an infant. ‘He’s glib, even as he murders his wife and child.’
    I looked at the puppets. ‘So she’s giving me the narrative of my frame-up.’
    ‘I can’t even wrap my brain around this. Fucking psycho .’
    ‘Go?’
    ‘Yeah, right: You didn’t want her to be pregnant, you got angry and killed her and the unborn