Gone Girl

course. They’ll be just like my parents: happy-happy.
    Still, it was unsettling, the incredibly small order the publisher put in. A new Amazing Amy used to get a first print of a hundred thousand copies back in the ’80s. Now ten thousand. The book-launch party was, accordingly, unfabulous. Off-tone. How do you throw a party for a fictional character who started life as a precocious moppet of six and is now a thirty-year-old bride-to-be who still speaks like a child? (‘ Sheesh,’ thought Amy, ‘my dear fiance´ sure is a grouch-monster when he doesn’t get his way …’ That is an actual quote. The whole book made me want to punch Amy right in her stupid, spotless vagina.) The book is a nostalgia item, intended to be purchased by women who grew up with Amazing Amy , but I’m not sure who will actually want to read it. I read it, of course. I gave the book my blessing – multiple times. Rand and Marybeth feared that I might take Amy’s marriage as some jab at my perpetually single state. (‘I, for one, don’t think women should marry before thirty-five,’ said my mom, who married my dad at twenty-three.)
    My parents have always worried that I’d take Amy too personally – they always tell me not to read too much into her. And yet I can’t fail to notice that whenever I screw something up, Amy does it right: When I finally quit violin at age twelve, Amy was revealed as a prodigy in the next book. (‘Sheesh, violin can be hard work, but hard work is the only way to get better!’) When I blew off the junior tennis championship at age sixteen to do a beach weekend with friends, Amy recommitted to the game. (‘Sheesh, I know it’s fun to spend time with friends, but I’d be letting myself and everyone else down if I didn’t show up for the tournament.’) This used to drive me mad, but after I went off to Harvard (and Amy correctly chose my parents’ alma mater), I decided it was all tooridiculous to think about. That my parents, two child psychologists , chose this particular public form of passive-aggressiveness toward their child was not just fucked up but also stupid and weird and kind of hilarious. So be it.
    The book party was as schizophrenic as the book – at Bluenight, off Union Square, one of those shadowy salons with wingback chairs and art deco mirrors that are supposed to make you feel like a Bright Young Thing. Gin martinis wobbling on trays lofted by waiters with rictus smiles. Greedy journalists with knowing smirks and hollow legs, getting the free buzz before they go somewhere better.
    My parents circulate the room hand in hand – their love story is always part of the Amazing Amy story: husband and wife in mutual creative labor for a quarter century. Soul mates. They really call themselves that, which makes sense, because I guess they are. I can vouch for it, having studied them, little lonely only child, for many years. They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride through life like conjoined jellyfish – expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other’s spaces liquidly. Making it look easy, the soul-mate thing. People say children from broken homes have it hard, but the children of charmed marriages have their own particular challenges.
    Naturally, I have to sit on some velvety banquette in the corner of the room, out of the noise, so I can give a few interviews to a sad handful of kid interns who’ve gotten stuck with the ‘grab a quote’ assignment from their editors.
    How does it feel to see Amy finally married to Andy? Because you’re not married, right?
    Question asked by:
    a) a sheepish, bug-eyed kid balancing a notebook on top of his messenger bag
    b) an overdressed, sleek-haired young thing with fuck-me stilettos
    c) an eager, tattooed rockabilly girl who seemed way more interested in Amy than one would guess a tattooed rockabilly girl would be
    d) all of the above
    Answer: D
    Me: ‘Oh, I’m thrilled for Amy and Andy, I wish them the best. Ha, ha.’
    My answers to all the other questions, in no particular order:
    ‘ Some parts of Amy are inspired by me, and some are just fiction.’
    ‘I’m happily single right now, no Able Andy in my life!’
    ‘No, I don’t think Amy oversimplifies the male-female dynamic.’
    ‘No, I wouldn’t say Amy is dated; I think the series is a classic.’
    ‘Yes, I am single. No Able Andy in my life right now.’
    ‘Why is Amy amazing and Andy’s just able? Well, don’t you know a