Gone Girl

human beings – there were at least twenty protesters in front of my home, in addition to the camera crews. My neighbor Jan Teverer was one of them. She and I made eye contact, and she aimed her poster at me: WHERE IS AMY, NICK?
    Finally, I was inside, and the garage door came buzzing down. I sat in the heat of the concrete space, breathing.
    Everywhere felt like a jail now – doors opening and closing and opening and closing, and me never feeling safe.
    I spent the rest of my day picturing how I’d kill Amy. It was all I could think of: finding a way to end her. Me smashing in Amy’s busy, busy brain. I had to give Amy her due: I may have been dozing the past few years, but I was fucking wide awake now. I was electric again, like I had been in the early days of our marriage.
    I wanted to do something, make something happen, but there was nothing to be done. By late evening, the camera crews were all gone, though I couldn’t risk leaving the house. I wanted to walk. I settled for pacing. I was wired dangerously tight.
    Andie had screwed me over, Marybeth had turned against me, Go had lost a crucial measure of faith. Boney had trapped me. Amy had destroyed me. I poured a drink. I took a slug, tightened my fingers around the curves of the tumbler, then hurled it at the wall, watched the glass burst into fireworks, heard the tremendous shatter, smelled the cloud of bourbon. Rage in all five senses. Those fucking bitches .
    I’d tried all my life to be a decent guy, a man who loved and respected women, a guy without hang-ups. And here I was, thinking nasty thoughts about my twin, about my mother-in-law, about my mistress. I was imagining bashing in my wife’s skull.
    A knock came at the door, a loud, furious bang-bang-bang that rattled me out of my nightmare brain.
    I opened the door, flung it wide, greeting fury with fury.
    It was my father, standing on my doorstep like some awful specter summoned by my hatefulness. He was breathing heavily andsweating. His shirtsleeve was torn and his hair was wild, but his eyes had their usual dark alertness that made him seem viciously sane.
    ‘Is she here?’ he snapped.
    ‘Who, Dad, who are you looking for?’
    ‘You know who.’ He pushed past me, started marching through the living room, trailing mud, his hands balled, his gravity far forward, forcing him to keep walking or fall down, muttering bitchbitchbitch . He smelled of mint. Real mint, not manufactured, and I saw a smear of green on his trousers, as if he’d been stomping through someone’s garden.
    Little bitch that little bitch , he kept muttering. Through the dining room, into the kitchen, flipping on lights. A waterbug scuttled up the wall.
    I followed him, trying to get him to calm down, Dad, Dad, why don’t you sit down, Dad, do you want a glass of water, Dad … He stomped downstairs, clumps of mud falling off his shoes. My hands turtled into fists. Of course this bastard would show up and actually make things worse.
    ‘Dad! Goddammit, Dad! No one is here but me. Just me.’ He flung open the guest room door, then went back up to the living room, ignoring me – ‘Dad!’
    I didn’t want to touch him. I was afraid I’d hit him. I was afraid I’d cry.
    I blocked him as he tried to go upstairs to the bedroom. I placed one hand on the wall, one on the banister – human barricade. ‘Dad! Look at me.’
    His words came out in a furious spittle.
    ‘You tell her, you tell that little ugly bitch it’s not over. She’s not better than me, you tell her. She’s not too good for me. She doesn’t get to have a say . That ugly bitch will have to learn—’
    I swear I saw a blank whiteness for just a second, a moment of complete, jarring clarity. I stopped trying to block my father’s voice for once and let it throb in my ears. I was not that man: I didn’t hate and fear all women. I was a one-woman misogynist. If I despised only Amy, focused all my fury and rage and venom on the one woman who deserved it, that didn’t make me my father. That made me sane.
    Little bitch little bitch little bitch .
    I had never hated my father more for making me truly love those words.
    Fucking bitch fucking bitch .
    I grabbed him by the arm, hard, and herded him into the car, slammed the door. He repeated the incantation all the way to Comfort Hill. I pulled up to the home in the entry reserved for ambulances, and I went to his side, swung open the door, yanked him out by the arm, and walked him just inside the