Gone Girl

jettisoned if necessary. It actually chilled me, that look.
    So it is decided that quickly, with that little of a debate: We are leaving New York. We are going to Missouri. To a house in Missouri by the river where we will live. It is surreal, and I’m not one to misuse the word surreal .
    I know it will be okay. It’s just so far from what I pictured. When I pictured my life. That’s not to say bad, just … If you gave me a million guesses where life would take me, I wouldn’t have guessed. I find that alarming.
    The packing of the U-Haul is a mini-tragedy: Nick, determined and guilty, his mouth a tight line, getting it done, unwilling to look at me. The U-Haul sits for hours, blocking traffic on our little street, blinking its hazard lights – danger, danger, danger – as Nick goes up and down the stairs, a one-man assembly line, carrying boxes of books, boxes of kitchen supplies, chairs, side tables. We are bringing our vintage sofa – our broad old chesterfield that Dad calls our pet, we dote on it so much. It is to be the last thing we pack, a sweaty, awkward two-person job. Getting the massive thing down our stairs ( Hold on, I need to rest. Lift to the right. Hold on, you’re going too fast. Watch out, my fingers my fingers! ) will be its own much-needed team-building exercise. After the sofa, we’ll pick up lunch from the corner deli, bagel sandwiches to eat on the road. Cold soda.
    Nick lets me keep the sofa, but our other big items are staying in New York. One of Nick’s friends will inherit the bed; the guy will come by later to our empty home – nothing but dust and cable cords left – and take the bed, and then he’ll live his New York life in our New York bed, eating two a.m. Chinese food and havinglazy-condomed sex with tipsy, brass-mouthed girls who work in PR. (Our home itself will be taken over by a noisy couple, hubby-wife lawyers who are shamelessly, brazenly gleeful at this buyers’-market deal. I hate them.)
    I carry one load for every four that Nick grunts down. I move slowly, shuffling, like my bones hurt, a feverish delicacy descending on me. Everything does hurt. Nick buzzes past me, going up or down, and throws his frown at me, snaps, ‘You okay?’ and keeps moving before I answer, leaving me gaping, a cartoon with a black mouth-hole. I am not okay. I will be okay, but right now I am not okay. I want my husband to put his arms around me, to console me, to baby me a little bit. Just for a second.
    Inside the back of the truck, he fusses with the boxes. Nick prides himself on his packing skills: He is (was) the loader of the dishwasher, the packer of the holiday bags. But by hour three, it is clear that we’ve sold or gifted too many of our belongings. The U-Haul’s massive cavern is only half full. It gives me my single satisfaction of the day, that hot, mean satisfaction right in the belly, like a nib of mercury. Good , I think. Good .
    ‘We can take the bed if you really want to,’ Nick says, looking past me down the street. ‘We have enough room.’
    ‘No, you promised it to Wally, Wally should have it,’ I say primly.
    I was wrong . Just say: I was wrong, I’m sorry, let’s take the bed. You should have your old, comforting bed in this new place . Smile at me and be nice to me. Today, be nice to me.
    Nick blows out a sigh. ‘Okay, if that’s what you want. Amy? Is it?’ He stands, slightly breathless, leaning on a stack of boxes, the top one with Magic Marker scrawl: Amy Clothes Winter . ‘This is the last I’ll hear about the bed, Amy? Because I’m offering right now. I’m happy to pack the bed for you.’
    ‘How gracious of you,’ I say, just a whiff of breath, the way I say most retorts: a puff of perfume from a rank atomizer. I am a coward. I don’t like confrontation. I pick up a box and start toward the truck.
    ‘What did you say?’
    I shake my head at him. I don’t want him to see me cry, because it will make him more angry.
    Ten minutes later, the stairs are pounding – bang! bang! bang! Nick is dragging our sofa down by himself.
    I can’t even look behind me as we leave New York, because the truck has no back window. In the side mirror, I track the skyline(the receding skyline – isn’t that what they write in Victorian novels where the doomed heroine is forced to leave her ancestral home?), but none of the good buildings – not the Chrysler or the Empire State or the Flatiron, they never appear in that little shining rectangle.
    My