Gone-Girl-by-Gillian-Flynn

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