Gone-Girl-by-Gillian-Flynn

know he loves me.’
I admire Mo’s unconditional love, I do. So I don’t tell her what I have
found on Nick’s computer, the book proposal for a memoir about a Manhattan
magazine writer who returns to his Missouri roots to care for both his ailing
parents. Nick has all sorts of bizarre things on his computer, and sometimes I
can’t resist a little light snooping – it gives me a clue as to what my husband
is thinking. His search history gave me the latest: noir films and the website
of his old magazine and a study on the Mississippi River, whether it’s possible
to free-float from here to the Gulf. I know what he pictures: floating down the
Mississippi, like Huck Finn, and writing an article about it. Nick is always
looking for angles.
I was nosing through all this when I found the book proposal.
Double Lives: A Memoir of Ends and Beginnings will especially resonate
with Gen X males, the original man-boys, who are just beginning to
experience the stress and pressures involved with caring for aging parents. In
Double Lives, I will detail:
• My growing understanding of a troubled, once-distant father
• My painful, forced transformation from a carefree young man into the
head of a family as I deal with the imminent death of a much loved
mother
• The resentment my Manhattanite wife feels at this detour in her
previously charmed life. My wife, it should be mentioned, is Amy
Elliott Dunne, the inspiration for the best-selling Amazing Amy series.
The proposal was never completed, I assume because Nick realized he
wasn’t going to ever understand his once-distant father; and because Nick was
shirking all ‘head of the family’ duties; and because I wasn’t expressing any
anger about my new life. A little frustration, yes, but no book-worthy rage.
For so many years, my husband has lauded the emotional solidity of
midwesterners: stoic, humble, without affectation! But these aren’t the kinds
of people who provide good memoir material. Imagine the jacket copy:
People behaved mostly well and then they died.
Still, it stings a bit, ‘the resentment my Manhattanite wife feels.’ Maybe I
do feel … stubborn. I think of how consistently lovely Maureen is, and I
worry that Nick and I were not meant to be matched. That he would be
happier with a woman who thrills at husband care and homemaking, and I’m
not disparaging these skills: I wish I had them. I wish I cared more that Nick