I didn’t move out. I wanted this all to be a surprise to my wife, who is never surprised. I wanted to give her the manuscript as I walked out the door to land a book deal. Let her feel that trickling horror of knowing the world is about to tilt and dump its shit all over you, and you can’t do anything about it. No, she may never go to prison, and it will always be my word against hers, but my case was convincing. It had an emotional resonance, if not a legal one.
So let everyone take sides. Team Nick, Team Amy. Turn it into even more of a game: Sell some fucking T-shirts.
My legs were weak when I went to tell Amy: I was no longer part of her story.
I showed her the manuscript, displayed the glaring title: Psycho Bitch. A little inside joke. We both like our inside jokes. I waited for her to scratch my cheeks, rip my clothes, bite me.
‘Oh! What perfect timing,’ she said cheerfully, and gave me a big grin. ‘Can I show you something?’
I made her do it again in front of me. Piss on the stick, me squatting next to her on the bathroom floor, watching the urine come out of her and hitting the stick and turning it pregnant-blue.
Then I hustled her into the car and drove to the doctor’s office, and I watched the blood come out of her – because she isn’t really afraid of blood – and we waited the two hours for the test to come back.
Amy was pregnant.
‘It’s obviously not mine,’ I said.
‘Oh, it is.’ She smiled back. She tried to snuggle into my arms. ‘Congratulations, Dad.’
‘Amy—’I began, because of course it wasn’t true, I hadn’t touched my wife since her return. Then I saw it: the box of tissues, the vinyl recliner, the TV and porn, and my semen in a hospital freezer somewhere. I’d left that will-destroy notice on the table, a limp guilt trip, and then the notice disappeared, because my wife had taken action, as always, and that action wasn’t to get rid of the stuff but to save it. Just in case.
I felt a giant bubble of joy – I couldn’t help it – and then the joy was encased in a metallic terror.
‘I’ll need to do a few things for my security, Nick,’ she said. ‘Just because, I have to say, it’s almost impossible to trust you. To start, you’ll have to delete your book, obviously. And just to put that other matter to rest, we’ll need an affidavit, and you’ll need to swear that it was you who bought the stuff in the woodshed and hid the stuff in the woodshed, and that you did once think I was framing you, but now you love me and I love you and everything is good.’
‘What if I refuse?’
She put her hand on her small, swollen belly and frowned. ‘I think that would be awful.’
We had spent years battling for control of our marriage, of our love story, our life story. I had been thoroughly, finally outplayed. I created a manuscript, and she created a life.
I could fight for custody, but I already knew I’d lose. Amy would relish the battle – God knew what she already had lined up. By the time she was done, I wouldn’t even be an every-other-weekend dad; I would interact with my child in strange rooms with a guardian nearby sipping coffee, watching me. Or maybe not even that. I could suddenly see the accusations – of molestation or abuse – and I would never see my baby, and I would know that my child was tucked away far from me, Mother whispering, whispering lies into that tiny pink ear.
‘It’s a boy, by the way,’ she said.
I was a prisoner after all. Amy had me forever, or as long as she wanted, because I needed to save my son, to try to unhook, unlatch, debarb, undo everything that Amy did. I would literally lay down my life for my child, and do it happily. I would raise my son to be a good man.
I deleted my story.
Boney picked up on the first ring.
‘Pancake House? Twenty minutes?’ she said.
‘No.’
I informed Rhonda Boney that I was going to be a father and so could no longer assist in any investigation – that I was, in fact, planning to retract any statement I’d made concerning my misplaced belief that my wife had framed me, and I was, also ready to admit my role in the credit cards.
A long pause on the line. ‘Hunh,’ she said. ‘Hunh.’
I could picture Boney running her hand through her slack hair, chewing on the inside of her cheek.
‘You take care of yourself, okay, Nick?’ she said finally. ‘Take good care of the little one too.’ Then she laughed. ‘Amy I don’t really give a fuck about.’
I went to Go’s house to tell her in person. I tried to frame it as happy news. A baby, you can’t be that upset about a baby. You can hate a situation, but you can’t hate a child.
I thought Go was going to hit me. She stood so close I could feel her breath. She jabbed me with an index finger.
‘You just want an excuse to stay,’ she whispered. ‘You two, you’re fucking addicted to each other. You are literally going to be a nuclear family, you do know that? You will explode. You will fucking detonate. You really think you can possibly do this for, what, the next eighteen years? You don’t think she’ll kill you?’
‘Not as long as I am the man she married. I wasn’t for a while, but I can be.’
‘You don’t think you’ll kill her? You want to turn into Dad?’
‘Don’t you see, Go? This is my guarantee not to turn into Dad. I’ll have to be the best husband and father in the world.’
Go burst into tears then – the first time I’d seen her cry since she was a child. She sat down on the floor, straight down, as if her legs gave out. I sat down beside her and leaned my head against hers. She finally swallowed her last sob and looked at me. ‘Remember when I said, Nick, I said I’d still love you if? I’d love you no matter what came after the if?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I still love you. But this breaks my heart.’ She let out an awful sob, a child’s sob. ‘Things weren’t supposed to turn out this way.’
‘It’s a strange twist,’ I said, trying to turn it light.
‘She won’t try to keep us apart, will she?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Remember, she’s pretending to be someone better too.’
Yes, I am finally a match for Amy. The other morning I woke up next to her, and I studied the back of her skull. I tried to read her thoughts. For once I didn’t feel like I was staring into the sun. I’m rising to my wife’s level of madness. Because I can feel her changing me again: I was a callow boy, and then a man, good and bad. Now at last I’m the hero. I am the one to root for in the never-ending war story of our marriage. It’s a story I can live with. Hell, at this point, I can’t imagine my story without Amy. She is my forever antagonist.
We are one long frightening climax.