Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

child psychologists
, chose this particular
public form of passive-aggressiveness toward 
their child
was not just fucked up but also stupid and weird and kind of

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hilarious. So be it.
The book party was as schizophrenic as the book – at
Bluenight, off Union Square, one of those shadowy salons
with wingback chairs and art deco mirrors that are
supposed to make you feel like a Bright Young Thing. Gin
martinis wobbling on trays lofted by waiters with rictus
smiles. Greedy journalists with knowing smirks and hollow
legs, getting the free buzz before they go somewhere
better.
My parents circulate the room hand in hand – their love
story is always part of the 
Amazing Amy
story: husband
and wife in mutual creative labor for a quarter century. Soul
mates. They really call themselves that, which makes
sense, because I guess they are. I can vouch for it, having
studied them, little lonely only child, for many years. They
have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts,
they ride through life like conjoined jellyfish – expanding
and contracting instinctively, filling each other’s spaces
liquidly. Making it look easy, the soul-mate thing. People
say children from broken homes have it hard, but the
children of charmed marriages have their own particular
challenges.
Naturally, I have to sit on some velvety banquette in the
corner of the room, out of the noise, so I can give a few
interviews to a sad handful of kid interns who’ve gotten
stuck with the ‘grab a quote’ assignment from their editors.
How does it feel to see Amy finally married to Andy?
Because you’re not married, right?
Question asked by:
a) a sheepish, bug-eyed kid balancing a notebook on top

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of his messenger bag
b) an overdressed, sleek-haired young thing with fuck-me
stilettos
c) an eager, tattooed rockabilly girl who seemed way more
interested in 
Amy
than one would guess a tattooed
rockabilly girl would be
d) all of the above
Answer: D
Me: 
‘Oh, I’m thrilled for Amy and Andy, I wish them
the best. Ha, ha.’
My answers to all the other questions, in no particular
order:
‘
Some parts of Amy are inspired by me, and some
are just fiction.’
‘I’m happily single right now, no Able Andy in my life!’
‘No, I don’t think Amy oversimplifies the male-female
dynamic.’
‘No, I wouldn’t say Amy is dated; I think the series is a
classic.’
‘Yes, I am single. No Able Andy in my life right now.’
‘Why is Amy amazing and Andy’s just able? Well,
don’t you know a lot of powerful, fabulous women who
settle for regular guys, Average Joes and Able Andys?
No, just kidding, don’t write that.’
‘Yes, I am single.’
‘Yes, my parents are definitely soul mates.’
‘Yes, I would like that for myself one day.’
‘Yep, single, motherfucker.’

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Same questions over and over, and me trying to
pretend they’re thought-provoking. And them trying to
pretend they’re thought-provoking. Thank God for the open
bar.
Then no one else wants to talk to me – that fast – and
the PR girl pretends it’s a good thing: 
Now you can get
back to your party!
I wriggle back into the (small) crowd,
where my parents are in full hosting mode, their faces
flushed – Rand with his toothy prehistoric-monster-fish
smile, Marybeth with her chickeny, cheerful head bobs, their
hands intertwined, making each other laugh, enjoying each
other, 
thrilled
with each other – and I think, 
I am so fucking
lonely
.
I go home and cry for a while. I am almost thirty-two.
That’s not old, especially not in New York, but fact is, it’s
been 
years
since I even really liked someone. So how likely
is it I’ll meet someone I love, much less someone I love
enough to marry? I’m tired of not knowing who I’ll be with, or
if I’ll be with anyone.
I have many friends who are married – not many who
are happily married, but many married friends. The few
happy ones are like my parents: They’re baffled by my
singleness. A smart, pretty, nice girl like me, a girl with so
ma ny 
interests
and 
enthusiasms
, a cool job, a loving
family. And let’s say it: money. They knit their eyebrows and
pretend to think of men they can set me up with, but we all
know there’s no one left, no one 
good
left, and I know that
they secretly think there’s something wrong with me,
something hidden away that makes me unsatisfiable,
unsatisfying.
The ones who are not soul-mated – the ones who have

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settled
– are even more dismissive of my singleness: It’s
not that hard to find someone to marry, they say. No
relationship is perfect, they say – they, who make do with
dutiful sex and gassy bedtime rituals, who settle for TV as
conversation, who believe that husbandly capitulation – yes,
honey, okay, honey – is the same as concord. 
He’s doing
what you tell him to do because he doesn’t care enough to
argue
, I think. 
Your petty demands simply make him feel
superior, or resentful, and someday he will fuck his pretty,
young coworker who asks nothing of him, and you will
actually be shocked
. Give me a man with a little fight in
him, a man who calls me on my bullshit. (But who also kind
of likes my bullshit.) And yet: Don’t land me in one of those
relationships where we’re always pecking at each other,
disguising insults as jokes, rolling our eyes and ‘playfully’
scrapping in front of our friends, hoping to lure them to our
side of an argument they could not care less about. Those
awful 
if only
relationships: 
This marriage would be great if
only
… and you sense the 
if only
list is a lot longer than
either of them realizes.
So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn’t make
me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home on
Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an
extravagant meal and tell myself, 
This is perfect
, as if I’m
the one dating me. As I go to endless rounds of parties and
bar nights, perfumed and sprayed and hopeful, rotating
myself around the room like some dubious dessert. I go on
dates with men who are nice and good-looking and smart –
perfect-on-paper men who make me feel like I’m in a
foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself
known. Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to

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be known by someone else, to be understood? He 
gets
me. She 
gets
me. Isn’t that the simple magic phrase?
So you suffer through the night with the perfect-on-
paper man – the stutter of jokes misunderstood, the witty
remarks lobbed and missed. Or maybe he understands
that you’ve made a witty remark but, unsure of what to do
with it, he holds it in his hand like some bit of conversational
phlegm he will wipe away later. You spend another hour
trying to find each other, to recognise each other, and you
drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go
home to a cold bed and think, 
That was fine
. And your life is
a long line of fine.
And then you run into Nick Dunne on Seventh Avenue
as you’re buying diced cantaloupe, and pow, you are
known, you are recognised, the both of you. You both find
the exact same things worth remembering. 
(Just one olive,
though)
. You have the same rhythm. Click. You just know
each other. All of a sudden you see 
reading in bed
and
waffles on Sunday
and 
laughing at nothing
and 
his mouth
on yours
. And it’s so far beyond fine that you know you can
never go back to fine. That fast. You think: 
Oh, here is the
rest of my life. It’s finally arrived
.

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