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

Amazing
Amy
series as a business, which on the surface never
failed to strike me as silly: They are children’s books, about
a perfect little girl who’s pictured on every book cover, a
cartoonish version of my own Amy. But of course they are
(were) a business, big business. They were elementary-
school staples for the better part of two decades, largely
because of the quizzes at the end of every chapter.
In third grade, for instance, Amazing Amy caught her
friend Brian overfeeding the class turtle. She tried to reason
with him, but when Brian persisted in the extra helpings,
Amy had no choice but to narc on him to her teacher: ‘Mrs
Tibbles, I don’t want to be a tattletale, but I’m not sure what
to do. I’ve tried talking to Brian myself, but now … I guess I
might need help from a grown-up …’ The fallout:
1) Brian told Amy she was an untrustworthy friend and
stopped talking to her
.
2) Her timid pal Suzy said Amy shouldn’t have told; she
should have secretly fished out the food without Brian
knowing
.
3) Amy’s archrival, Joanna, said Amy was jealous and just
wanted to feed the turtle herself
.
4) Amy refused to back down – she felt she did the proper
thing
.

---

Who is right?!
Well, that’s easy, because Amy is always right, in
every story. (Don’t think I haven’t brought this up in my
arguments with my real Amy, because I have, more than
once.)
The quizzes – written by 
two psychologists, who are
also parents like you!
– were supposed to tease out a
child’s personality traits: Is your wee one a sulker who can’t
stand to be corrected, like Brian? A spineless enabler, like
Suzy? A pot-stirrer, like Joanna? Or perfect, 
like Amy
? The
books became extremely trendy among the rising yuppie
class: They were the Pet Rock of parenting. The Rubik’s
Cube of child rearing. The Elliotts got rich. At one point it
was estimated that every school library in America had an
Amazing Amy
book.
‘Do you have worries that this might link back to the
Amazing Amy
business?’ I asked.
‘We do have a few people we thought might be worth
checking out,’ Rand began.
I coughed out a laugh. ‘Do you think Judith Viorst
kidnapped Amy for Alexander so he wouldn’t have any
more Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days?’
Rand and Marybeth turned matching surprised-
disappointed faces toward me. It was a gross, tasteless
thing to say – my brain had been burping up such
inappropriate thoughts at inopportune moments. Mental
gas I couldn’t control. Like, I’d started internally singing the
lyrics to ‘Bony Moronie’ whenever I saw my cop friend.
She’s as skinny as a stick of macaroni
, my brain would
bebop as Detective Rhonda Boney was telling me about
dragging the river for my missing wife. 
Defense

---

mechanism
, 
I 
told 
myself, 
just a weird defense
mechanism
. I’d like it to stop.
I rearranged my leg delicately, spoke delicately, as if
my words were an unwieldy stack of fine china. ‘I’m sorry, I
don’t know why I said that.’
‘We’re all tired,’ Rand offered.
‘We’ll have the cops round up Viorst,’ Marybeth tried.
‘And that bitch Beverly Cleary too.’ It was less a joke than a
pardon.
‘I guess I should tell you,’ I said. ‘The cops, it’s normal
in this kind of case—’
‘To look at the husband first, I know,’ Rand interrupted.
‘I told them they’re wasting their time. The questions they
asked us—’
‘They were offensive,’ Marybeth finished.
‘So they have spoken with you? About me?’ I moved
over to the minibar, casually poured a gin. I swallowed three
belts in a row and felt immediately worse. My stomach was
working its way up my esophagus. ‘What kind of stuff did
they ask?’
‘Have you ever hurt Amy, has Amy ever mentioned you
threatening her?’ Marybeth ticked off. ‘Are you a
womanizer, has Amy ever mentioned you cheating on her?
Because that sounds like Amy, right? I told them we didn’t
raise a doormat.’
Rand put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Nick, what we
should have said, first of all, is: We know you would never,
ever hurt Amy. I even told the police, told them the story
about you saving the mouse at the beach house, saving it
from the glue trap.’ He looked over at Marybeth as if she
didn’t know the story, and Marybeth obliged with her rapt

---

attention. ‘Spent an hour trying to corner the damn thing,
and then literally drove the little rat bastard out of town.
Does that sound like a guy who would hurt his wife?’
I felt a burst of intense guilt, self-loathing. I thought for a
second I might cry, finally.
‘We love you, Nick,’ Rand said, giving me a final
squeeze.
‘We do, Nick,’ Marybeth echoed. ‘You’re our son. We
are so incredibly sorry that on top of Amy being gone, you
have to deal with this – cloud of suspicion.’
I didn’t like the phrase