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

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
JULY 5, 2008
I
am fat with love! Husky with ardor! Morbidly obese with
devotion! A happy, busy bumblebee of marital enthusiasm.
I positively hum around him, fussing and fixing. I have
become a strange thing. I have become a wife. I find myself
steering the ship of conversations – bulkily, unnaturally –
just so I can say his name aloud. I have become a wife, I
have become a bore, I have been asked to forfeit my
Independent Young Feminist card. I don’t care. I balance
his checkbook, I trim his hair. I’ve gotten so retro, at one
point I will probably use the word 
pocketbook
, shuffling out
the door in my swingy tweed coat, my lips painted red, on
the way to the 
beauty parlor
. Nothing bothers me.
Everything seems like it will turn out fine, every bother
transformed into an amusing story to be told over dinner.
So I killed a hobo today, honey … hahahaha! Ah, we have
fun!
Nick is like a good stiff drink: He gives everything the
correct perspective. Not a different perspective, the correct
perspective. With Nick, I realize it actually, truly doesn’t
matter if the electricity bill is a few days late, if my latest
quiz turns out a little lame. (My most recent, I’m not joking:
‘What kind of tree would you be?’ Me, I’m an apple tree!
This means nothing!) It doesn’t matter if the new 
Amazing

---

Amy
book has been well and duly scorched, the reviews
vicious, the sales a stunning plummet after a limp start. It
doesn’t matter what color I paint our room, or how late
traffic makes me, or whether our recycling really, truly does
get recycled. (Just level with me, New York, does it?) It
doesn’t matter, because I have found my match. It’s Nick,
laid-back and calm, smart and fun and uncomplicated.
Untortured, happy. Nice. Big penis.
All the stuff I don’t like about myself has been pushed
to the back of my brain. Maybe that is what I like best about
him, the way he makes me. Not makes me feel, just makes
me. I am fun. I am playful. I am game. I feel naturally happy
and entirely satisfied. I am a wife! It’s weird to say those
words. (Seriously, about the recycling, New York – come
on, just a wink.)
We do silly things, like last weekend we drove to
Delaware because neither of us have ever had sex in
Delaware. Let me set the scene, because now it really is
for posterity. We cross the state line – 
Welcome to
Delaware!
, the sign says, and also: 
Small Wonder
, and
a ls o : 
The First State
, and also: 
Home of Tax-Free
Shopping
.
Delaware, a state of many rich identities.
I point Nick down the first dirt road I see, and we
rumble five minutes until we hit pine trees on all sides. We
don’t speak. He pushes his seat back. I pull up my skirt. I
am not wearing undies, I can see his mouth turn down and
his face go slack, the drugged, determined look he gets
when he’s turned on. I climb atop him, my back to him,
facing the windshield. I’m pressed against the steering
wheel, and as we move together, the horn emits tiny bleats

---

that mimic me, and my hand makes a smearing noise as I
press it against the windshield. Nick and I can come
anywhere; neither of us gets stage fright, it’s something
we’re both rather proud of. Then we drive right back home. I
eat beef jerky and ride with bare feet on the dashboard.
We love our house. The house that 
Amazing Amy
built. A Brooklyn brownstone my parents bought for us, right
on the Promenade, with the big wide-screen view of
Manhattan. It’s extravagant, it makes me feel guilty, but it’s
perfect. I battle the spoiled-rich-girl vibe where I can. Lots of
DIY. We painted the walls ourselves over two weekends:
spring green and pale yellow and velvety blue. In theory.
None of the colors turned out like we thought they would, but
we pretend to like them anyway. We fill our home with
knickknacks from flea markets; we buy records for Nick’s
record player. Last night we sat on the old Persian rug,
drinking wine and listening to the vinyl scratches as the sky
went dark and Manhattan switched on, and Nick said, ‘This
is how I always pictured it. This is exactly how I pictured it.’
On weekends, we talk to each other under four layers
of bedding, our faces warm under a sunlit yellow comforter.
Even the floorboards are cheerful: There are two old creaky
slats that call out to us as we walk in the door. I love it, I love
that it is ours, that we have a great story behind the ancient
floor lamp, or the misshapen clay mug that sits near our
coffeepot, never holding anything but a single paper clip. I
spend my days thinking of sweet things to do for him – go
buy a peppermint soap that will sit in his palm like a warm
stone, or maybe a slim slice of trout that I could cook and
serve to him, an ode to his riverboat days. I know, I am
ridiculous. I love it, though – I never knew I was capable of

---

being ridiculous over a man. It’s a relief. I even swoon over
his socks, which he manages to shed in adorably tangled
poses, as if a puppy carried them in from another room.
It is our one-year anniversary and I am fat with love,
even though people kept telling and telling us the first year
was going to be so hard, as if we were naive children
marching off to war. It wasn’t hard. We are meant to be
married. It is our one-year anniversary, and Nick is leaving
work at lunchtime; my treasure hunt awaits him. The clues
are all about us, about the past year together:
Whenever my sweet hubby gets a cold
It is this dish that will soon be sold
.
Answer: the torn yum soup from Thai Town on
President Street. The manager will be there this afternoon
with a taster bowl and the next clue.
Also McMann’s in Chinatown and the Alice statue at
Central Park. A grand tour of New York. We’ll end at the
Fulton Street fish market, where we’ll buy a pair of beautiful
lobsters, and I will hold the container in my lap as Nick
jitters nervously in the cab beside me. We’ll rush home, and
I will drop them in a new pot on our old stove with all the
finesse of a girl who has lived many Cape summers while
Nick giggles and pretends to hide in fear outside the
kitchen door.
I had suggested we get burgers. Nick wanted us to go
out – fivestar, fancy – somewhere with a clockwork of
courses and name-dropping waiters. So the lobsters are a
perfect in-between, the lobsters are what everyone tells us
(and tells us and tells us) that marriage is about:

---

compromise!
We’ll eat lobster with butter and have sex on the floor
while a woman on one of our old jazz records sings to us in
her far-side-of-the-tunnel voice. We’ll get slowly lazy-drunk
on good Scotch, Nick’s favorite. I’ll give him his present –
the monogrammed stationery he’s been wanting from
Crane & Co. with the clean sans-serif font set in hunter
green, on the thick creamy stock that will hold lush ink and
his writer’s words. Stationery for a writer, and a writer’s wife
who’s maybe angling for a love letter or two.
Then maybe we’ll have sex again. And a late-night
burger. And more Scotch. Voilà: happiest couple on the
block! And they say marriage is such hard work.

---