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

partly watching a romantic comedy on my computer but
mostly chatting, while the IV dripped … so … slowly, and as
the spunky heroine tripped over a sofa, Mo turned to me
and said, ‘Don’t be too hard on Nick. About not wanting to
do this kind of thing. I just always doted on him, I babied
him – how could you 
not
? That 
face
. And so he has trouble
doing hard things. But I truly don’t mind, Amy. Truly.’
‘You should mind,’ I said.
‘Nick doesn’t have to prove his love for me,’ she said,
patting my hand. ‘I 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

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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

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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 always has his favorite
toothpaste, that I know his collar size off the top of my head,
that I am an unconditionally loving woman whose greatest
happiness is making my man happy.
I was that way, for a while, with Nick. But it was
unsustainable. I’m not selfless enough. Only child, as Nick
points out regularly.
But I try. I keep on keeping on, and Nick runs around
town like a kid again. He’s happy to be back in his rightful
prom-king place – he dropped about ten pounds, he got a
new haircut, he bought new jeans, he looks freakin’ great.
But I only know that from the glimpses of him coming home
or going back out, always in a pretend hurry. 
You wouldn’t
like it
, his standard response any time I ask to come with
him, wherever it is he goes. Just like he jettisoned his
parents when they were of no use to him, he’s dropping me
because I don’t fit in his new life. He’d have to work to
make me comfortable here, and he doesn’t want to do that.
He wants to enjoy himself.
Stop it, stop it. I must 
look on the bright side
. Literally. I
must take my husband out of my dark shadowy thoughts
and shine some cheerful golden light on him. I must do
better at adoring him like I used to. Nick responds to
adoration. I just wish it felt more equal. My brain is so busy

---

with Nick thoughts, it’s a swarm inside my head:
Nicknicknicknicknick!
And when I picture his mind, I hear
my name as a shy crystal ping that occurs once, maybe
twice, a day and quickly subsides. I just wish he thought
about me as much as I do him.
Is that wrong? I don’t even know anymore.

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