How It All Goes Down
Amy Elliott Dunne—April 28, 2011
- Inspired by Mama Maureen's mantra, "Keep on keeping on," Amy is trying her best to survive in the situation Nick has thrust her into. While his motivation for coming home was to care for his parents, he seems to have stopped caring about them—taking Maureen to chemo appointments, tidying up Nick's dad's room, and staying in good graces with the assisted living staff are now solely Amy's responsibilities.
- One of Nick's latest projects is a planned memoir about moving back to Missouri to take care of his parents and having to become a family man, which Amy discovers while snooping on his computer. The proposal describes the difficulties of gaining greater understanding of his dad and dealing with his wife's anger over being uprooted from New York. Apparently, Nick never finished the proposal because the idea of getting to know his dad better is too repugnant and Amy isn't angry enough. At least not to his face.
- Sometimes Amy worries that she and Nick were never meant for each other. Nick's a mama's boy and wants women to dote on him the way Maureen did, but Amy's not that kind of lady. For a while she tried to be, making his happiness the primary goal of her life, but her only-child self-centeredness keeps her from being able to sustain it.
- It also doesn't help that Nick seems to have thrown Amy to the wind just like his parents. He's no longer concerned with her happiness, either. He never invites her to do things with him, and while he's lost weight and looks pretty fantastic, Amy feels like he's leaving her behind in their new life. She wishes that she preoccupied his thoughts the way he does hers.