I made it a few steps into the woodshed before I had to lean against the wall and catch my breath.
I knew it was going to be bad. I knew it once I figured out the clue: woodshed. Midday fun. Cocktails. Because that description was not me and Amy. It was me and Andie. The woodshed was just one of many strange places where I’d had sex with Andie. We were restricted in our meeting spots. Her busy apartment complex was mostly a no go. Motels show up on credit cards, and my wife was neither trusting nor stupid. (Andie had a MasterCard, but the statement went to her mom. It hurts me to admit that.) So the woodshed, deep behind my sister’s house, was very safe when Go was at work. Likewise my father’s abandoned home (Maybe you feel guilty for bringing me here / I must admit it felt a bit queer / But it’s not like we had the choice of many a place / We made the decision: We made this our space), and a few times, my office at school (I picture myself as your student / With a teacher so handsome and wise / My mind opens up [not to mention my thighs!]), and once, Andie’s car, pulled down a dirt road in Hannibal after I’d taken her for a visit one day, a much more satisfying reenactment of my banal field trip with Amy (You took me here so I could hear you chat / About your boyhood adventures: crummy jeans and visor hat).
Each clue was hidden in a spot where I’d cheated on Amy. She’d used the treasure hunt to take me on a tour of all my infidelities. I had a shimmer of nausea as I pictured Amy trailing oblivious me in her car – to my dad’s, to Go’s, to goddamn Hannibal – watching me fuck this sweet young girl, my wife’s lips twisting in disgust and triumph.
Because she knew she’d punish me good. Now at our final stop, Amy was ready for me to know how clever she was. Because the woodshed was packed with about every gizmo and gadget that I swore to Boney and Gilpin I hadn’t bought with the credit cards I swore I didn’t know anything about. The insanely expensive golf clubs were here, the watches and game consoles, the designer clothes, they were all sitting here, in wait, on my sister’s property. Where it looked like I’d stored them until my wife was dead and I could have a little fun.
I knocked on Go’s front door, and when she answered, smoking a cigarette, I told her I had to show her something, and I turned around and led her without a word to the woodshed.
‘Look,’ I said, and ushered her toward the open door.
‘Are those—Is that all the stuff … from the credit cards?’ Go’s voice went high and wild. She put one hand to her mouth and took a step back from me, and I realized that just for a second, she thought I was making a confession to her.
We’d never be able to undo it, that moment. For that alone, I hated my wife.
‘Amy’s framing me, Go,’ I said. ‘Go, Amy bought this stuff. She’s framing me.’
She snapped to. Her eyelids clicked once, twice, and she gave a tiny shake of her head, as if to rid herself of the image: Nick as wife killer.
‘Amy’s framing me for her murder. Right? Her last clue, it led me right here, and no, I didn’t know about any of this stuff. It’s her grand statement. Presenting: Nick Goes to Jail! ’ A huge, burpy air bubble formed at the back of my throat – I was going to sob or laugh. I laughed. ‘I mean, right? Holy fuck, right?’
So hurry up, get going, please do / And this time I’ll teach you a thing or two. The final words of Amy’s first clue. How did I not see it?
‘If she’s framing you, why let you know?’ Go was still staring, transfixed by the contents of her shed.
‘Because she’s done it so perfectly. She always needed that validation, the praise, all the time. She wants me to know I’m being fucked. She can’t resist. It wouldn’t be fun for her otherwise.’
‘No,’ Go said, chewing on a nail. ‘There’s something else. Something more. Have you touched anything in here?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Then the question becomes …’
‘What does she think I’ll do when I find this, this incriminating evidence, on my sister’s property,’ I said. ‘That’s the question, because whatever she assumes I’ll do, whatever she wants me to do, I have to do the opposite. If she thinks I’ll freak out and try to get rid of all this stuff, I guarantee you she has a way I’ll get busted with it.’
‘Well, you can’t leave it here,’ Go said. ‘You’ll definitely get busted that way. Are you sure that was the last clue? Where’s your present?’
‘Oh. Shit. No. It must be inside somewhere.’
‘Don’t go in there,’ Go said.
‘I have to. God knows what else she’s got in store.’
I stepped carefully into the dank shed, keeping my hands tight by my sides, walking delicately on tiptoes so as not to leave tread marks. Just past a flat-screen TV, Amy’s blue envelope sat on top of a huge gift box, wrapped in her beautiful silvery paper. I took the envelope and the box back outside into the warm air. The object inside the package was heavy, a good thirty pounds, and broken into several pieces that slid with a strange rattle as I set the box on the ground at our feet. Go took an involuntary quick step away from it. I slid open the envelope.
Darling Husband,
Now is when I take the time to tell you that I know you better than you could ever imagine. I know sometimes you think you are moving through this world alone, unseen, unnoticed. But don’t believe that for a second. I have made a study of you. I know what you are going to do before you do it. I know where you’ve been, and I know where you’re going. For this anniversary, I’ve arranged a trip: Follow your beloved river, up up up! And you don’t even have to worry about trying to find your anniversary present. This time the present will come to you! So sit back and relax, because you are DONE.
‘What’s upriver?’ Go asked, and then I groaned.
‘She’s sending me up the river.’
‘Fuck her. Open the box.’
I knelt down and nudged off the lid with my fingertips, as if expecting an explosion. Silence. I peered inside. At the bottom of the box lay two wooden puppets, side by side. They seemed to be husband and wife. The male was dressed in motley and grinning rabidly, holding a cane or a stick. I pulled the husband figure out, his limbs bouncing around excitedly, a dancer limbering up. The wife was prettier, more delicate, and stiffer. Her face looked shocked, as if she’d seen something alarming. Beneath her was a tiny baby that could be attached to her by a ribbon. The puppets were ancient, heavy, and large, almost as big as ventriloquist dummies. I picked up the male, gripped the thick, clublike handle used to move him, and his arms and legs twitched manically.
‘Creepy,’ Go said. ‘Stop.’
Beneath them lay a piece of buttery blue paper folded over once. Amy’s broken-kite handwriting, all triangles and points. It read:
The beginning of a wonderful new story, Nick! ‘That’s the way to do it!’
Enjoy.
On our mom’s kitchen table, we spread all of Amy’s treasure-hunt clues and the box containing the puppets. We stared at the objects as if we were assembling a jigsaw puzzle.
‘Why bother with a treasure hunt if she was planning … her plan,’ Go said.
Her plan had become immediate shorthand for faking her disappearance and framing you for murder. It sounded less insane.
‘Keep me distracted, for one thing. Make me believe she still loved me. I’m chasing her little clues all over Christendom, believing my wife was wanting to make amends, wanting to jump-start our marriage …’
The moony, girlish state her notes had left me in, it sickened me. It embarrassed me. Marrow-deep embarrassment, the kind that becomes part of your DNA, that changes you. After all these years, Amy could still play me. She could write a few notes and get me back completely. I was her little puppet on a string.
I will find you, Amy. Lovesick words, hateful intentions.
‘So I don’t stop to think: Hey, it sure looks like I murdered my wife, I wonder why?’
‘And the police would have found it strange – you would have found it strange – if she didn’t do the treasure hunt, this tradition,’ Go reasoned. ‘It would look as if she knew she was going to disappear.’
‘This worries me though,’ I said, pointing at the puppets. ‘They’re unusual enough that they have to mean something. I mean, if she just wanted to keep me distracted for a while, the final gift could have been anything wooden.’
Go ran a finger across the male’s motley uniform. ‘They’re clearly very old. Vintage.’ She flipped their clothing upside down to reveal the club handle of the male. The female had only a square-shaped gap at her head. ‘Is this supposed to be sexual? The male has this giant wooden handle, like a dick. And the female is missing hers. She just has the hole.’
‘It’s a fairly obvious statement: Men have penises and women have vaginas?’
Go put a finger inside the female puppet’s gap, swept around to make sure there was nothing hidden. ‘So what is Amy saying?’
‘When I first saw them, I thought: She bought children’s toys. Mom, dad, baby. Because she was pregnant.’
‘Is she even pregnant?’
A sense of despair washed over me. Or rather, the opposite. Not a wave coming in, rolling over me, but the ebb of the sea returning: a sense of something pulling away, and me with it. I could no longer hope my wife was pregnant, but I couldn’t bring myself to hope she wasn’t either.
Go pulled out the male doll, scrunched her nose, then lightbulb popped. ‘You’re a puppet on a string.’
I laughed. ‘I literally thought those exact words too. But why a male and female? Amy clearly isn’t a puppet on a string, she’s the puppetmaster.’
‘And what’s: That’s the way to do it? To do what?’
‘Fuck me for life?’
‘It’s not a phrase Amy used to say? Or some quote from the Amy books, or …’ She hurried over to her computer and searched for That’s the way to do it. Up came lyrics for ‘That’s the Way to Do It’ by Madness. ‘Oh, I remember them,’ Go said. ‘Awesome ska band.’
‘Ska,’ I said, swerving toward delirious laughter. ‘Great.’
The lyrics were about a handyman who could do many types of home-improvement jobs – including electrical and plumbing – and who preferred to be paid in cash.
‘God, I fucking hate the eighties,’ I said. ‘No lyrics ever made sense.’
‘“The reflex is an only child,”’ Go said, nodding.
‘“He’s waiting by the park,”’ I muttered back automatically.
‘So if this is it, what does it mean?’ Go said, turning to me, studying my eyes. ‘It’s a song about a handyman. Someone who might have access to your house, to fix things. Or rig things. Who would be paid in cash so there’s no record.’
‘Someone who installed video cameras?’ I asked. ‘Amy went out of town a few times during the – the affair. Maybe she thought she’d catch us on tape.’
Go shot a question at me.
‘No, never, never at our house.’
‘Could it be some secret door?’ Go suggested. ‘Some secret false panel Amy put in where she’s hidden something that will … I don’t know, exonerate you?’
‘I think that’s it. Yes, Amy is using a Madness song to give me a clue to my own freedom, if only I can decipher their wily, ska-infused codes.’
Go laughed then too. ‘Jesus, maybe we’re the ones who are bat-shit crazy. I mean, are we? Is this totally insane?’
‘It’s not insane. She set me up. There is no other way to explain the warehouse of stuff in your backyard. And it’s very Amy to drag you into it, smudge you a little bit with my filth. No, this is Amy. The gift, the fucking giddy, sly note I’m supposed to understand. No, and it has to come back to the puppets. Try the quote with the word marionettes.’
I collapsed on the couch, my body a dull throb. Go played secretary. ‘Oh my God. Duh! They’re Punch and Judy dolls. Nick! We’re idiots. That line, that’s Punch’s trademark. That’s the way to do it!’
‘Okay. The old puppet show – it’s really violent, right?’ I asked.
‘This is so fucked up.’
‘Go, it’s violent, right?’
‘Yeah. Violent. God, she’s fucking crazy.’
‘He beats her, right?’
‘I’m reading … okay. Punch kills their baby.’ She looked up at me. ‘And then when Judy confronts him, he beats her. To death.’
My throat got wet with saliva.
‘And each time he does something awful and gets away with it, he says, “That’s the way to do it!”’ She grabbed Punch and placed him in her lap, her fingers grasping the wooden hands as if she were holding an infant. ‘He’s glib, even as he murders his wife and child.’
I looked at the puppets. ‘So she’s giving me the narrative of my frame-up.’
‘I can’t even wrap my brain around this. Fucking psycho.’
‘Go?’
‘Yeah, right: You didn’t want her to be pregnant, you got angry and killed her and the unborn baby.’
‘Feels anticlimactic somehow,’ I said.
‘The climax is when you are taught the lesson that Punch never learns, and you are caught and charged with murder.’
‘And Missouri has the death penalty,’ I said. ‘Fun game.’