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Her brain, all those coils, and her thoughts shuttling through those coils like fast, frantic centipedes. Like a child, I picture opening her skull, unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts. What are you thinking, Amy? The question I’ve asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?
This quote from the beginning of the novel is a startling piece of foreshadowing, especially as Amy initially comes off so angelically. As he gazes at her, Nick feels deeply frustrated and confused by how separate Amy’s mental life seems from his. The question of what one’s spouse is truly feeling is an important one in any marriage, but it seems much more important when one is married to a dangerous sociopath. The reader gets an inkling that whatever is going on inside Amy’s head must be unpleasant, because all the imagery Nick uses to describe it is so unappealing. To him, her thoughts are like “fast, frantic centipedes” and their pathways like “coils.” Amy’s mind is complex and scuttling, and Nick's desire to "open her skull" and "pin down her thoughts" points to both his fear of her and his yearning to understand her. The questions Nick poses here are pretty universal concerns about identity and the impact of long-term relationships on each spouse’s personality. However, the way he poses them makes it seem like more than a casual curiosity about what his wife truly feels. Instead, they sound like he wants to know what she’s thinking so that he can protect himself from her.
I’m so much happier now that I’m dead. Technically, missing. Soon to be presumed dead. But as shorthand, we’ll say dead. It’s been only a matter of hours, but I feel better already: loose joints, wavy muscles. At one point this morning, I realized my face felt strange, different. I looked in the rearview mirror—dread Carthage forty-three miles behind me, my smug husband lounging around his sticky bar as mayhem dangled on a thin piano wire just above his shitty, oblivious head—and I realized I was smiling. Ha! That’s new.
This quote unveils the novel’s shocking twist: after chapters’ worth of Nick’s guilt and Amy’s diary entries escalating in fear, the author reveals she’s been fine all along. Her declaration of being "happier" now that she is "dead" is a celebration of how successful her plan to liberate herself from Nick has been. The physical sensations she describes, such as "loose joints" and "wavy muscles” are part of this delicious release of tension and the newfound freedom she experiences. She uses a metaphor to describe how close Nick was to this disaster without knowing it, saying that for a long time she was dangling “mayhem...on a thin piano wire just above his shitty, oblivious head.” This image is an intensely dramatic one, especially as the “mayhem” hasn’t actually quite snapped its wire quite yet. As Amy drives away, she knows Nick will probably not have left The Bar yet. These are his last few hours of peace before all hell breaks loose. She’s so delighted by the idea of ruining his life that she’s willing to completely abandon—and potentially even sacrifice—her own to make it happen.
My body was a beautiful, perfect economy, every feature calibrated, everything in balance. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss men looking at me. It’s a relief to walk into a convenience store and walk right back out without some hangabout in sleeveless flannel leering as I leave, some muttered bit of misogyny slipping from him like a nacho-cheese burp. Now no one is rude to me, but no one is nice to me either. No one goes out of their way, not overly, not really, not the way they used to. I am the opposite of Amy.
Amy has always been a thin and conventionally beautiful woman, so much so that she’s very noticeable in a crowd. In order to hide away more effectively, she deliberately gains weight before leaving and chops her hair off, switching out her stylish clothes for cheap, grocery-store versions. Keeping her body as a "perfect economy" reflected her previous obsession with maintaining her cool-girl image. However, her relief at no longer being the object of male attention also comes with unfamiliarity. There’s an underlying discomfort with losing the capital her beauty gave her, one which makes her realize how much better she used to be treated when more people found her attractive. In stating that she’s "the opposite of Amy," she underlines the shift from her previous perfection to her current state of economical, protective anonymity. It allows her to control her narrative, but robs her of some of the control over other people she is used to having.
