I'm Nicole Kidman – I'm A Married Woman – I'm Your Troubled Wife – I Have A Question For You – Wait, Wait A Minute, Wait Just A Minute – I Need To THINK –

Previously: I’m Patrick Wilson. I’m Your Skeptical Husband. I’m– Well, I’m Just Not So Sure About All Of This.

Wait. Wait, wait. Wait — wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I just. I just. I just – Wait. What is going on? I just want to know what is going on. This is me. This is me you’re talking to, Nicole Kidman, your troubled wife, wrapping a sweater tighter around myself because the buttons won’t protect me from betrayal, and you have something to tell me. Don’t you? Do I? What does that mean? What, what, what does that mean? Of course you can talk to me. Do you feel like you can’t talk to me? Because you can always talk to me. And yes, yes, I am, yes, okay, yes, I am going to shift from intense and engaged to brittle and aloof now, I am going to shuttle, but it’s only because I know something I didn’t know I knew before, and I know I’m being wronged, and I need you, I need you to see that I am the most wounded deer in the forest, careful limbs thinly arranged, breathing heavily, very still, curtain of hair, fragile, vibrant, infidelity sex. Looking away, looking left and right rapidly, looking in amazement. I’m your wife, and I’m looking at everything, especially away, I’m the looking wife and I’ll never stop looking now, and you are so much to be looked at, you shame husband, you bag of secrets, you medical oil spill, you humiliation ape, you need baby. Can’t you see how much I’m seeing now? Can’t you wait? Wait, wait, wait. And did it ever? Did that never was? And how am I supposed to think that, especially now, especially Charles?

Let’s have a long pause. Let me start to do something, and then stop. Let me begin a gesture, and then abandon it. Let me sigh partwa—Well, we never agreed to that. Let me shake my head vigorously, face made of stationery.

Well, I don’t remember it that way. Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t. I’m sorry. Polite but increasingly firm disagreement. Brittle nod. Am I slipping through your fingers?

It’s not that I’m disagreeing. I’m going to whisper now. My eyes will get bigger and my voice will get softer, and more shocked, and I will throw my eyebrows at you, to protect my questions from the sun.

Of course I trust you. And I just — Well, I take my promises very seriously. And you know I never asked you about that, because I knew how you felt about it, and I hardly think it’s fair to bring that up now. I have, I have so many questions, I just have so many questions, and I really don’t think now is the best time, why don’t you come back later? I’m going to have to ask you to leave my beautiful home, I paid for it with indignity. Let me reassure the children that everything is fine, like a swan with a broken flute in its beak, like a cracked marble, spilling galaxies, get in the SUV for millionaire kindergarten, how can this be? Can this really be happening? Is anything happening to me? Why is something happening to me?

I just can’t believe it. I just don’t — I’m sorry, but sudden finality, that’s how it is, I just can’t believe it, no, I’m sorry, I can no longer be torn apart by my own doubt, I must resolve myself into decisive, lampshade, straight up and down, beautiful hair don’t touch me, rich father, step inside of circle of feminine sympathy noises, I am the most wife and no one is more married than me, Nicole Kidman wife, to you, good husband all of a sudden most bad, never suspected a thing, rotten just under the surface, fire extinguisher white wife of money, break glass in emergency, was I the emergency?

How can you say that to me? I’m amazed, I’m amazed all in the eyes, nose full of teacups, I’m stars, I’m blown to bits with amazement, can this be happening? How can this be happening, when everything was always so much money before? And where is it now? And put me back on my elevator to God, but you can’t, because everything that’s outside is inside, and our son.

I haven’t decided, I haven’t decided yet, I just haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do. What do you think I’m going to do? How far away from you do you think I can get inside of my own body? And did I ever? And did you ever guess? And you can’t possibly imagine now what a wife looks like turned inside-out, always exhaling, putting down glass, I’m not hungry, I’m trying to tell you something, big steel refrigerator quite engine inside, trench coat and scarf for denouement, turn into snow, wife statue, no husband, only marriage, and not even that anymore.

[Stills from Big Little Lies, Malice, The Undoing]