What Alice Forgot (39 page)

“I mean, the last time I saw you was when we had that drinks thing with that friend of yours. The neighbor? Gina. How's she?”

Gina, Gina, Gina. It occurred to Alice that she wouldn't have called Elisabeth or Sophie about the kiss in the laundry. She would have called Gina.

“She's dead.”

“Sorry, she's what? Green! Green! Are you color-blind? Look, Alice, I've got to go. I'll call! Soon!”

“Just tell me one thing,” said Alice, but the phone was beeping at her. Sophie had gone.

Just like everyone, it seemed.

The phone rang in her hand and Alice jumped as if it had come alive.

“Hello?”

“Oh, you sound much better.” It was her mother. Alice relaxed. Barb might now be the salsa-dancing, cleavage-baring wife of Roger, but she was still her mother.

“I've just been speaking to Sophie,” said Alice.

“Oh, that's nice. She's so famous these days, isn't she? After that article? I was just talking to someone about her the other day. Who was it? Oh, I know! It was the lady who comes to do Roger's feet. The chiropractor. No, no, that's not it. The podiatrist. She said her daughter wanted one of those ‘Sophie Drew' handbags for her birthday. I said, well, I've known Sophie since she was eleven years old, and I was nearly going to offer to try and get a discount for her, because it has to be said, Roger has awful hairy feet, so I do feel a bit sorry for her, but then I thought, you and Sophie don't really see much of each other these days, do you? Just Christmas cards, isn't it? So I changed the subject quick smart in case she asked, because she's that sort of person, I think, who likes to try and use connections to get bargains. Gina was a bit like that, wasn't she? Not that there's anything wrong with it, I guess. It's quite a clever way to live your life really, oh dear, what an absolute tragedy, it really is, anyway, what made me think of Gina? Oh yes, ah, connections. Anyway, I've got three reasons why I rang, I've actually written them down, my memory is just shocking these days—now speaking of which, how
are
you, darling?”

“I'm fine,” began Alice.

“Oh good, I'm so pleased. Frannie was making such a fuss about it. I said, ‘You watch, she'll have her memory back by Monday.'”

“I'm remembering some things,” began Alice. Should she ask her mother about Nick and the kiss in the laundry?

“Wonderful!” Her mother wavered and then obviously decided to take the optimistic approach. “Wonderful! Now, darling, I wondered, when you said at the hospital that you and Nick might be getting back together, is that something that I possibly shouldn't have mentioned to anyone? Because I happened to run into Jennifer Turner today at the shops.”

“Jennifer Turner?” The name didn't mean anything to her.

“Yes, you know. That fierce sort of girl. The lawyer.”

“Oh, you mean
Jane
Turner.” Mmmm. The first face she saw when she woke up in this strange new life. Jane who was helping her divorce Nick.

“Yes, Jane. She wanted to know how you were. She said you hadn't been answering her texts.”

Texts. What did that mean?

“Anyway, I said you were fine, and then I mentioned that you and Nick were getting back together. Well, she seemed quite taken aback. She said to tell you that you must not, under any circumstances, sign anything. Went on and on about it. I wondered if maybe I shouldn't have said anything? Have I messed up?”

“Of course not, Mum,” said Alice automatically.

“Thank goodness, because Roger and I are just thrilled. Thrilled! We were thinking we could take the children for a weekend and you and Nick could go somewhere romantic. That was the second thing on my list. I'll just cross it off. You say the word. We'd love to have them. Roger said he'd even foot the bill for a meal at somewhere fancy-schmancy. He's so generous like that.”

“That sounds great.”

“Really? Oh, I'm so pleased because I mentioned it to Elisabeth and she said she thought once you got your memory back that you would be ‘singing a different tune.' But you know, she takes the pessimistic approach to things these days, poor thing, and that was my third reason for calling. Have you heard from her by any chance? I'm desperate to know if she's got the results yet. I've been ringing and ringing and no answer.”

“What results?”

“Today was the blood test. You know, for the last egg. Oh, wait a minute, I always get that word wrong. Embryo.” Her mother's voice broke. “Oh, Alice, I've been praying and praying and sometimes I have to admit I get a bit
cross
with God. Elisabeth and Ben have tried so hard. Just one little baby isn't too much to ask for, is it?”

“No,” said Alice. She looked at Dino's fertility doll sitting on the counter. Why didn't Elisabeth tell her there was a blood test today?

Her mother sighed. “I said to Roger, I'm so happy myself now, why can't my girls be happy, too?”

 

 

Alice was hanging clothes on the line (it was taking forever) when the phone rang again. She had to run to answer it.

“Hello?” she said breathlessly.

“Oh, hi, it's me,” said Nick. He paused. “Nick.”

“Yes, I recognized your voice actually.”

You kissed another woman in the laundry! I can't believe you did that!
Should she mention the kiss? No. She should think about the right way to approach it first.

He said, “I just thought I should call and see how you, how your ah, your head, your injury, is today. Were you okay driving the children to school?”

“It's a bit late if I wasn't,” said Alice tartly. Last night she'd had to
iron
all their school uniforms, do all the cleaning up, and make very specific lunches for each of them (after Tom had politely pointed out that was what she normally did on a Sunday night).

“Oh, good,” said Nick. “So, I assume, you've got that memory thing all sorted out?”

“Well, I've got one memory back,” burst out Alice. It appeared she was going to mention the kiss after all. It was physically impossible not to mention it. “I remember you kissing that woman in the laundry.”

“Kissing a woman in the laundry?”

“Yes. At a party. I came in to get a drink.”

There was silence and then Nick laughed sharply.

“Sitting on the washing machine, right?”

“Yes,” said Alice, wondering how he could sound so smug, as if this point went to him, when it so clearly went to her.

“You remember
me
kissing a woman sitting on our washing machine?”

“Yes!”

“You know what? I never even looked at another woman while we were together. I never kissed another woman. I never slept with another woman.”

“But I remember—”

“Yeah. I know exactly what you remember, and I find that very interesting.”

Alice was baffled. “But—”

“Very interesting. Look, I've got to go, but clearly you haven't got your memory back properly yet and you need to see a doctor. If you're not capable of looking after the children, you need to let me know. You've got a responsibility to them.”

Oh, but it was fine to leave her with them last night when he knew perfectly well that she didn't even recognize them, let alone know how to look after them. It wasn't logical, and yet, he was speaking in that pompous, I'm-so-rational-you're-so-irrational voice, each word stuffed with his own rightness. She could remember that voice from arguments in the past, like that morning when they didn't have milk for breakfast, and the night when they ran late for his sister's first baby's christening, and the time neither of them had enough cash for the ferry tickets, and each time he had put on that voice. That superior, crisp, businesslike voice, with a hint of a sigh. It drove her bananas.

Each time he used that voice it brought back the other occasions he'd used it before and she would think, That's right, I can't stand it when you talk like that.

“You know what?” she said. “I'm
glad
we're getting a divorce!”

As she slammed the phone down, she could hear him laughing.

T
he Mega Meringue Committee turned up at Alice's door at 1:00 p.m.

She'd forgotten all about them.

When the doorbell rang she was sitting on the living room floor surrounded by photo albums. She'd been there for hours, flipping pages, peeling photos off so she could hold them close to her and study for clues.

There were photos of picnics and bushwalks and days at the beach, birthday parties and Easters and Christmases. She'd lost so many Christmas memories! It gave her a pain in the center of her chest seeing the photos of tangle-haired children in their pajamas, their faces solemn with concentration as they unwrapped presents under a huge, gorgeously decorated tree.

Maybe she could go to the doctor and ask if she could please have all her happy memories returned, minus the sad ones.

The photos were mostly of the children and Nick. Alice would have been the one behind the camera. Nick always looked so capable when he was taking a photo, a grave, professional look on his face, but actually he was hopeless, skimming off the tops of people's heads.

Alice had discovered she could take good photos when she was a child. After their father died nobody had taken photos of them. He had been the photographer and their mother would no more think about trying to use his camera than she would have tried to change a light globe. It was Alice who picked up his camera one day and worked out how to use it. In those years when their mother disappeared into herself and “old Miss Jeffrey” next door turned into “Frannie,” their honorary grandmother, Alice also taught herself how to change light globes, fix running toilets, and cook chops and veggies, while Elisabeth learned how to demand refunds, pay bills, fill in forms, and talk to strangers.

Whenever she came upon another rare photo of Nick she tried to read the expression in his eyes. Was it possible to track the decline of their marriage? No. She could track the decline of his
hair
over the years, but his smile at the person behind the camera seemed unchangingly genuine and happy.

In the ones where they were together, they always had their arms around each other, their bodies curved together. If a body-language expert were asked to objectively judge their marriage on the basis of these photo albums they would surely say, “This is a happy, loving, good-humored family and the likelihood of that couple breaking up is nil.”

She didn't bother much with the photos of people she didn't recognize but one face kept appearing again and again, and it dawned on her that this must surely be Gina. She was a busty, big-toothed woman with a heap of dark curly hair. She and Alice always seemed to be photographed holding champagne or cocktail glasses up to the camera like trophies. They seemed to be very physical together, which was unusual for Alice. She had never had those sorts of lavish friendships where you threw your arms around each other, but Alice and this woman always seemed to have their heads angled together so their cheeks were touching, big wide lipsticky smiles for the camera. Alice felt embarrassed by these photos. “Oh stop it, you don't even
know
her,” she said out loud at a photo of herself actually planting a big, smoochy kiss on Gina's cheek.

Alice stared at the photos of Gina for ages, waiting for the recognition— and the grief? But nothing. She looked sort of fun, she guessed, although not really the sort of woman Alice would have picked as a friend. She looked like she had the potential to be a bit overbearing. A loud, zany, tiring type.

But maybe not. Actually, Alice looked a bit loud and zany herself in some of those photos. Maybe she
was
loud and zany now that she was so slim and drank so much coffee.