What Alice Forgot Read online

  Barb talked about it all the way home. "Sometimes I wish Alice had never met Gina," she fretted. "You can't change the past," pronounced Roger, and we were all quite overcome by his wisdom. He's a philosopher, that fellow.

  It's not relevant now but I always thought that Gina did dominate Alice. (Alice does have a slight tendency toward hero worship.) I remember her making some comment about Alice's outfit at Olivia's birthday party last year. It was something along the lines of "Your such-and-such blouse looks nicer with that skirt." Alice went straight back upstairs and changed. I noticed Nick was watching the whole incident and didn't look too happy about it.

  After Barb and Roger dropped me off, we had yet another Social Committee meeting. This time we were discussing plans for this year's Christmas party. Mr. Mustache suggested a "Casino Night." People loved the idea! Can you think of anything less Christmassy, Phil?

  He's the most aggravating man.

  I will admit, however, that he did make a point of asking me whether Alice liked the talcum powder.

  Elisabeth's Homework for Dr. Hodges A funny thing happened when I got home from lunch with the Infertiles. Not exactly ha-ha funny. Just stupid ironic funny.

  Driving home after lunch, I kept thinking about "Giving Up." The idea grew stronger and stronger in my head. It suddenly seems quite obvious to me. I can't go through another miscarriage. I can't. The thought of it happening again gives me the feeling of a block of concrete dropping on my chest. I have had enough. I didn't know I'd had enough, but it turns out I have.

  We used to keep setting those deadlines. No more after my fortieth birthday. No more after Christmas. But then each time we'd think, well, but what else is there to do? We'd traveled, we'd been to lots of parties, lots of movies and concerts, we'd slept in. We'd done all those things that people with children seem to miss so passionately. We didn't want those things anymore. We wanted a baby.

  I remember thinking about how mothers were prepared to run into burning buildings to save their children's lives. I thought I should be able to go through a bit more suffering, a bit more inconvenience to give my children life. It made me feel noble. But now I realize I'm a crazy woman running into a burning house for children who don't exist. My children were never going to exist. They were always in my mind. That's what's so embarrassing about all this. Each time I sobbed for a lost baby, it was like sobbing over the end of a relationship when I'd never even gone out with the guy. My babies weren't babies. They were just microscopic clusters of cells that weren't ever going to be anything else. They were just my own desperate hopes. Dream babies.

  And people have to give up on dreams. Aspiring ballet dancers have to accept that their bodies aren't right for ballet. Nobody even feels that sorry for them. Oh, well, think of another job. My body isn't right for babies. Bad luck.

  At the pedestrian crossing I saw a pregnant woman, a woman pushing a pram, a woman holding a child's hand. And I actually felt nothing, Dr. Hodges. Nothing! That's a big thing for an Infertile--to see a pregnant woman and feel nothing. No knifein-the-stomach feeling of bitterness. No ugly envy twisting my mouth.

  So here's the funny thing.

  I got home, and for once, Ben wasn't in the garage working on his car. He was sitting at the kitchen table with paperwork spread out all around him, and I noticed his eyes were a bit red and puffy.

  He said, "I've been thinking."

  I told him so had I, but he could go first.

  He said he'd been thinking about what Alice had said last week and he'd decided she was one hundred percent right.

  Oh, Alice.

  Alice sat on the couch and watched Dominick using a helium tank to blow up blue and silver balloons. He and Jasper had finally got sick of breathing in the helium and talking in chipmunk voices. Jasper had laughed so hard at his dad squeakily singing "Over the Rainbow" that Alice had worried he might stop breathing. Now he was outside in the backyard, using a remote control to expertly operate a miniature helicopter.

  "He's very cute," said Alice, watching him. She'd gathered that Jasper was in the same class as Olivia. Her daughter. The one with the fat blond pigtails.

  "When he's not being a psychotic monster," said Dominick.

  Alice laughed. Perhaps too much. She didn't really get parent humor. Maybe he really was a psychotic monster and that wasn't funny.

  "So," she said. "How long have you and I been, ummm, seeing each other for?"

  Dominick glanced quickly at her and away again. He tied the end of the balloon and watched it float straight up to the ceiling with the others.

  Without looking at her, he said, "About a month."

  Alice had told Dominick that the doctors had said her memory loss was only temporary. He looked terrified and seemed to be talking to her gently and carefully, as if she had a mild intellectual disability. Unless that was the way he always talked to her, of course.

  "And it's, ah, going well?" asked Alice recklessly. It was bizarre. Had she kissed him? Slept with him? He was very tall. Not unattractive. Just a stranger. She felt both repelled and mildly titillated by the idea. It reminded her of gurgly, giggly teenage conversations. Oh my God, imagine having sex with him.

  "Yup," said Dominick. He was doing something funny and nervous with his mouth. He was one of those awkward, geeky types.

  He picked up another balloon and hooked it over the nozzle of the helium tank. He looked at her properly, full in the face, and said, almost sternly, "Well, I think so, anyway." Actually, he was not unattractive.

  "Oh." Alice felt flustered and exposed. "Well, good. I guess."

  She longed for Nick to be sitting next to her. His hand warm on her leg. Claiming her. So she could enjoy talking, maybe even flirting, with this perfectly nice man in an appropriate, safe way.

  "You seem different," said Dominick.

  "In what way?"

  "I don't know how to explain it."

  He didn't say anything else. Apparently he wasn't a talker, like Nick. She wondered what she saw in him. Did she even like him that much? He seemed sort of dull.

  "What do you do for a living?" she asked. The standard dating question. Trying to unfairly slot him into a personality type.

  "I'm an accountant," he said.

  Fabulous. "Oh, right."

  He grinned and said, "Just testing to see if you really had lost your memory. I'm a grocer. A fruit and veg man."

  "Really?" She was imagining free mangoes and pineapples.

  "Nah!"

  Oh, God, this man was a nerd.

  "I'm a school principal."

  "No, you're not."

  "I'm being serious now. I'm principal at the school."

  "What school?"

  "Where your kids go. That's how we met."

  The school principal. Straight to the principal's office!

  "So you'll be there tonight? At this party?"

  "Yes. I'm sort of wearing two hats, because Jasper is in kindergarten, and this party is for parents of kindergarten kids. So I'll be ..."

  He had a habit of not completely finishing his sentences. His voice just drifted away, as if he thought it was so obvious how the sentence finished there was no point saying it out loud.

  "And why am I hosting it?" asked Alice. It seemed extraordinary. Why would she even think of doing such a thing?

  Dominick raised his eyebrows. "Well, because you and your friend Kate Harper are Class Mums."

  "Like classy mothers?"

  He smiled uncertainly. "The Class Mums arrange social events for all the other mothers, and communicate with the teachers, organize the reading roster, and, ah, that sort of ..."

  Oh Lord. It sounded horrendous. She'd become one of those volunteering, involved type of people. She was probably really proud and smug; she'd always known she had a tendency toward smugness. She could just imagine herself swanning about in her beautiful clothes.

  "You do a lot for the school," said Dominick. "We're very lucky to have you. Speaking of which, it's the big day comi
ng up! Wow! I hope you're going to be well enough for it!"

  That man on the treadmill at the gym had mentioned a "big day," too. "What do you mean?" asked Alice with a sense of foreboding.

  "You're getting us into the Guinness Book of Records."

  She smiled, ready to laugh at his next joke.

  "No, really. You don't remember at all? You're baking the world's biggest lemon meringue pie on Mother's Day. It's a big event. All the money raised is going to breast cancer research."

  Alice remembered her dream about the giant rolling pin. Ah. The rolling pin wasn't a symbol at all. It was just a giant rolling pin. Her dreams were always so disappointingly obvious.

  "I'm baking it?" she said in a panic. "This huge lemon meringue pie?"

  "No, no. You've got one hundred mums baking it," said Dominick. "It's going to be amazing." He knotted the end of another balloon together. Alice looked up and saw that the ceiling was now covered with blue and silver balloons.

  Tonight she was hosting a party and next weekend she was planning to break a world record. Good Lord. What had she become?

  She looked back down and saw that Dominick was staring at her.

  "I've worked it out," he said. "What's different about you."

  He sat down beside her. Much too close. Alice tried to move unobtrusively away from him, but it was too hard on the squishy leather sofa without making a production of it. So she sat passively with her hands in her lap, schoolgirl style; surely he wasn't going to do anything, with his son just a few feet away.

  He was so close, she could see tiny black whiskers on his chin and smell him: toothpaste, washing powder. (Nick smelled of coffee, aftershave, last night's garlic.)

  Up close, his eyes were the same liquid chocolate as his son's. (Nick's were either hazel or green, depending on the light, the irises were rimmed with gold, and his eyelashes were so fair, they looked white in the sun.)

  Dominick leaned in closer. Oh sweet heavens above, the school principal was going to kiss her, and it would be wrong to slap his face because she might have already kissed him before.

  No. He pressed his thumb in between her eyebrows. What was he doing? Was it some sort of weird middle-aged-people ritual? Was she meant to do it back to him?

  "You've lost your frown," he said. "You always have this little frown right here, as if you're concentrating, or worrying about something, even when you're happy. Now it's ..."

  He took his thumb away. Alice exhaled with relief. She said, "I don't know if you're meant to tell a woman she has a permanent frown." It came out sounding flirtatious.

  "Either way, you're still gorgeous," he said, and put his hand to the back of her head and kissed her.

  It was not unpleasant.

  "I saw that!"

  Jasper stood in front of them, his helicopter dangling by a rotor from one hand. His eyes were wide and delighted.

  Alice put her fingers to her mouth. She'd kissed another man. She hadn't just let him kiss her; she'd kissed him back. Out of nothing more than interest really. Politeness. (Maybe the teeniest flicker of attraction.) Guilt blossomed like heartburn across her chest.

  Jasper chortled. "I'm going to tell Olivia that my dad kissed her mum!" He danced on the spot, punching his fists in the air, his face screwed up in an ecstasy of pleasure and disgust. "My dad kissed her mum! My dad kissed her mum!"

  Goodness. Were Alice's own children like this? Sort of ... demented?

  Dominick touched Alice gently and respectfully on her arm, and stood up. He grabbed Jasper and held him upside down by his ankles. Jasper shrieked with gasps of laughter and dropped his helicopter.

  Alice watched them and felt a weird sense of dissociation. Did she really just kiss that man? That shy school principal? That jolly dad?

  Maybe it was her head injury that made her do it. Yes, she had a medical reason. She was not herself.

  Then she remembered there was no need to feel guilty, because of Nick's affair with that Gina girl. Right. Now they were even.

  Jasper noticed that a part of his helicopter had broken off and he yelled and squirmed as though in terrible agony. Dominick said, "What? What is it, mate?" and turned him upright.

  Alice's head began to ache again.

  When was Elisabeth coming back? She needed Elisabeth.

  Elisabeth's Homework for Dr. Hodges As I was driving back over to Alice's place, I thought about Gina. I often think about her now. She has acquired an aura of mystery. Once upon a time I just found her irritating.

  I'm not sure why I disliked her so much from the beginning. Maybe it was just because it was clear that she and Michael and Alice and Nick had formed such a cozy foursome. They used to be in and out of each other's places all the time. No need to knock. Lots of private jokes. Feeding each other's kids. Gina would walk straight over from her house in her swimming costume--no T-shirt, no towel wrapped under her armpits--just entirely unselfconscious, like a child. She had a softish, round, mocha-colored body. Beautiful jiggly breasts that dragged the men's eyes along with them. I think I remember some story about them all getting drunk and swimming naked in the pool one summer's night. So very seventies of them.

  She and Alice were all bright and giggly and swilling champagne, and I was a stiff cardboard cutout. My laugh was forced. It seemed to happen so quickly that she knew my sister better than me.

  Gina's kids were IVF pregnancies. She asked lots of expertly interested questions. She would sympathetically rub my hand (very touchy-feely type, soft, sweet-smelling kisses on each cheek every time you saw her; I once heard Roger say to her, "Oh, I do like the way you European ladies kiss hello!"). Gina said she understood exactly what I was going through. And quite probably she did, except that it was all behind her now. I could tell her memories were rose-colored because of the happy ending. You'd think I would have been inspired by her--she was a success story. She'd traveled across the infertility minefield and got safely to the other side. But I found her patronizing. It's easy to think the minefield wasn't that bad once you're safely watching other people get blown up. She couldn't imagine her children not existing. They were too real, filling up her mind. I felt like I couldn't complain to Alice because Gina was probably in her ear, telling her, with the benefit of experience, that it wasn't that bad and I was just whinging and being melodramatic.

  One night I called Alice to tell her that we'd lost another baby.

  I had terrible nausea with that pregnancy. I gagged every time I cleaned my teeth. I had to run out of a cinema because the smell of the woman's perfume sitting next to me (Opium) combined with her popcorn made me retch. I'd thought for sure it must be a sign that this one was going to be the lucky one. Ha-ha. It meant nothing.

  When I rang Alice, she answered the phone laughing. Gina was in the background, yelling out something about pineapple. They were inventing cocktails for some school function. Of course Alice stopped laughing when I told her the news and put on her sad voice, but she couldn't quite stamp out the leftover laughter. I felt like the boring sister with yet another boring miscarriage, ruining the good times for everybody with her slightly disgusting gynecological bad news. Alice must have signaled to Gina, because her laughter stopped like a switch had been turned off.

  I told her not to worry, that we could talk later, and hung up fast. Then I threw the phone across the room and it smashed a beautiful vase that I'd bought in Italy when I was twenty, and I lay on the couch and screamed into a cushion. I still grieve for the vase.

  Alice didn't call me the next day. And the day after that was when Madison ran through the French doors. So we were distracted and busy at the hospital worrying about her. My miscarriage got forgotten in between cocktails with Gina and Madison. Alice never even mentioned it. I wondered if she forgot.

  I think that's when the coldness started between us.

  Yes, I know. Petty and childish, but there you have it.

  Chapter 17

  Frannie's Letter to Phil I'm tucked up in bed again, Phil. It's be
en a long day.

  Who should be sitting next to me again in the dining room at dinner tonight? You guessed it. Mr. Mustache.

  The man seems to have taken a shine to me. I don't know why because we have absolutely nothing in common and we appear to disagree on everything.

  He was talking about his mustache tonight. He said that he'd always wanted a mustache but that his wife had never let him grow one because it would be "too ticklish when she kissed him." (Too much information, as the young people say!) He said that after she died, he'd "cultivated this beautiful specimen."

  He asked what I thought of his mustache and I said I thought it was most unattractive.

  He roared with laughter.

  Then he asked how I'd managed to escape the "shackles of marriage." (Do you mind!)

  You will be astonished to hear that I told him about you. Not the whole story. I just said that I was pretty much an old maid when I finally met "Mr. Right." I said that we were engaged to be married, but unfortunately the wedding never took place. It wasn't meant to be.

  Mr. Mustache was uncharacteristically quiet. Then he said, "I'm sorry to hear that, Frannie," and touched my hand, and for a moment I couldn't speak.

  He had an unexpectedly gentle touch.

  Of course, only a few minutes after that, he was regaling the whole table with the most tasteless "dirty joke" you have ever heard.

  "Nick!"

  Alice sat bolt upright, her heart racing, her breath shallow. She felt about the bed with her hand for Nick, to wake him up and tell him about the nightmare, although the details were already slipping away and starting to seem silly. Something to do with a ... tree?

  A huge tree. Branches black against a stormy sky.

  "Nick?"

  Normally he woke up immediately when she had a nightmare, his voice gruff with sleep, automatically soothing her, "It's okay, it's just a dream, just a bad dream." Part of her mind would always think, He's going to make such a great dad.

  She patted at the sheets. He must have gone to get a glass of water. Or had he not come to bed yet?

  Nick is not here, Alice. He lives somewhere else. He flew back from Portugal this morning and you weren't there to meet him. Maybe "Gina" picked him up at the airport. Oh, and you kissed that school principal today. Remember? Remember? Can you just please REMEMBER your life, you fool!