What Alice Forgot

Chapter 19

I t was five-thirty p.m., Sunday afternoon. In half an hour Nick would be home with the children.

Alice had a sick, excited feeling in her stomach as if she were going on a first date.

She’d been wearing a pretty floral dress and makeup, her hair all fluffy and motherly, when she decided that she was trying too hard. Presumably she didn’t normally dress up like a 1950s mother at a fancy-dress party. So she’d run back upstairs and scrubbed off the makeup, and pulled the dress over her head in mad panic. She’d found jeans and a white T-shirt, and flattened her hair. No jewelry except for Nick’s bracelet and her wedding ring, which she’d found at the back of a drawer, together with Granny Love’s engagement ring. It had been yet another fresh shock to find these symbols of her marriage carelessly tossed in with her underwear. She remembered when Nick had placed the wedding ring on her finger for the first time. Most grooms were clumsy at this point, grinning goofily, soft chuckles from the guests, but Nick had smoothly, tenderly slid it onto her finger in one go, his eyes locked on hers; she’d been proud. He was so dexterous.

With this ring I thee wed . . .

. . . until I thee divorce.

She wondered why she hadn’t given the awful engagement ring back. Wasn’t the ring normally torn from the finger and thrown at the man’s face in a fit of rage at some point during a divorce?

She looked at herself in the bedroom mirror. This was much better, casual, unaffected—although her face looked pale and very old; she resisted an intense longing to go through that amazing dab, dab, slap, slap routine again that transformed her face. Surely she didn’t normally wear makeup on a Sunday night at home.

Earlier in the day, after Elisabeth and Ben had gone home, it had suddenly occurred to Alice that it was presumably her responsibility to feed those three children. She had called her mother and asked her what she should cook for dinner, saying she wanted to cook their favorite thing. Barb had spent a full twenty minutes discussing each child’s dietary idiosyncrasies throughout their lives. “Remember when Madison went through that vegetarian stage? And of course it would have to be at the same time that Tom was just refusing to eat any vegetable. Then Olivia couldn’t decide whether she should only eat vegetables, like Madison, or refuse to eat vegetables, like Tom! Oh, you were tearing your hair out every tea time!” At last, after much changing of her mind, she’d finally settled on homemade hamburgers. “I think you found a healthy recipe in your Heart Foundation recipe book. You were saying just the other week that you were sick to death of it but the children can’t get enough of it. I’m sure you remember that , don’t you, darling? Because it was only last week .”

Alice had found the recipe book and it had opened straight at the right food-splattered page. All the ingredients were in her amazingly well-stocked freezer and pantry. It seemed like there was enough there to feed hundreds of children. As she made the mince for the hamburgers, she realized she wasn’t looking at the recipe book anymore. She seemed to know that now she grated in two carrots, one zucchini, now she added two eggs. Once it was ready, she had put the mince back in the fridge, defrosted rolls ready to be toasted, and made a green salad. Would the children eat a green salad? Who knew? She and Nick could eat it. He would stay for dinner, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t just drop the children off and leave ? But she had an awful feeling that was exactly what divorced parents did. She’d just have to ask him to please stay. Beg him, if necessary. She couldn’t be left alone with the children. It wasn’t safe. She didn’t know the procedures. For example, did they bath themselves? Did she read them stories? Sing them songs? When was bedtime? And how was it enforced?

She went back downstairs in her jeans and looked around her gleaming, beautiful house. Two cleaners had turned up at the door at midday, laden with mops and buckets, asking how the party had gone as they plugged in vacuum cleaners. They’d scrubbed and polished while Alice had wandered vaguely about, feeling embarrassed and not sure what she was meant to be doing. Should she help? Get out of the way? Supervise? Hide the valuables? She had her purse ready to give them however much they asked for, but there had been no request for money. They told her they’d see her on Thursday at the usual time and disappeared, waving cheerily. She’d closed the door behind them, breathed in the smell of furniture polish, and thought, “I am a woman with a swimming pool, air-conditioning, and cleaners .”

Now she looked about the kitchen and her eyes fell on a rack of wine. She should have a bottle open and breathing for Nick. She selected a bottle, went to get a corkscrew, and realized that the bottle didn’t have a cork. Instead she unscrewed a normal bottle top. How funny. The smell of the wine hit her nostrils and she found she was pouring herself a glass. She buried her nose in it. Part of her mind thought, “What are you doing, you tosser?” Another part thought, “Mmmm. Blackberries. ”

The wine slid smoothly down her throat and she wondered if she’d turned into an alcoholic. It wasn’t even six o’clock. She’d never been much of a wine drinker. Yet drinking this wine felt right and familiar, even as it felt strange and wrong. Maybe that’s why Nick had left her and wanted custody of the children. She’d become a drunk. Nobody knew, except for Nick and her children. It was a terrible secret. Well, but couldn’t she just get help? Join AA and follow those twelve steps? Never touch a drop again? She took another sip and tapped her fingers on the countertop. Soon she would see him and then the mystery of all this would finally be solved. It wasn’t logical, but she had a strong feeling that the moment she saw Nick’s face her entire memory would land back in her head, fully intact.

Dominick had turned up again this afternoon. He had takeaway hot chocolates in a tray and tiny polenta cakes (she had a feeling they were her favorites and acted accordingly grateful). She’d been surprised by the pleasure she’d felt when she saw him standing at the door. Maybe it was because of his somewhat nervy demeanor. It made her feel like she was adored. Nick adored her, but she adored him back, so it was equal. Talking to Dominick made her feel as if every word she said was somehow amazing.

“How is your, ah, memory today?” he’d asked her politely, while they drank their hot chocolates and ate the cakes on the back veranda.

“Oh, maybe a bit better,” she’d said. People liked to think you were making progress when it came to health matters.

Apparently Jasper was with “his mother.” She realized that Dominick must be a divorced dad. How strange it all was. Wouldn’t it be a lot less messy if everyone just stayed with the people they married in the first place?

That meant divorce was a shared interest. She’d had a moment of inspiration and said to him, “Have we ever talked about Nick—about why we separated?”

He gave her an odd sideways look. “Yes.”

Aha!

“Would you mind giving me a quick summary of what I told you?” She said this lightly, trying not to show how desperately she needed to know the answer.

“You don’t remember anything about why you and Nick split up?” he’d said slowly.

“No! I couldn’t believe it! It was a total shock to me.”

The words spilled out of her mouth before she realized that they might be upsetting to someone who was hoping to start a relationship with her.

He’d scratched hard at his nose. “Well. Obviously I don’t know every detail, but, ah, it seemed that he—Nick—was pretty much involved with his job. He was away a lot and he worked long hours, and so I guess, I think you said, you just drifted apart. That’s the way it happened. And, ummm, I guess, maybe some sexual issues. You mentioned . . .” He coughed loudly and stopped talking.

Sex? She’d talked to this man about sex? It was an unforgivable betrayal of Nick. And besides which, what issues could there have been relating to sex? They had a glorious, funny, tender, highly satisfying sex life.

It was so embarrassing to hear the word “sex” coming out of Dominick’s mouth. He was too nice. Too grown-up and proper. Even now, when Alice was alone thinking about it, she felt her face become warm.

Dominick had seemed embarrassed, too. He’d cleared his throat so many times, Alice had offered him a glass of water, and then he’d left soon after, telling her to take care of herself. At the front door he’d suddenly wrapped his arms around her in a quick, warm hug. He’d said in her ear, “I care a lot about you,” and then he was gone.

So that hadn’t helped much at all. “Drifting apart because of Nick’s long hours.” That was such a cliché. The sort of thing that broke up other marriages. If Nick had to work long hours, they would have just made up for it in the hours they did have.

She looked at her wineglass and saw that the level had gone down considerably. What if her lips and teeth were stained purple and she opened the door to Nick and the children looking like a vampire? She rushed to the mirror in the hallway and checked her reflection. Her lips were fine. Her eyes just looked a bit wild and crazed, and she still looked extremely old.

As she walked back into the kitchen, she stopped by the Green Room, except it wasn’t green anymore. It was a small room off the hallway that had originally been painted a bright lime green. Now the walls were painted a tasteful mushroom. Alice leaned against the doorway and found that she missed the green. It had made people laugh and shield their eyes whenever they saw it. Of course, it had to go—but still. The house was literally perfect now. Instead of being thrilling, that suddenly seemed depressing.

The Green Room had been turned into a study, which had always been their plan. There was a computer on a desk and bookshelves lined the walls. She walked in and sat down at the computer. Immediately, without thinking, she leaned down and pushed a round silver button on a black box sitting on the floor. The computer whirred to life and she pressed another button on the monitor. The screen turned blue. White letters ordered her “To begin, click your user name.” There were four icons: Alice, Madison, Tom, and Olivia. (Did that mean the children used this computer? Weren’t they too little?) She clicked on her own name and a colorful photo filled the whole screen. It was the three children. They were all rugged up in parkas and scarves, sharing a toboggan that was flying down a snowy incline. Madison was at the back, Tom was in the middle, and the little one, Olivia, was at the front. Madison had hold of the control rope. Their mouths were open as if laughing or shrieking, and their eyes were wide with fear and exhilaration.

Alice put a hand to the base of her throat. They were extraordinarily beautiful. She wanted the memory of that day back so bad. She stared at the photo and for a second she thought she heard the faint sounds of children shouting, the feeling of an icy-cold nose and fingertips . . . and as soon as she tried too hard to grab hold of it, it slipped deftly away.

Instead, she clicked on an icon that said E-mail. It asked for a password.

Naturally, she didn’t know it, but as she held her hands over the keyboard, her fingers went ahead and inexplicably typed out the word OREGANO.

What in the world? But it seemed her body remembered more than her mind because the screen was obediently vanishing, to be replaced by a dancing image of an envelope and a message saying, “You have 7 new messages.”

What inspired her to choose an herb for her password?

There was an e-mail from Jane Turner with the subject heading:

“How’s the head?”; another one from a Dominick Gordon (Who? Oh, of course. Him. Her boyfriend ) with the subject heading: “Next weekend?” and five from names she didn’t recognize, all with the heading: “Mega Meringue Mother’s Day.”

Mega Meringue Mother’s Day. It made her want to snort with derision. It seemed like something Elisabeth—the old energetic Elisabeth—might have arranged. Not her.

There was also an e-mail from Nick Love, with no subject heading, dated Friday, the day of her accident. She clicked on it and read:

Well a lot of traditions are going to have to change now, aren’t they? What a load of crap. XMAS Day WILL be different whatever we do. You can’t reasonably expect to have them for the morning AND the night, so I only get them for five fucking minutes in the middle of the day. It makes perfect sense for them to stay at Ella’s on XMAS eve. They love being with their cousins. Can’t YOU think of THEM for a change? This is all about YOU. As usual.

PS. Please make sure they pack their swimming costumes for the weekend. I’m taking them to the Aquatic Center on Sunday when I get back from Portugal.

PPS. I had two sisters on the phone in tears last night about Granny Love’s ring. Can you please be reasonable about this? It’s not like you ever wore it that often. If you’re thinking of selling it, you’ve really sunk to a new low. Even for you.

“Even for you.” Alice struggled to catch her breath. It was like being winded. The coldness. The viciousness. The dislike.

It was impossible to believe that this was written by the same man who got tears in his eyes when she said she would marry him; who would crashtackle her onto the bed and lift her hair and kiss the back of her neck; who told her when it was safe to look back at the television because the blood and guts had gone now; who sang all the words to “Living Next Door to Alice” to her in the shower.

And why was she refusing to give back Granny Love’s dreadful ring? It was a family heirloom. Of course the Love family should get it back.

She scrolled down and saw that Nick’s message was part of a whole conversation that had been going on for days.

There was one from herself dated just three days ago.

The children should wake up in their own beds on Christmas Day this year. I’m not moving on this matter. Obviously, I want to keep all the same traditions for them—putting out their Santa Sacks at the end of their beds, etc. They’ve had to go through enough disruption as it is. This is just another power game for you. All you care about is winning. I couldn’t care less what points you win over me—just don’t win at the expense of the children. By the way, I have asked you at least twice before now not to give the children, especially Olivia, so much junk food over the weekend. I’m sure it makes you feel like a wonderful father to say yes to whatever they want, but they’re tired and irritable every Monday after a weekend with you—and I’m the one who has to deal with it.

It was May! Why were they even talking about what would happen on Christmas Day?

Some impostor had been living her life. She was stunned by her sanctimonious, contemptuous tone.

She scrolled down further and bitter words and phrases jumped out at her.

May I remind you . . .

You are so small-minded . . .

You are so sanctimonious . . .

You must be out of your mind if you think . . .

What is WRONG with you?

Can we just try and be rational about this?

You’re the one who . . .

There was a scrunch of gravel and a flicker of headlights. A car pulled up in the driveway. Alice stood up, her heart beating like a jackhammer. She pushed a hand back through her hair as she walked down the hallway toward the front door. She was such an idiot for not doing her makeup again. She was about to see a man who hated her.

Car doors were slamming. A child was whining, “But Dad, that’s not fair!”

Alice opened the front door. Her legs were shaking so badly, she thought she might collapse. Maybe that would be a good thing.

“Mummy!” A little girl came hurtling up the stairs and threw her arms around Alice, her head colliding hard with her stomach. She talked straight into Alice’s T-shirt, her voice muffled. “Is your sore head better? Did you get my card? What was it like sleeping in the hospital?”

Alice hugged her back and couldn’t speak.

I don’t even remember being pregnant with you.

“Olivia?” she croaked and put her hand on top of the little girl’s tangled white-blond curls. There was sand in her hair and a crooked line revealing a pink scalp. Her hair was soft and her skull was hard, and when she looked up, she was impossibly beautiful: smooth skin with a cinnamon dusting of freckles and enormous dark-lashed blue eyes.

They were her own eyes staring back at her, but much bigger and definitely much more beautiful. Alice felt dizzy.

“Oh Mum,” crooned Olivia. “Are you actually still feeling a bit sick? Poor darling Mum. I know! I’ll listen to your heart and be your nurse! Yes!”

She was gone, slamming the screen door behind her, pounding down the hallway.

Alice looked up and saw Nick leaning over to pull out stuff from the boot of a swish silver car.

He straightened. Both his arms were filled with backpacks and soggy beach towels.

“Hi,” he said.

His hair seemed to have disappeared. As he walked toward her, she saw that it was completely gray and cropped close to his head. His face had got thinner but his body was somehow thicker: his shoulders chunkier, his stomach paunchier. There were spiderwebs of lines around his eyes. He was wearing a green T-shirt and shorts she’d never seen before. Well, of course, but it was still unsettling.

He walked up the stairs toward her and stood in front of her. She looked up at him. He was different and strange but he was still essentially Nick. Alice forgot everything that she’d just read on the computer and the way he’d talked to her on the phone the other day and was filled with the pure simple pleasure of Nick coming home after a long trip away. She smiled joyously at him. “Hi yourself.”

She went to step forward toward him and Nick stepped back. It seemed involuntary, as if she were an unpleasant insect. His eyes were blank, and they seemed to be fixed on her forehead.

“How are you?” he said. His tone was the frosty one he used when he was being mucked around by incompetent tradespeople.

“Mum! You should have seen the wave I caught today! It was, like, twenty feet tall. It was, like, as high as the roof there. Look. No, look, Mum, at the roof there. Yeah, there. That’s how high it was. Or maybe a few centimeters less. Anyway, Dad took the best photo! Show Mum the photo on your camera, Dad. Can you show her the photo?”

So this was Tom. He was wearing long board shorts and a cap that he pulled off so he could rub the top of his head hard. His hair was the same color as Olivia’s—so blond it was almost white. Nick had that color hair when he was a child. Tom’s limbs were skinny and tanned and strong. He was like a miniature surfie teenager. Good Lord. He had Roger’s nose. It was definitely Roger’s nose. It made her want to laugh. Roger’s nose in this vibrant little boy’s face. She wanted to hug him, but she wasn’t sure if that was appropriate.

Instead, she said, “Yeah, let me see the photo, Nick.”

Nick and Tom stared at her. Her tone must have been wrong. Too flippant?

Tom said, “You sound a bit funny, Mum. Did you get stitches at the hospital for your head? I asked Auntie Libby if it was a brain tumor and she said it definitely was not . I did a lie-detector test on her.”

“It definitely was not a brain tumor,” said Alice. “I just fell over.”

“I’m starved to death,” sighed Tom.

“I’m making hamburgers for dinner.”

“No, I mean, I’m starved right now.”

“Oh.”

A girl walked up onto the veranda. She dropped a wet towel on the veranda, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Did you say you’re making hamburgers for dinner?”

“Yes,” said Alice.

Madison. The Sultana. The two blue lines on all those pregnancy tests. The flashing heartbeat on the screen. The mysterious invisible presence listening to Nick’s voice through the toilet roll.

Madison had very fair, almost translucent skin. There was a patch of angry red sunburn on her neck with white fingerprints as if someone had given up on putting on the sunscreen too soon. She had lank, dark brown hair that was falling in her eyes and beautiful strong white teeth. Her eyes were the same shape as Nick’s but a darker, unusual color, and her eyebrows were someone’s—Elisabeth’s as a child! They were subtly raised at the corners, like Mr. Spock. She wasn’t adorable like Olivia and Tom. Her body was chunky. Her lower lip jutted out sulkily. But one day, thought Alice, one day I think you might be striking, my darling Sultana.

“You promised ,” the Sultana said to Alice. Her eyes were murderous. She was formidable. She filled Alice with awe.

“I promised what?”

“That you would buy the ingredients so I could make lasagna tonight. I knew you wouldn’t do it. Why do you pretend you’re going to do something when you know that you’re not .” She punctuated the last sentence with rhythmic stamps of her foot.

Nick said, “Don’t be so rude, Madison. Your mother had an accident. She had to spend the night at the hospital.”

Alice wanted to laugh at Nick’s stern dad voice. Madison lifted her chin. Her eyes blazed. She stormed into the house, slamming the screen door behind her.

“Don’t slam the door!” called out Nick. “And come back and pick up your towel.”

Silence. She didn’t return.

Nick sucked in his lower lip and his nostrils flared. Alice had never seen him pull a face like that. He said, “Go inside, Tom. I want to speak to your mother. Will you take Madison’s towel inside, too?”

Tom was standing at the front wall of the house, tracing the brickwork with his fingertips. He said, “Dad, how many bricks do you reckon there are in this whole house?”

“Tom.”

Tom sighed theatrically, picked up Madison’s towel, and went inside.

Alice took a deep breath. She couldn’t imagine living with those three children twenty-four hours a day. She’d never imagined them actually talking. They fizzed and crackled with energy. Their personalities were right there on the surface without that protective sheen of adulthood.

“The Sultana,” began Alice, but words eluded her. Madison could not be put into words.

“I beg your pardon?” said Nick.

“The Sultana. I could never have imagined her growing up to be like that. She’s so . . . I don’t know.”

“Sultana?” He didn’t know what she was talking about.

“You remember—when I was pregnant with Madison, we used to call her the Sultana.”

He frowned. “I don’t remember that. Anyway, I wanted to see if we could work out this thing with Christmas Day.”

“Oh, that.” She thought of all those nasty e-mails and got a bad taste in her mouth. “Why are we even talking about Christmas now? It’s May !”

He stared at her as if she were crazy.

“I beg your pardon? You’re the one obsessed with your precious spreadsheet. You said you wanted everything in black-and-white for the whole year ahead. Every birthday. Every concert. You said that was best for the kids.”

“Did I?” Did she even know how to do a spreadsheet?

“Yes!”

“Right. Well. Whatever you want. You can have them on Christmas Day.”

“Whatever I want,” he repeated suspiciously, almost nervously. “Is there something I’m missing here?”

“Nope. Hey—how was Portugal?”

“It was fine, thank you,” he said formally.

She had to clench her fingernails into her hands to stop herself leaning forward and laying her face against his chest. She wanted to say, “Talk in your normal voice.”

“I’d better go,” he said.

“What?” She nearly grabbed for him in a panic. “No. You can’t go. You have to stay for dinner.”

“I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

“Oh yes! Daddy, stay for dinner!” It was Olivia. She had a red cape tied around her shoulders and a toy stethoscope around her neck. She clung to Nick’s arm. Alice was jealous she was allowed to touch him so freely.

“I think I’d better go,” said Nick.

“Please stay,” said Alice. “We’re having hamburgers.”

“Yes! See, Mummy wants you to stay.” Olivia was doing a tap dance of delight back and forth across the veranda. She yelled, “Tom! Guess what? Dad’s staying for dinner!”

“Jesus, Alice,” said Nick under his breath, and this time he looked her properly in the eyes.

“I opened some really nice wine for us,” said Alice, and smiled at him.

She didn’t need lipstick to get her husband back.