What Alice Forgot

  She snapped on the bedside lamp, threw back the sheets, and got out of bed. There was no way she was going back to sleep now.

  Right.

  She ran her palms down her nightie. It was a sleeveless, shimmery oyster-colored silk. It must have cost a fortune. It was just so stupid that she didn't remember buying it. She'd had enough. She wanted to remember everything, right now.

  She went into the bathroom and found the bottle of perfume she'd used at the hospital. She sprayed it in big lavish swoops and sniffed deeply. She was going to run and jump straight into that vortex of memory.

  The perfume assaulted her nostrils, making her feel a bit sick. She waited for the images of the last ten years to fill her mind, but all she could see were the smiling strange faces from tonight's party, and Dominick's liquid brown eyes, and her mother smiling coyly at Roger, and the disappointed lines around Elisabeth's mouth.

  All these recent memories were too fresh and confusing. That was the problem. There was no space for all the old memories.

  She sat down on the cold bathroom tiles and hugged her knees in close. All those people tonight, trooping happily into her house, helping themselves to glasses of champagne and tiny canapes from white-aproned caterers (who had turned up at five p.m., taking over the kitchen, blandly efficient), standing around her backyard in little groups, high heels sinking into the grass. "Alice!" they said so familiarly, kissing her on both cheeks. (There was a lot of kissing of both cheeks in 2008.) "How are you?" Hairstyles were smoother and flatter than in 1998. It made everyone's heads seem comically smaller.

  People talked about petrol prices (how could there be anything to say on such a boring topic?), property prices, development applications, and some political scandal. They talked about their children--"Emily," "Harry," "Isabel"--as if Alice knew them intimately. There were hilarious jokes about some school excursion she'd apparently attended where things had gone hilariously wrong. There were serious, lowered voices about some teacher everybody hated. They talked to her about jazz ballet lessons, saxophone lessons, swimming lessons, the school band, the school fete, the tuckshop, the extension class for "gifted and talented" kids. None of it made any sense. The conversations were so detailed--so many names and dates and times and acronyms--the PE-something class, the WE-something teacher. On two occasions different women hissed the unfamiliar word "Botox" in Alice's ear as another woman walked by. Alice couldn't be sure if it was a contemptuous insult or an envious compliment.

  Dominick hovered unobtrusively close by, explaining to people that she wasn't quite herself after her accident, that she really should be in bed. "Typical Alice to soldier on!" they said. (Was it typical? How strange. Normally she loved the excuse to put herself to bed.) It didn't really seem to matter all that much that she didn't recognize a single person. Nodding and smiling seemed enough to keep the conversations flowing, while Alice kept being distracted by things in her own backyard: Was that a vegetable garden in the corner? There was a swing set creaking gently in the evening breeze--had the Sultana slid down that slippery dip into her arms?

  Now Alice traced her fingertips along the grouting of the white bathroom tiles. (She and Nick had done a tiling course together in preparation for this job--number 46 on their Impossible Dream list.) She didn't remember doing it. It was possible she had lost thousands of memories.

  Was Nick in bed with Gina right now?

  Gina's name had come up at the party. It had been awkward. Alice had been talking--or, more accurately, listening--to a woman wearing distractingly large diamond earrings and a man who was obsessively interested in getting another mini-samosa and was watching the caterer's plates with an eagle eye. The topic was homework and how much of a strain it was on the parents.

  "It's three a.m. and I'm sticking paddle-pop sticks together to make Erin's early settler's house, and I tell you, something inside me just snaps"--the earring woman clicked her fingers and her diamonds flashed.

  "I can imagine," Alice had murmured, although she couldn't. Why hadn't this Erin kid done her own homework? Or why hadn't they done it together? Alice imagined laughing happily with a sweet daughter while they glued together paddle-pop sticks and drank hot chocolate. Also, Alice was great at that sort of thing. Her kid's early settler's house would be the best in the class.

  "Well, they've got to learn discipline, haven't they? Isn't that the point of homework?" said the man. "Hey! Excuse me! Are they samosas you've got there? Oh, kebabs. Anyway, these days you can just Google anything."

  Did he say giggle? Goggle? Alice's head ached.

  "You can't Google an early settler's cottage made of paddle-pop sticks into existence! Anyway, I bet you don't have to help them with their homework, do you?" The woman had given Alice a womanly "Men!" look, which Alice had tried to return. (She was sure Nick would have helped.) "I'm sure Laura has it all done by the time you get home from work. I remember hearing Gina Boyle say once that she thought homework should be--"

  The woman had stopped herself mid-sentence with an exaggerated wince of embarrassment. "Oh, I'm sorry, Alice. How insensitive of me."

  The man had given Alice a brief, brotherly hug around the shoulders. "It's been so hard for you. Oh, look! Let me get you a samosa."

  Alice had been horrified. Did everyone know that Nick had cheated on her with Gina? Was it public knowledge in this strange, cliquey circle?

  Dominick had appeared from nowhere, gently extricating her. She was starting to rely on him. She even found herself looking for him in the crowd, thinking vaguely to herself, "Where's Dominick?" while at the same time imagining telling Nick the story: "So, this guy acted like my boyfriend for the whole night. What do you think of that?"

  Elisabeth and Ben had come to the party, too, because Alice had told Elisabeth she would have a panic attack if she didn't come. Ben was even huger and grizzlier than the man Alice had remembered meeting. He looked like a woodchopper who had escaped from a fairytale picture book, and he was particularly conspicuous amongst all the other smooth-faced men with their neat button-down shirts and neat gym-toned shoulders. He seemed fond of Alice. He told her he'd been "thinking a lot about their conversation the other day" and then he said, "Oh, but of course, you probably don't even remember it," and slapped himself lightly on the side of the head. Elisabeth had folded her lips together and looked the other way. "What did we talk about?" Alice had asked. "Not now," Elisabeth had said tersely.

  Elisabeth and Ben hadn't circulated much. They talked a lot to Dominick--whom they didn't appear to have met before. It was strange, seeing Elisabeth cradling one drink and sticking to Ben's side. She used to march her way from person to person at parties, as if it were her duty to talk to every single person.

  Actually, the funny thing was that she thought she could have managed that party even without Elisabeth or Dominick or even Nick there to help her. Even though it had been surreal and dreamlike, meeting all those strange people who knew her name and intimate details about her health (one woman had tried to drag her into a corner to continue a conversation from a few weeks ago that appeared to be about Alice's pelvic floor), she hadn't ever felt that normal feeling of party panic. She seemed to know instinctively how to stand and what to do with her arms and her face. She could feel herself being gracious and vibrant, actually telling people the story of how she'd fallen over at the gym and thought she was ten years younger and pregnant with her first child. The words rolled smoothly. She made eye contact with everyone in the circle. She was delivering an anecdote. It appeared she had become very normal and accomplished, now that she was nearly forty.

  Maybe it was because she looked so good that she'd felt so confident. She'd chosen a blue dress from her wardrobe with detailed embroidery around the neckline and hem. "Oh, you always have the most gorgeous clothes, Alice darling," Kate Harper, the woman from the lift, had said. Kate's rounded vowels had become even rounder the more she drank, so by midnight she sounded like the queen. Alice couldn't stand her.

  The
party had finished up around one a.m. Dominick had been one of the last to go, kissing her chastely on the cheek and saying he'd call tomorrow. There didn't seem to have been any question about him staying the night, so maybe their relationship hadn't progressed to that point. He was a very nice man, someone she would happily recommend as a single man to a friend, but the thought of taking her clothes off in front of him was laughable.

  Then again, maybe he had just been discreet because he knew she had begged Elisabeth and Ben to stay the night. (She hadn't liked the idea of waking up in this strange new world without company.) Maybe they had quite an active sex life.

  She shuddered.

  Less than twenty-four hours till she saw Nick and the children and everything would finally fall into place.

  The bathroom floor was becoming cold. She stood up and surveyed her tired, thin face in the mirror. Who have you become, Alice Love?

  She walked back into the bedroom and considered trying to go back to sleep but she knew it would be impossible. Hot milk was the answer. Of course it wasn't the answer at all. It never cured her insomnia, but the ritual of it and the feeling that you were doing something that the magazines always recommended for insomnia was soothing and helped pass the time.

  The door to the spare bedroom was closed as she crept down the hallway. She had been pleasantly surprised to discover a spare room (previously one of their many junk rooms) all set up with a double bed, chests of drawers and spare towels. "Was I expecting someone to stay?" she'd asked Elisabeth.

  "You always keep it like this," Elisabeth had said. "You're very organized, Alice."

  That hardness had come back in her voice. Alice didn't know what it meant. She was starting to feel irritated by Elisabeth.

  She crept down the carpeted hallway and nearly missed her footing at the top of the stairs, grabbing for the banister. Maybe it would be convenient if she fell and banged her head again. It might bring back all her memories.

  She walked down the stairs, clinging to the banister. As she got to the bottom, she saw that there was a light on in the kitchen.

  "Hi," she said.

  "Oh, hi."

  Elisabeth was standing at the microwave.

  "Hot milk," she said. "Want some?"

  "Yes, please."

  "Not that it ever really cures my insomnia."

  "No--me neither."

  Alice leaned back against the counter and watched Elisabeth pour milk into a second mug. She was wearing a huge man's T-shirt that must belong to Ben. It made Alice feel prissy in her long silk nightie.

  "How are you feeling?" asked Elisabeth. "How's your--memory?"

  "Nothing new," said Alice. "I still don't remember anything about the children or the divorce. Although I've worked out it's got something to do with Gina."

  Elisabeth looked at her with surprise. "What do you mean?"

  "It's okay, you don't need to protect me," said Alice. "I've worked out that he had an affair with her."

  "Nick had an affair with Gina?"

  "Well, didn't he? Everybody seems to know about it."

  "It's news to me." Elisabeth looked genuinely shocked.

  Alice said nonchalantly, "He's probably in bed with her now."

  The microwave bell dinged but Elisabeth ignored it.

  She said, "I really doubt that, Alice."

  "Why?"

  Elisabeth paused and then looked her in the eye. "Because she's dead," she said.

  Chapter 18

  Gina was dead?

  "Oh," said Alice.

  She paused. "I didn't kill her, did I? In a fit of jealous rage? Although I guess I'd be in jail? But maybe I got away with it!"

  Elisabeth laughed in a scandalized way. "No, you didn't kill her." She frowned. "Are you saying you remember Nick having an affair with Gina?"

  "Not exactly," admitted Alice. It had seemed so clear. She brightened. That's why everyone had seemed sympathetic when Gina's name came up--because she was dead! There had been no affair at all! Now she was filled with relief and guilty love for Nick. Of course you didn't, darling, I never really suspected you, not for a second.

  And if there had been no affair, maybe Gina had been quite nice. So it was sort of terrible that she was dead.

  Elisabeth took the mugs of milk out of the microwave and carried them over to the coffee table, switching on a lamp. The helium balloons that Dominick had blown up were still hovering silently. Two half-empty glasses of champagne sat on the windowsill, along with a pile of gnawed sticks from the chicken kebabs.

  Alice sat cross-legged on the leather couch, stretching her nightie over her knees.

  "How did Gina die?" she asked.

  "It was an accident." Elisabeth put her finger in her milk and stirred it around, avoiding Alice's eyes. "A car accident, I guess. About a year ago."

  "Was I upset?"

  "She was your best friend. I think you were devastated." Elisabeth took a big mouthful of her milk and put the mug down quickly. "Ow! Too hot."

  Devastated. Such a big, sweeping word. Alice took a sip of her milk and burned her own tongue. It was so peculiar to think of being "devastated" by this strange woman's death, yet apparently perfectly accepting of her divorce. She had no experience with devastation. Nothing that terrible had ever happened to her. Her dad had died when she was six, but she mostly just remembered a feeling of confusion. Her mother had told her once that Alice had worn an old jumper of her dad's for weeks and weeks after he died and refused to take it off, kicking and screaming when Frannie finally pulled it off over her head. Alice didn't remember that at all. Instead she remembered how at the afternoon tea after the funeral she'd got told off by one of her mum's tennis friends for sticking her fingers in the cheesecake, and how Elisabeth had been doing it, too, even more than she was, but she didn't get into trouble. Instead of remembering grief and devastation, she remembered the terrible injustice of the cheesecake.

  There had been that night before her wedding when she had found herself crying in bed over the fact that her dad wasn't alive to walk her down the aisle. She had been perplexed by the sudden tears and thought that maybe she was just nervous about the next day. She worried that they were fake tears because she thought she should feel that way, when in fact she couldn't even imagine what it would be like to have a father. And at the same time she'd felt pleased, because maybe it meant part of her did remember her dad and did still miss him, and then she'd cried harder, remembering how whenever he was shaving in the bathroom, he'd squeeze a whole lot of delicious, creamy foam into her outstretched hands so she could smear it all over her face and wasn't that cute and touching and she really hoped the hairdresser got her fringe right the next day because when she messed it up, she looked like a wombat--and there you had it, she was a horribly superficial person, actually more worried about her hair than her dead father. She had finally fallen asleep in a lather of emotion, which she didn't know whether to attribute to her father or her hair.

  Now, apparently, she had experienced real grown-up grief, for a woman called Gina.

  "You were there," said Elisabeth quietly.

  "Pardon? I was where?"

  "You saw Gina's accident. You were driving along behind her. It must have been terrible for you. I can't even imagine--"

  "On the corner of Rawson and King streets?" interrupted Alice.

  "Yes. Do you remember?"

  "Not really. I think I just remember the feeling of it. It's happened twice now that I've got all panicky, nightmarish feelings when I see that corner."

  Would those feelings stop now that she knew what they meant?

  She didn't know if she wanted to remember seeing someone killed in front of her.

  They drank their milk in silence for a few seconds. Alice reached up for one of the dangling strings of the balloons and pulled upon it. She watched it bob about and remembered again those pink bouquets of balloons floating angrily about in a stormy sky.

  "Pink balloons," she said to Elisabeth. "I remember pink ba
lloons and this terrible feeling of grief. Is that something to do with Gina?"

  "That was at her funeral," said Elisabeth. "You and Michael--that's her husband--organized for balloons to be released at the graveyard. It was very beautiful. Very sad."

  Alice tried to imagine herself talking about balloons with a bereaved man called Michael.

  Michael. That was the name on that business card in her wallet. Michael Boyle--the physiotherapist from Melbourne--must be Gina's husband. That's why he'd written about "happier times" on the back of his business card. It was all very simple.

  "Did Gina die before Nick and I separated?" asked Alice.

  "Yes. I think about six months before. You've had a pretty hard year."

  "Sounds like it."

  "I'm sorry," said Elisabeth.

  "Don't be." Alice looked up guiltily, worried she'd look like she was filled with self-pity. "I don't even remember Gina. Or the divorce."

  "Well, you're going to have to see that neurologist," said Elisabeth, but she spoke without conviction, as if she couldn't be bothered pushing the point.

  They sat in silence for a while, except for the intermittent gurgling sounds of the fish tank.

  "Am I meant to be feeding those fish?" asked Alice.

  "I don't know," said Elisabeth. "Actually, I think they're Tom's responsibility. I think nobody else is allowed to have anything to do with them."

  Tom. The fair-haired little boy with the snuffly voice on the phone. She felt terrified at the thought of meeting him. He was in charge of fish. He had responsibilities and opinions. All three children would have opinions. They'd have opinions on Alice. They might not even like her that much. Maybe she was too strict. Or maybe she embarrassed them. Wore the wrong clothes when she picked them up from school. Maybe they preferred Nick. Maybe they blamed her for driving Nick away.

  She said, "What are they like?"

  "The fish?"

  "No, the children."

  "Oh--well, they're great."

  "But tell me about them properly. Describe their personalities."

  Elisabeth opened her mouth and shut it again. "I feel stupid telling you about your children. You know them so much better than me."