"How are you, darling?" said Barb to Alice. "You look lovely, of course, but you're so pale. And shadows under your eyes. There must be something going around at the moment, because Elisabeth is pea green."
"Is Libby here?" said Alice with surprise.
"She's there with Frannie," said Barb, pointing up to one of the bench seats, where Elisabeth was sitting with Ben. She did look quite ill. Nausea. That must be a good sign. At least she wasn't watching television.
Sitting next to Ben was Frannie, and next to her the white-haired man from the Family Talent Night who had organized the wheelchair races. Frannie was sitting very upright, glancing around self-consciously, but as Alice looked at her, the man said something in her ear and she clapped her hands together and burst out laughing.
"That's Frannie's gentleman friend," said Barb. "Xavier. Isn't it lovely! After all these years of holding a candle for her silly dead fiance!"
"Her what?" said Alice. She pressed a fingertip to her forehead. She didn't think her head could handle any fresh new surprises today.
"Her fiance died just two weeks before their wedding. It wasn't all that long before your father died," said Barb calmly, as if this weren't a huge revelation. "He went away with some mates on a camping trip and he broke his neck diving into a river. That's why I was always telling you girls to never, ever dive anywhere without checking the depth."
"Are you saying you knew about this all these years?" said Alice. She looked up at Frannie smiling at Xavier and tried to incorporate this sad new information about her grandmother. "And you kept it a secret?"
"No need to look so surprised," said Barb crisply. "I can keep secrets. Frannie didn't like to talk about it. She's so private! She admitted to me once that she had kept on writing to him all these years, as if he was still away on holiday. She said she felt silly about it, because she knew perfectly well that he'd died, but that it was nice to keep writing to him. She'd seal the letters up and put them in a drawer. She told me she'd address them but she didn't go so far as to waste her money putting stamps on them. So we agreed that proved she wasn't completely deluded! It was just a funny little quirk of hers."
"And you never said a word," marveled Alice. The fact that her mother had kept a secret was more surprising than the secret itself.
"Although she has let the cat out of the bag now," chortled Roger.
"Only because Frannie told me she intended to tell the girls now!" retorted Barb. "Apparently she started to tell you and Elisabeth the whole story just a few weeks ago, but then you had to go pick up the children."
"I don't remember," said Alice. Her catchcry.
"Anyway, she's finally found love again!" Barb sighed and shook her head regretfully. "If only it hadn't taken so long!"
"She's probably just fussy," said Roger. "Needed to find the right fellow. Like you."
"Oh, you!" said Barb flirtatiously, and she gleamed with happiness. "I was lucky to find you!"
"Dad was lucky to find you," said Nick, suddenly serious. Alice's mother looked up at him with surprise, her cheeks pink with pleasure. "Well, that's a lovely thing to say, Nick."
Maggie appeared again wearing a long apron that said Mega Meringue Day on the front, with a picture of a huge lemon meringue pie. Underneath it said, Mother's Day, Sydney, 2008. She was holding another one for Alice.
"The aprons turned out beautifully, Alice!" she said as she slid the apron over Alice's neck and tied it at her waist.
Alice looked around and saw rows of pink-aproned women lining up around the big table with the mixing bowls.
"It looks like we're about ready to start," said Maggie. "Is that okay with you?"
"Sure thing," said Alice recklessly.
"You're over here," said Maggie. "Next to me."
"Good luck, darling," said Barb. "I do hope they're careful with that oven. It's very easy to burn the meringue on a lemon meringue pie. I remember once I was making one when your father's boss was coming for dinner. I was terribly upset, I remember looking in the oven and thinking--"
"Come on, Barbie," said Roger, pulling on her arm. "You can tell me the rest of the story while we're sitting down."
He winked at Alice as he guided her still-chattering mother into the audience, and Alice was filled with affection for him. He loved Barb--in his own self-satisfied way, he loved her.
"I'll get the kids to come and sit down," said Nick, and he headed off to the children's area.
Alice went to stand beside Maggie behind the tables.
"What an event," said the woman standing next to Alice. She had a birthmark like a burn across the bottom half of her face. "You're a bloody marvel, Alice."
I'm a bloody marvel, thought Alice. Her head was feeling fuzzy.
Nora stood at the microphone. "Can everybody take their seats, please? The baking is about to commence!"
Alice found Nick in the audience. He had Olivia on his lap. The fairy wings she'd insisted on wearing that day were brushing against his face. Tom was on Nick's left, taking photos with a digital camera, and Madison was on his right, seemingly intensely interested in the proceedings. Nick said something and pointed at Alice, and all three children beamed and waved in her direction.
Alice waved back, and as she did, Dominick and Jasper caught her eye. They were sitting just two rows behind Nick and the children, and waving enthusiastically, as if they'd thought Alice had been waving at them.
Oh dear. Now she could see Libby and Ben waving at her, along with Frannie, Xavier, Barb, and Roger.
Alice tried to make her smile and wave seem all encompassing and personal to each of them.
Nora was speaking again.
"I'm stepping in on behalf of Alice Love to be your host today. As many of you know, Alice had an accident at the gym last week and still isn't feeling a hundred percent. You know, I can still remember the day Alice said to me that she wanted to get one hundred mums together to bake the world's largest lemon meringue pie. I thought she was nuts!"
The audience chuckled.
"But you all know Alice. She's like a bull terrier when she gets an idea in her head." There was appreciative laughter. A bull terrier? How had she changed so much in just ten years? She was more like a Labrador. Anxious to please and overexcited.
"But just a few months later, no surprise, here we are! Let's put our hands together for Alice!"
There was a burst of enthusiastic applause. Alice nodded and smiled fraudulently.
"We're dedicating this day to a very dear friend and member of the school community who we tragically lost last year," said Nora. "We're using her lemon meringue pie recipe and we're sure she's with us in spirit today. I'm referring, of course, to Gina Boyle. We miss you, Gina. A minute's silence, please, for Gina."
Alice watched as people reverently bowed their heads and remembered the woman who had apparently been such a significant part of Alice's life. Her own mind was blank. This morning's pancakes sat uncomfortably in her stomach. After what seemed much longer than a minute, Nora lifted her head.
"Ladies," she said. "Pick up your whisks."
Chapter 31
The women picked up their whisks solemnly as if they were musicians in an orchestra.
"Whisk the eggs, cream, sugar, lemon rind, and juice until combined," read out Nora.
There was a pause and then everyone put their whisks back down and began to select ingredients.
Alice cracked her eggs one after the other into her bowl. All around her, women were doing the same thing. There were nervous giggles and whispers.
"Don't get any eggshell in there!" called out someone from the audience, to much hilarity.
After a few minutes, the sound of brisk whisking filled the marquee.
Under Nora's instructions, once they were all finished, they stood in line to pour their mixture into a huge yellow industrial vat.
This is going to be an absolute disaster, thought Alice.
"Place the flour, almond meal, icing sugar, and butter into a f
ood processor and process until it resembles fine bread crumbs," read out Nora. "Instead of using a food processor, we're going to use a concrete mixer. Don't worry, it's clean! So could each mum please place her combined ingredients into the mixer."
"I can't believe we're doing this," whispered Alice to Maggie, as the mothers lined up with their bowls of ingredients. "It's madness."
Maggie laughed. "It's all your doing, Alice!"
One of the bemused workmen operated the concrete mixer while the mothers separated yolks from whites.
"Add the egg yolk and process," ordered Nora.
Once again the woman lined up to add their egg yolks. A few minutes later a massive glob of yellow dough was upended from the concrete mixer and onto the floury surface of the center table.
"Knead until smooth."
The women gathered around the table, kneading and pulling at the dough. This pastry is going to be inedible, thought Alice, watching inexpert hands pushing and pulling. Cameras flashed.
"Now we really should be putting the pastry into the fridge for half an hour, but today is all about quantity, rather than quality," said Nora. "So we're going to go straight to rolling out the pastry."
The workmen carried over the giant rolling pin.
Alice stood back and watched as three women stood on each side of the rolling pin, took a firm grip of the handles, and began to push forward, as if they were pushing along a broken-down car.
There was giggling and shrieking and yelled suggestions from the audience as the women went off in different directions, but, incredibly, after a few minutes, the dough began to flatten. It was working. It was actually working. A huge sheet of pastry, the size of a king-size bed, was emerging.
"Now, the hard bit," said Nora. "Line the pie dish."
We'll never do it, thought Alice, as the women gathered around the sheet of pastry and lifted it into the air, with their palms flat, as though they were carrying some sort of precious canvas. Every woman had the exact same expression of terrified concentration on her face.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit," said the woman with the birthmark, as the pastry began to sag in the middle. Another woman rushed to try and save it. They were treading on each other's toes, calling out sharp orders like "Be careful there!" and "Watch that part there!"
No one smiled or laughed until the delicate sheet of pastry was safely placed in the massive pie dish. They'd done it. No serious tears or cracks. It was a miracle.
"Hooray!" cried the crowd, and the women shared ecstatic grins as they used their thumbs to push the pastry against the sides of the dish. Next they covered it with sheet after sheet of baking paper and weighted it down with rice, and the workmen lifted the dish and placed it into the oven.
"We'll bake that for ten minutes," said Nora smoothly, as if it weren't at all surprising that they had got this far. "And in the meantime our clever mums will make the meringue."
The ladies went back to their tables and began to whisk egg whites, gradually adding the sugar as they did so.
The tent filled with heat from the giant oven. Alice could feel her face flushing and beads of perspiration forming at her hairline. The fragrance of cooking pastry filled the air. Her head ached. She wondered if she was coming down with the flu.
The smell of the pastry was making her want to remember something. Except it was somehow too large to remember. It was like the huge sheet of pastry. Too big for one person. She couldn't find an edge to grasp so she could pull it in front of her. But there was definitely something there.
"Are you okay?" Maggie's face loomed in front of Alice.
"Fine. I'm fine."
The pastry shell was pulled from the oven to a round of applause. It was golden brown. The baking paper and rice were removed and the vat of lemon-colored filling was poured into the pastry. Next came the meringue. The women seemed tipsy with relief. They danced around the pie like schoolgirls, pouring their frothy white meringue mixtures over the filling and using wooden spoons to create snowy peaks.
More cameras flashed.
"Alice?" said Nora into the microphone. "Do we have your approval?"
Alice felt like the world had been wrapped in some sort of gauzy material. Her vision was slightly blurred, her mouth felt full of cotton wool. It was as though she'd just woken up and was trying to clear her head of the previous night's dreams. She blinked and considered the pie. "Can someone just smooth the meringue over in that corner?" she said, and was surprised that her voice came out sounding quite normal. A woman rushed to obey her.
Alice nodded at Nora.
"And now, ladies and gentlemen, we bake," said Nora.
Maggie's husband gave the thumbs-up signal to the forklift driver. Everyone's eyes were fixed on the magnificent pie as it was lifted by the forklift and slid into the oven. There was a round of applause.
"Year 4 has kindly offered to keep us entertained while the lemon meringue pie is baking," said Nora. "As many of you will remember, our dear friend Gina loved Elvis. Whenever she was cooking, she always had Elvis playing. You couldn't get her to play anything else. So Year 4 is going to perform a medley of Elvis hits for us. Gina, honey, this is for you."
There was a burst of laughter and cheers as thirty miniature Elvises swaggered into the center of the marquee. They were wearing dark glasses and white satin jumpsuits complete with sparkly rhinestones. A teacher pressed a button on a stereo and the children began to dance, Elvis style, to "Hound Dog."
There was nowhere for the Mega Meringue mums to sit, so they all leaned back against the long tables. Some of them took off their pink aprons. Alice's legs ached. Actually, everything ached.
Oh, this song is so ... familiar.
Yes, that's because it's Elvis. Elvis is familiar to everyone.
The song switched to "Love Me Tender."
The sweet lemony smell of the baking pie was overpowering. It was impossible to think of anything else but lemon ... meringue ... pie ...
That smell is so ... familiar.
Yes, that's because it's a lemon meringue pie. You know what a lemon meringue pie smells like.
But there was something more than that. It meant something.
Alice's face had been feeling flushed and hot. Now she felt cold, as if she'd stepped into an icy wind.
Oh, dear, she wasn't well. She really wasn't well.
She looked desperately into the audience for someone to help.
She saw Nick suddenly lift Olivia off his lap and stand up.
She saw Dominick bounce to his feet, frowning with concern.
Both men were making their way past people's knees, trying to get to her.
Now the song was "Jailhouse Rock."
The scent of lemon meringue was becoming stronger and stronger. It was going straight up her nostrils and trickling into her brain, filling it with memory.
Oh, God, of course, of course, of course.
Alice's legs buckled.
Elisabeth's Homework for Jeremy I missed seeing Alice collapse because I'd gone outside to the toilet.
They had a row of those blue plastic Port-a-loos.
I was bleeding.
I thought, How fitting. That I should be losing my last baby in a Port-a-loo.
Trashy and slightly laughable. Like my life.
Chapter 32
"Hi!"
The woman who opened the door was smiling delightedly, wiping her hands on a floury apron, as if Alice were a very dear friend.
Alice hadn' t wanted to come. She hadn' t been at all thrilled when this "Gina" had moved into the house across the road and turned up the very next day, knocking on their door to invite Alice for "high tea." For one thing, shouldn't Alice have been the one doing the asking--seeing as she was the one already living there? That made her feel guilty, as if this woman already had some sort of etiquette point over her. And she could tell just by looking at Gina that she wasn't her sort of person. Too loud. Too many teeth. Too much makeup for the middle of the day. Too much perfume. Too much
everything. She was one of those women who drained Alice of her personality. And "high tea"? What was wrong with just ordinary old afternoon tea?
This was going to be awful.
"HELLO there, sweetie!" Gina bent down to say hello to Madison.
Madison clung to Alice's leg in an agony of shyness, burying her face in Alice's crotch. Alice hated it when she did that. She always worried people might think the kid had inherited her poor social skills from her mother.
"I'm terrible with children," said Gina. "Terrible. That's probably why I'm having so much trouble getting pregnant."
Alice followed Gina through the house, trying to dislodge Madison, who was still clinging to her leg. There were boxes everywhere waiting to be unpacked.
"I should have invited you to my place," said Alice.
"It's okay, I'm the one desperate to make friends," said Gina. "I'm going to try and seduce you with my lemon meringue pie." She turned around quickly and then walked into a box. "Not literally seduce you."
"Oh, that's a pity," said Alice. And then she said quickly, idiotically, "That was a joke."
Gina laughed and led her into the kitchen. It was warm and filled with the sweet smell of lemon meringue pie. Elvis was playing on the stereo.
"I thought I'd say 'high tea' instead of 'afternoon tea,'" said Gina, "so we could have champagne. Would you like champagne?"
"Oh, sure," said Alice, although she normally wouldn't drink in the day.
Gina danced a jig on the spot. "Thank God! If you'd said no, I wouldn't have been able to drink on my own, and you know, it just makes it a bit easier when you're talking to new people." She popped the cork and produced two glasses she had waiting. "Mike and I are from Melbourne. I don't know a soul here in Sydney. That's why I'm on the prowl for friends. And Mike is working such long hours at the moment, I get lonely during the week."
Alice held out her glass to be filled.
"Nick has started working pretty long hours, too."
"Alice?"
"Alice."
Nick was supporting one side of her and Dominick was supporting the other. Her legs had turned to jelly.