Authors: Liane Moriarty
What Alice Forgot (26 page)
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?
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!”
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.
Â
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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 costumeâno T-shirt, no towel wrapped under her armpitsâjust 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 herâshe 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.
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 herâshe 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 been 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!
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 canapés 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.
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 childrenâ“Emily,” “Harry,” “Isabel”âas 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 fête, the tuckshop, the extension class for “gifted and talented” kids. None of it made any sense. The conversations were so detailedâso many names and dates and times and acronymsâthe 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.
anything
to say on such a boring topic?), property prices, development applications, and some political scandal. They talked about their childrenâ“Emily,” “Harry,” “Isabel”âas 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 fête, the tuckshop, the extension class for “gifted and talented” kids. None of it made any sense. The conversations were so detailedâso many names and dates and times and acronymsâthe 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 breezeâhad the Sultana slid down that slippery dip into her arms?
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