What Alice Forgot (9 page)

Alice had finally been moved up to a ward and given a hospital gown and a remote for the television and a white chest of drawers. A lady wheeling a trolley brought her a cup of weak tea and four tiny triangular curried-egg sandwiches. The nurse was right; the tea and sandwiches had made her feel better, except they hadn't done anything about the huge gaping crevasse in her memory.

When she'd heard Elisabeth's voice on the mobile phone, it was just like each time she'd called home on that disastrous trip around Europe when she was nineteen and trying to pretend she had a different personality—an adventurous, extroverted sort of personality; the sort of person who
loves
exploring cathedrals and ruins all day on her own and talking to drunk boys from Brisbane in youth hostels at night—when really she was homesick and lonely and often bored, and couldn't make head or tail of the train timetables. The sound of Elisabeth's voice, loud and clear in a strange phone box on the other side of the world, always made Alice's knees buckle with relief, and she'd press her forehead against the glass and think,
That's right; I am a real person.

“My sister is coming right now,” she told the nurse when she hung up, as if giving her credentials as a proper person with a family; a family she recognized.

Although, when Elisabeth first walked toward her bed, she actually didn't recognize her. She vaguely assumed that this woman in the cream suit with the glasses and the swinging shoulder-length hair must be a hospital administrator coming to do something administrative, but then something about the woman's straight-backed “I'll take you on” posture, something essentially Elisabeth, gave her away.

It was a shock, because it seemed that overnight Elisabeth had put on a lot of weight. She'd always had a strong, lithe, athletic-looking body, because of her rowing and her jogging and whatever else it was she was always so busy doing. Now she wasn't fat but definitely larger, softer, and bustier; a puffed-out version of herself, as if someone had blown her up like a plastic pool toy. She won't like that, thought Alice. Elisabeth had always been so amusingly moralistic about fattening food, refusing an offer of pavlova as if it were crack cocaine. Once, when Nick, Alice, and Elisabeth went away for a weekend together, Elisabeth spent ages at the breakfast table studying the “nutritional information” panel on the side of a container of yogurt, warning them darkly, “You have to be
really
careful with yogurt.” Whenever Nick and Alice ate yogurt after that, one of them would always shout, “Careful!”

As she got closer and the bright light over Alice's bed lit up her face, Alice saw fine spidery lines etched around Elisabeth's mouth and on either side of her eyes behind the elegant spectacles. Elisabeth had large, pale blue eyes with dark lashes, like Alice, inherited from their father; eyes that attracted compliments, but now they seemed smaller and paler, as if the color had begun to wash out.

There was something bruised and wary and worn out about those washed-out eyes, as if she'd just been badly defeated in a fight she'd expected to win.

Alice felt a surge of worry; something terrible must have happened.

But when she asked, Elisabeth said, “What do you mean what happened to
me
?” so briskly and spiritedly that Alice doubted herself.

Elisabeth pulled over a plastic chair and sat down. Alice caught a glimpse of her skirt pulling unflatteringly across her stomach and quickly looked away; it made her want to cry.

Elisabeth said, “You're the one in hospital. The question is what happened to
you
?”

Alice felt herself slip into the role of irrepressible, hopeless Alice. “It's completely bizarre. It's like a dream. Apparently, I fell over at the gym. Me, at the gym! I know! According to Jane Turner I was doing something called my ‘Friday spin class.' ” She could be silly now, because Elisabeth was here to be sensible.

Elisabeth stared at her with such grim, frightened concentration that Alice felt her silly grin drift away.

She reached out for the photo she'd left sitting on the chest of drawers next to her bed and handed it to Elisabeth, saying in a small, polite voice, “Are these my . . .” She felt more foolish than she'd ever felt in her life. “Are these my children?”

Elisabeth took the photo, glanced at it, and something complicated crossed her face, a barely perceptible tremor, and vanished. She smiled carefully and said, “Yes, Alice.”

Alice took a deep, shaky breath and closed her eyes. “I've never seen them before.”

She heard Elisabeth take a deep breath herself. “It's just temporary, I'm sure. You probably just need to rest, to relax and—”

“What are they like?” Alice opened her eyes. “Those children. Are they . . . nice?”

Elisabeth said in a stronger voice, “They're wonderful, Alice.”

Alice said, “Am I a good mother? Do I look after them all right? What do I feed them? They're so big!”

“Your children are your life, Alice,” said Elisabeth. “You'll remember for yourself soon. It will all come back. Just—”

“I could cook them sausages, I guess,” said Alice, cheering up at the thought. “Kids love sausages.”

Elisabeth stared. “You would never feed them sausages.”

“I thought I was pregnant,” said Alice. “But they did a blood test and told me I'm definitely not. I don't feel like I am, but I can't believe I'm not. I can't believe it.”

“No. Well, I don't think you would be pregnant—”

“
Three
kids!” said Alice. “We're only going to have two.”

“Olivia was an accident,” said Elisabeth stiffly, as if she disapproved.

“None of this seems real,” said Alice. “I'm like Alice in Wonderland. Remember how much I hated that book? Because nothing made sense. You didn't like it either. We liked things to make sense.”

“I can imagine it must feel
really
strange, but it's not going to last, it's all going to come back to you any minute. You must have hit your head quite . . . severely.”

“Yes. Very severely.” Alice picked up the photo again. “So this little girl. This little girl is the oldest, so she must be my first baby, right? So we had a girl?”

“Yes, you did.”

“We thought it was a boy.”

“I remember that.”

“And labor! I went through labor three times? What was my labor like? I'm so nervous about it. I mean, I
was . . .”

“I think you had a pretty easy time with Madison, but there were complications with Olivia—” Elisabeth fidgeted in her plastic seat. “Look, Alice, I think I should go and try to talk to one of your doctors. I'm finding this really hard. It's weird. It's really . . . scary.”

Alice reached out for Elisabeth's arm in a panic. She couldn't stand to be alone again. “No, no, don't go. Someone will be around soon. They keep coming and checking on me. Hey, Libby, I called Nick at work and they told me he was in Portugal! Portugal! What's he doing there? I left a message with some horrible secretary. I stood up to her. You'd be proud of me! I showed backbone. My backbone was like
steel
.”

“Good for you,” said Elisabeth. She looked as if she'd just eaten something that disagreed with her.

“But he still hasn't called me back,” sighed Alice.

 

 

“
S
o, you
seriously
don't remember anything, not a single thing, since 1998?” Elisabeth shifted the plastic chair in closer toward Alice's bed and leaned toward her, as if it was time to get to the bottom of this. “Nothing at all?”

“Well, I've been having some funny snippets of things come into my mind,” said Alice. “But none of them make sense.”

“Okay, so tell me about them,” urged Elisabeth. Her face was closer now to Alice and the lines on either side of her mouth were even deeper than Alice had first thought. Goodness. Involuntarily, Alice pressed her fingertips to her own skin; she still hadn't looked at herself in a mirror.

She said, “Well, when I first woke up, I was having this dream, and I couldn't tell if it was just a dream or something that really happened. I was swimming, and it was a beautiful summer's morning, and my toenails were all painted different colors. There was somebody else with me and their toenails were painted the same way. Hey, maybe the other person was you? I bet it was you!”

Elisabeth said, “No, that doesn't mean anything to me. What else?”

Alice thought about the bouquets of pink balloons bobbing about in the gray sky, but she didn't want to tell Elisabeth about that great tidal wave of grief that kept sweeping her away, and she wasn't all that keen on finding out what it meant.

Instead she said, “I remember an American lady saying, ‘
I'm sorry, but there is no heartbeat.
'”

“Oh,” said Elisabeth.

 

 

Elisabeth smoothed the white blanket next to Alice's leg with the flat of her palm. Her face seemed to harden. She said, “Sorry, that doesn't mean anything to me, either. Not a thing.”

Why did she sound angry? Alice felt as if she'd done something wrong but couldn't work out what; she felt stupidly clumsy, like a child trying to grasp something big and important that the grown-ups weren't telling her.

Elisabeth met Alice's eyes and gave her a half-smile and looked away again quickly.

A woman carrying flowers came into the ward, peered hopefully at Alice and Elisabeth, blinked dismissively, and walked past their curtained-off cubicle to the next one. They heard a disembodied voice squeal, “I was just thinking about you!”

“I should have brought you flowers,” murmured Elisabeth.

Alice said suddenly, “You're married!”

“Pardon?”

Alice picked up Elisabeth's left hand. “You've got an engagement ring! It's gorgeous. That's exactly the sort of ring I would have got if we'd got to choose our own ring. Not that I don't love Granny Love's ring, of course.”

Elisabeth said dryly, “You hate and despise Granny Love's ring, Alice.”