What Alice Forgot (32 page)

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.

Chapter 20

N
ick didn’t seem to know what to do with himself when he came inside. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his shorts and wandered around the living room, stopping and looking at things, as if he were in somebody else’s home.

“You got the pool under control?” he asked, and jutted his chin toward the backyard.

Alice stood in the kitchen, pouring them both a glass of wine. She had no idea what he was talking about. How do you get a pool under control?

“The pool has been very calm,” she said. “Very serene. I think I must have it on a tight leash.”

Nick turned back from the windows and looked at her sharply.

“Good,” he said.

Alice walked out of the kitchen and handed him a glass of wine. She noticed that he took it from her carefully, so that their hands didn’t touch. “Thanks,” he said. She kept standing in front of him and he backed away again as if she were contagious.

Tom was wandering around the kitchen, opening cupboard doors. He stood in front of the fridge, swinging the door back and forth.

“What can I eat, Mum?” he said.

Alice looked around vaguely for her mother.

“Mum,”
said Tom.

Alice jumped. She was the mum.

“Well,” she said, trying to sound cheery and loving. “What do you feel like? Maybe a sandwich?”

“You can wait till dinner, Tom,” said Nick.

Oh, so that had been the correct response.

“Yes,” she said. She put on a similar voice to Nick’s. “Your father is right.” Then she giggled. She couldn’t help it. She gave Nick a mischievous look. Didn’t he find it funny, too? The two of them being the mum and the dad?

Nick just looked back at her nervously. She saw his eyes dart involuntarily to her glass of wine. Did he think she was drunk?

The little boy slammed the fridge door so hard it rattled, and said, “I think if I don’t eat soon, I might get malnourished. Look. My stomach is sticking out like a starving person. See?” He thrust out his stomach.

Alice laughed. Nick said sharply, “Stop being silly. Go and get changed out of those wet clothes.” Yes, well, it probably wasn’t the best idea to encourage your children to laugh at the plight of the starving.

The littlest child appeared. Olivia. She had smeared her lips with brightred lipstick. It had got on her teeth. Was that allowed? Alice looked over at Nick for guidance, but he was standing at the back door and looking out at the pool. “The color looks a bit green to me,” he said. “When was the last time you had the guy around?”

“Okay, Mummy, I’m ready now to be your nurse. Sit down and I’ll take your temperature.” Olivia grabbed her by the hand. Charmed by the feel of her small, warm palm, Alice let herself be led over to the sofa.

“Lie down, there’s a dear,” said Olivia.

Alice lay down and Olivia stuck a toy thermometer in her mouth. She stroked back Alice’s hair from her forehead and said, “Now I will listen to your heart, patient.” She plugged the stethoscope to her ears and pressed the other end against Alice’s chest. She frowned professionally. Alice tried not to laugh. This kid was adorable.

“Okay, patient, your heart is beating,” she said.

“Phew,” said Alice.

Olivia removed the thermometer and looked at it. Her mouth dropped. “You have a terrible fever, patient! You’re burning up!”

“Oh no! What should I do?”

“You should watch me do a cartwheel. That will cure you.”

Olivia did a perfect cartwheel. Alice applauded and Olivia bowed. She went to do another one.

“Not in the house, Olivia!” snapped Nick. “You know that!”

Olivia stuck her bottom lip out. “Please, Daddy, please. Just one more.”

“Should she be wearing your lipstick like that?” asked Nick.

“Oh, well,” said Alice, “I’m not exactly sure.”

“Let your mother get dinner started.” Nick had the same exhausted, defeated look as Elisabeth had the night before. Everyone was so tired and cranky in 2008.

“Sorry, darling Daddy.” Olivia threw her arms around Nick’s legs.

“Go and get changed out of your swimming costume,” said Nick. Olivia danced off, swirling her red cape around her.

They were alone.

“By the way, I didn’t get all of Olivia’s homework done,” said Nick. He sounded defensive, like he was confessing something.

“You mean you do Olivia’s homework for her?” asked Alice.

“Of course not! Jesus. You really do think I’m incompetent, don’t you.”

Alice sat up. “No I don’t.”

“She’s only got eight questions to go. It’s obviously more difficult when you’re all together in a small apartment. Also we didn’t quite finish Tom’s reading. And we spent three hours doing Madison’s science experiment today. Tom wanted to do it for her.”

“Nick.”

He stopped talking, took a mouthful of his wine, and looked at her.

“What?”

“Why are we getting a divorce?”

“What sort of question is that?”

“I just want to know.”

The longing to stand up and touch him was so strong, she had to press her hands against her thighs to stop herself from leaping up and burying her head under his chin.

“It doesn’t matter why we’re getting a divorce,” said Nick. “I’m not having this conversation. What is the point of it? I’m not interested in playing games tonight, Alice. I’m exhausted. If you’re trying to make me say something you can use against me, it’s not going to work.”

“Oh,” said Alice.

Would her capacity for shock ever run out? She realized that ever since Elisabeth had first uttered the word “divorce” at the hospital, she’d been waiting to see Nick so that he could take it away, make it nothing to do with them.

“Maybe I should just go home,” said Nick, putting his glass down on the coffee table.

“You told me once that if we were ever having trouble with our relationship, you would move heaven and earth to try and fix it,” said Alice. “We were at that new Italian restaurant when you said that. We were peeling the wax off the candlestick. I remember it very, very clearly.”

“Alice.”

“You said we were going to get old and grumpy together and go on coach tours and play bingo. The garlic bread was cold but we were too hungry to complain.”

Nick’s lower lip had dropped, so he looked stupid.

“One night, we were standing in Sarah O’Brien’s driveway waiting for a taxi and I asked if you thought Sarah looked even more beautiful than usual that night, and you said, ‘Alice, I could never love anyone the way I love you,’ and I laughed and said, ‘That wasn’t the question,’ but it was the question, because I was feeling insecure, and that’s what you said. You said that. It was cold. You were wearing that big woolly jumper that you lost at Katoomba. Don’t you remember?”

She could feel her nose starting to block.

Nick was holding his palms up in a panicky fashion, as if there were a fire starting right in front of him but he couldn’t see anything handy to extinguish it.

Alice sniffed noisily. “Sorry,” she said, and looked at the floor because she couldn’t bear to look at his familiar but strange face.

She said, “These tiles are the absolute perfect color. Where did we get them?”

“I don’t know,” said Nick. “It must have been ten years ago.” She looked back up at him. He dropped his hands by his sides and his eyes widened as comprehension swept his face. He said, “Alice, you did get your memory back, didn’t you? I just assumed—I mean, you’re home from the hospital. You don’t still think it’s 1998, do you?”

“I know it’s 2008. I believe it. It just doesn’t feel like it.”

“Yes, but you
remember
the last ten years, don’t you? That’s not why you’re asking these bizarre questions, is it?”

Alice said, “Did you have an affair with that woman who lived across the road? The one who died? Gina?”

“An affair? With
Gina
? You are joking.”

“Oh. Good.”

He said, “You don’t remember Gina?”

“No. I remember the balloons at her funeral.”

“But Alice . . .” Nick leaned forward urgently. He looked around the room to make sure they were alone and lowered his voice. “You do remember the
kids
, don’t you?”

Alice met his eyes and silently shook her head.

“Not at all?”

“The last thing I remember properly is being pregnant with the Sultana. I mean, Madison.”

Nick slammed his palms against his knees. (He had all these new grown-up grumpy gestures.) “For God’s sake, why aren’t you still at the hospital?”

“Did you have an affair with someone
other
than Gina?” asked Alice.

“What? No, of course not.”

“Did
I
?”

“Not that I know of. Can we get back to the point?”

“So there were no affairs at all?”

“No! Jesus. We didn’t have
time
for affairs. We didn’t have the energy. Well, I didn’t. Maybe you did, in between your precious aerobics classes and beautician appointments, in which case, good luck to you.”

Alice thought about how she’d kissed Dominick.

She said, “Do you have a girlfriend now? Oh, don’t answer that. I can’t bear it if you’ve got a girlfriend. Don’t answer it.” She put her hands over her ears, took them away, and said, “Do you?”

Nick said, “You must have hit your head really hard, Alice.”

For a moment it seemed like the real Nick was back. He was shaking his head in comical disbelief, the way he did when he caught her crying over that margarine ad with the ducklings, or hopping around swearing because she’d hurt herself kicking the washing machine, or down on her knees frenziedly pulling everything out of the fridge in the hope of finding a forgotten bar of chocolate.

Then the look vanished as if he’d just recalled something highly irritating and he said, “Anyway, according to Olivia, you’ve got a boyfriend yourself. Jasper’s dad. The school principal, no less. Do you remember
him
?”

Her face became warm. “I didn’t remember him, but I met him yesterday.”

“Right,” said Nick testily. “Well, he sounds very nice. Think I remember him from the school. Tall, lanky bloke. Anyway, so glad everything is working out so well for you. The question is, are you well enough to look after the children tonight? Or should they come back with me?”

Alice said, “If neither of us had an affair, why aren’t we still together? What could be bad enough to break us up?”

Nick exhaled noisily. He looked around the room in a flabbergasted way, as if looking for guidance from an equally flabbergasted audience. “It seems to me like this is a pretty serious head injury. I can’t believe they let you leave the hospital.”

“They did a CT scan. There’s nothing physically wrong with me. Also, I sort of told them that I had my memory back.”

Nick’s eyes rose to the heavens. Another pompous new gesture. “Oh, great. Brilliant. Lie to the doctors. Well done, Alice.”

“Why are you being so mean to me?”

“What, are we five now? I’m not being mean to you.”

“You are. And you don’t even sound like yourself. You’ve got all sarcastic and clichéd and . . . ordinary.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much. Clichéd and ordinary. Yes, it’s such a great mystery why our marriage has ended.”

He looked around with a triumphant jeer for his invisible audience again, as if to say, “See what I have to put up with?”

“I’m sorry,” said Alice. “I didn’t mean . . .” She drifted off because she was remembering what it was like when you broke up with someone. Conversations became so hopelessly tangled. You had to be polite and precise. You couldn’t safely criticize anymore, because you didn’t have the right. You’d lost your immunity.

“Oh, Nick,” she said helplessly.

She was experiencing all those familiar symptoms of a relationship breakup. The nausea. The sensation of something huge and hard lodged in the center of her chest. That trembly, teary feeling.

She wasn’t supposed to ever have to feel this way again. Breakups were meant to be something from her youth. Painful memories. Actually not that painful, because it was sort of nice to look fondly back at her younger self and think, “Oh you silly thing, crying over that jerk.”