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.