What Alice Forgot

“I’m sorry,” said Alice again. “I’m really sorry.”

“You don’t even remember it,” said Elisabeth. “Once you remember it, you’ll feel differently. Anyway, I said some pretty nasty things to you.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not saying them again! I didn’t even mean them. This lets me off the hook.”

They were silent for a few seconds. Alice said, “Are Angelina and Brad friends of yours?”

Elisabeth snorted. “Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. You’ve forgotten all your celebrity gossip, too.”

“I thought Brad Pitt was engaged to Gwyneth Paltrow.”

“Ancient history. He’s married and divorced Jennifer Aniston since then, and Gwyneth has had a baby called Apple. I’m not kidding. Apple.”

“Oh.” Alice felt unaccountably sad for Brad and Gwyneth. “They seemed happy in the photos.”

“Everyone looks happy in photos.”

“What about Bill and Hillary Clinton?” asked Alice. “Did they stay together?”

“You mean after the Lewinsky thing?” said Elisabeth. “Yes, they did. I don’t think anyone even thinks about that much anymore.”

Alice looked at Elisabeth. “So,” she said with wild abandon, “I take it you don’t want to adopt a baby?”

Elisabeth smiled a sick sort of a smile. “I would have considered it years ago, but Ben couldn’t stand the idea. He’s always been ideologically opposed to adoption because he’s adopted himself, and his mother is—difficult. He didn’t have a great childhood. My charming mother-in-law told him that his real mother couldn’t afford to keep him, so Ben saved up his money. He thought once he had a hundred dollars, he could write to his real mum to tell her he could be self-supporting now, so could she please take him back. On his birthday he always ran to the letterbox, thinking that maybe this year, out of the blue, his real mum might decide to send him a card.

“He thought his baby photos were ugly—he was a funny-looking baby— and he wondered if maybe his real mother hadn’t liked the look of him when he was born. He always felt that his parents wished they had chosen a smaller, smarter son. He’d spent his whole childhood keeping his room tidy, not saying much, feeling like a big clumsy visitor in his own home. It breaks my heart to think of it. When you were saying earlier that Nick wanted to be a good father to make up for his own father leaving, well, Ben was similar. He wanted his own biological child. He wanted to have someone who looked like him, who had the same eyes or whatever. And I was so looking forward to giving him that. I so badly wanted to give him that.”

“Of course you did.”

“So I was always very respectful of Ben’s views on adoption.”

“Yes. I can imagine.”

Elisabeth gave a wry half-smile.

“What?”

“On Thursday you told Ben that he needed to get over it.”

“Get over what?”

“Get over his problem with adoption. You said that plenty of people didn’t get on with their biological parents and that it was a lottery, but that any kid who got Ben and me as parents would hit the jackpot. Thank you, by the way. That was a nice thing to say.”

“That’s okay.” At least she’d said one thing right. “But Ben must not have appreciated me saying that.”

“Well, that’s the thing. Yesterday when I came home from lunch he said he’d been thinking about what you said, and he thinks you’re right. We should adopt. He’s all excited. He’d done all this research on the Internet. Apparently all I needed to say to him five years ago was ‘Get over it.’ Silly old me. All that unnecessary tiptoeing around his traumatic childhood.”

Alice tried to imagine herself telling that big grizzly man to “get over it” while she fed him banana muffins. (Banana muffins. She wondered what recipe she used. Also, she must own a muffin tray.) She had never had opinions about how Elisabeth should run her life, although Elisabeth had plenty of opinions about how Alice should run hers. That was fine because she was the big sister. It was her job to be the sensible, bossy one who did her tax returns on time, got her car serviced regularly, and had a career, while Alice could be whimsical and hopeless and make fun of Elisabeth for her motivational posters of mountains and sunsets. Actually, now she thought about it, it had been Elisabeth who had bullied her into doing that Thai cooking course with Sophie, instead of wasting her life moping over that sneering IT consultant.

Now Alice was the one doing the bullying.

“So if Ben is considering adoption now, isn’t that maybe a good thing?” she said hopefully.

“No, it’s not.” Elisabeth’s voice became flinty. She sat up straight. Here we go, thought Alice. “It’s not at all. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Alice.”

“But—”

“It’s too late now. You don’t seem to realize how long adoption takes. What you have to go through. You don’t just order a kid online. We’re not Brad and Angelina. We’ve got to jump through hoops and pay thousands of dollars, which we don’t have. It takes years and years, and it’s stressful and things go wrong, and I don’t have the energy for it. I’ve had enough. We’d be nearly fifty by the time we got a child. I’m too tired to start dealing with bureaucrats and trying to convince them why I’d make a good mother and how much money we earn and blah, blah, blah. I don’t know why you’re suddenly taking this interest in my life, but you’re too late.”

“I’m suddenly taking an interest?” Alice was wounded, desperate to defend herself, except she had no facts at her disposal. She didn’t believe it. She would never have not been interested in Elisabeth’s life. “Are you saying I haven’t been interested before?”

Elisabeth breathed out noisily, deflating like a balloon, and sank back in her chair.

“Of course you have.”

“Well, why did you say it?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I’ve felt it. Look, I withdraw the comment.”

“We’re not in court.”

“I didn’t even mean it. Anyway, you could probably say the same thing about me. I don’t see the children as much as I did. I should have done more for you after Gina, and after Nick. But you’re always so . . . I don’t know. Busy. Self-sufficient.” She yawned. “Just forget it.”