What Alice Forgot

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.”

This was meant to be her grown-up relationship. The one that lasted forever.

She put her wineglass on the coffee table and turned to face him. “Just tell me why we’re getting a divorce. Please.”

“That’s an impossible question to answer. There are a million reasons. And you’d probably give a million different reasons.”

“Well, just sort of . . . sum it up.”

“In twenty-five words or less.”

“Yes, please.”

He smiled slightly and it was the real Nick again. He kept appearing and disappearing.

He said, “Well, I guess—” and then he stopped and bowed his head. “Oh, Alice.” An expression of pure misery crossed his face.

It was too much for Alice. Her instinct was to comfort him, and she wanted to be comforted herself, and it was Nick, for heaven’s sake.

She launched herself across the room and into his arms and buried her face in his chest, breathing in deeply. It was still Nick. He still smelled exactly like himself.