What Alice Forgot

“What’s your saddest memory of the last ten years?” said Alice.

“Oh, I’ve got lots of contenders.” Nick smiled strangely. She couldn’t tell if it was a nasty smile or a sad one. “Take your pick. The day we told the children we were separating. The day I moved out. The night Madison rang me up, sobbing her heart out and begging me to come home.”

All around them people talked and laughed and drank their cups of tea. Alice could feel the warmth from the heaters beating down upon her head. She felt as though the top of her head were melting, softening like chocolate. She imagined Madison on the phone, crying for her dad to come home.

He should have put down the phone and come right home that second, and they should have watched a family video together, snuggled on the couch, eating fish-and-chips. It should have been easy to be happy. There were poor Elisabeth and Ben, desperately trying to have a family, while Nick and Alice had just let theirs fall apart.

She stepped closer to Nick.

“Don’t you think we should try again? For them? For the children? Actually, not just for them. For us. For the old us.”

“Excuse me!” It was another old lady, with a blue-gray perm and a wrinkled, happy face. “You’re Nick and Alice, aren’t you!” She leaned toward them confidentially. “I recognize you from Frannie’s Facebook page. She mentioned that you were separated now, and I just want you to know that I think you two belong together. I could tell it was true love by the way you danced just then!”

“Frannie has photos of us on the Internet?” said Nick.

The old lady turned to Alice. “Have you got your memory back yet, love? You know, a similar thing happened to a friend of mine in 1954. We could not convince her that the war was over. Of course, she ended up forgetting her own name, which I’m sure won’t happen to you.”

“No,” said Alice. “It’s Alice. Alice, Alice.”

“Tell me she doesn’t post photos of the children on the Internet,” said Nick.

“Oh, your children are just beautiful,” said the old lady.

“Great. An open invitation to murderers and pedophiles,” said Nick.

“I’m sure she doesn’t actually invite people to murder the children,” said Alice. “‘Murderers, check out our delicious little victims here!’ ”

“This is serious. Why do you always think bad things can’t happen to us? It’s just like that time you let Olivia go missing at the beach. You’re so blasé.”

“Am I?” said Alice, bemused. Had she really let Olivia go missing?

“We’re not immune from tragedy.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Alice, and Nick’s face gave an actual spasm of irritation, as if he’d just been bitten by a mosquito.

“What?” said Alice. “What did I say?”

“Is your sister here?” said the old lady to Alice. “I wanted to tell her that I think she should adopt a baby. There must be lots of lovely babies up for adoption after that cyclone in Burma. Of course, in my day a lot more babies were left on church doorsteps, but that doesn’t seem to happen so much anymore, which is a pity. Oh, there’s your mother!” The old lady spotted Barb, still in her outfit and makeup, holding a clipboard and surrounded by eager old ladies. “I’m going to sign up for salsa! You two have inspired me!”

She tottered off.

“Will you please tell Frannie that I don’t appreciate her putting photos of my children on the Net,” said Nick. That detached, pompous voice was back.

“Tell her yourself!” said Alice. Nick adored Frannie. The old Nick would have been off to accost Frannie for a spirited debate. At family functions they argued about politics and played cards together.

Nick sighed heavily. He massaged his cheeks as if he had a toothache, pushing the flesh up around his eyes, causing them to crease oddly, so that his face looked like a gargoyle.

“Don’t do that,” said Alice, pulling on his arm.

“What?” said Nick. “Jesus, what?”

“Oh my goodness,” said Alice. “How did our relationship get so prickly?”

“I should go,” said Nick.

“What happened to George and Mildred?” said Alice.

Nick just looked at her blankly.

“The sandstone lions,” Alice reminded him.

“I have no idea,” said Nick.

Chapter 27

“Oh, Alice,” said Alice to herself.

It was the morning after the Family Talent Night. The children had been safely delivered to school and she was sitting at the desk in the study, searching for things to help jog her memory. She’d just stumbled upon the reason why Mrs. Bergen wasn’t speaking to her.

She sat back in her chair, put her feet up on the desk, and leaned right back on the chair so she was staring up at the ceiling. “What were you thinking?”

It seemed that Alice was an active member of a residents’ committee lobbying the local council to have their street rezoned to allow the building of five-story apartment blocks. Mrs. Bergen was heading up the committee of residents fighting the rezoning proposal.

She took her feet off the desk and pulled out the next piece of paper in the file, biting into a Twix bar to fortify herself. (She had stocked the pantry with essential chocolate. The children were delirious about this, even while they pretended this was nothing out of the ordinary.)

It was a clipping from the local paper with the headline KING STREET RESIDENTS CLASH, showing pictures of Mrs. Bergen and Alice. They had photographed Mrs. Bergen in her front garden, next to her rosebushes, wearing her gardening hat, holding a mug and looking sad and sweet.

“This proposal is an outrage. It will ruin the character and heritage of this beautiful street,” said Mrs. Beryl Bergen, who has lived in her King Street home for the past forty years and raised five children there.

“Of course it will,” said Alice out loud.

The photo of Alice showed her sitting in the very chair she was sitting in now, looking grim and officious and definitely forty.

She groaned out loud as she read her own words.

“It’s inevitable,” said Mrs. Alice Love, who moved into the area ten years ago. “Sydney needs high density housing close to public transport. When we purchased this home, we were told the rezoning would happen in the next five years. We took that into account as part of the property’s investment potential. The council can’t go back on its word and leave people out of pocket.”