What Alice Forgot

“Okay,” said Nick carefully. He licked his ice cream and looked at them both.

“So, I guess we need to help Madison find some better ways to react when she feels angry.”

“I always take ten deep breaths before I say anything when I’m angry,” said Nick.

“No you don’t,” said Madison. “You just yell straightaway. So does Mum. And what about that time Mum threw that pizza box at you?”

Oh my, they’d been setting fine examples for their children.

Alice cleared her throat. “Well, the thing is—”

“Are you going to come home, please, Dad?” said Madison. “I think you should come home now and be Mum’s husband again. I’m pretty sure then I would stop being angry. Then I would never do another bad thing in my whole entire life. I could write that in a contract for you. So that means you could, like, sue me if I was ever bad, which I would not ever be.”

She looked at her father with desperate entreaty.

“Sweetheart,” began Nick, his face screwed tight as if he had a toothache. Then he stopped, distracted by some sort of disturbance on the beach. There were shouts and people running. Alice could see a small crowd of people forming up on the cliff above the aquarium, pointing at something in the water.

“Humpback whales in the harbor!” a man cried at them, running along with a camera bouncing on his chest.

Nick immediately leapt to his feet, still holding his ice cream. Madison and Alice looked up at him.

“What are you waiting for?” he said, and next thing the three of them were running breathlessly along the beach, up onto the foreshore, and running around the walkway, their ice creams held precariously in front of them.

They had to run a steep set of concrete steps and Alice drew ahead, one hand holding her ice cream, the other holding up her skirt as she effortlessly leapt up the steps, two at a time.

As she reached the top, she was in time to see a massive plume of water shoot up from the water below them.

“It’s a mother and her calf,” said a woman to Alice. “Watch. Just there. You’ll see them again.”

Nick and Madison pounded up the stairs behind her. Nick was breathing heavily. (How did he get so unfit?)

“Where? Where?” said Madison. Her face was pink and anxious.

“Just watch,” said Alice.

For a few seconds there was nothing but silence. The surface of the harbor rippled in the breeze and a seagull squawked plaintively.

“They’ve gone,” said Madison. “We’ve missed them. Typical.”

Nick looked at his watch.

Come on, whale, thought Alice. Give us a break.

The water erupted as a massive creature shot straight into the air. It was like something prehistoric had crashed through an invisible barrier into ordinary life. Alice caught a glimpse of a barnacle-encrusted white front. It seemed to hover in the air before slamming back into the water, with a flurry of icy, salty raindrops against their faces.

Madison grabbed hold of Alice’s arm. Her face was radiant with joy, speckled with droplets of water. “Look, Mum! Look!”

The whale rolled luxuriously about, revealing huge curves of velvety black skin, its tail slapping the water, as if enjoying a hot bath.

“Madison, Alice, over there—it’s the baby!” shouted Nick, and he sounded like a sixteen-year-old boy.

The calf was splashing about in miniature imitation of its mother. Alice could almost imagine it gurgling with laughter.

“Ha!” said Nick idiotically. “Ha!”

All around them were faces full of joy and wonder. The sea air was cool on their faces, the sun warm on their backs.

“Do it again!” said Madison. “Jump up again, mother whale!”

“Yeah!” agreed the man with the camera. “One more time.”

And right on cue, she did.

Elisabeth’s Homework for Jeremy Ben is threatening to ring you up. He thinks I’m behaving like a crazy person.

Frannie’s Letter to Phil Something quite extraordinary has happened, Phil.

As they walked back to the picnic rug, Madison danced around them. She was euphoric. Skipping. Jumping. Swinging on Nick’s hand, then Alice’s, then both. People walking by smiled at her.

“That was the best thing I’ve ever seen!” she kept saying. “I’m going to blow that photo up into a poster and put it over my bed!”

The man with the camera had taken Nick’s e-mail address and was going to send him the photo he’d taken.

“Let’s hope he didn’t miss it,” said Nick.

“No, he got it,” said Madison. “He definitely got it. Can I go paddle? Just to feel the water?”

She looked at Alice, and Alice looked at Nick. He shrugged.

“Sure,” said Alice. “Why not?”

They watched her run down toward the water.

“Do you think she needs counseling?” said Alice.

“She’s been through a lot,” said Nick. “Gina’s accident. You and me. And she always feels things so deeply.”

“What do you mean, Gina’s accident?” Alice thought about Madison’s nightmare. Get it off her.

“Madison was with you,” said Nick. “She saw it happen. You don’t remember it, do you?”

“No,” said Alice. “Just the feeling of it.” Although that feeling of sick horror seemed impossible here today, with the sun and sea, ice creams and whales.

“There was a storm,” said Nick. “A tree fell on Gina’s car. You and Madison were driving behind.”

A tree. So that horrible image of a black leafless tree swaying against a stormy sky was real.

“It must have been horrendous for both of you,” said Nick quietly. He lifted a handful of sand and let the grains fall through his fingers. “And I didn’t—I wasn’t—”

“What?”

“I wasn’t as supportive as I should have been,” said Nick.

“Why weren’t you?” asked Alice curiously.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” said Nick. “I just felt detached. I felt like you wouldn’t want my sympathy. I felt like—I felt that if you’d had the choice, you would have preferred that I’d died rather than Gina. I remember I tried to hug you and you pushed me away as if I made you sick. I should have tried harder. I’m sorry.”