What Alice Forgot

“But why would you think I’d prefer you to die?” asked Alice. It seemed such a silly, childish, wrong thing to think.

“We weren’t getting on that well at the time. And you two were such good friends,” said Nick. “I mean—that was great—that was fine—but . . .” His lips did something funny. “You told Gina that you were pregnant with Olivia before you told me.”

“Really?” Why would she have done that? “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, well, it was only a small thing.” He stopped. “Also, once I overheard you saying something about our sex life. Or lack thereof. I mean, I know women always talk about sex together. It was just the tone in your voice. It was such contempt for me. And then, when she and Mike broke up, and you were going out to bars with her, trying to help her pick up men, I got the feeling that you were jealous. You wanted to be a single woman with her. I was in the way. Cramping your style.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Alice. She felt like some other woman had been horrible to Nick. As if he were describing an awful ex-girlfriend who had broken his heart.

“And then Gina died. And that was it. You froze up. That’s how it felt. You were like ice.”

“I don’t understand why I did that,” said Alice. If Sophie had died, she would have cried for hours in the safe, comforting circle of Nick’s arms.

“Is that why you didn’t come to the funeral?” she asked.

Nick shrugged.

“I had to be in New York. It was a huge meeting. Something we’d been planning for months, but I told you a million bloody times I was happy to cancel. I kept asking if you wanted me at the funeral, and you said, ‘Do what you want.’ So, I thought, maybe you’d actually prefer it if I wasn’t there. I wanted to go. She was my friend, too, once upon a time. You always seem to forget that. She drove me crazy the way she bossed you around, but I still cared about her. It just got so confusing after she and Mike split up. I wanted to stay friends with him, too, and you saw that as a betrayal of Gina. So did she. She was so mad with me. Each time I saw Gina, she’d say, ‘Seen Mike lately?’ and you’d both be shooting me evil looks as if I was the villain. I didn’t see why I had to dump a good mate just because of one drunken—anyway, we’ve been over it a million times. I’m just trying to say that I felt so, I don’t know, awkward, when she died. I didn’t know how I was meant to act. I just wanted you to say, ‘Of course you should cancel the trip. Of course you should come to the funeral.’ I felt like I needed your permission.”

“So all our problems were because of Gina and Mike,” said Alice. These two strangers had destroyed their marriage.

“I don’t think we can blame them for everything,” said Nick. “We argued. We argued over the most trivial things.”

“Like what?”

“Like, I don’t know, cherries. One day we were going over to Mum’s place for dinner and I ate some cherries we were meant to be taking. It was the crime of the century. You would not let it go. You were talking about those cherries for months.”

“Cherries,” pondered Alice.

“I’d be at work, where people respected my opinions,” said Nick. “And then I’d come home and it was like I was the village idiot. I’d pack the dishwasher the wrong way. I’d pick the wrong clothes for the children. I stopped offering to help. It wasn’t worth the criticism.”

They didn’t say anything for a few moments. Next to them, a family with a toddler and a baby laid out a rug. The toddler picked up a handful of sand with a determined expression on his face and went to drop it all over his baby sister’s face. They heard the mother say, “Watch him!” and the father pulled him away just in time. The mother rolled her eyes, and the father muttered something they didn’t catch.

“I’m not saying I was perfect,” said Nick, his eyes on the father. “I was too caught up in work. You’d say I was obsessed with it. You always talk about the year I was working on the Goodman project. I was traveling a lot. You had to cope on your own with three children. You said once that I ‘deserted you.’ I always think that year made my career, but maybe . . .” He stopped and squinted out at the harbor. “Maybe that was the year that broke our marriage.”

The Goodman project. The words put a bad taste in her mouth. The bloody Goodman project. The word “bloody” seemed to belong naturally before “Goodman.”

Alice leaned back and pushed the heels of her boots deep into the sand. It all seemed so complicated. Her mistakes. Nick’s mistakes. For the first time it occurred to her that maybe their marriage couldn’t be put back together.

She looked over at the family with the two small children. Now the father was spinning the little boy around and the mother was laughing, taking photos of them with a digital camera.

Madison walked up from the water toward them, carrying something in her cupped-together hands, her face radiant.

Nick’s hand was next to Alice’s on the picnic rug.

She felt the tip of his finger lightly touch hers.

“Maybe we should try again,” he said.

Chapter 29

George and Mildred turned up on Friday.

Alice found them at the back of the garage. George was lying on his side, as if he’d been kicked over. His once dignified lion’s face was now stained a moldy green, which made him look ashamed, as if he were an old man with food all over his face. Mildred was sitting in the middle of a pile of old pots. There was a huge chip out of one paw, and she looked sad and resigned. They were both filthy.

Alice had dragged them both onto the back veranda and was scrubbing them with a mixture of bleach and water, as recommended by Mrs. Bergen next door, who was thrilled that Alice had swapped sides on the development issue, and who was once again waving and smiling when she saw her and asking Alice to send the children over to play on her piano anytime they wanted. “We’re not five anymore,” said Tom wearily. “Doesn’t she know we have a PlayStation?”

Barb had offered to take Madison for a shopping trip on the first day of her suspension. “Don’t worry, I won’t spoil her,” she’d told Alice. “No new clothes or anything. Unless she sees something really special, of course, in which case I’ll put it away for her next birthday.”