What Alice Forgot

After Mike moved out, Gina wanted to lose weight. So Alice and Gina decided to get a personal trainer. They joined a gym. They started doing spin classes. The weight fell off them. They got fitter and fitter. Alice loved it. She dropped two dress sizes. She had no idea exercise could be so exhilarating.

Gina went on a date with a guy she’d met on the Internet. Alice minded the kids. Nick was working late.

When Gina came home, she was all glittery and flushed. Alice, lying on the couch in her tracksuit pants, felt envious. First dates. How wonderful to experience a first date again.

When Nick came home that night he said, You’re getting too thin.

When Nick heard that his dad was dating Alice’s mother, he laughed out loud.

She’s not his type. He goes for eastern suburbs women with fake boobs and big divorce settlements. Women who read all the right books and see all the right plays.

Are you saying my mother isn’t cultured enough for your father?

I hate the sort of woman my father normally dates!

So your dad’s slumming it, then? With my poor simple Hills District mother?

It is impossible to talk to you. It’s like you want me to say the wrong thing. Fine. Dad is slumming it. Is that what you want me to say? Satisfied?

Elisabeth had disappeared. Her sister turned into this bitter, angry person, with a hard, sarcastic laugh. Nothing as bad had ever happened to anyone else as was happening to Elisabeth. Alice couldn’t say the right thing to her. Once she asked if she’d had another embryo implanted and Elisabeth’s lip curled contemptuously. The embryo is “transferred,” she sneered, it’s not implanted. If only it were that easy. How the hell was Alice meant to know all the right terminology? If she invited her to one of the kids’ birthday parties, Elisabeth sighed, in a way that meant it would be excruciating for her, but she would still come, and she’d look like a martyr the whole time. Didn’t offer to help, just stood there with her lips folded together. Don’t do me any favors, Alice wanted to say. After the fourth miscarriage, she tried to talk to Elisabeth. She offered to donate her eggs. Your eggs are too old, Elisabeth had said. You really don’t know what you’re talking about.

When Roger proposed to Alice’s mother, Nick was angry.

Well that’s just fabulous. Wonderful. How is that going to make my mother feel?

As if it were somehow Alice’s fault. As if her mother had somehow trapped Roger into marrying her.

They stopped having sex. It just stopped. They didn’t even talk about it.

“Let’s get her outside into the fresh air.”

She was dimly aware that she was being half carried, half dragged out of the marquee. People were staring, but she couldn’t focus on anything but the memories rushing through her brain.

When she felt her first labor pain with Madison, she thought to herself, They must be joking. They can’t expect me to put up with this. But it seemed they did. Seven hours later, when the baby was born, neither she nor Nick could believe it was a girl. They’d both been so ridiculously convinced it was a boy. It’s a girl, they kept saying to each other. The surprise made them euphoric. She was extraordinary. As if a baby girl had never been born before.

Tom was in the posterior position. She kept screaming at that midwife with the soft, worn face—it’s my back, the pain is in my back. And the whole time she was promising herself, I will never, ever go through this again.

Olivia was the worst. Your baby is in distress. We need to do an emergency cesarean, they told her, and suddenly the room filled with people, and she was being wheeled down a long corridor, watching the ceiling lights flash rhythmically by, and wondering what she’d done to distress her poor baby before it was even born. When she woke up from the anesthetic, a nurse said, You have the most beautiful baby girl.

Madison got her first tooth when she was eight months old. She kept touching it with her finger and frowning.

Tom refused point blank to ever sit in the high chair. Never ever sat in it.

Olivia didn’t walk until she was eighteen months old.

Madison’s little red hooded jacket with the white flowers.

Tom’s filthy blue elephant that had to come everywhere with him. Where’s Elephant? Have you seen his damned elephant?

Olivia ran into the schoolyard on her first day of school shrieking with joy. Madison had to be dragged out of Alice’s arms.

Alice walked into the kitchen one day and found Tom carefully stuffing his nose with frozen peas. I wanted to see if the peas would come out of my eyeballs, he told the doctor.

They lost Olivia at Newport Beach. The panic made Alice hyperventilate. You were meant to be watching her, Nick kept saying. As if that were the point. That Alice had made a mistake. Not that Olivia was missing, but that it was Alice’s fault.

“Alice? Take big deep breaths.”

She ignored their voices. She was busy remembering.

It was a really cold August day. She and Gina were driving in separate cars home from the gym. Normally, they would have driven together, but Alice had taken Madison to the dentist beforehand. The dentist said there was nothing wrong with Madison’s teeth. He didn’t know what was causing that ache in her jaw. He’d sent Madison to the waiting room and asked Alice quietly, Could it be stress?

Alice had looked at her watch impatiently, desperate to get to the gym. She didn’t want to miss the beginning of the spin class. She’d already missed a class yesterday because Olivia had some school presentation. Stress? What did Madison have to be stressed about? She was just impossible. She probably just wanted to get out of school.

As they were driving home Madison was whining about having to stay in the gym day-care while Alice and Gina did their class.

I am too old for the crèche. It is just stupid crying babies.

Well, you should have gone to school today instead of making up stories about toothaches.

I didn’t make it up.

It was a black stormy day. Lightning cracked across the sky. It started to rain. Heavy drops splattering on the windscreen like pebbles.

Mum. I didn’t make it up.

Be quiet. I’m trying to concentrate on the road.

Alice hated driving in the rain.

The wind was howling. The trees were swaying about as if they were performing some sort of ghostly dance.

They pulled into Rawson Street. Alice saw Gina’s brake lights turn red.

Gina was driving her wildly impractical fortieth-birthday present to herself. A little red Mini with white stripes along the side and personalized number plates. Not a family car. It makes me feel young and crazy, said Gina. She drove it with the sunroof open and Elvis on full blast.