What Alice Forgot

“But—”

“Sleep. Just sleep.”

It was the most erotic thing he’d ever said to her. He pulled the covers up under her chin, unplugged the monitor, and left, switching off the light and closing the door behind him. The room became divinely silent and dark.

She slept.

When she woke, her br**sts rock hard and leaking, the room was filled with sunlight, and the house was quiet. She looked at the clock and saw that it was nine o’clock. He’d done it. He actually canceled his trip. She’d slept for six straight glorious hours. Her vision was brighter, her brain sharper. She went downstairs and found Nick giving Madison her breakfast, while Tom cooed and kicked in his bouncer.

“Thank you,” said Alice, almost delirious with gratitude and relief.

“No problem.” Nick smiled.

She could still see the pride on his face, because he’d saved her. He’d fixed things. He’d always loved to fix things for her.

So it wasn’t strictly true that he was never there, or that he always put work first.

Maybe if she’d just asked him for help more? If she’d fallen apart more often so he could be the knight in shining armor (but how sexist and wrong was that?); if she hadn’t made herself the expert on everything to do with the children; if she hadn’t been so condescending when he dressed the children in weirdly inappropriate combinations. He couldn’t stand being made to feel stupid, so then he just stopped offering to dress them. His stupid pride.

Her stupid pride about being the best, most professional mother. I might not have made it in your world, Nick, like Elisabeth, and all those career women in suits, but I’ve made it in my world.

She’d come to the steepest part of the route, the part that always made Gina use terrible language. Her calf muscles tightened.

It was good to remember that for every horrible memory from her marriage, there was also a happy one. She wanted to see it clearly, to understand that it wasn’t all black, or all white. It was a million colors. And yes, ultimately it hadn’t worked out, but that was okay. Just because a marriage ended didn’t mean that it hadn’t been happy at times.

She thought about that strange period of time straight after she’d got her memory back. At first, images, words, emotions crashed over her in violent waves. She could hardly breathe for the chaos. Then, after a few days, her mind had calmed, the memories had fallen into their correct places, and she felt a kind of beautiful relief. Without her memory, she’d been swimming through cloudy water, half blind: now she had clarity of vision again. And what she saw was this: her marriage was over and she was in love with Dominick. That was that. With Dominick she felt the sweet, soothing comfort of being with a man who was besotted by her, fascinated by her, and wanted to find out who she was. With Nick, all she felt was bitterness, fury, and hurt. He was a man who had already decided who she was, who could list all her flaws, annoying tendencies, and mistakes. She could hardly stand to be in the same room with him. The idea that she’d planned to get back together with him was terrifying and shocking. As if someone had drugged her, hypnotized her, duped and deceived her.

It wasn’t just that her memories of the last ten years were back. It was that her true self, as formed by those ten years, was back. As seductive as it might have been to erase the grief and pain of the last ten years, it was also a lie. Young Alice was a fool. A sweet, innocent fool. Young Alice hadn’t experienced ten years of living.

But even as she tried to reason with her, scolded her, and grieved for her, young Alice stubbornly refused to go away.

Over the months that followed she kept popping up. She’d be paying for petrol at the service station and find her hand reaching out for a bar of heavenly Lindt chocolate. She’d be talking seriously to Nick about complicated logistical arrangements with the children and she’d find herself asking him something flippant and entirely unrelated to the conversation, like what he’d had for breakfast that morning. She’d be rushing to the beautician and find herself calling Elisabeth to suggest they meet for a coffee instead. She’d be hurrying between appointments and a voice would whisper in her head: Relax.

Finally she stopped resisting and called a truce. Young Alice was allowed to stay as long as she didn’t eat too much chocolate.

Now it seemed like she could twist the lens on her life and see it from two entirely different perspectives. The perspective of her younger self. Her younger, sillier, innocent self. And her older, wiser, more cynical and sensible self.

And maybe sometimes Young Alice had a point.

Like with Madison, for example. Before she’d lost her memory, Alice had been going through a bad stage with Madison. She’d been so tough on her, so frustrated by her behavior, and in the deepest, most shamefully childish part of her mind, she had blamed Madison for Gina’s accident. If she hadn’t had to take her to the dentist that morning, Gina wouldn’t have been pulling up at the corner at that time. They would have stopped to have coffee instead.

And of course Madison would have been smart enough to pick up on Alice’s resentment. She was already a child who felt everything far too deeply. She’d seen her mother’s friend killed in an accident and then her parents separated.

No wonder she’d been playing up. Elisabeth recommended a psychiatrist she’d heard about. A Dr. Jeremy Hodges. Madison had been going to see him twice a week, and it seemed to be helping. At least she hadn’t assaulted anyone lately at school; and Kate Harper’s husband had been transferred to somewhere in Europe, so the Harper family was now thankfully out of their lives.

There was a friendly toot of a horn and Alice looked up to see Mrs. Bergen driving by in her little blue Honda. It was strange, but after she got her memory back Alice found she’d lost interest in the development issue. The idea of selling up for a nice profit and moving to a fresh, new house without memories no longer seemed that important. She knew the bad memories would come with her anyway, and she didn’t want to leave the good ones behind.

On the other hand, if the developers won—well, that was life. Things changed. Oh, things sure did change.

She came to the corner where Gina had died and remembered yet again the terror and disbelief of that moment. Her grief had changed since she lost and regained her memory. It was simpler, calmer, sadder. Before, she had somehow channeled her grief into a whole lot of different directions: fury toward Nick (He should have taken Gina’s side when she was splitting up with Mike), coldness toward Elisabeth (She never really liked Gina all that much), and irritation toward Madison (Gina would still be alive if they’d driven in the same car). Hearing the facts of her life—“Your friend died”—without the memories, had untangled her feelings. Now she just missed her.