“Oh.” Frustration welled up in her. “But I just can’t believe I don’t remember any of this. It doesn’t even sound familiar!” She stuck her fingers though the holes in the blanket over her legs and bunched it together hard with both hands in a silly, childish movement. “There is so much . . . stuff!”
“Hey . . . hey, there.” Elisabeth rubbed Alice’s shoulder a bit too vigorously, as if she were a boxer, and looked around her feverishly for help. “You’ve got to let me go and find a doctor to talk about this.”
She was a problem solver, Elisabeth. She always wanted to find a solution for you.
There was a burst of screechy female laughter from the cubicle next to them. “You didn’t!” “I did!” Alice and Elisabeth raised their eyebrows at each other in mutual silent distaste and Alice was filled with soothing, sisterly affection.
She let go of the blanket and managed to put her hands sedately back in her lap. “Please don’t go. A nurse will come along and check on me soon and you can talk to her. Just stay here and keep talking to me. I think that will cure me.”
Elisabeth glanced at her watch and said, “I don’t know about that,” but she sat back in her chair.
Alice shifted herself against the pillows behind her back to get comfortable. She thought about asking more questions about the children in the photo (three!—the number was so unwieldy and impossible) but it was so surreal it was silly, like a movie that was so far-fetched you kept shifting in your seat and trying not to guffaw. It was better to ask about Elisabeth’s life.
Elisabeth had her head bent, scratching at something invisible on her wrist. Alice looked again at the lines that seemed to pull her sister’s mouth down into a sad sort of grimace. Was it just age? (Did her own mouth turn down like that, too? Soon she would look. Soon.) But it was more than that; there was a deep, slumping sort of sadness about her. Was she not happy being married to that grizzly-bear man? (Was it possible to love a man with a beard? Childish. Of course it was possible. Even if it was a remarkably bushy beard.)
As Alice watched, Elisabeth’s throat moved as she swallowed convulsively.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Alice.
Elisabeth started and looked up. “I don’t know, nothing.” She swallowed a yawn. “Sorry. I’m just tired. I only got a couple of hours’ sleep last night.”
“Ah,” said Alice. She didn’t need an explanation. She and Elisabeth had both suffered from bouts of terrible insomnia all their lives. They had inherited it from their mother. After their dad died, Alice and Elisabeth would often stay up right through the night with their mother, sitting in their dressing gowns in a row on the couch, watching videos and drinking cocoa, and then they’d sleep the next day away, while sunlight streamed through the muffled, sleeping house.
“How has my insomnia been lately?” asked Alice.
“I don’t know actually. I don’t know if you still get it.”
“You don’t know?” Alice was baffled. They always kept each other up to date with their insomnia battles. “But don’t we—don’t we talk?”
“Of course we talk, but I guess you’re pretty busy, with the kids and everything, so our conversations are maybe a bit rushed.”
“Busy,” repeated Alice. She didn’t like the sound of that at all. She had always had a slight mistrust of busy people; the sort of people who described themselves as “Flat-out! Frantic!” What was the hurry? Why didn’t they slow down? Just what exactly were they so busy doing?
“Well,” she said, and felt unaccountably awkward. It felt like things weren’t exactly right between herself and Elisabeth. There seemed to be a sort of stilted, friendly politeness, as if they were good friends who didn’t see each other so often anymore.
She would ask Nick about it. It was one of the best things about him; he liked to talk about people, study them, and work them out. He was interested in the complexities of relationships. Also, he loved Elisabeth, and when he made fun of her, or complained about her (because she could at times be profoundly annoying), he did it in just the right brotherly way so that Alice didn’t feel she had to defend her.
Alice looked at Elisabeth’s beautifully cut cream suit (both their wardrobes seemed to have improved in 2008) and said, “Are you still working at the catalogue place? The Treasure Chest?”
Elisabeth had a job writing the text for a huge monthly mail-order catalogue called The Treasure Chest. She had to find clever, persuasive things to say about hundreds and hundreds of products, anything from bananaflavored lip gloss to an instant egg poacher to a waterproof radio you could play in the shower. She got a lot of free stuff to give away, which was nice, and every month when the catalogue came out, everyone in the family read out their favorite lines to Elisabeth. Frannie kept every issue of The Treasure Chest on proud display and made her friends read it when they came to visit.
“Oh, that feels like such a long time ago,” said Elisabeth. She looked at Alice and shook her head slightly, as if she’d never seen anything quite like it. “You’re like a time traveler. You really are.”
“So I guess you don’t work there anymore?” Alice felt irritable. This was going to get tiring if everyone looked at her with awe each time she asked a simple question. How much could have changed in ten years? It seemed like everything.
“The Treasure Chest is a website now,” said Elisabeth. “And I stopped working there about six years ago. I worked for an agency for about four years, and then two years ago I started running these training seminars on how to write direct mail. Or junk mail, as most people would call it. They’re quite—well, they’re quite successful, actually, as strange as that may seem. Anyway, it pays the bills. I was running one today when I got the call from Jane about you.”
“So it’s your own business?”
“Yes.”
“Wow! That’s so impressive. You’re a success story. I always knew you would be a success story. Can I come along and watch you?”
“Come along and watch? Watch me?” Elisabeth snorted.
“Oh. I guess I’ve already done that, have I?”
Elisabeth said, “No, Alice, you’ve never shown the slightest interest in coming along to one of my seminars.” Her voice had that sharp edge again.