What Alice Forgot

Afterward, I felt guilty because I hadn’t been concentrating on my own baby. I shouldn’t have been playing with Tom when my poor little baby was trying to have a heartbeat. I felt that it must somehow have known I wasn’t concentrating. I should have had my eyes fixed on that screen. I should have been helping it along, thinking: Beat. Beat. Beat.

I know this is irrational, Dr. Hodges. I’m never going to give you the professional satisfaction of hearing that story so you can point out it’s irrational and pat yourself on the back for a good day’s work at the office.

I know it’s irrational, and I know there is nothing I could have done.

But I also know that a good mother would have been concentrating on her baby’s heartbeat.

I never pulled that silly face for Tom again. I wonder if some part of his baby mind missed it. Poor little Tom. Poor little lost astronaut.

“Remember?” asked Elisabeth. “The woman with the wispy hair? Tom had rusk smeared all over his face. It was a really hot, humid day and you were wearing khaki pants and a white T-shirt. On the way home you had to stop and get petrol and when you came back to the car, both Tom and I were crying. You’d bought a Twix in the service station and you handed out pieces, and a man behind you waiting for the pump tooted his horn at us, and you put your head out the window and shouted at him. I was proud of you for shouting.”

Alice tried to remember. She wanted to remember this. It seemed a betrayal of Elisabeth to have forgotten. She strained her mind with all her might, like a weight lifter, heaving to lift something huge that had lodged itself in her memory.

Scenes came into her head of a baby laughing in a stroller, Elisabeth crying in the car, a man angrily tooting his horn; but she couldn’t tell if they were real memories or just her imagination painting pictures as Elisabeth talked. They didn’t feel like real memories; they were insubstantial and shadowy, without context.

“You remember now?” said Elisabeth.

“Maybe a bit.” She didn’t want to disappoint her; she looked so hopeful.

“Well. Good. I guess.”

Alice said, “I’m sorry.”

“What for? It’s not your fault. You didn’t throw yourself headfirst at the floor at the gym.”

“No, I mean, I’m sorry about your baby.”

Chapter 12

Alice groped for the right thing to say next. The obvious thing to ask was, “Did you try to get pregnant again?” but that would be like saying, “So! Moving right along!”

She glanced over at Elisabeth. She had put on sunglasses, so Alice couldn’t see her eyes, and was steering with one hand while she used the other hand to rub compulsively at something on the side of her face.

Alice looked away and saw that they were only a block away from the house. She and Nick had gone for so many walks around this area in the twilight, stopping to look at other people’s houses to steal renovation ideas for their own. Was that really ten years ago? It didn’t seem possible. The memory was so clear and ordinary it could have happened yesterday. Nick always said hello first to other neighborhood walkers. “Beautiful evening!” he would call out with a cheery lack of cool, and then he’d stop and chat, as if these people were old friends, while Alice stood there, smiling tightly, thinking, “Why are we bothering with these strangers?” But she was so proud of Nick’s uninhibited sociability, the way he could walk straight into a party full of people they didn’t know and stick his hand out to a stranger and say, “I’m Nick. This is my wife, Alice.” It was as though he had an amazing skill, like playing a complicated musical instrument, that Alice could never hope to master. The best part was that she could coast along safely beside him at any social event, so that parties became glittery and giggly instead of excruciating torture, so much so that she wondered if she’d ever really been that shy in the first place. Even when he wasn’t right by her side, she always knew that if the person talking to her drifted off, she wouldn’t be stranded in the crowd; she could go and find Nick with a purposeful expression on her face, and he’d put an arm around her shoulder and draw her smoothly into the conversation.

Did she have to go to parties on her own again now?

She remembered that raw sensation she’d felt after previous relationships had ended. For months afterward, it had felt like she’d lost a layer of skin. If she’d felt like that after those meaningless boys, what would she feel like after breaking with Nick? She’d been so cozy in the cocoon of their relationship. She assumed she got to stay there forever.

Alice looked up from her lap, where she’d been fiddling with her bracelet, and saw they were turning into Rawson Street. As she watched the long line of leafy liquid ambers and the car ahead putting on its right-hand indicator to turn into King Street, she felt a sudden sense of horror. Her heart palpitated as if she’d woken up in the middle of a nightmare; something grabbed her throat and squeezed; pure fear rammed her hard against her seat.

She went to reach out for Elisabeth, to touch her arm to let her know that she might be dying, but she couldn’t move. Elisabeth braked and looked left and right to turn onto King Street. Alice was having a heart attack right next to her and Elisabeth didn’t even realize.

They turned the corner and Alice’s heart began to slow. She could breathe again. She made a whooshing sound of relief as air filled her lungs once more.

Elisabeth glanced over at her. “You okay?”

Alice spoke, her voice high. “I felt really, really strange for a moment there.”

“Dizzy? Because I can take you straight back to the hospital right now if you like. It’s no problem.”

“No, no, it’s gone now. It was just—nothing, really.”

The fear had vanished, leaving her weak and shaky as though she’d just stepped off an amusement park ride. What did these huge tidal waves of feeling mean? First there had been that unimaginable grief. Now it was terror.

As they drove down Alice and Nick’s street, she saw a For Sale sign on the house directly opposite theirs. “Oh, are the Pritchetts selling?” she asked.

Elisabeth glanced at the sign and a strange, inscrutable expression crossed her face. “Um. I think they sold years ago. The family who bought it from them is selling it now. So, anyway—” She turned into Alice and Nick’s driveway and pulled on the handbrake. “Home sweet home.”