What Alice Forgot

You kissed another woman in the laundry! I can’t believe you did that! Should she mention the kiss? No. She should think about the right way to approach it first.

He said, “I just thought I should call and see how you, how your ah, your head, your injury, is today. Were you okay driving the children to school?”

“It’s a bit late if I wasn’t,” said Alice tartly. Last night she’d had to iron all their school uniforms, do all the cleaning up, and make very specific lunches for each of them (after Tom had politely pointed out that was what she normally did on a Sunday night).

“Oh, good,” said Nick. “So, I assume, you’ve got that memory thing all sorted out?”

“Well, I’ve got one memory back,” burst out Alice. It appeared she was going to mention the kiss after all. It was physically impossible not to mention it. “I remember you kissing that woman in the laundry.”

“Kissing a woman in the laundry?”

“Yes. At a party. I came in to get a drink.”

There was silence and then Nick laughed sharply.

“Sitting on the washing machine, right?”

“Yes,” said Alice, wondering how he could sound so smug, as if this point went to him, when it so clearly went to her.

“You remember me kissing a woman sitting on our washing machine?”

“Yes!”

“You know what? I never even looked at another woman while we were together. I never kissed another woman. I never slept with another woman.”

“But I remember—”

“Yeah. I know exactly what you remember, and I find that very interesting.”

Alice was baffled. “But—”

“Very interesting. Look, I’ve got to go, but clearly you haven’t got your memory back properly yet and you need to see a doctor. If you’re not capable of looking after the children, you need to let me know. You’ve got a responsibility to them.”

Oh, but it was fine to leave her with them last night when he knew perfectly well that she didn’t even recognize them, let alone know how to look after them. It wasn’t logical, and yet, he was speaking in that pompous, I’m-so-rational-you’re-so-irrational voice, each word stuffed with his own rightness. She could remember that voice from arguments in the past, like that morning when they didn’t have milk for breakfast, and the night when they ran late for his sister’s first baby’s christening, and the time neither of them had enough cash for the ferry tickets, and each time he had put on that voice. That superior, crisp, businesslike voice, with a hint of a sigh. It drove her bananas.

Each time he used that voice it brought back the other occasions he’d used it before and she would think, That’s right, I can’t stand it when you talk like that.

“You know what?” she said. “I’m glad we’re getting a divorce!”

As she slammed the phone down, she could hear him laughing.

Chapter 25

The Mega Meringue Committee turned up at Alice’s door at 1:00 p.m.

She’d forgotten all about them.

When the doorbell rang she was sitting on the living room floor surrounded by photo albums. She’d been there for hours, flipping pages, peeling photos off so she could hold them close to her and study for clues.

There were photos of picnics and bushwalks and days at the beach, birthday parties and Easters and Christmases. She’d lost so many Christmas memories! It gave her a pain in the center of her chest seeing the photos of tangle-haired children in their pajamas, their faces solemn with concentration as they unwrapped presents under a huge, gorgeously decorated tree.

Maybe she could go to the doctor and ask if she could please have all her happy memories returned, minus the sad ones.

The photos were mostly of the children and Nick. Alice would have been the one behind the camera. Nick always looked so capable when he was taking a photo, a grave, professional look on his face, but actually he was hopeless, skimming off the tops of people’s heads.

Alice had discovered she could take good photos when she was a child. After their father died nobody had taken photos of them. He had been the photographer and their mother would no more think about trying to use his camera than she would have tried to change a light globe. It was Alice who picked up his camera one day and worked out how to use it. In those years when their mother disappeared into herself and “old Miss Jeffrey” next door turned into “Frannie,” their honorary grandmother, Alice also taught herself how to change light globes, fix running toilets, and cook chops and veggies, while Elisabeth learned how to demand refunds, pay bills, fill in forms, and talk to strangers.

Whenever she came upon another rare photo of Nick she tried to read the expression in his eyes. Was it possible to track the decline of their marriage? No. She could track the decline of his hair over the years, but his smile at the person behind the camera seemed unchangingly genuine and happy.

In the ones where they were together, they always had their arms around each other, their bodies curved together. If a body-language expert were asked to objectively judge their marriage on the basis of these photo albums they would surely say, “This is a happy, loving, good-humored family and the likelihood of that couple breaking up is nil.”

She didn’t bother much with the photos of people she didn’t recognize but one face kept appearing again and again, and it dawned on her that this must surely be Gina. She was a busty, big-toothed woman with a heap of dark curly hair. She and Alice always seemed to be photographed holding champagne or cocktail glasses up to the camera like trophies. They seemed to be very physical together, which was unusual for Alice. She had never had those sorts of lavish friendships where you threw your arms around each other, but Alice and this woman always seemed to have their heads angled together so their cheeks were touching, big wide lipsticky smiles for the camera. Alice felt embarrassed by these photos. “Oh stop it, you don’t even know her,” she said out loud at a photo of herself actually planting a big, smoochy kiss on Gina’s cheek.

Alice stared at the photos of Gina for ages, waiting for the recognition— and the grief? But nothing. She looked sort of fun, she guessed, although not really the sort of woman Alice would have picked as a friend. She looked like she had the potential to be a bit overbearing. A loud, zany, tiring type.

But maybe not. Actually, Alice looked a bit loud and zany herself in some of those photos. Maybe she was loud and zany now that she was so slim and drank so much coffee.