What Alice Forgot

“Fine,” said Alice. No need to mention her daily failures with lost permission notes, unwashed school uniforms, and forgotten homework, or how she didn’t know what to do when they fought with each other over the computer or the PlayStation. “They’re lovely. We made lovely children.”

“I know we did,” said Nick, and his face seemed to collapse. “I know we did.” He paused, as if not sure whether he should speak, and then said, “That’s why the thought of only seeing them on weekends kills me.”

“Oh, that,” said Alice. “Well, if we don’t get back together, then of course we should do the fifty-fifty thing. One week for you. One week for me. Why not?”

“You don’t mean that,” said Nick.

“Of course I do,” said Alice. “I’ll sign something!”

“Fine,” said Nick. “I’ll get my lawyer to draft something. I’ll have it couriered over to you tomorrow.”

“No problem.”

“Once you get your memory back, you’re going to change your mind,” said Nick. He laughed harshly. “And you’re not going to want to get back together, I’d put money on that.”

“Twenty bucks,” said Alice, holding out her hand.

Nick shook her hand. “Done.”

She still loved the feel of his hand holding hers. Wouldn’t her body tell her if she hated him?

“I found out it was Gina’s husband who kissed the woman in the laundry,” said Alice. “Not you.”

“Oh yes, the infamous laundry incident.” Nick smiled at an old lady with a walking stick in one hand attempting to hand around a sagging plate of sandwiches. “Oh, all right, you twisted my arm!” He took a sandwich. Alice noted it was curried egg.

“What did you mean when you said you found it interesting that I thought that was you?” asked Alice, taking a sandwich herself to save it from sliding onto the floor.

“Because I was always saying to you, ‘I’m not Mike Boyle,’” said Nick. Even with his mouth full of sandwich, she could hear the leftover anger in his voice. “You identified so strongly with Gina, it was as if it was happening to you. I said to you, ‘But it wasn’t me.’ You got so caught up in that ‘all men are bastards’ thing.”

“I’m sorry,” said Alice. Her sandwich was ham and mustard, and the taste of mustard was reminding her of something. This constant feeling of fleeting memories was like having a mosquito buzzing in your ear when you’re asleep, and you know that when you turn out the light, it will have vanished, until you lie back down, close your eyes, and then . . . bzzzzzzz.

Nick wiped his serviette across his mouth. “You don’t need to be sorry. It’s all water under the bridge now.” He paused and his eyes went blank, looking back on a shared past that Alice couldn’t see.

He said, “I often think the four of us were too close. We got all tangled up in Mike and Gina’s marriage problems. We caught their divorce. Like a virus.”

“Well, let’s just get better from it,” said Alice. How dare this stupid Mike and Gina come into their lives, spreading their germy marriage problems?

Nick smiled and shook his head. “You sound so . . .” He couldn’t find the right word. Finally he said, “Young.”

After a pause, he continued: “Anyway, it wasn’t just Mike and Gina. That’s too simplistic. Maybe we were too young when we got together. Mmmm. Do you think fame might have gone to Olivia’s head?”

Alice followed his gaze to see Olivia back onstage. She had the microphone held close to her mouth and was doing a grandiose performance of some song they couldn’t hear because the sound was turned off. Tom was on his hands and knees next to her, following the microphone lead back to the power plug. Madison was sitting in the front row of the empty chairs in the audience, next to the white-haired wheelchair-race organizer. They were deep in conversation.

“Tell me a happy memory from the last ten years,” said Alice.

“Alice.”

“Come on. What’s the first thing that comes into your head?”

“Ummm. God. I don’t know. I suppose when the children were born. Is that too obvious an answer? Although not the actual births. I didn’t like the actual births.”

“Didn’t you?” said Alice, disappointed. She’d imagined herself and Nick sobbing and laughing and holding each other while a movie soundtrack played in the background. “Why not?”

“I guess I was in a crazy panic the whole time, and I couldn’t control anything, and I couldn’t help you. I kept doing the wrong thing.”

“I’m sure you didn’t.”

Nick glanced at Alice, then looked away again quickly.

“And all the blood, and you screaming your head off, and that incompetent obstetrician who didn’t turn up until it was all over with Madison, I was going to knock him out. If it wasn’t for that midwife—she was great, the one we said could have been Melanie Barker’s twin sister.”

He looked distractedly down at his hands. Alice wondered if he knew he was twisting the skin beneath the knuckle on his finger where his wedding ring should have been. It had become a habit of his, fiddling with his ring when he was thinking. Now he was still doing it, even though he wasn’t wearing the ring.

“And when they had to do the emergency cesarean with Olivia”—Nick shoved his hands in his pockets—“I genuinely thought I was having a heart attack.”

“How horrible for you,” said Alice. Although she guessed maybe it hadn’t been a barrel of laughs for her either.

Nick smiled and shook his head in wonder. “I remember, I didn’t want to distract them from you and the baby, you know, like some man in a movie who faints. I thought, I’ll just die discreetly in this corner. I thought you were going to die, too, and the children were going to be orphans. Have I ever told you that before? I must have.”

“I thought we were talking happy memories.” Alice was appalled. Without those memories, it felt like all that blood and screaming were still ahead of her, still to be endured.

“The happy part was when it was all over and quiet, and they left us alone, with the baby all wrapped up, and we could talk about which doctors and nurses we hated, and have a cup of tea, and just look at the baby for the first time. Count their tiny fingers. That new little person. That was—special.” He cleared his throat.