What Alice Forgot, Page 24

  The children had become wriggly and giggly, almost as if they were drunk. They seemed unable to sit still. They were sliding off their chairs, constantly knocking cutlery onto the floor, and talking in high-pitched voices over the top of one another. Alice didn't know if this was normal behavior or not. It wasn't exactly relaxing. Nick had his jaw clenched, as if this dinner were a horrible medical procedure he had to endure.

  "I knew you wouldn't remember that you promised I could make lasagna." Madison poked disgustedly at her hamburger.

  "She's got amnesia, stupid," said Tom thickly, his mouth amazingly full.

  "Manners," said Alice automatically, and then caught herself. Did she just say, "Manners"? What did that even mean?

  "Oh, yeah," said Madison. She turned her dark eyes on Alice. "Sorry."

  "That's okay," Alice said, and dropped her eyes first. The kid could be sort of scary.

  "What's for dessert, Mummy?" said Olivia. She was kicking the table leg rhythmically as she ate. "Maybe ice cream? Or I know, Chocolate Mush?"

  "What's Chocolate Mush?" asked Alice.

  "Oh, silly, you know that!" said Olivia.

  Tom slapped his hand against his forehead. "You girls! She's got amnesia!"

  "Mummy, darling," said Olivia. "Is it gone now? Your am--thing? Because maybe you could take an aspirin? I could get it for you? I could get it for you now!"

  She pushed her chair back from the table.

  "Eat your dinner, Olivia," said Nick.

  "Daddy," groaned Olivia. "I'm trying to help."

  "As if an aspirin is going to help," said Tom. "She probably needs an operation. Like brain surgery. By a brain surgeon. I saw a brain surgeon on television the other night." He brightened. "Hey! I would like to dissect a mouse and see its brain, as well as its intestines! With a scalpel. That would be excellent."

  "Oh my God." Madison put down her knife and fork and put her head on the table. "That is making me sick. I am so going to be sick."

  "Stop it," said Nick.

  "This is a mouse's brain, Madison." Tom squished his fork into his hamburger meat. "Chop, chop, chop, mousie's brain!"

  "Make him stop!" wailed Madison.

  "Tom," sighed Nick.

  "So!" said Alice. "How was the Aquatic Center today?"

  Madison lifted her head from the table and said to Alice, "Did you remember that you and Dad were getting a divorce? After you hit your head? Did you remember that?"

  Nick made a strangled, helpless sound.

  Alice considered the question. "No," she said. "I didn't."

  No one spoke. Olivia banged her knife against her plate. Tom twisted his arm over and frowned ferociously at something on his elbow. There were spots of crimson on Madison's cheekbones.

  "So do you still love Dad?" said Madison. There was a slight tremor in her voice. She sounded much younger.

  "Alice," said Nick warningly, at the same time as Alice said, "Yes, of course I do."

  "Can Daddy come home, then?" Olivia looked up, elated. "And sleep in his own bed again!"

  "Okay, time for a change of subject," said Nick. He avoided Alice's eyes.

  "They'd fight too much," said Tom.

  "What do we fight about?" asked Alice, greedy for facts.

  "Oh, I don't know," said Tom irritably. "You said that's why you couldn't live together anymore. Because you fight too much. Even though I still have to live with my stupid sisters and we fight all the time. So it wasn't even logical."

  "You fight about Gina," said Madison.

  "Don't talk about Gina!" said Olivia. "It makes me sad. It's an absolute tragedy."

  "R.I.P. ," said Tom. "That's what you say when you talk about someone who has died. It means rest in peace. You have to say it whenever you hear their name."

  "Why did we fight about Gina?" asked Alice.

  "R.I.P.!" cried Tom, as if he were saying "snap!"

  "So, the Aquatic Center was a lot of fun," said Nick. "Wasn't it, kids?"

  "Well," said Madison. "I think Dad thought you liked Gina better than him."

  "R.I.P.!" shouted Tom and Olivia.

  "Oh shut up!" said Madison. "Someone dying is not funny!"

  Alice looked at Nick. His face looked red and raw, like windburn. She couldn't tell whether it meant he was angry or embarrassed. Goodness. Had she had some sort of torrid lesbian affair with Gina?

  "You fight about the American Expense a lot," said Tom.

  "American Express," said Madison.

  "American Expense works for me." Nick lifted his wineglass in a mocking sort of salute but he still didn't look at Alice.

  "Once you had a really extremely big fight about me," said Olivia with satisfaction.

  "Why?" asked Alice.

  "Oh, you remember." Olivia looked wary. "That day. At the beach."

  "For the twenty-billionth time, she doesn't remember!" said Tom.

  "Olivia got lost," said Madison. "The police came. You were crying." She gave Alice a malicious look. "Like this: 'Olivia! Olivia! My daughter! Where is my daughter?'" She buried her face in her hands and pretended to sob dramatically.

  "Did I?" Alice felt ridiculously hurt by Madison's act.

  "Just in case you're wondering," said Madison, "Olivia is your favorite child."

  "Your mother doesn't have favorites," said Nick.

  Did she? She hoped not.

  "When I was pregnant with you, Madison," said Alice, "your Dad and I called you the Sultana. Did you know that? Because you were as tiny as a sultana."

  "You never told me that." Madison looked doubtful.

  "What did you call me?" asked Olivia.

  "Really? I never told you that?" said Alice.

  Madison turned to Nick. "Is that true? Did you call me the Sultana?"

  "Your Dad spoke to you through a toilet roll on my tummy," said Alice. "He said, 'Ahoy there, Sultana! It's me! Your father!' "

  Madison smiled. Alice stared. It was the most exquisite smile she had ever seen. She felt a shot of love so powerful, it hurt her chest.

  She looked down at her plate and a memory dropped straight into her head.

  She was in a car filled with gold, filmy light. There was a smell of salt and seaweed. Her neck hurt. She turned around to check the baby. Miracle. She was asleep. Fat pink cheeks. Long lashes. Her head lolling against the side of the car seat. As Alice watched, a bar of light fell across her face. Her eyes fluttered open and she yawned and stretched sleepily. Then she caught sight of Alice and her whole face lit up with a huge, surprised grin, as if to say, "Hey! I can't believe it! You're here, too!" There was a sudden loud, rumbling snore from the driver's seat and the baby looked startled. "It's okay," said Alice. "It's just Daddy."

  "The baby wouldn't sleep." Alice looked at Nick. "She wouldn't sleep unless we were driving."

  Nick kept shoveling food into his mouth and looked straight ahead.

  Alice stared at Madison and blinked. The angry, strange little girl at the table was the baby. The giggling baby in the car was the Sultana.

  "We drove all through the night," said Alice to Madison. "Every time we stopped you screamed."

  "I know," said Madison. She was sullen again. "And you drove me all the way to Manly and you stopped in the car park and you and Daddy and me all fell asleep in the car, and then you took me on the beach and I rolled over for the first time. Whatever."

  "Yes!" said Alice excitedly--she remembered. "The baby rolled over on the picnic rug! We got takeaway coffees from that place with the blue awning. And toasted ham-and-cheese sandwiches."

  It felt like yesterday and it felt like a million years ago.

  "I slept through the night when I was eight weeks old," said Olivia. "Didn't I, Mum? I was a gold-star sleeper."

  "Just--shhhh," said Alice, holding up her hand, trying to focus. She could see that morning so clearly. The baby's striped suit. Nick's unshaven face and red eyes. A seagull white and squawky against a very blue sky. They were so tired, they were light-headed. The blessed
feeling of the caffeine hitting her bloodstream. They were parents. They were filled with the wonder and the horror, the bliss and the exhaustion of being parents.

  "Mummy," whined Olivia.

  If she remembered that day, she should be able to feel her way back to when Madison was born. And she should be able to feel her way forward to the day that Nick packed his bags and left.

  "Mummy," said Olivia again. Oh, please be QUIET. She groped about in the dark but there was nothing else.

  All she had was that morning.

  "But Nick," she began.

  "What?" he said grimly, irritably. He really didn't like her. It wasn't just that he didn't love her anymore. He didn't even like her.

  "We were so happy."

  Elisabeth's Homework for Jeremy 3 a.m.

  Hi J. Ben drove off somewhere. I don't know where he is.

  I'm so tired.

  Hey. You know how if you say a word over and over again, it starts to sound really weird?

  Like, let's say the word is, oh, I don't know, INFERTILITY.

  Infertility. Infertility. Infertility. Infertility.

  It's a twisty, curly, nasty word. Lots of syllables.

  Anyway, Jeremy, my darling therapist (as Olivia would say), my point is that things become weird and pointless if you examine them for too long. I've thought about being a mother for so many years the whole concept has started to seem weird. I've wanted it, wanted it, wanted it. Now I'm not even sure if I wanted it in the first place.

  Look at Alice and Nick. They were so happy before they had the children. And sure, they love their kids, but let's be honest, they're hard work. And it's not like you get to keep those adorable babies. Babies disappear. They grow up. They turn into children who are not necessarily that cute at all.

  Madison was the most beautiful baby. We adored her. But the Madison of today doesn't seem to have anything to do with that baby. She's so furious and strange and she can make you feel like an idiot. (Yes, Jeremy, a ten-year-old can make me feel inferior. That shows a lack of emotional maturity or something, doesn't it?) Tom used to bury his face in my neck and now he wriggles away if I try and touch him. And he tells you the plots of TV shows with a lot of unnecessary detail. It's sort of dull. Sometimes I think of other things while he's talking.

  And Olivia is still gorgeous, but actually she can be manipulative. Sometimes it's like she knows she's being cute.

  And the FIGHTS. You should see them fight. It's amazing.

  See. I'm a terrible auntie. I'm making bitchy remarks about those three beautiful children, whom I hardly see anymore anyway. So what sort of mother would I be? A horrible one. Maybe even an abusive one. They'd probably take my children away and give them to someone else. An infertile woman could adopt them.

  You know, Jeremy, once, when Olivia was a toddler, I minded her for a whole day. Alice and Gina were out at some school function. Olivia was perfectly behaved and she was so cute, she would have won an award for the cutest baby, but you know, by the end of the day, I was BORED OUT OF MY SKULL from walking around after her and saying, no don't touch that, ooooh yes, look at the bright light.

  Bored. Tired. A bit irritable. I was relieved to hand her over when Alice came home. I felt as light as a feather.

  How's that? All this "oh, poor me" obsession with being a mother and I was bored after one day.

  I've always secretly thought that Anne-Marie, my friend from the Infertiles, would make a terrible mother. She's so impatient and brittle. But maybe they're all thinking that about me, too. Maybe we'd all make terrible mothers. Ben's mum is probably right when she says that "Nature knows best." Nature knows that I would make a terrible mother. Each time I get pregnant, Nature says, "Actually, this kid would be better off dead than having a mother like her."

  After all, Ben's mum couldn't have children either and look at her, she DID make a terrible mother.

  The bottom line is, we shouldn't adopt.

  I don't want to be a mother anymore, Jeremy.

  A mother. A mother. A mother. A mother.

  Sounds like smother. It's a weird word.

  I don't even know why I'm crying.

  Frannie's Letter to Phil Mr. Mustache turned up at my door this morning just as I was about to leave for Tai Chi.

  I almost didn't recognize him. He'd shaved off his mustache.

  I said, "I hope you didn't do that for me."

  His upper lip looked so naked! He seemed like an entirely different person. Softer and gentler. Although at the same time, more sophisticated and ... masculine.

  He was wearing tracksuit pants and a T-shirt and he said he'd been thinking he might give this "Tai whatchamacallit" a go, but he said he felt "shy" about turning up on his own.

  I said, "Oh, yes, because you're such a shy, retiring type."

  We went along to the Tai Chi, and he was utterly hopeless. I had to keep trying not to giggle like a naughty schoolchild. Afterward he looked so endearingly rumpled, I invited him back for a cup of tea and some of Alice's banana muffins that she'd given me last week.

  We had quite a chat. I told him how I'd recently become quite addicted to "Facebook" after an old student invited me to join. (Little Mattie Marks. Remember him, Phil? He's some sort of IT big shot these days.) Mr. M was impressed. He said he used the Internet a lot but didn't know anything about Facebook. It made me feel quite hip!

  He told me about his two sons and how much he misses them. (One lives in the U.K. and the other is in Perth.) He said both his boys were adopted.

  "My wife and I couldn't have our own children," he explained. "That's why I felt so sorry for your granddaughter."

  (He says "granddaughter" so naturally, even though he knows I'm not really related to Elisabeth. It may be to do with his own children being adopted. Perhaps it's not so presumptuous of him. Perhaps it's rather nice. I can't make up my mind.)

  "It's a very lonely feeling when all your friends are having babies," he said. He told me he could still remember the expression on his wife's face while they went to her niece's baptism, even though it was over sixty years ago. "It made me want to punch a wall," he said.

  I wonder if he was reprimanding me for my "babies are not the be-all and end-all" comment. I wonder if he thinks I'm being a bit harsh about poor Elisabeth.

  Do you know something, Phil? I had always secretly hoped that you and I might have our own little baby. Just the one. Boy or girl. Didn't matter. I was thirty-eight, but I knew it wasn't beyond the realms of possibility. One of the sixth-form mothers at the school had a baby at forty-one. She was almost embarrassed about it. She brought the baby to the school one day and I remember holding out my finger for the baby to clutch and suddenly thinking, I'm younger than her. I felt that sudden rush of disbelief and exhilaration you feel when your ticket number is called in a raffle. I could still be a mother, I thought, and I felt like dancing.

  It was two weeks before what should have been our wedding day.

  One week before the phone call.

  It's true I've never been pregnant, but I know what it's like to lose the possibility of a baby. So of course I sympathize with Elisabeth, Phil! Deeply. My heart breaks for her. I've cried and cried for her each time she's lost another baby.

  It's just that sometimes I want to say to her, "Darling, maybe you don't get to be a mother, but you still get to be a wife."

  Chapter 23

  "Right. Seat belts on?" said Alice. Her hand shook slightly as she turned the key in the ignition. Did she really drive this gigantic car every day of her life? It felt like a semi-trailer. Apparently, it was called an SUV.

  "Are you sure you're safe to take them to school tomorrow? Because if you think there is any risk at all to the children, I'd rather drive them myself," Nick had said the night before when he was leaving, and Alice had wanted to say, "Of course I'm not right, you idiot! I don't even know where the school is!" But there had been something about Nick's tone that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up with a powerful, stran
gely familiar feeling that was close to ... fury? He had such a sneery way of talking to her now. That snippy voice spoke up again in her head: Sanctimonious bastard! Trying to make me look like a bad mother. "I'll be fine," she'd said. And he'd sighed his huffy new sigh, and as she watched him walk out to his shiny car, she felt something almost like relief at the same time as she thought, "But why don't you just come up to bed with me?"

  Now her three children sat in the seat behind her. They were in horrible moods. If they'd been drunk last night, now they were all suffering from terrible hangovers. They were pale and snarly, with purple shadows under their eyes. Had they slept badly because of her? She suspected she'd let them stay up way past their normal bedtimes. There had been a lot of vagueness when she asked them what time they normally went to bed.

  Alice adjusted the rear-vision mirror.

  "Do you remember how to drive?" asked Tom.

  "Yes, of course." Alice's hand hovered nervously over the handbrake.

  "We're late," said Tom. "You might have to go quite a bit over the speed limit."

  It had been a strange and stressful morning. Tom had appeared at Alice's bedroom door at seven a.m. and said, "Have you got your memory back?" "Not quite," Alice had said, trying to shake her head free of a night of dreams all involving Nick yelling at her. "She hasn't got it back!" she heard Tom cry, and then the sound of the television being switched on. When she got out of bed, she found Madison and Tom lounging around in their pajamas, eating cereal in front of the television. "Do you normally watch television before school?" Alice had asked. "Sometimes," Tom had answered carefully, without removing his eyes from the TV. Twenty minutes later, he was in a frenzy, yelling that they needed to leave in five minutes' time. That's when it emerged that Olivia was still sound asleep in bed. Apparently it was Alice's job to wake her.

  "I think Olivia might be sick," Alice had said, as Olivia kept collapsing back against the pillow, her head lolling to one side, saying sleepily, "No thank you, I'll just stay here, thank you, goodbye."

  "Mum, she's like this every morning," Tom had said disgustedly.

  Finally, after Alice had dragged a half-comatose Olivia into a school uniform and spooned cereal into her mouth, while Madison had spent half an hour with a roaring hair dryer in the bathroom, they had left the house, incredibly late, according to Tom.