What Alice Forgot

by Liane Moriarty

  I don't cry as much. I'm concentrating too hard on doing it all right. Ringing Alice up to ask questions about breast-feeding. How do you know if she's getting enough? Worrying about her crying. What is it this time? Wind? Worrying about her weight. Her skin. (It seems a bit dry.)

  But sometimes, in the middle of the night, when it's a good breast-feed and she's attached properly and sucking well, suddenly the reality of her, the actuality of her, the aliveness of her, the exquisiteness of her, hits me so hard, wham, and the happiness is so huge, so amazing, it explodes like fireworks through my brain. I don't know how to describe it. Maybe it's like your first hit of heroin.

  (How will I get her to just say no to drugs? Could I put her in some sort of early preventative therapy? What do you think, J? So much to worry about.)

  Anyway, I wanted to tell you that we did finally have a ceremony for the lost babies, like you suggested. We took a bunch of roses to the beach one calm sunny winter's day, and we walked around the rocks and dropped one in the water for each lost little astronaut. I'm glad we did that. I didn't cry. But as I watched each rose float off, I felt something loosen, as if I'd been wearing something too tight around my chest for a very long time. As we walked back to the car, I found myself taking very deep breaths of air, and the air felt good.

  (We were going to read a poem as well, but I thought the baby's ears might have been cold. She hasn't had a cold yet. She was a bit sniffly the other day, but it seemed to go away, so that was a relief. I'm thinking about giving her a multivitamin. Alice says it's not necessary but--anyway, I digress.)

  I also wanted to apologize for thinking that you were a smug dad with a perfect life. When you told me at our last session that you and your wife were actually going through fertility treatments too, and that photo on your desk wasn't your children, but your nephews, I was ashamed of all my self-centered thoughts.

  So, here is my homework, Jeremy. I know you never wanted to read it, but I thought I'd submit it anyway. Maybe it will help you with other patients. Or maybe it will help you when your wife is acting crazy, as she will sometimes do.

  The Infertiles came to visit yesterday, laden with expensive gifts. It was sort of horrible. I knew exactly how they were feeling. I knew how they would be trying to hold it together, promising themselves they would only stay for twenty minutes and they could cry in the car, keeping their voices light and bright, their poor, tired, bloated bodies aching with need when they each dutifully held the baby. I complained about the lack of sleep (we'd had a really bad night) and I knew I was overdoing it, even though I knew there is nothing more patronizing to an Infertile than to hear a new mother complaining, as if that will make you feel better for not having your own baby. It's like telling a blind person, "Oh, sure, you get to see mountains and sunsets, but there are also rubbish dumps and pollution! Terrible!" I don't know why I did it, except that I understand now that desperate, clumsy desire to make people feel better--even when you know perfectly well that nothing will. The Infertiles will probably bitch about me at the next lunch. I won't see them again--the distance between us is just too great--unless, I guess, one of them gets to join me here on the other side.

  I don't know if this is presumptuous of me, Jeremy, but I was wondering if you and your wife might be struggling with the problem of when is the right time to give up.

  And if so, I want to say something that will make no sense.

  We should have given up years ago. It's so clear now. We should have "explored other options." We should have adopted. We gave up years of our lives and we very nearly destroyed our marriage. Our happy ending could have and should have arrived so much sooner. And even though I adore the fact that Francesca has Ben's eyes, I also see now that her biological connection to us is irrelevant. She is her own little person. She is Francesca. If we weren't her "natural" parents, we would still have loved her just as much. I mean, for heaven's sake, I named Francesca after her great-grandmother, who has no genetic connection to us at all and wasn't even part of our lives until I was eight years old. I couldn't love Frannie any more than I do.

  So there's that.

  But now, to be completely honest, I have to contradict myself.

  Because if your wife were to ask me if I would go through it all again, then this is how I would answer.

  Yes. Absolutely. Of course I would. No question. I would go through it all again, every needle, every loss, every raging hormone, every heartbreaking second, to be here right now, with my beautiful daughter sleeping beside me.

  PS. I'm enclosing a strange, rather ugly doll. It might just do the trick. Good luck, Jeremy. I think you'll make a wonderful dad. However long it takes and whichever way you choose to get there.

  Chapter 35

  Frannie's Letter to Phil Hello again, Phil.

  I've had this unfinished letter in my desk for months now.

  My days are so full at the moment, I don't seem to have time to write to you. (Or to your memory, or your ghost, or to myself, or to whoever it was I've been writing all these years!)

  I've just returned home from seeing Madison compete in an oratory competition and I'm still on cloud nine.

  SHE WON FIRST PLACE!

  It was a competition against the best children from other primary schools, so it was quite a big deal. She gave an extremely informative and entertaining speech about world records. (Did you know that the world record for the most live rattlesnakes held in the mouth at the same time is ... eight!)

  We were all so nervous beforehand. Xavier was pale and perspiring, and Alice was snapping at everyone. When they announced Madison's name, we went quite crazy. Olivia danced in the aisle. Roger leapt to his feet, knocking his elbow into some poor woman's eye. (Somewhat embarrassing.) Barb burst into tears. I could hear Xavier telling the man next to him, "That's my great-granddaughter you just heard. Gets all her talent from me!" He has appropriated my family in typical Xavier fashion. They don't seem to mind.

  Elisabeth and Ben were there with the baby. You know what I love? Secretly watching Barb when she's secretly watching Elisabeth. The bliss on Elisabeth's face every time she looks at her baby is mirrored on Barb's face--and maybe it's mirrored on mine, too.

  (Sometimes Barb comes across as a bit of a silly thing, but there's more to her than people think. That Roger knows he's on to a good thing. And I'm not just saying that because she's my daughter. A daughter I wouldn't swap for the world.)

  Of course, little Francesca gets prettier every day. Tom kept her amused by rattling Ben's keys. He's good with babies. He finds them scientifically interesting.

  Alice and Dominick seemed quite happy together. Alice is so much more relaxed since her accident. She's lost that tense, gaunt look. Perhaps we all need a good thump on the head from time to time? There is talk of them moving in together.

  I hear Nick has a new girlfriend too, although she wasn't there, thankfully. Nick was kept busy with his sisters and his mother. I believe the modern term for these women is "high maintenance."

  Everyone keeps telling me there is no chance of reconciliation between Alice and Nick. "No chance at all," they tell me, as if I'm a deluded old woman. And yet ...

  Xavier and I happened to be sitting next to Nick, directly behind Alice and Dominick. When they announced Madison was the winner, Alice didn't even look at Dominick. She turned straight around to look for Nick. She reached out her hand to him almost involuntarily. He took it. Just her fingertips. Just for a fleeting second. I saw the expressions on their faces. That's all I'm saying.

  Well, I think perhaps it's time I signed off, Phil, and I hope you don't mind, but I think this may be my last letter.

  Xavier is waiting for me to come to bed.

  Love,

  and goodbye,

  Frannie

  Epilogue

  She was floating, arms outspread, water lapping her body, breathing in a summery fragrance of salt and coconut. There was a pleasantly satisfied breakfast taste in her mouth of bacon and coffee
and possibly croissants. She lifted her chin and the morning sun shone so brightly on the water, she had to squint through spangles of light to see her feet in front of her. Her toenails were each painted a different color. Red. Gold. Purple. Funny. The nail polish hadn't been applied very well. Blobby and messy. Someone else was floating in the water right next to her. Someone she liked a lot, who made her laugh, with toenails painted the same way. The other person waggled multicolored toes at her companionably, and she was filled with sleepy contentment. Somewhere in the distance, a man's voice shouted, "Marco?" and a chorus of children's voices cried back, "Polo!" The man called out again, "Marco, Marco, Marco?" and the voices answered, "Polo, Polo, Polo!" A child laughed; a long, gurgling giggle, like a stream of soap bubbles.

  We're on the Hawkesbury River. This is our magical houseboat holiday.

  Alice lifted her head from the water and looked at Gina. She had her eyes shut; her long curly hair was floating out from her head like seaweed.

  "Gina! You're not dead, are you?"

  Gina opened one eye and said, "Do I look dead?"

  Alice was filled with exquisite relief. "Let's have champagne to celebrate!"

  "Oh, definitely," said Gina sleepily. "Definitely."

  There was someone swimming toward them. Bobbing up and down in a clumsy breaststroke. Brown shoulders rising in and out of the water. It was Dominick. His hair plastered close to his head. Drops of water sparkling on his eyelashes.

  "Hi, girls," he said, treading water next to them.

  Gina kept quiet.

  Alice felt embarrassed in front of Gina. For some reason it was wrong. It wasn't right that Dominick was here.

  Gina rolled over onto her stomach and swam away.

  "No, no, come back!" shouted Alice.

  "She's gone," said Dominick sadly.

  "You shouldn't be here," said Alice to Dominick. She splashed him and he looked hurt. "This isn't your holiday."

  The radio alarm went off. An eighties song, loud and jarring in the morning silence.

  There was a flurry of movement and the quilt slid off her shoulders. "Sorry." The radio was switched off again.

  She turned over and pulled the quilt back up again.

  A Gina dream. She hadn't dreamed of her for so long. She loved those dreams that felt so real, it was almost like she was seeing her again, spending another day with her. Except Dominick shouldn't have popped up like that. It felt like a betrayal of Nick to let Dominick into her houseboat holiday memory. Nick had loved that holiday. She could see him standing on the top deck of the boat, loping about, pretending to be a pirate. "Arg! Arg!" He would grab Tom around the waist and say, "Time to walk the plank, my boy!" and throw him high, so high in the air. She could see Tom's exhilarated face so clearly, his little brown boy's body suspended forever against a bright blue sky.

  Tom.

  She opened her eyes.

  Had Tom come home last night?

  He'd promised to be home by midnight and they'd gone to bed early. She'd meant to get up and check on him, but for some reason she'd fallen asleep so soundly.

  Was that a memory of his key in the door? The car scraping in the driveway, music hastily switched off, the explosive sounds of teenage boys trying to be quiet. Huge feet thumping up the stairs.

  Or was that another night?

  Maybe she'd better go and check, but it was so early, and she was sleepy, and it was Sunday. Her one sleepin day. She would get up, push open his bedroom door, and he'd be there, sprawled out fully dressed on top of his bed. The room dank and musty with the smell of aftershave and unwashed socks. Then she'd be wide awake with no chance of getting back to sleep. She'd have to spend the next two hours sitting in the kitchen, waiting for someone to wake up.

  And it was Mother's Day! They were meant to bring her breakfast and presents in bed. If they remembered. Last year they forgot entirely. They were teenagers, full of the tragedies and the ecstasies of their own lives.

  But what if Tom hadn't come home? And she didn't report him missing until ten a.m.? "I was asleep," she'd have to explain to the police officers when they asked why it had taken her so long to report that her eighteenyear-old son was missing. The police officers would exchange glances. Bad, lazy mother. Bad, lazy mother who deserves to have her son killed on Mother's Day.

  She pushed back the covers.

  "Tom came home," said a sleepy voice beside her. "I checked earlier."

  She pulled the covers back up.

  Tom would always come home. He was reliable. Did what he said he would. He didn't like being asked too many questions about his life (no more than three in a row was his rule), but he was a good kid. Studying hard for his exams, playing his soccer, and going out with his friends, bringing home pretty, eager-faced girls, who all seemed to think that if they just sold themselves to Alice they'd be in with a chance. (How wrong they were! If Alice showed too much interest in a girl, she was never seen again.) It would be Olivia who wouldn't come home one night.

  Alice couldn't stop being surprised at the transformation of Olivia from sweet, angelic little girl to surly, furious, secretive teenager. She'd dyed her beautiful blond curls black and pulled her hair dead straight, so she looked like Morticia from The Addams Family. "Who?" Olivia had sneered. You couldn't talk to her. Anything you said was likely to give offense. The slamming of her bedroom door reverberated throughout the house on a regular basis. "I hate my life!" she would scream, and Alice would be researching teenage suicide on the Net, when next thing she'd hear her shrieking with laughter with her friends on the phone. Drugs. Teenage pregnancy. Tattoos. It all seemed possible with Olivia. Alice was pretty sure she was going to need intense therapy when Olivia was studying for her HSC in two years' time. For herself.

  It's just a stage, Madison told her. Just ride it out, Mum.

  Madison had got all her teenage angst over and done with by the time she was fourteen. Now she was a joy. So beautiful to look at that it sometimes made Alice catch her breath in the morning when she saw her come down to breakfast, her hair tousled, her skin translucent. She was studying economics at uni and had a besotted boyfriend called Pete, whom Alice had begun to think of as a bonus son (which was unfortunate, because she had an awful feeling that Madison would be breaking his heart in the not too distant future). It had all gone so fast. One minute they were driving her home from the hospital, a tiny, wrinkled, squalling baby. The next she was all legs and cheekbones and opinions. Whoosh. It made Alice's head spin.

  "It goes so fast," she told Elisabeth, but Elisabeth didn't really believe her. Anyway, she was the expert on all things mothering now. Even if she didn't have teenagers yet, she still knew best. Alice wanted to say, Just you wait until your beautiful little Francesca is sleeping until noon and then slumps about the house, flying into a rage when you suggest she might want to get dressed before it's bedtime again.

  But Elisabeth was too busy to hear it. Busy, busy, busy.

  She and Ben had ended up adopting three little boys from Vietnam after Francesca was born.

  Two were brothers. The youngest was a severe asthmatic and was constantly in and out of hospital. One was in speech therapy for a stammer. Francesca was into swimming, which required early-morning training sessions. Elisabeth was involved with the Vietnamese expatriate community, a support group for adoptive parents, and of course she was treasurer of her school's Parents and Friends Committee. She'd also got back into rowing and was as thin as a rake.

  She and Ben also had two dogs, a cat, three guinea pigs, and a fish tank. That quiet, neat little house Alice had visited all those years ago when Elisabeth was refusing to get out of the bed was now an absolute madhouse. Alice got a headache after five minutes.

  Luckily they were all coming here today for a Mother's Day lunch, rather than Elisabeth's crazy house, and Madison, the precious girl, was going to cook.

  Sleep, Alice. In a few hours the house will be filled with people.

  Mum and Roger would be early. They'd b
e desperate to show them their photos from their recent holiday to the Latin Dance Convention in Las Vegas. Salsa dancing was still their passion.

  As Frannie once said, "They've created a whole life around salsa dancing." Xavier had added, "Not like us. We've created a whole life around sex." Frannie hadn't spoken to him for a week, she had been so humiliated to hear him speak like that in front of the grandchildren.

  Frannie and Xavier would be there today, together with Jess, one of Xavier's granddaughters, who had moved to Sydney a few years ago and made contact with her grandfather, to his everlasting joy. She was an extremely hip young Web designer who was also the lead singer in a band. Frannie and Xavier enjoyed going along to Jess's "gigs" and making knowledgeable comments afterward about the "crowd" and the "acoustics."

  Alice worried sometimes that Frannie was overtiring herself, keeping up with all of Xavier's activities, but there was no denying her happiness.

  She shifted in her bed. Sleep. As Frannie would certainly point out, she was quite old enough to take care of herself!

  Hurry up and sleep.

  She slept, and dreamed of Gina again.

  She, Mike, Nick, and Alice were sitting around the dinner table after a long night of eating and drinking.

  "I wonder what we'll all be doing in ten years' time," said Gina.

  "We'll be grayer and fatter and wrinklier," said Nick, who was a bit drunk. "But hopefully the four of us will still be friends sitting around a table like this, talking about our memories."

  "Awwww," said Gina, raising her glass. "You're so sweet, Nick."

  "Preferably on a yacht," said Mike.

  Was it a dream or a memory?

  "Alice," said a voice in her ear.

  Alice opened her eyes.

  Nick's face was creased with sleep. "Were you dreaming about Gina?" "Did I say her name?"

  "Yes. And Mike's name."

  Thankfully she hadn't said Dominick's name. He was still a bit strange about Dominick. Did Nick sometimes dream of that Megan? She looked at him suspiciously.

  "What?" he said.

  "Nothing."

  "Happy Mother's Day."

  "Thank you."

  He said, "I'll go bring us up some coffee in a minute."