What Alice Forgot (14 page)

Hi, me again, Dr. Hodges. It's 3:30 a.m. and sleep feels like something impossible and stupid that only other people do. I woke up thinking of Alice and how she said to me, “You're such a good big sister.”

I'm not. I'm not at all.

We still care about each other, of course we do. It's not that. We'd never forget each other's birthdays. In fact, there's a weird sort of silent competition going on to see who can give the best present each year, as if we're always jostling for the role of most generous, thoughtful sister. We see each other pretty regularly. We still have a laugh. We're just the same as a million sisters. So I don't even know exactly what I'm talking about. It's just that it isn't the same as when we were younger. But that's just life, isn't it, Dr. Hodges? Relationships don't stay the same. There isn't
time
. Ask Alice! She converted to the role of busy North Shore Mum like it was a religion.

Maybe if I'd been more vigilant? Perhaps it was my responsibility as the older sister to keep us on track.

But the only way I've been able to get through the last seven years is by wrapping myself up like a package with a tighter and tighter string. It's so tight that if I'm talking about anything (other than how to write the perfect direct-mail package), I feel as though there is something constricting my throat, as if my mouth doesn't open wide enough for proper, unthinking conversation.

The problem is the rage. It's permanently simmering, even when I'm not aware of it. If I hurt myself unexpectedly, or drop a punnet of blueberries all over the kitchen floor, it bubbles over like boiling milk. You should have heard the primeval scream of rage when I banged my forehead against an open cupboard door the other day when I was unpacking the dishwasher. I sat on the kitchen floor with my back against the fridge and sobbed for twenty minutes. It's pretty embarrassing.

Before Alice and Nick split up, I sometimes felt there were unforgivable words hovering on the tip of my tongue whenever I spoke to Alice, words like: “You think the world begins and ends with you and your perfect little family and your perfect little life and you think stress is finding the perfectly color-coordinated cushions for your new $10,000 sofa.”

And I feel like scribbling those things out because they're nasty and not even true. I don't think those things at all, but I could have said them, I could still say them, and if I did, those words would have been there in both our memories forever. So it was safer to say nothing and pretend, and she knew I was pretending and she pretended too, and then we forgot how to be real with each other.

That's why when she called me to say that Nick had moved out, it was as shocking as a death. I had no idea, no inkling they were having troubles. There was the indisputable evidence that we didn't share secrets anymore. I should have known what was going on in her life. She should have been asking me for wise, sisterly advice. But she didn't. So I've let her down as much as she let me down.

And that's why, when I got the news about Gina, I couldn't think what the right thing was to do. Should I phone Alice? Should I drive straight over? Should I call and ask first? I couldn't think what Alice would want. I was worrying about the right etiquette, as if this was someone I didn't know very well. And OF COURSE I should have driven straight to her, for God's sake. What was wrong with me that I even had to think about it?

As we were walking out of the hospital, Mum said to me in a diffident, un-Mumlike voice, “I guess she doesn't remember anything about Gina, either, does she?” And I said, “I guess not.” Neither of us knew what to say about that.

How do you find the thread that started it all and follow it all the way back through the tangles of phone calls and Christmases and kids' parties, right back to the beginning when we were just Alice and Libby Jones? Do you know, Dr. Hodges?

Anyway . . . maybe I should try and sleep.

No. Can't even fake a yawn.

Tomorrow I'm going to the hospital to pick up Alice and take her home. They're expecting to discharge her by 10. She just seemed to take it for granted that I would be the one to come and get her. If she were her normal self, she would be making a point of not relying on me. She only takes favors from other school mums, because they can be repaid with complicated playdate arrangements involving their children.

I wonder if she'll have her memory back by tomorrow. I wonder if she will feel embarrassed by the things she said this afternoon, especially about Nick. I wonder if that was her real self, or her old self, or just a confused, banged-on-the-head self. Deep down, is she devastated about the divorce? Was that a glimpse of what she's really feeling? I don't know. I just don't know.

The doctor I spoke to seems confident that she'll have her memory back by the morning. She was one of the nicer doctors I've met in my years of doctors. She actually looked me in the eyes and waited till I'd finished speaking before she spoke. But I could tell she was just focused on the fact that Alice's CT scan didn't show any sign of what she called “intracranial bleeding.” She blinked a bit when I said Alice doesn't remember the existence of her own children, but she said people can have a wide variety of responses to concussion and that rest was the best thing. She said as her injury heals, her memory will come back. She seemed to be implying that they'd already gone above and beyond what they'd do in a normal concussion case by keeping her overnight for observation.

I felt strangely guilty leaving Alice there at the hospital. She seems so much younger. That's the thing about this I couldn't seem to get across to the doctor. It's not just Alice being confused. It's like I am
literally
talking to 29-year-old Alice. Even the way she talks is different. It's slower and softer and less careful. She's just saying whatever comes into her head.

“Did I have a thirtieth birthday party?” she asked me before we left and I couldn't for the life of me remember. But then on the way home in the car I remembered they had a BBQ. Alice had a big pregnant belly and they were right in the middle of renovations. There were ladders and paint tins and gaping holes in walls. I remember standing in the kitchen helping Alice and Nick put candles in the cake, when Alice said, “I think the baby has the hiccups.” Nick pressed his hand to her stomach and then he grabbed my hand and held it over her stomach so I could feel the freaky fishy movements too. I have such a clear memory of both their faces turned to me, their eyes shiny, flushed with the excitement and wonder of it all. They both had flecks of blue paint in their eyebrows from painting the nursery. They were lovely. They were my favorite couple.

I used to secretly watch Nick listening to Alice when she told a story; that tender, proud look he got on his face, the way he laughed harder than anyone else when she said something funny or typically Alice. He got Alice, the way we did, or maybe even more so than us. He made her more confident, funnier, smarter. He brought out all the things that were there already and let her be fully herself, so she seemed to shine with this inner light. He loved her so much, he made her seem even more lovable.

(Does Ben love me like that? Yes. No. I don't know. Maybe in the beginning. All that shiny love stuff doesn't seem relevant anymore. That's for other younger, thinner, happier people, and besides which, it's not actually possible for a dried apricot to shine.)

I miss the old Nick and Alice. When I think of them standing in that kitchen, putting candles on the cake, it's like remembering people who I once knew, who moved to another country and didn't keep in touch.