What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty [29]
She seized on a sudden hurtful thought. “Hey! You must have had a wedding without me!” Alice loved weddings. She would never forget a wedding.
Elisabeth said, “Alice, you were my matron of honor and Madison was flower girl. You had matching dresses the color of a Singapore orchid. You made a funny speech, and you and Nick made a spectacle of yourselves dancing to ‘Come On Eileen.’ You gave us a blender.”
“Oh.” Frustration welled up in her. “But I just can’t believe I don’t remember any of this. It doesn’t even sound familiar!” She stuck her fingers though the holes in the blanket over her legs and bunched it together hard with both hands in a silly, childish movement. “There is so much . . . stuff!”
“Hey . . . hey, there.” Elisabeth rubbed Alice’s shoulder a bit too vigorously, as if she were a boxer, and looked around her feverishly for help. “You’ve got to let me go and find a doctor to talk about this.”
She was a problem solver, Elisabeth. She always wanted to find a solution for you.
There was a burst of screechy female laughter from the cubicle next to them. “You didn’t!” “I did!” Alice and Elisabeth raised their eyebrows at each other in mutual silent distaste and Alice was filled with soothing, sisterly affection.
She let go of the blanket and managed to put her hands sedately back in her lap. “Please don’t go. A nurse will come along and check on me soon and you can talk to her. Just stay here and keep talking to me. I think that will cure me.”
Elisabeth glanced at her watch and said, “I don’t know about that,” but she sat back in her chair.
Alice shifted herself against the pillows behind her back to get comfortable. She thought about asking more questions about the children in the photo (three!—the number was so unwieldy and impossible) but it was so surreal it was silly, like a movie that was so far-fetched you kept shifting in your seat and trying not to guffaw. It was better to ask about Elisabeth’s life.
Elisabeth had her head bent, scratching at something invisible on her wrist. Alice looked again at the lines that seemed to pull her sister’s mouth down into a sad sort of grimace. Was it just age? (Did her own mouth turn down like that, too? Soon she would look. Soon.) But it was more than that; there was a deep, slumping sort of sadness about her. Was she not happy being married to that grizzly-bear man? (Was it possible to love a man with a beard? Childish. Of course it was possible. Even if it was a remarkably bushy beard.)
As Alice watched, Elisabeth’s throat moved as she swallowed convulsively.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Alice.
Elisabeth started and looked up. “I don’t know, nothing.” She swallowed a yawn. “Sorry. I’m just tired. I only got a couple of hours’ sleep last night.”
“Ah,” said Alice. She didn’t need an explanation. She and Elisabeth had both suffered from bouts of terrible insomnia all their lives. They had inherited it from their mother. After their dad died, Alice and Elisabeth would often stay up right through the night with their mother, sitting in their dressing gowns in a row on the couch, watching videos and drinking cocoa, and then they’d sleep the next day away, while sunlight streamed through the muffled, sleeping house.
“How has my insomnia been lately?” asked Alice.
“I don’t know actually. I don’t know if you still get it.”
“You don’t know?” Alice was baffled. They always kept each other up to date with their insomnia battles. “But don’t we—don’t we talk?”
“Of course we talk, but I guess you’re pretty busy, with the kids and everything, so our conversations are maybe a bit rushed.”
“Busy,” repeated Alice. She didn’t like the sound of that at all. She had always had a slight mistrust of busy people; the sort of people who described themselves as “Flat-out! Frantic!” What was the