What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty [49]
Suddenly—it must have taken less than five minutes—she was finished and stowing all the bottles away in the toiletries bag. Without stopping, she unzipped a pocket on the side of the bag and wondered what she was looking for until she pulled out a portable hair dryer and a round brush. Oh, right, fair enough. Time to blow-dry your hair. She plugged it in and once again her hands moved without waiting for her to tell them what to do. The brush moved back and forth. The hair dryer roared hot air.
Okay, so once you leave here, you’ve got to—
Her mind went blank.
. . . you’ve got to . . .
Her hair was done.
She snapped off the hair dryer, pulled the plug out of the socket, twirled the cord round and round, and shoved it back into the bag and began to rustle again for something else. Good Lord. Why was she moving so fast? Where was the fire?
She pulled out the flat plastic bag with the clothes, shook it open, and pulled out the matching cream underwear and dress. The underwear felt smooth and luxurious against her skin and the bra lifted her breasts back to their former perky position. Surely this beautiful dress would not fit, but she was sliding it over her head, doing up the zipper at the side without having to look for it, and there were no bulges of unsightly fat because she didn’t have them anymore.
Jewelry. She found the topaz necklace and Nick’s bracelet and put them on. Shoes. She slid her feet into them.
She stopped and looked at the woman in the mirror and watched her bottom lip drop in awe.
She looked, well, she had to say that she looked pretty good. She turned side to side and observed herself over one shoulder.
An attractive, elegant, slim woman. The sort of woman she never thought it was possible for her to be. She had become one of those women, those other women, who had seemed too perfectly put together to be real.
Why did Nick want to leave her if she looked this damned good?
There was still something missing.
Perfume.
She found it in the zippered section at the front of the toiletries bag. She sprayed it on both wrists and suddenly she was leaning forward, grasping both sides of the basin to stop herself from falling. The scent was vanilla, mandarin, and roses. Her whole life was right there in that scent. She was being sucked into a massive swirling vortex of grief and fury and the ring, ring, ring of the phone and the rising whiny shriek of a child and the babble of the television and Nick sitting on the end of the bed, bent right over with his hands laced tightly around the back of his head.
“Excuse me?”
There was a knock on the bathroom door.
“Excuse me? Will you be much longer? It’s just that I’m dying to go!” Alice stood slowly back up. The color had drained from her face. Was she going to be sick again, like yesterday? No.
“Sorry!” she called out. “Won’t be a second.”
She put her hands in the sink and used the pink soap from the soap dispenser to scrub away hard at the perfume. As the straightforward, bracing smell of strawberry bubble gum mixed with disinfectant filled her nostrils, the vortex receded.
I don’t remember.
I don’t remember.
I won’t remember.
Elisabeth’s Homework for Dr. Hodges
She was dressed and waiting for me when I went to pick her up from the hospital. She had dark circles under very red eyes, but her hair was done and her makeup perfect as always.
She looked so much like her normal self that I was sure she must have her memory back and this strange interlude in our lives was all over.
I said,