What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty [81]
She and Alice were all bright and giggly and swilling champagne, and I was a stiff cardboard cutout. My laugh was forced. It seemed to happen so quickly that she knew my sister better than me.
Gina’s kids were IVF pregnancies. She asked lots of expertly interested questions. She would sympathetically rub my hand (very touchy-feely type, soft, sweet-smelling kisses on each cheek every time you saw her; I once heard Roger say to her, “Oh, I do like the way you European ladies kiss hello!”). Gina said she understood exactly what I was going through. And quite probably she did, except that it was all behind her now. I could tell her memories were rose-colored because of the happy ending. You’d think I would have been inspired by her—she was a success story. She’d traveled across the infertility minefield and got safely to the other side. But I found her patronizing. It’s easy to think the minefield wasn’t that bad once you’re safely watching other people get blown up. She couldn’t imagine her children not existing. They were too real, filling up her mind. I felt like I couldn’t complain to Alice because Gina was probably in her ear, telling her, with the benefit of experience, that it wasn’t that bad and I was just whinging and being melodramatic.
One night I called Alice to tell her that we’d lost another baby.
I had terrible nausea with that pregnancy. I gagged every time I cleaned my teeth. I had to run out of a cinema because the smell of the woman’s perfume sitting next to me (Opium) combined with her popcorn made me retch. I’d thought for sure it must be a sign that this one was going to be the lucky one. Ha-ha. It meant nothing.
When I rang Alice, she answered the phone laughing. Gina was in the background, yelling out something about pineapple. They were inventing cocktails for some school function. Of course Alice stopped laughing when I told her the news and put on her sad voice, but she couldn’t quite stamp out the leftover laughter. I felt like the boring sister with yet another boring miscarriage, ruining the good times for everybody with her slightly disgusting gynecological bad news. Alice must have signaled to Gina, because her laughter stopped like a switch had been turned off.
I told her not to worry, that we could talk later, and hung up fast. Then I threw the phone across the room and it smashed a beautiful vase that I’d bought in Italy when I was twenty, and I lay on the couch and screamed into a cushion. I still grieve for the vase.
Alice didn’t call me the next day. And the day after that was when Madison ran through the French doors. So we were distracted and busy at the hospital worrying about her. My miscarriage got forgotten in between cocktails with Gina and Madison. Alice never even mentioned it. I wondered if she forgot.
I think that’s when the coldness started between us.
Yes, I know. Petty and childish, but there you have it.
Chapter 17
Frannie’s Letter to Phil
I’m tucked up in bed again, Phil. It’s been a long day.
Who should be sitting next to me again in the dining room at dinner tonight? You guessed it. Mr. Mustache.
The man seems to have taken a shine to me. I don’t know why because we have absolutely nothing in common and we appear to disagree on everything.
He was talking about his mustache tonight. He said that he’d always wanted a mustache but that his wife had never let him grow one because it would be “too ticklish when she kissed him.” (Too much information, as the young people say!) He said that after she died, he’d “cultivated this beautiful specimen.”
He asked what I thought of his mustache and I said I thought it was most unattractive.
He roared with laughter.
Then he asked how I’d managed to escape the “shackles of marriage.” (Do you mind!)
You will be astonished to hear that I told him about you. Not the whole story. I just said that I was pretty much an old maid when I finally met “Mr. Right.” I said that we