The restaurant was crowded and noisy. Voices from other tables competed for Alice’s attention, and the music in the background moved in and out of the foreground. Anna’s and Lydia’s voices sounded the same to her. Everyone used too many pronouns. She struggled to locate who was talking at her table and to follow what was being said.
“Honey, you okay?” asked Charlie.
“The smells,” said Anna.
“You want to go outside for a minute?” asked Charlie.
“I’ll go with her,” said Alice.
Alice’s back tensed as soon as they left the cozy warmth of the restaurant. They’d both forgotten to bring their coats. Anna grabbed Alice’s hand and led her away from a circle of young smokers hovering near the door.
“Ahh, fresh air,” said Anna, taking a luxurious breath in and out through her nose.
“And quiet,” said Alice.
“How are you feeling, Mom?”
“I’m okay,” said Alice.
Anna rubbed the back of Alice’s hand, the hand she was still holding.
“I’ve been better,” she admitted.
“Same here,” said Anna. “Were you sick like this when you were pregnant with me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How did you do it?”
“You just keep going. It’ll stop soon.”
“And before you know it, the babies will be here.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Me, too,” Anna said. But her voice didn’t carry the same exuberance Alice’s did. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
“Mom, I feel sick all the time, and I’m exhausted, and every time I forget something I think I’m becoming symptomatic.”
“Oh, sweetie, you’re not, you’re just tired.”
“I know, I know. It’s just when I think about you not teaching anymore and everything you’re losing—”
“Don’t. This should be an exciting time for you. Please, just think about what we’re gaining.”
Alice squeezed the hand she held and placed her other one gently on Anna’s stomach. Anna smiled, but the tears still spilled out of her overwhelmed eyes.
“I just don’t know how I’m going to handle it all. My job and two babies and—”
“And Charlie. Don’t forget about you and Charlie. Keep what you have with him. Keep everything in balance—you and Charlie, your career, your kids, everything you love. Don’t take any of the things you love in your life for granted, and you’ll do it all. Charlie will help you.”
“He better,” Anna threatened.
Alice laughed. Anna wiped her eyes several times with the heels of her hands and blew a long, Lamaze-like breath out through her mouth.
“Thanks, Mom. I feel better.”
“Good.”
Back inside the restaurant, they settled into their seats and ate dinner. The young woman across from Alice, her youngest child, Lydia, clanged her empty wineglass with her knife.
“Mom, we’d like to give you your big gift now.”
Lydia presented her with a small, rectangular package wrapped in gold paper. It must have been big in significance. Alice untaped the paper. Inside were three DVDs—The Howland Kids, Alice and John, and Alice Howland.
“It’s a video memoir for you. The Howland Kids is a collection of interviews of Anna, Tom, and me. I shot them this summer. It’s our memories of you and our childhoods and growing up. The one with Dad is of his memories of meeting you and dating and your wedding and vacations and lots of other stuff. There are a couple of really great stories in that one that none of us kids knew about. The third one I haven’t made yet. It’s an interview of you, of your stories, if you want to do it.”
“I absolutely want to do it. I love it. Thank you, I can’t wait to watch them.”
The waitress brought them coffee, tea, and chocolate cake with a candle in it. They all sang “Happy Birthday.” Alice blew out the candle and made a wish.
NOVEMBER 2004
The movies that John had bought over the summer now fell into the same unfortunate category as the abandoned books they’d replaced. She could no longer follow the thread of the plot or remember the significance of the characters if they weren’t in every scene. She could appreciate small moments but retained only a general sense of the film after the credits rolled. That movie was funny. If John or Anna watched with her, they would many times roar with laughter or jump with alarm or cringe with disgust, reacting in an obvious, visceral way to something that happened, and she wouldn’t understand why. She would join in, faking it, trying to protect them from how lost she was. Watching movies made her keenly aware of how lost she was.
The DVDs Lydia had made came at just the right time. Each story told by John and the kids ran only a few minutes long, so she could absorb each one, and she didn’t have to actively hold the information in any particular story to understand or enjoy the others. She watched them over and over. She didn’t remember everything they talked about, but this felt completely normal, for each of her children and John didn’t remember all of the details either. And when Lydia asked them all to recount the same event, each remembered it somewhat differently, omitting some parts, exaggerating others, emphasizing their own individual perspectives. Even biographies not saturated with disease were vulnerable to holes and distortions.
She could only stomach watching the Alice Howland video once. She used to be so eloquent, so comfortable talking in front of any audience. Now, she overused the word thingy and repeated herself an embarrassing number of times. But she felt grateful to have it, her memories, reflections, and advice recorded and pinned down, safe from the molecular mayhem of Alzheimer’s disease. Her grandchildren would watch it someday and say, “That’s Grandma when she could still talk and remember things.”
She had just finished watching Alice and John. She remained on the couch with a blanket on her lap after the television screen faded to black and listened. The quiet pleased her. She breathed and thought of nothing for several minutes but the sound of the ticking clock on the fireplace mantel. Then, suddenly, the ticking took on meaning, and her eyes popped open.
She looked at the hands. Ten minutes until ten o’clock. Oh my god, what am I still doing here? She threw the blanket onto the floor, crammed her feet into her shoes, ran into the study, and clicked her laptop bag shut. Where’s my blue bag? Not on the chair, not on the desk, not in the desk drawers, not in the laptop bag. She jogged up to her bedroom. Not on her bed, not on the night table, not on the dresser, not in the closet, not on the desk. She was standing in the hallway, retracing her whereabouts in her boggled mind, when she saw it, hanging on the bathroom doorknob.