“Would anyone like something to think?” asked Alice.
They stared at her and at one another, disinclined to answer. Were they all too shy or polite to be the first to speak up?
“Alice, did you mean ‘drink’?” asked Cathy.
“Yes, what’d I say?”
“You said ‘think.’”
Alice’s face flushed. Word substitution wasn’t the first impression she’d wanted to make.
“I’d actually like a cup of thinks. Mine’s been close to empty for days, I could use a refill,” said Dan.
They laughed, and it connected them instantly. She brought in the coffee and tea as Mary was telling her story.
“I was a real estate agent for twenty-two years. I suddenly started forgetting appointments, meetings, open houses. I showed up to houses with no keys. I got lost on my way to show a property in a neighborhood I’d known forever with the client in the car with me. I drove around for forty-five minutes when it should’ve taken less than ten. I can only imagine what she was thinking.
“I started getting angry easily and blowing up at the other agents in the office. I’d always been so easygoing and well liked, and suddenly, I was becoming known for my short fuse. I was ruining my reputation. My reputation was everything. My doctor put me on an antidepressant. And when that one didn’t work, he put me on another, and another.”
“For a long time, I just thought I was overtired and multitasking too much,” said Cathy. “I was working part-time as a pharmacist, raising two kids, running the house, running around from one thing to the next like a chicken with my head cut off. I was only forty-six, so it never occurred to me that I might have dementia. Then, one day at work, I couldn’t figure out the names of the drugs, and I didn’t know how to measure out ten milliliters. Right then, I realized I was capable of giving someone the wrong amount of drug or even the wrong drug. Basically, I was capable of accidentally killing someone. So I took off my lab coat, went home early, and never went back. I was devastated. I thought I was going crazy.”
“How about you, Dan? What were the first things you noticed?” asked Mary.
“I used to be really handy around the house. Then, one day, I couldn’t figure out how to fix the things I’d always been able to fix. I always kept my workshop tidy, everything in its place. Now, it’s a total mess. I accused my friends of borrowing my tools and messing up the place and not returning them when I couldn’t find them. But it was always me. I was a firefighter. I started forgetting the names of the guys on the force. I couldn’t finish my own sentences. I forgot how to make a cup of coffee. I’d seen the same things with my mom when I was a teenager. She had early-onset AD, too.”
They shared stories of their earliest symptoms, their struggles to get a correct diagnosis, their strategies for coping and living with dementia. They nodded and laughed and cried over stories of lost keys, lost thoughts, and lost life dreams. Alice felt unedited and truly heard. She felt normal.
“Alice, is your husband still working?” asked Mary.
“Yes. He’s been buried in his research and teaching this semester. He’s been traveling a lot. It’s been hard. But we both have a sabbatical year next year. So I just have to hold on and get to the end of next semester, and we’ll be able to be home together for a whole year.”
“You can make it, you’re almost there,” said Cathy.
Just a few more months.
ANNA SENT LYDIA INTO THE kitchen to make the white chocolate bread pudding. Noticeably pregnant now and no longer nauseated, Anna seemed to eat constantly, as if on a mission to make up for calories lost during the months of morning sickness.
“I have some news,” said John. “I’ve been offered the position of chairman of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at Sloan-Kettering.”
“Where’s that?” asked Anna, through a mouthful of chocolate-covered cranberries.
“New York City.”
No one said a word. Dean Martin belted out “A Marshmallow World” on the stereo.
“Well, you’re not actually entertaining the idea of taking it, are you?” asked Anna.
“I am. I’ve been down there several times this fall, and it’s a perfect position for me.”
“But what about Mom?” asked Anna.
“She’s not working anymore, and she rarely goes to campus at all.”
“But she needs to be here,” said Anna.
“No, she doesn’t. She’ll be with me.”
“Oh, please! I come over at night so you can work late, and I sleep over whenever you’re out of town, and Tom comes when he can on the weekends,” said Anna. “We’re not here all the time, but—”
“That’s right, you’re not here all the time. You don’t see how bad it’s getting. She pretends to know a lot more than she does. You think she’s going to appreciate that we’re in Cambridge a year from now? She doesn’t recognize where she is now when we’re three blocks away. We could very well be in New York City, and I could tell her it’s Harvard Square, and she wouldn’t know the difference.”
“Yes, she would, Dad,” said Tom. “Don’t say that.”
“Well, we wouldn’t move before September. It’s a long ways off.”
“It doesn’t matter when it is, she needs to stay here. She’ll go downhill fast if you move away,” said Anna.
“I agree,” said Tom.
They talked about her as if she weren’t sitting in the wing chair, a few feet away. They talked about her, in front of her, as if she were deaf. They talked about her, in front of her, without including her, as if she had Alzheimer’s disease.
“This position is likely never to open up again in my lifetime, and they want me.”
“I want her to be able to see the twins,” said Anna.
“New York isn’t that far. And there’s no guarantee that you’re all going to stay in Boston.”
“I might be there,” said Lydia.
Lydia stood in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. Alice hadn’t seen her there before she spoke, and her sudden presence in the periphery startled her.
“I applied to NYU, Brandeis, Brown, and Yale. If I get into NYU and you and Mom are in New York, I could live with you and help out. And if you stay here, and I get into Brandeis or Brown, I can be around, too,” said Lydia.
Alice wanted to tell Lydia that those were excellent schools. She wanted to ask her about the programs that most interested her. She wanted to tell her that she was proud of her. But her thoughts from idea to mouth moved too slowly today, as if they had to swim miles through black river sludge before surfacing to be heard, and most of them drowned somewhere along the way.
“That’s great, Lydia,” said Tom.
“So that’s it. You’re just going to continue about your life as if Mom doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, and we don’t have anything to say about it?” asked Anna.
“I’m making plenty of sacrifices,” said John.
He’d always loved her, but she’d made it easy for him. She’d been looking at their time left together as precious time. She didn’t know how much longer she could hang on to herself, but she’d convinced herself that she could make it through their sabbatical year. One last sabbatical year together. She wouldn’t trade that in for anything.
Apparently, he would. How could he? The question raged through the black river sludge in her head unanswered. How could he? The answer it found kicked her behind the eyes and choked her heart. One of them was going to have to sacrifice everything.
Alice, answer the following questions:
1. What month is it?