“How’s Malcolm?”
“Good. We just did the Memory Walk together in L.A.”
“What’s he like?”
Lydia’s smile jumped ahead of her answer.
“He’s very tall, outdoorsy, a little shy.”
“What’s he like with you?”
“He’s very sweet. He loves how smart I am, he’s so proud of my acting, he brags about me a lot, it’s almost embarrassing. You’d like him.”
“What are you like with him?”
Lydia considered this for several moments, as if she hadn’t before.
“Myself.”
“Good.”
Alice smiled and squeezed Lydia’s hand. She thought to ask Lydia what that meant to her, to describe herself, to remind her, but the thought evaporated too quickly to speak it.
“What were we just talking about?” asked Alice.
“Malcolm, Memory Walk? New York?” asked Lydia, offering prompts.
“I go for walks around here, and I feel safe. Even if I get a little turned around, I eventually see something that looks familiar, and enough people in the stores know me and point me in the right direction. The girl at Jerri’s is always keeping track of my wallet and keys.
“And I have my support group friends here. I need them. I couldn’t learn New York now. I’d lose what little independence I still have. A new job. Your dad would be working all the time. I’d lose him, too.”
“Mom, you need to tell all this to Dad.”
She was right. But it was so much easier telling her.
“Lydia, I’m so proud of you.”
“Thanks.”
“In case I forget, know that I love you.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
“I DON’T WANT TO MOVE to New York,” said Alice.
“It’s a long ways off, we don’t have to make a decision on it now,” said John.
“I want to make a decision on it now. I’m deciding now. I want to be clear about this while I still can be. I don’t want to move to New York.”
“What if Lydia’s there?”
“What if she’s not? You should’ve discussed this with me privately, before announcing it to the kids.”
“I did.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did, many times.”
“Oh, so I don’t remember? That’s convenient.”
She breathed, in through her nose, out through her mouth, allowing a calm moment to pull herself out of the elementary school argument they were spiraling into.
“John, I knew you were meeting with people at Sloan-Kettering, but I never understood that they were wooing you for a position for this upcoming year. I would’ve spoken up if I’d known this.”
“I told you why I was going there.”
“Fine. Would they be willing to let you take your sabbatical year and start a year from September?”
“No, they need someone now. It was difficult as it was negotiating them out that far, but I need the time to finish up some things in the lab here.”
“Couldn’t they hire someone temporary, you could take your sabbatical year with me, and then you could start?”
“No.”
“Did you even ask?”
“Look, the field’s so competitive right now, and everything’s moving so rapidly. We’re on the edge of some huge finds. I mean, we’re knocking on the door to a cure for cancer. The drug companies are interested. And with all the classes and administrative crap at Harvard, it’s just slowing me down. If I don’t take this, I could ruin my one shot at discovering something that truly matters.”
“This isn’t your one shot. You’re brilliant, and you don’t have Alzheimer’s. You’re going to have plenty of shots.”
He looked at her and said nothing.
“This next year is my one shot, John, not yours. This next year is my last chance at living my life and knowing what it means to me. I don’t think I have much more time of really being me, and I want to spend that time with you, and I can’t believe you don’t want to spend it together.”
“I do. We would be.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. Our life is here. Tom and Anna and the babies, Mary, Cathy, and Dan, and maybe Lydia. If you take this, you’ll be working all the time, you know you will, and I’d be there all alone. This decision has nothing to do with wanting to be with me, and it takes everything I have left away. I’m not going.”
“I won’t be working all the time, I promise. And what if Lydia’s living in New York? What if you get to stay with Anna and Charlie one week a month? There are ways we can work this out so you’re not alone.”
“What if Lydia’s not in New York? What if she’s at Brandeis?”
“That’s why I think we should wait, make the decision later, when we have more information.”
“I want you to take the sabbatical year.”
“Alice, the choice for me isn’t ‘take the position at Sloan’ or ‘take a sabbatical year.’ It’s ‘take the position at Sloan’ or ‘continue here at Harvard.’ I just can’t take the next year off.”
He became blurry as her body trembled and her eyes burned with furious tears.
“I can’t do this anymore! Please! I can’t keep holding on without you! You can take the year off. If you wanted to, you could. I need you to.”
“What if I turn this down, and I take the next year off, and you don’t even know who I am?”
“What if I do, but after next year, I don’t? How can you even consider spending the time we have left squirreled away in your fucking lab? I would never do this to you.”
“I’d never ask you to.”
“You wouldn’t have to.”
“I don’t think I can do it, Alice. I’m sorry, I just don’t think I can take being home for a whole year, just sitting and watching what this disease is stealing from you. I can’t take watching you not knowing how to get dressed and not knowing how to work the television. If I’m in lab, I don’t have to watch you sticking Post-it notes on all the cabinets and doors. I can’t just stay home and watch you get worse. It kills me.”
“No, John, it’s killing me, not you. I’m getting worse, whether you’re home looking at me or hiding in your lab. You’re losing me. I’m losing me. But if you don’t take next year off with me, well, then, we lost you first. I have Alzheimer’s. What’s your fucking excuse?”
SHE PULLED OUT CANS AND boxes and bottles, glasses and dishes and bowls, pots and pans. She stacked everything on the kitchen table, and when she ran out of room there, she used the floor.
She took each coat out of the hall closet, unzipped and inverted all the pockets. She found money, ticket stubs, tissues, and nothing. After each strip search, she discarded the innocent coat to the floor.
She flipped the cushions off the couches and armchairs. She emptied her desk drawer and file cabinet. She dumped the contents of her book bag, her laptop bag, and her baby blue bag. She sifted through the piles, touching each object with her fingers to register its name in her head. Nothing.
Her search didn’t require her to remember where she’d already looked. The heaps of unearthed stuff evidenced her previous excavation sites. From the looks of things, she’d covered the entire first floor. She was sweating, manic. She wasn’t giving up. She raced upstairs.
She ransacked the laundry basket, the bedside tables, the dresser drawers, the bedroom closets, her jewelry box, the linen closet, the medicine cabinet. The downstairs bathroom. She ran back down the stairs, sweating, manic.
John stood in the hallway, ankle-deep in coats.
“What the hell happened in here?” he asked.