No running without John. She might get lost or hurt. But lately there was no running with John either. He’d been traveling a lot, and when he wasn’t out of town, he left the house for Harvard early and worked late. By the time he got home, he was always too tired. She hated depending on him to go running, especially since he wasn’t dependable.

She picked up the phone and dialed the number on the refrigerator.

“Hello?”

“Are we going for a run today?” she asked.

“I don’t know, maybe, I’m in a meeting. I’ll call you later,” said John.

“I really need to go for a run.”

“I’ll call you later.”

“When?”

“When I can.”

“Fine.”

She hung up the phone, looked out the window and then down at the running shoes on her feet. She peeled them off and threw them at the wall.

She tried to be understanding. He needed to work. But why didn’t he understand that she needed to run? If something as simple as regular exercise really did counter the progression of this disease, then she should be running as often as she could. Each time he told her “Not today,” she might be losing more neurons that she could have saved. Dying needlessly faster. John was killing her.

She picked up the phone again.

“Yes?” asked John, hushed and annoyed.

“I want you to promise that we’ll run today.”

“Excuse me for a minute,” he said to someone else. “Please, Alice, let me call you after I get out of this meeting.”

“I need to run today.”

“I don’t know yet when my day’s going to end.”

“So?”

“This is why I think we should get you a treadmill.”

“Oh, fuck you,” she said, hanging up.

She supposed that wasn’t very understanding. She flashed to anger a lot lately. Whether this was a symptom of her disease advancing or a justified response, she couldn’t say. She didn’t want a treadmill. She wanted him. Maybe she shouldn’t be so stubborn. Maybe she was killing herself, too.

She could always walk somewhere without him. Of course, this somewhere had to be somewhere “safe.” She could walk to her office. But she didn’t want to go to her office. She felt bored, ignored, and alienated in her office. She felt ridiculous there. She didn’t belong there anymore. In all the expansive grandeur that was Harvard, there wasn’t room there for a cognitive psychology professor with a broken cognitive psyche.

She sat in her living room armchair and tried to think of what to do. Nothing meaningful enough came to her. She tried to imagine tomorrow, next week, the coming winter. Nothing meaningful enough came to her. She felt bored, ignored, and alienated in her living room armchair. The late afternoon sun cast strange, Tim Burton shadows that slithered and undulated across the floor and up the walls. She watched the shadows dissolve and the room dim. She closed her eyes and fell asleep.

ALICE STOOD IN THEIR BEDROOM, naked but for a pair of ankle socks and her Safe Return bracelet, wrestling and growling at an article of clothing stretched around her head. Like a Martha Graham dance, her battle against the fabric shrouding her head looked like a physical and poetic expression of anguish. She let out a long scream.

“What’s happening?” asked John, running in.

She looked at him with one panicked eye through a round hole in the twisted garment.

“I can’t do this! I can’t figure out how to put on this fucking sports bra. I can’t remember how to put on a bra, John! I can’t put on my own bra!”

He went to her and examined her head.

“That’s not a bra, Ali, it’s a pair of underwear.”

She burst into laughter.

“It’s not funny,” said John.

She laughed harder.

“Stop it, it’s not funny. Look, if you want to go running, you have to hurry up and get dressed. I don’t have a lot of time.”

He left the room, unable to watch her standing there, naked with her underwear on her head, laughing at her own absurd madness.

ALICE KNEW THAT THE YOUNG woman sitting across from her was her daughter, but she had a disturbing lack of confidence in this knowledge. She knew that she had a daughter named Lydia, but when she looked at the young woman sitting across from her, knowing that she was her daughter Lydia was more academic knowledge than implicit understanding, a fact she agreed to, information she’d been given and accepted as true.

She looked at Tom and Anna, also sitting at the table, and she could automatically connect them with the memories she had of her oldest child and her son. She could picture Anna in her wedding gown, in her law school, college, and high school graduation gowns, and in the Snow White nightgown she’d insisted on wearing every day when she was three. She could remember Tom in his cap and gown, in a cast when he broke his leg skiing, in braces, in his Little League uniform, and in her arms when he was an infant.

She could see Lydia’s history as well, but somehow this woman sitting across from her wasn’t inextricably connected to her memories of her youngest child. This made her uneasy and painfully aware that she was declining, her past becoming unhinged from her present. And how strange that she had no problem identifying the man next to Anna as Anna’s husband, Charlie, who had entered their lives only a couple of years ago. She pictured her Alzheimer’s as a demon in her head, tearing a reckless and illogical path of destruction, ripping apart the wiring from “Lydia now” to “Lydia then,” leaving all the “Charlie” connections unscathed.

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.