She didn’t have time for Alzheimer’s today. She had emails to return, a grant proposal to write, a class to teach, and a seminar to attend. And at the end of the day, a run. Maybe a run would give her some clarity.

ALICE TUCKED A PIECE OF paper with her name, address, and phone number in her sock. Of course, if she became so confused that she didn’t know her way home, she might not have the presence of mind to remember that she carried this piece of helpful information on her person. But it was a precaution she took anyway.

Running was becoming less and less effective at clearing her thoughts. In fact, these days, she felt more like she was physically chasing down the answers to an interminable stream of runaway questions. And no matter how hard she kicked, she could never catch them.

What should I be doing? She took her medications, slept for six to seven hours a night, and clung to the normalcy of day-to-day life at Harvard. She felt like a fraud, posing as a Harvard professor without a progressive neurodegenerative disease, working every day as if everything were just fine and would continue that way.

There weren’t a lot of metrics for performance or day-today accountability in the life of a professor. She didn’t have books to balance, a certain quota of widgets to make, or written reports to hand in. There was room for error, but how much? Ultimately, her functioning would deteriorate to a level that would be noticed and not tolerated. She wanted to leave Harvard before then, before the gossip and pity, but had no way of even guessing when that would be.

And although the thought of staying on too long terrified her, the thought of leaving Harvard terrified her much, much more. Who was she if she wasn’t a Harvard psychology professor?

Should she try to spend as much time as possible with John and her children? What would that mean practically? Sit with Anna while she typed her briefs, shadow Tom on his rounds, observe Lydia in acting class? How was she supposed to tell them that they each had a 50 percent chance of going through this? What if they blamed and hated her like she blamed and hated her father?

It was too soon for John to retire. How much time could he realistically take off without killing his own career? How much time did she have? Two years? Twenty?

Although Alzheimer’s tended to progress more quickly in the early-onset versus late-onset form, people with early-onset usually lived with the disease for many years longer, this disease of the mind residing in relatively young and healthy bodies. She could stick around all the way to the brutal end. She’d be unable to feed herself, unable to talk, unable to recognize John and her children. She’d be curled up in the fetal position, and because she’d forget how to swallow, she’d develop pneumonia. And John, Anna, Tom, and Lydia would agree not to treat it with a simple course of antibiotics, riddled with guilt over feeling grateful that something had finally come along that would kill her body.

She stopped running, bent over, and threw up the lasagna she’d eaten for lunch. It would be several more weeks before the snow melted enough to wash it away.

SHE KNEW EXACTLY WHERE SHE was. She was on her way home, in front of the All Saints’ Episcopal Church, only a few blocks from her house. She knew exactly where she was but had never felt more lost in her life. The bells of the church began to chime to a tune that reminded her of her grandparents’ clock. She turned the round, iron knob on the tomato red door and followed her impulse inside.

She was relieved to find no one there, because she hadn’t formulated a coherent story as to why she was. Her mother was Jewish, but her father had insisted that she and Anne be raised Catholic. So she went to mass every Sunday as a child, received communion, went to confession, and was confirmed, but because her mother never participated in any of this, Alice began questioning the validity of these beliefs at a young age. And without a satisfying answer from either her father or the Catholic Church, she never developed a true faith.

Light from the streetlamps outside streamed in through the Gothic stained-glass windows and provided almost enough illumination for her to see the entire church. In each of the stained-glass windows, Jesus, clad in robes of red and white, was pictured as a shepherd or a healer performing a miracle. A banner to the right of the altar read GOD IS OUR REFUGE AND STRENGTH, A VERY PRESENT HELP IN TROUBLE.

She couldn’t be in more trouble and wanted so much to ask for help. But she felt like a trespasser, undeserving, unfaithful. Who was she to ask for help from a God she wasn’t sure she believed in, in a church she knew nothing about?

She closed her eyes, listened to the calming, oceanlike waves of distant traffic, and tried to open her mind. She couldn’t say how long she sat in the velvet-cushioned pew in that cold, darkened church, waiting for an answer. It didn’t come. She stayed longer, hoping a priest or parishioner would wander in and ask her why she was there. Now, she had her explanation. But no one came.

She thought about the business cards she’d been given from Dr. Davis and Stephanie Aaron. Maybe she should talk to the social worker or a therapist. Maybe they could help her. Then, with complete and simple lucidity, the answer came to her.

Talk to John.

SHE FOUND HERSELF UNARMED FOR the attack she faced when she walked through the front door.

“Where have you been?” asked John.

“I went for a run.”

“You’ve been running, this whole time?”

“I also went to church.”

“Church? I can’t take this, Ali. Look, you don’t drink coffee, and you don’t go to church.”

She smelled the booze on his breath.

“Well, I did today.”

“We were supposed to have dinner with Bob and Sarah. I had to call and cancel, didn’t you remember?”

Dinner with their friends Bob and Sarah. It was on her calendar.

“I forgot. I have Alzheimer’s.”

“I had absolutely no idea where you were, if you were lost. You have to start carrying your cell phone with you at all times.”

“I can’t bring it with me when I run, I don’t have any pockets.”

“Then duct tape it to your head, I don’t care, I’m not going through this every time you forget you’re supposed to show up somewhere.”

She followed him into the living room. He sat down on the couch, held his drink in his hand, and wouldn’t look up at her. The beads of sweat on his forehead matched those on his sweaty glass of scotch. She hesitated, then sat on his lap, hugged him hard around his shoulders with her hands touching her own elbows, her ear against his, and let it all out.

“I’m so sorry I have this. I can’t stand the thought of how much worse this is going to get. I can’t stand the thought of looking at you someday, this face I love, and not knowing who you are.”

She traced the outline of his jaw and chin and the creases of his sorely out of practice laugh lines with her hands. She wiped the sweat from his forehead and the tears from his eyes.

“I can barely breathe when I think about it. But we have to think about it. I don’t know how much longer I have to know you. We need to talk about what’s going to happen.”

He tipped his glass back, swallowed until there was nothing left, and then sucked a little more from the ice. Then he looked at her with a scared and profound sorrow in his eyes that she’d never seen there before.

“I don’t know if I can.”