She remembered facing a similar dilemma when her children were around two years old. Without an afternoon nap, they turned miserable and uncooperative by the evening. With a nap, they stayed wide awake hours past their usual bedtime. She couldn’t remember the solution.
With all the pills I’m taking, you’d think at least one would have drowsiness as a side effect. Oh, wait. I have that sleeping pill prescription.
She got out of bed and walked downstairs. Although fairly confident it wasn’t in there, she emptied her baby blue bag first. Wallet, BlackBerry, cell phone, keys. She opened her wallet. Credit card, bank card, license, Harvard ID, health insurance card, twenty dollars, a handful of change.
She rifled through the white mushroom bowl where they kept the mail. Light bill, gas bill, phone bill, mortgage statement, something from Harvard, receipts.
She opened and emptied the contents of the drawers to the desk and file cabinet in the study. She emptied the magazines and catalogs out of the baskets in the living room. She read a couple of pages from The Week magazine and dog-eared a page in the J. Jill catalog with a cute sweater. She liked it in sea-foam blue.
She opened the junk drawer. Batteries, a screwdriver, Scotch tape, blue tape, glue, keys, a number of chargers, matches, and so much more. This drawer probably hadn’t been organized in years. She pulled the drawer completely off its tracks and dumped the entirety of its contents onto the kitchen table.
“Ali, what are you doing?” asked John.
Startled, she looked up at his bewildered hair and squinting eyes.
“I’m looking for…”
She looked down at the items jumbled before her on the table. Batteries, a sewing kit, glue, a tape measurer, several chargers, a screwdriver.
“I’m looking for something.”
“Ali, it’s after three. You’re making a racket down here. Can you look for it in the morning?”
His voice sounded impatient. He didn’t like having his sleep disrupted.
“Okay.”
She lay in bed and tried to remember what she’d been looking for. It was dark, still middle of the night. She knew she should be sleeping. John had fallen back to sleep without ceremony and was already snoring. He was a fast sleeper. She used to be, too. But she couldn’t fall asleep. She’d been having a lot of trouble sleeping through the night lately, probably because she was napping a lot during the day. Or was she napping a lot during the day because she wasn’t sleeping well at night? She was caught in a vicious cycle, a positive feedback loop, a dizzying ride that she didn’t know how to step off.
Oh, wait. I have a way to get to sleep. I have those pills from Dr. Moyer. Where did I put them?
She got out of bed and walked downstairs.
THERE WERE NO MEETINGS OR seminars today. None of the textbooks, periodicals, or mail in her office interested her. Dan didn’t have anything ready for her to read. She had nothing new in her inbox. Lydia’s daily email wouldn’t come until after noon. She watched the movement outside her window. Cars zipped around the curves of Memorial Drive, and joggers ran along the curves of the river. The tops of pine trees swayed in the turbulent fall air.
She pulled all of the folders out of the bin marked HOWLAND REPRINTS from her file cabinet. She’d authored well over a hundred published papers. She held this stack of research articles, commentaries, and reviews, her truncated career’s worth of thoughts and opinions, in her hands. It was heavy. Her thoughts and opinions carried weight. At least, they used to. She missed her research, thinking about it, talking about it, her own ideas and insights, the elegant art of her science.
She put the pile of folders down and selected her From Molecules to Mind textbook from the bookcase. It, too, was heavy. It was her proudest written achievement, her words and ideas blended with John’s, creating something together that was unique in this universe, informing and influencing the words and ideas of others. She’d assumed they’d write another someday. She flipped through the pages without being lured in. She didn’t feel like reading that either.
She checked her watch. She and John were supposed to go for a run at the end of the day. That was way too many hours away. She decided to run home.
Their house was only about a mile from her office, and she got there quickly and easily. Now what? She walked into the kitchen to make some tea. She filled the kettle with tap water, placed it back on the stove, and turned the burner knob to Hi. She went to get a tea bag. The tin container where she kept the tea bags wasn’t anywhere on the counter. She opened the cabinet where she kept the coffee mugs. She stared instead at three shelves of plates. She opened the cabinet to the right of that, where she expected to see rows of glasses, but instead it housed bowls and mugs.
She took the bowls and mugs out of the cabinet and put them on the counter. Then, she removed the plates and placed them next to the bowls and mugs. She opened the next cabinet. Nothing right in there either. The counter was soon stacked high with plates, bowls, mugs, juice glasses, water glasses, wineglasses, pots, pans, Tupperware, pot holders, dish towels, and silverware. The entire kitchen was inside out. Now, where did I have it all before? The teakettle shrilled, and she couldn’t think. She turned the burner knob to Off.
She heard the front door open. Oh good, John’s home early.
“John, why did you do this to the kitchen?” she hollered.
“Alice, what are you doing?”
The woman’s voice startled her.
“Oh, Lauren, you scared me.”
It was her neighbor who lived across the street. Lauren didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry, would you like to sit down? I was about to make some tea.”
“Alice, this isn’t your kitchen.”
What? She looked around the room—black granite countertops, birch cabinets, white tile floor, window over the sink, dishwasher to the right of the sink, double oven. Wait, she didn’t have a double oven, did she? Then, for the first time, she noticed the refrigerator. The smoking gun. The collage of pictures stuck with magnets to its door were of Lauren and Lauren’s husband and Lauren’s cat and babies Alice didn’t recognize.
“Oh, Lauren, look what I did to your kitchen. I’ll help you put everything back.”
“That’s okay, Alice. Are you all right?”
“No, not really.”
She wanted to run home to her own kitchen. Couldn’t they just forget this happened? Did she really have to have the I-have-Alzheimer’s-disease conversation right now? She hated the I-have-Alzheimer’s-disease conversation.
Alice tried to read Lauren’s face. She looked baffled and scared. Her face was thinking, Alice might be crazy. Alice closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“I have Alzheimer’s disease.”
She opened her eyes. The look on Lauren’s face didn’t change.
NOW, EVERY TIME SHE ENTERED the kitchen, she checked the refrigerator, just to be sure. No pictures of Lauren. She was in the right house. In case that didn’t remove all doubt, John had written a note in big black letters and stuck it with a magnet to the refrigerator door.
ALICE,
DO NOT GO RUNNING WITHOUT ME.
MY CELL: 617-555-1122
ANNA: 617-555-1123
TOM: 617-555-1124
John had made her promise not to go running without him. She’d sworn she wouldn’t and crossed her heart. Of course, she might forget.
Her ankle could probably use the time off anyway. She’d rolled it stepping off a curb last week. Her spatial perception was a bit off. Objects sometimes appeared closer or farther or generally somewhere other than where they actually were. She’d had her eyes checked. Her vision was fine. She had the eyes of a twenty-year-old. The problem wasn’t with her corneas, lenses, or retinas. The glitch was somewhere in the processing of visual information, somewhere in her occipital cortex, said John. Apparently, she had the eyes of a college student and the occipital cortex of an octogenarian.