“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?

2. Where do you live?

3. Where is your office?

4. When is Anna’s birthday?

5. How many children do you have?

If you have trouble answering any of these, go to the file named “Butterfly” on your computer and follow the instructions there immediately.

December

Harvard Square

Harvard

April

Three

JANUARY 2005

Mom, wake up. How long has she been asleep?”

“About eighteen hours now.”

“Has she done this before?”

“A couple of times.”

“Dad, I’m worried. What if she took too many of her pills yesterday?”

“No, I checked her bottles and dispenser.”

Alice could hear them talking, and she could understand what they were saying, but she was only mildly interested. It was like eavesdropping on a conversation between strangers about a woman she didn’t know. She had no desire to wake up. She had no awareness that she was asleep.

“Ali? Can you hear me?”

“Mom, it’s me, Lydia, can you wake up?”

The woman named Lydia talked about wanting to call a doctor. The man named Dad talked about letting the woman named Ali sleep some more. They talked about ordering Mexican and eating dinner at home. Maybe the smell of food in the house would wake up the woman named Ali. Then, the voices ceased. Everything was dark and quiet again.

SHE WALKED DOWN A SANDY path that led into dense woods. She ascended via a series of switchbacks out of the woods and onto a steep, exposed cliff. She walked to the edge and looked out. The ocean below her was frozen solid, its shore buried in high drifts of snow. The panorama before her appeared lifeless, colorless, impossibly still, and silent. She yelled for John, but her voice carried no sound. She turned to go back, but the path and the forest were gone. She looked down at her pale, bony ankles and bare feet. With no other choice, she readied to step off the cliff.

SHE SAT ON A BEACH chair and buried and unburied her feet in the warm, fine sand. She watched Christina, her best friend from kindergarten and still only five years old, flying a butterfly kite. The pink and yellow daisies on Christina’s bathing suit, the blue and purple wings of the butterfly kite, the blues in the sky, the yellow sun, the red polish on her own toenails, indeed every color before her was more brilliant and striking than anything she’d ever seen. As she watched Christina, she was overwhelmed with joy and love, not so much for her childhood friend but for the bold and breathtaking colors of her bathing suit and kite.

Her sister, Anne, and Lydia, both about sixteen years old, lay next to each other on red, white, and blue striped beach towels. Their shiny, caramel bodies in matching bubble gum pink bikinis glistened in the sun. They, too, were glossy, cartoon-colored, and mesmerizing.

“Ready?” asked John.

“I’m a little scared.”

“It’s now or never.”

She stood, and he strapped her torso into a harness attached to a tangerine orange parasail. He clicked and adjusted buckles until she felt snug and secure. He held on to her shoulders, pushing against the strong, invisible force willing her upward.