“And what are you going to study?”

“Acting.”

“That’s wonderful. Will you act in plays?”

“I will.”

“Shakespeare?”

“Yes.”

“I love Shakespeare, especially the tragedies.”

“Me, too.”

The pretty woman moved over and hugged Alice. She smelled fresh and clean, like soap. Her hug penetrated Alice much like her peanut butter eyes had. Alice felt happy and close to her.

“Mom, please don’t move to New York.”

“New York? Don’t be silly. I live here. Why would I move to New York?”

“I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU do this,” said the actress. “I was up with her most of the night, and I feel delirious. I made her scrambled eggs, toast, and tea at three a.m.”

“I was up then. If we could get you to lactate, then you could help me feed one of these guys,” said the mother of the babies.

The mother was sitting on the couch next to the actress, breast-feeding the baby in blue. Alice held the baby in pink. John walked in, showered and dressed, holding a coffee mug in one hand and a newspaper in the other. The women were wearing pajamas.

“Lyd, thanks for getting up last night. I really needed the sleep,” said John.

“Dad, how on earth do you think you can go to New York and do this without our help?” asked the mother.

“I’m going to hire a home health aide. I’m looking to find someone starting now actually.”

“I don’t want strangers taking care of her. They’re not going to hug her and love her like we do,” said the actress.

“And a stranger isn’t going to know her history and memories like we do. We can sometimes fill in her holes and read her body language, and that’s because we know her,” said the mother.

“I’m not saying that we won’t still take care of her, I’m just being realistic and practical. We don’t have to shoulder this entirely ourselves. You’ll be going back to work in a couple of months and coming home every night to two babies you haven’t seen all day.

“And you’re starting school. You keep talking about how intense the program is. Tom’s in surgery as we speak. You’re all about to be busier than you’ve ever been, and your mother would be the last person to want you to compromise the quality of your own lives for her. She’d never want to be a burden to you.”

“She’s not a burden, she’s our mother,” said the mother.

They were talking too quickly and using too many pronouns. And the baby in pink had begun to fuss and cry, distracting her. Alice couldn’t figure out what or who they were talking about. But she could tell by their facial expressions and tones that it was a serious argument. And the women in pajamas were on the same side.

“Maybe it makes more sense for me to take a longer maternity leave. I’m feeling a little rushed, and Charlie’s okay with me taking more time, and it makes sense for being around for Mom.”

“Dad, this is our last chance to spend time with her. You can’t go to New York, you can’t take that away.”

“Look, if you’d accepted at NYU instead of Brandeis, you could’ve spent all the time you wanted with her. You made your choice, I’m making mine.”

“Why doesn’t Mom get a say in this choice?” asked the mother.

“She doesn’t want to live in New York,” said the actress.

“You don’t know what she wants,” said John.

“She’s said she doesn’t want to. Go ahead and ask her. Just because she has Alzheimer’s doesn’t mean she doesn’t know what she does and doesn’t want. At three in the morning, she wanted scrambled eggs and toast, and she didn’t want cereal or bacon. And she definitely didn’t want to go back to bed. You’re choosing to dismiss what she wants because she has Alzheimer’s,” said the actress.

Oh, they’re talking about me.

“I’m not dismissing what she wants. I’m doing the best I can to do what’s right for both of us. If she got everything she unilaterally wanted, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“What the hell does that mean?” asked the mother.

“Nothing.”

“It’s like you don’t get that she’s not gone yet, like you think her time left isn’t meaningful anymore. You’re acting like a selfish child,” said the mother.

The mother was crying now, but she seemed angry. She looked and sounded like Alice’s sister, Anne. But she couldn’t be Anne. That was impossible. Anne didn’t have any children.

“How do you know she thinks this is meaningful? Look, it’s not just me. The old her, before this, she wouldn’t want me to give this up. She didn’t want to be here like this,” said John.

“What does that mean?” asked the crying woman who looked and sounded like Anne.

“Nothing. Look, I understand and appreciate everything you’re saying. But I’m trying to make a decision that’s rational and not emotional.”

“Why? What’s wrong with being emotional about this? Why is that a negative thing? Why isn’t the emotional decision the right decision?” asked the woman who wasn’t crying.

“I haven’t come to a final decision yet, and the two of you aren’t going to bully me into one. You don’t know everything.”

“So tell us, Dad, tell us what we don’t know,” said the crying woman, her voice shaking and threatening.

The threat silenced him for a moment.

“I don’t have time for this now, I have a meeting.”

He got up and abandoned the argument, leaving the women and babies alone. He slammed the front door as he left the house, startling the baby in blue, which had just fallen asleep in the mother’s arms. It wailed. As if it were contagious, the other woman began crying, too. Maybe she just felt left out. Now, everyone was crying—the pink baby, the blue baby, the mother, and the woman next to the mother. Everyone except Alice. She wasn’t sad or angry or defeated or scared. She was hungry.

“What are we having for dinner?”

MAY 2005

They reached the counter after waiting a long time in a long line.

“All right, Alice, what do you want?” asked John.

“I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“I’m getting vanilla.”

“That’s fine, I’ll have that.”

“You don’t want vanilla, you want something chocolate.”

“Okay then, I’ll have something chocolate.”

It seemed simple and unproblematic enough to her, but he became visibly stressed by the exchange.

“I’ll have a vanilla in a cone, and she’ll have a chocolate fudge brownie in a cone, both large.”

Away from the stores and crowded lines of people, they sat on a graffiti-covered bench on the edge of a river and ate their ice creams. Several geese nibbled in the grass just a few feet away. The geese kept their heads down, consumed in the business of nibbling, completely unbothered by Alice and John’s presence. Alice giggled, wondering if the geese thought the same thing about them.

“Alice, do you know what month it is?”

It had rained earlier, but the sky was clear now, and the heat from the sun and the dry bench warmed her bones. It felt so good to be warm. Many of the pink and white blossoms from the crab apple tree next to them were scattered across the ground like party confetti.