Still Alice

Alice wakes up in the middle of the night, aware of the time but unsure of what to do. She hasn’t been able to sleep lately, but she is unable to figure out why. She remembers that she has the sleeping pill prescription and goes downstairs to find the pills. John wakes up, comes downstairs, and asks her what she’s doing; this startles her, and she is unable to remember. She agrees to wait until the morning; when she gets back upstairs, unable to fall asleep, she remembers that she has sleeping pills and returns downstairs to look for them.

Back in her office, with nothing to do, she looks back through her various published works, including numerous papers and a textbook that she and John wrote together, From Molecules to Mind. Bored and indifferent to reviewing her past work, she decides to run home. Once home, she tries to make tea, but nothing feels familiar—everything is out of place. She is relieved when she hears the door open, then startled when she realizes it is not John, but instead her neighbor, Lauren, who informs her that she is in the wrong house.

After this incident, she begins checking the fridge every time she comes home to make sure the photographs are familiar. Further, she promises John that she will no longer go running without him. However, she grows frustrated when he is always too busy to follow through on his own promise to run with her. She grows angry when he suggests they get a treadmill.

Some time later, Alice is struggling to fit her sports bra on; frustrated, she lets out a scream. John comes running in to find out what happened, then informs her that she is actually trying to put her underwear on over her head. She begins laughing hysterically, which annoys John.

Later, Alice, John, and their children are at a restaurant for Alice’s 51st birthday. Alice recognizes that “the young woman sitting across from her was her daughter” (199), but lacks real confidence in the presumption as she cannot connect her memories of Lydia to the woman at the table. Tom and Anna, on the other hand, she is able to connect to her memories. This makes her aware that her disease is getting worse.

The noise in the restaurant makes it difficult for Alice to pay close attention to what’s happening around her. When Anna decides to step out to get away from the smells, Alice goes with her to get away from the noise. They discuss her pregnancy; Anna asks Alice how she got through it, and she tells her that you just keep going until it’s done. Anna then grows emotional and confides in Alice that every time she forgets something, she worries she’s becoming symptomatic now; Alice reassures her that she’s just stressed with the pregnancy and reminds her that she has Charlie.

Back inside the restaurant, the three children present Alice with their gifts: DVDs they made of Alice’s life. The last one is incomplete; it is meant to be a series of interviews with Alice so that she can discuss her own life and memories. 

Alice is no longer able to follow movies with any consistency; she can “appreciate small moments but [retain] only a general sense of the film after the credits” (204). The DVDs she was given as a gift, however, she finds to be much better, as each story is just a few minutes long, and therefore easier for her to follow. Additionally, she appreciates that John and each of the children recalls the events in her life differently, “emphasizing their own individual perspectives,” showing her that “biographies not saturated with disease [are also] vulnerable to holes and distortions” (205). The videos of herself, on the other hand, are more difficult, as they remind her of how eloquent and intelligent she used to be.

Alice notices the time and frantically begins getting her things together, believing she is late for something. When she is about to race out the front door, though, she notices a large hole in front of it; she cannot remember how or when the hole got there, but realizing she can’t leave that way, she heads toward the back door, instead. However, Anna calls while she’s on her way to remind her that John is in New York and that she’ll be there a little later. She suggests that Alice write this on the fridge; Alice gets angry at her, but nevertheless stays calm in her response and congratulates herself for remaining in control of her raw emotions. She looks outside; unsure of the time and unwilling to go to her office, she decides to stay at home. As she walks to her study, mail is delivered through the front door, where, to her, it remains floating on the hole.

While home, she realizes that she is the only person she knows with early-onset Alzheimer’s, so she searches online for support groups. She is surprised to discover that support groups only exist for caregivers, not for those with the disease. She reaches out to Denise Daddario at Mass General Hospital and is told that the numbers don’t justify the resources they’d need for such a meeting. She suggests that Alice come in to meet with her, but Alice declines.

When Anna arrives, Alice is shocked to see that she is, like the mail, floating on the hole in front of the door; she inspects the hole to discover that it is not a hole, but the black rug she’s had for years. When Anna asks what she’s doing, Alice yells at her, then tells her she hates her and doesn’t want her there. Anna is hurt, but only says that she is going to eat dinner then go to bed. Alice takes the rug and throws it outside.

At the end of the chapter, we see that Alice’s answers to the “Butterfly” questions are now all one-word responses, much vaguer than they previously were.

Alice struggles to get through Dan’s thesis; it is 142 pages long, but Alice grows stuck on the 26th page, which is “saturated in pink,” marking the spots she would need to review (213). She takes a break and finds an email from Denise Daddario; Denise had previously told her that she couldn’t share the names of others, but she did share the idea with other people with early-onset Alzheimer’s, and three people are interested. Their contact info is included in the email, so Alice reaches out to them with an invite to the first meeting. Meanwhile, something beeps in the background. She tries to go back to Dan’s thesis, but is unable to concentrate; she checks her email again, then tries to answer the phone, but finds only a dial tone. She begins to drift off, but hears the doorbell; however, when she goes to answer it, no one is at the door. She checks her email again and sees an email from Lydia, but nothing yet from her budding support group. She again thinks she hears the phone, but hears only a dial tone when she tries to answer it. Thinking she may be hearing her cell phone, she finds it but realizes that it is turned off. She hears a “disembodied voice” (218), which she realizes is John, who reminds them that they have dinner with Bob and Sarah; she tells him that she doesn’t feel like going and says he should go alone. John hears the beeping, which turns out to be the microwave letting her know that her tea is finished warming up.

While John is still out, Alice is getting ready for bed when she sees emails from all three early-onset sufferers waiting for her. All had accepted her invitation. On the appointed day, Mary, Cathy, and Dan arrive for their meeting; their respective spouses went for coffee with John at Jerri’s. They tease each other about mistakes, then take turns telling each other their stories and their struggles.

By Christmas Eve, Anna is noticeably pregnant, and Lydia now makes the bread pudding. John announces that he has been offered the chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at Sloan-Kettering in New York City. This erupts into an argument, as the three children can’t believe that he is considering the job; they argue that Alice needs to be in Boston, close to them, while John argues that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, that they can hire a caretaker, and that Alice wouldn’t notice the difference anyway. Lydia says that she might be in New York, anyway, as she’s decided to apply to college, including NYU, Brandeis, Brown, and Yale.

As they argue, Alice follows the conversation but is unable to join in. She considers the fact that she wouldn’t trade their last sabbatical year together for anything; she realizes that he would, and that “[o]ne of them was going to have to sacrifice everything” (226).