Still Alice (17 page)

A
lthough it was officially the beginning of fall semester at Harvard, the weather was steadfastly adhering to the rules according to the Roman calendar. It was a sticky eighty degrees that summer morning in September as Alice began her commute to Harvard Yard. In the days just before and following matriculation each year, it always amused her to see the first-year students who weren’t from New England. Fall in Cambridge evoked images of vibrant leaves, apple picking, football games, and wool sweaters with scarves. While it wouldn’t be unusual to wake up on a late September morning in Cambridge to find frost on the pumpkin, the days, especially in early September, were still filled with the sounds of window air conditioners
tirelessly groaning and fevered, pathologically optimistic discussions about the Red Sox. Yet each year there they were, these newly transplanted students, moving with the uncertainty of unseasoned tourists along the sidewalks of Harvard Square, always burdened by too many layers of wool and fleece and an excess of shopping bags from the Harvard Coop packed with all the necessary desk gear and sweatshirts bearing the
HARVARD
brand. The poor sweaty things.

Even in her sleeveless white cotton T-shirt and ankle-length black rayon skirt, Alice felt uncomfortably damp by the time she reached Eric Wellman’s office. Directly above hers, his was the same size, with the same furniture and the same view of the Charles River and Boston, but somehow his seemed more impressive and imposing. She always felt like a student whenever she was in his office, and that feeling hovered especially present today, as she’d been called in by him “to talk for a minute.”

“How was your summer?” asked Eric.

“Very relaxing. How was yours?”

“Good, it went by too fast. We all missed seeing you at the conference in June.”

“I know, I missed being there.”

“Well, Alice, I wanted to talk with you about your course evaluations from last semester before classes begin.”

“Oh, I haven’t even had a chance to look at them yet.”

An elastic-bound stack of evaluations from her motivation and emotion course sat somewhere in her office, unopened. Harvard’s student evaluation responses were entirely anonymous and seen only by the instructor of the course and the chair of the department. In the past, she’d read them purely as a vanity check. She knew she was a great teacher, and
her students’ evaluations had always nodded in unwavering agreement. But Eric had never asked her to review them with him. She feared, for the very first time in her career, that she wouldn’t like the image of herself she saw reflected in them.

“Here, take a few minutes and look them over now.”

He handed her his copy of the stack with the summary page on top.

All fours and fives.

Fours, threes, and twos.

Again, fours, threes, and twos.

Two students gave her ones.

Mostly threes. If she remembered correctly, she’d never received lower than a four in this category.

The entire summary page was splattered with threes, twos, and ones. She didn’t try to convince herself that it represented anything but the accurate and thoughtful judgment of her students, without malice. Her teaching performance had outwardly suffered more than she’d been aware of. Still, she’d be willing to bet anything that she was far from the worst-rated teacher in the department. She might be sinking fast, but she was nowhere near the bottom of the barrel.

She looked up at Eric, ready to face the music, maybe not her favorite tune but probably not wholly unpleasant.

“If I hadn’t seen your name on that summary, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. It’s decent, not what I’ve ever seen attached to you, but not horrible. It’s the written comments that are particularly worrisome, and I thought we should talk.”

Alice hadn’t looked beyond the summary page. He referred to his notes and read aloud.

“‘She skips over huge sections of the outline, so you skip it, too, but then she expects us to know it for the exam.’

“‘She doesn’t seem to know the information she’s teaching.’

“‘Class was a waste of time. I could’ve just read the textbook.’

“‘I had a hard time following her lectures. Even she gets lost in them. This class was nowhere near as good as her intro course.’

“‘Once she came to class and didn’t teach. She just sat down for a few minutes and left. Another time, she taught the exact same lecture she did the week before. I’d never dream
of wasting Dr. Howland’s time, but I don’t think she should waste mine either.’”

That was tough to hear. It was much, much more than she’d been aware of.

“Alice, we’ve known each other a long time, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to risk being blunt and too personal here. Is everything okay at home?”

“Yes.”

“How about you then, is it possible that you’re overstressed or depressed?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“This is a little embarrassing to have to ask, but do you think you might have a drinking or substance problem?”

Now she’d heard enough.
I can’t live with a reputation of being a depressed, stressed-out addict. Having dementia has to carry less of a stigma than that.

“Eric, I have Alzheimer’s disease.”

His face went blank. He had been braced to hear about John’s infidelity. He was ready with the name of a good psychiatrist. He was prepared to orchestrate an intervention or to have her admitted to McLean Hospital to dry out. He was not prepared for this.

“I was diagnosed in January. I had a hard time teaching last semester, but I didn’t realize how much it showed.”

“I’m sorry, Alice.”

“Me, too.”

“I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Neither was I.”

“I was expecting something temporary, something you would get past. This isn’t a temporary problem we’re looking at.”

“No, no, it’s not.”

Alice watched him think. He was like a father to everyone in the department, protective and generous, but also pragmatic and strict.

“Parents are paying forty grand a year now. This wouldn’t go over well with them.”

No, it certainly wouldn’t. They weren’t shelling out astronomical dollars to have their sons and daughters learn from someone with Alzheimer’s. She could already hear the uproar, the scandalous sound bites on the evening news.

“Also, a couple of students from your class are contesting their grades. I’m afraid that would only escalate.”

In twenty-five years of teaching, no one had ever contested a grade given by her. Not a single student.

“I think you probably shouldn’t be teaching anymore, but I’d like to respect your time line. Do you have a plan?”

“I’d hoped to stay on for the year and then take my sabbatical, but I hadn’t appreciated the extent to which my symptoms were showing and disrupting my lectures. I don’t want to be a bad teacher, Eric. That’s not who I am.”

“I know it’s not. How about a medical leave that would take you into your sabbatical year?”

He wanted her out now. She had an exemplary body of work and performance history, and most important, she had tenure. Legally, they couldn’t fire her. But that was not how she wanted to handle this. As much as she didn’t want to give up her career at Harvard, her fight was with Alzheimer’s disease, not with Eric or Harvard University.

“I’m not ready to leave, but I agree with you, as much as it breaks my heart, I think I should stop teaching. I’d like to stay on as Dan’s adviser, though, and I’d like to continue to attend seminars and meetings.”

I am no longer a teacher.

“I think we can work that out. I’d like you to have a talk with Dan, explain to him what’s going on and leave the decision up to him. I’d be happy to coadvise with you if that makes either of you more comfortable. Also, obviously, you shouldn’t take on any new graduate students. Dan will be the last.”

I am no longer a research scientist.

“You probably shouldn’t be accepting invitations to speak at other universities or conferences. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea for you to be representing Harvard in that kind of capacity. I have noticed that you’ve stopped traveling for the most part, so maybe you’ve already recognized this.”

“Yes, I agree.”

“How do you want to handle telling the administrative faculty and people in the department? Again, I’ll respect your time line here, whatever you want to do.”

She was going to stop teaching, researching, traveling, and lecturing. People were going to notice. They were going to speculate and whisper and gossip. They were going to think she was a depressed, stressed-out addict. Maybe some of them already did.

“I’ll tell them. It should come from me.”

T
HE FIRST WEEK OF THE
fall semester, Marty took over Alice’s teaching responsibilities. When she met with him to hand over the syllabus and lecture materials, he hugged her and said how very sorry he was. He asked her how she was feeling and if there was anything he could do. She thanked him and told him she was feeling fine. And as soon as he had everything he needed for the course, he left her office as fast as he could.

Pretty much the same drill followed with everyone in the department.

“I’m so sorry, Alice.”

“I just can’t believe it.”

“I had no idea.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Are you sure? You don’t look any different.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Then they left her alone as quickly as possible. They were
politely kind to her when they ran into her, but they didn’t run into her very often. This was largely because of their busy schedules and Alice’s now rather empty one. But a not so insignificant reason was because they chose not to. Facing her meant facing her mental frailty and the unavoidable thought that, in the blink of an eye, it could happen to them. Facing her was scary. So for the most part, except for meetings and seminars, they didn’t.

T
ODAY WAS THE FIRST
P
SYCHOLOGY
Lunch Seminar of the semester. Leslie, one of Eric’s graduate students, stood poised and ready at the head of the conference table with the title slide already projected onto the screen. “Searching for Answers: How Attention Affects the Ability to Identify What We See.” Alice felt poised and ready as well, sitting in the first seat at the table, across from Eric. She began eating her lunch, an eggplant calzone and a garden salad, while Eric and Leslie talked, and the room filled in.

After a few minutes, Alice noticed that every seat at the table was occupied except for the one next to her, and people had begun taking up standing positions at the back of the room. Seats at the table were highly coveted, not only because the location made it easier to see the presentation but because sitting eliminated the awkward juggling of plate, utensils, drink, pen, and notebook. Apparently, that juggling was less awkward than sitting next to her. She looked at everyone not looking at her. About fifty people crowded into the room, people she’d known for many years, people she’d thought of as family.

Dan rushed in, his hair disheveled, his shirt untucked, wearing glasses instead of contact lenses. He paused for a
moment, then went straight for the open seat next to Alice and declared it his by plopping his notebook down on the table.

“I was up all night writing. Gotta get some food, be right back.”

Leslie’s talk ran the full hour. It took an excessive amount of energy, but Alice followed her to the end. After Leslie advanced past the last slide and the screen went blank, she opened up the floor to discussion. Alice went first.

“Yes, Dr. Howland,” said Leslie.

“I think you’re missing a control group that measures the actual distractibility of your distracters. You could argue that some, for whatever reason, simply aren’t noticed, and their mere presence isn’t distracting. You could test the ability of the subjects to simultaneously notice and attend to the distracter, or you could run a series where you swap out the distracter for the target.”

Many at the table nodded. Dan uh-huhed through a mouthful of calzone. Leslie grabbed her pen even before Alice finished her thought and took vigorous notes.