Still Alice

Alice enters her office with one of her graduate students, Dan, right behind her. Dan is working on his thesis research and Alice is helping him edit and revise his research paper. Alice gives Dan his rough draft with handwritten notes in the margins and he asks her what the reference is for one of her notes. Alice is typically very quick to remember the details of the different scientific studies, but she struggles to remember this one. Eventually, however, she does remember it and Dan leaves her office to go revise his paper.

Alice turns to her to-do list and sees the next item says “Eric,” but she can’t remember what it means. She searches her email for a clue but can’t find one. Frustrated, she throws out the to-do list and makes a new one that includes calling the doctor. These types of “disturbances” with her memory are happening more frequently now and she decides she can no longer put off seeing a doctor.

Alice and John walk together to a restaurant for Alice’s 50th birthday dinner. Their daughter, Anna, and her husband, Charlie, are already there. Both Anna and Charlie are successful lawyers at a major law firm. Alice notices that Anna is holding a martini, which means that Anna is not pregnant yet even though she’s been trying to conceive. Alice thinks Anna should wait because pregnancy might disrupt her career, but Anna insists on starting a family right away.

Alice’s worry for Anna’s career if she gets pregnant is rooted in her own experience. She thinks back to the time when she was starting her family and how difficult that made it for her to succeed at work. Alice had seen other women with “promising careers” lose them when they started having children and remembers how difficult it was for her to see John, her “intellectual equal,” flourish in his career while hers slowed down. Alice doubts that John would be as successful as he is if their roles were reversed.

Alice, John, Anna, and Charlie all exchange pleasantries while they wait for Tom, to arrive. Tom, Alice’s son, is in his third year of medical school at Harvard, studying to become a thoracic surgeon. Once Tom arrives, they are seated and talk turns to Lydia. Anna takes “transparent pleasure” in the fact that Lydia is not in college because it makes Anna “the smartest, most successful Howland daughter.” She asks if Lydia’s been cast in anything yet and John tells her about a play he’d seen her in. This reminds Alice that John is paying for Lydia’s acting workshops and reminds herself to talk to him about it later.

Tom asks John about a “tagging experiment” John is working on. John immediately dives into the conversation and Alice remembers back to when John used to talk this enthusiastically to her about his research. It has been a long time since he’s talked with her in so much detail about his job, and she realizes she only knows the “barest skeleton” of what he is doing. She wonders who got bored with these discussions first, “he in the telling, or she in the listening.”

Dinner is brought out and they all enjoy it together, ending with an “off-key” performance of “Happy Birthday” and Alice blowing out the candle in a piece of warm cake. John wishes Alice a happy birthday and toasts her “next fifty years.”

Alice goes to the restroom and looks in the mirror. At 50 years old, Alice doesn’t feel like she is “old” yet, but notices that her “golden brown eyes appeared tired even though she was fully rested, and the texture of her skin appeared duller, looser.” She knows she is aging, but she feels “young, strong, and healthy” aside from the memory lapses. Her image in the mirror makes her think of her mother, who died when she was only 41, and her sister, who would have been 48 now.

When Alice sits on the toilet, she notices she’s started her period and she begins to consider the possibility that her symptoms are not menopause-related, but potentially something much more serious. Terrified, Alice begins sobbing in the bathroom. Anna hears her, knocks on the door, and asks if she’s okay.