Still Alice

Alice stops in the Mount Auburn Manor Nursing Center, where, under the guise of a daughter planning for a parent, she takes a tour of the facilities for Alzheimer’s patients. The woman at the facility compliments her on her butterfly necklace, which was passed down to Alice after Alice’s mother’s death, and which she had only recently begun wearing in casual settings. When they enter the Alzheimer’s ward, a resident demands that Alice give her back her money; the caretaker explains that the woman has a twenty-dollar bill that she keeps hidden, but she also keeps forgetting the hiding place, so she continually believes the bill to be stolen. Eventually, she explains, the woman will forget the bill exists entirely.

The caretaker takes Alice to the common room, where many of the residents are eating lunch. She explains that most of their activities and their meals are taken at the same times daily in that room, as routine is helpful to them. Alice notes that most of the residents are women; one non-resident man, Harold, comes to eat with his wife every day, and apart from him, there are only two men in the ward, who, “reverting to the cootie rules of childhood…[sit] together at their own table, apart from the women” (113).