Grafton
Grafton gave some money to the homeless man on the corner of Church and Brant. It wasn’t something he would normally do, but it was cold out and starting to snow, and the man looked frigid and pitiful. So Grafton paused as he passed him and reached into his pocket and fished out a handful of change. He bent down and put it in the man’s Styrofoam cup on the sidewalk.
The man leaned forward and peered into the cup. Then he looked up at Grafton. “Thank you,” he said.
Grafton straightened. “Merry Christmas,” he said. He started to walk away. The man said something behind him and Grafton stopped and looked back. The man was looking at him, somehow strange and familiar.
“It’s malignant,” he said. He smiled a twisted kind of smile. “She’s going to tell you tonight.”
Grafton stared at the man and his cup on the ground. For a moment he wanted to kick the man, or reach into his Styrofoam cup and take his money back. But he stared at the man’s face and his triumphant eyes, and then he straightened his shoulders. “Screw off,” he said.
The man cackled behind him as he walked to the crosswalk and over to the parking garage. Grafton gripped his coat tighter and hurried his step. He must have overheard something as I walked by this morning, he thought.
Michelle was waiting for him in the kitchen. She looked up from her coffee as he came in from the garage. “It’s bad news,” she said. Her eyes were swollen and dark.
Grafton stared at her. He leaned against the doorframe and rubbed his hand over his face.
His wife sipped her coffee. “Come sit.”
Grafton forced himself to walk into the kitchen. He pulled out a chair and sat down across from her, and he reached out and put his hand on her own. “Tell me what they said,” he said. “Tell me everything.”
“It’s malignant,” she said. “They have to run some more tests, but-”
“Can they treat it?”
She shook her head. “They don’t think so. They’re not sure yet.”
He squeezed her hand and leaned forward. “What are the chances?” he said. “The survival rates. How much time do we have?”
“They’re not sure yet, Aaron,” she said. She finished her coffee and put down the empty mug. “They said if I’m lucky it’s one chance in three.”
Grafton stared at her. He said nothing. He felt his heart pounding inside his chest and he felt his whole body starting to shake. He stared at his wife and said nothing.
Michelle bit her lip. She looked up at him. “What am I going to tell my parents?” she said, and she started to cry.
The homeless man was still there in the morning. He’d wrapped himself up in an old sleeping bag and he didn’t look like he’d moved overnight. There was a thin dusting of snow on the sidewalk and the sleeping bag and the man’s ragged toque. Grafton crossed over from the parking garage and walked up to the man. He nudged the sleeping bag with his toe.
“Hey,” he said. “Wake up.”
The man snored and snorted, and then he rolled over. He rubbed his eyes and looked up at Grafton. He grinned, and his bleary eyes seemed to clear up. “Good morning,” he said.
Grafton wanted to kick the smile off of his face. “How did you know?” he said. “About the biopsy? Did you hear me say something, or what?”
The man’s grin seemed to widen. He gathered the sleeping bag around him and sat up. “This is your chance,” he said. “You get to choose.”
“How did you know?”
“Give me a dollar,” said the man.
Grafton stared at him. He looked so damned familiar. The man looked around for his cup and placed it on the ground in front of Grafton. Grafton looked at it a minute and then sighed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a dollar. “Merry Christmas,” said the man.
“Tell me,” said Grafton. “Tell me how you knew.”
The man smiled at Grafton for a moment. “Imagine you could save your wife’s life,” he said. “Would you do it?”
“Of course I would do it,” said Grafton. “I love her.”
The man’s smile got wider. “What if saving her meant you could never see her again?” he said. “What if it meant she would forget that she knew you?”
Grafton looked up and down the block. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Is this some kind of game?”
“This is your chance,” said the man. “You get to choose. Your wife will die if you let her. The cancer is too advanced to treat. You can save her, if you choose to, but saving her will erase any memory of you from her mind. Your lives will play out as if you never met.”
Grafton shook his head. “Why?” he said. “Why me?”
The man grinned up at him. “You were kind to a stranger,” he said. “This is your kindness repaid.” He reached into the folds of his sleeping bag and came out with something in his hand. He leaned forward and took Grafton’s hand, and he put the object in Grafton’s hand and closed his fingers around it.
Grafton looked down at the object. It was a little brass bell, tarnished and damaged. He looked back at the homeless man. “Ring that bell to call me,” the man told him. “When you’ve made your decision.”
Grafton looked at the bell in his hand. Then he looked at the man in his mountain of rags. “I have to go to work,” he said.
Grafton sat in his desk at his office, staring at the brass bell. What nonsense, he thought. That old man’s some kind of nuts. But he’d held onto the bell and he’d stared at it and toyed with it most of the day. He couldn’t erase the man from his mind.
He looked past the bell onto the pictures on his desk. Michelle in the first one, then the two of them, their wedding picture a decade or so back. Grafton looked at the pictures, the smiles on his wife’s face. He sat back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling and breathed in and out, slowly.
This cannot be happening, he thought. There has to be some way to treat this.
He looked at the bell again. The old man is crazy, he thought. No doubt about it. “Ring that bell to call me,” he’d said. Well, alright, thought Grafton. We’ll prove that he’s crazy and then we’ll move on.
He rang the bell. It made a flat, metal sound when he shook it. At first, nothing happened.
Grafton sat there for a moment. He looked out through his office door into the hallway. The office was quiet. Nothing had happened.
Then his phone rang.
Grafton swore and jumped forward, nearly falling out of his chair. He swore again. Calm down, he thought. He picked up the phone.
“Mr. Grafton?” It was Sandy, the receptionist. “There’s someone here to see you,” she said. “By the door.”
The old man was waiting by the elevators. He’d brought the sleeping bag with him. Sandy was staring at him from her desk. She looked at Grafton as he walked into the lobby. “Mr. Grafton?” she said.
Grafton stared at the old man. The old man grinned back. “It’s okay,” said Grafton. “I know this guy, Sandy.”
They rode the elevators down to street level. “What are you doing here?” said Grafton.
The old man looked at him. “You called me,” he said. “Have you made your decision?”
The elevator reached the lobby and the doors slid open. “You must have heard something,” said Grafton. “You overheard me talking about Michelle yesterday and today you saw me ring the bell through the window. This is some stupid game and I don’t want to play it.”
“This isn’t a game,” said the man. “You’ve been given a choice.”
Grafton stared at him. “Prove it.”
The old man looked at him. “Get back on the elevator,” he said.
Grafton looked back at the bank of elevators. Then he shrugged. “Fine.”
He followed the old man into the elevator. The man pressed the button for the building’s top floor and the doors slid shut again. The old man hummed to himself as the elevator climbed. Grafton stared at his reflection in the door.
The elevator slowed and came to a stop. The old man winked at Grafton and the doors slid open. Grafton started to walk out of the car. Then he stopped.
He’d been to the top floor of the building before. It was similar to his own floor. Offices, a lobby, a waiting room. Potted plants. This was not where he’d been in the past. He looked back at the man. “Where are we?”
The old man gestured forward and Grafton looked out of the elevator again. It was an apartment, a penthouse. The doors opened onto a massive living room and beyond, tall floor-to-ceiling views of the city. Grafton heard voices around a corner somewhere. “What is this?” he said.
The man winked at him. “Wait.”
A man came into the living room, tall and well dressed and handsome. He looked back at where he’d come from and said something and then Grafton stepped back because Michelle was there.
She was dressed in a black cocktail gown and her hair was highlighted and done up in some expensive style. There were diamonds in her earrings and she was wearing high heels. She said something to the man, and he laughed. Then she glanced over at the elevator and saw Grafton and frowned.
“How did you get here?” she said. “This is a private floor.”
“Michelle,” said Grafton. “It’s me.”
Michelle glanced back at the man. The man looked at her and then Grafton. He started toward them. “Do you know this man?” he said.
Grafton watched as his wife shook her head.
“I’m her husband,” said Grafton. “It’s me.”
The old homeless man pushed a button and the elevator doors started to close. Grafton leaned forward. “It’s me,” he said. The doors closed in his face. “I’m her husband.”
Grafton stared at the man as the elevator brought them down to the street. The old man smiled back. “You wanted proof you can save her,” he said.
“Why didn’t she know me?” said Grafton.
“You can save your wife,” said the man, “if you give her up first.”
Grafton stared at the man. The elevator seemed to fall faster. “You mean she really didn’t know me,” he said. “That was her life if we’d never met. That’s what you’re trying to tell me.”
The man shrugged. “Every life is one thread of a million possibilities.”
Grafton leaned against the elevator wall. He looked up at the ceiling and he tried to breathe. “What about my life?” he said. “What happens to me?”
“If you choose to save her, you erase yourself from her life,” said the man. “You will have never met her. You will forget her, and she’ll have no idea you exist.”
The elevator slowed and then stopped. The doors slid open again in the lobby. The old man gathered his sleeping bag and stepped out of the car. “Ring that bell to call me,” he said. “When you’ve made your decision.”
The house was dark when Grafton pulled into the driveway. He stepped out of his car and stared in at the empty black windows. The wind seemed to howl and the snow billowed around him.
He sat in the dark kitchen until Michelle came home. He heard the garage door open and close and then Michelle came into the kitchen. She turned on the light and looked at him. “Another doctor,” she said. “I left you a note.”
Grafton looked at the table and saw the note. He looked back at his wife. Her hair was shoulder-length brown and she was wearing her ski jacket and jeans. She smiled weakly at him and sat down and looked tired. “How was your day?”
He looked at her and shrugged. “What did the doctor say?” he said.
She looked down at the table. She shook her head. “It’s not good news,” she said. She reached for his hand and squeezed it and she looked up into his eyes. “He said maybe a month.”
Grafton stared up at the ceiling as Michelle read beside him. Maybe a month, he thought. One month left. Fifteen years gone. He stared up at the ceiling and tried to breathe slow.
Michelle put down her book and looked at him. “What are you thinking?”
Grafton looked at her. “What if there was a way to save you?” he said. “Except we would have to give everything up.”
Michelle frowned. She sat up. “I don’t get it.”
“If we had to give up everything,” said Grafton. “This life together, the memories. If we had to give it all up. What if that would save you?”
She stared at him. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Grafton shook his head. “It’s no joke.”
“Aaron, I didn’t get this disease because of something we did,” said Michelle. “This thing didn’t happen because we’re bad people.”
“Humor me,” said Grafton. “What if it was me instead? Would you let me die just to save what we had?”
His wife shook her head. “This is stupid,” she said.
“I met a guy,” Grafton told her. “He told me I could save you. I know it sounds stupid, but I think maybe he’s telling the truth.”
“Aaron,” she said. She looked at him again and her eyes were bright and wet and sharp. “I don’t want to hear this shit. You can’t fix this. Your friend can’t fix this. This is the way it’s going to be and we have to accept it.”
Grafton looked at her. Then he put his arm around her and pulled her close to him. “Okay,” he said.
He lay awake for a long time after she’d turned out the light. He lay there in bed and then he sat up and leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. He went downstairs to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. Then he sat at the table in the dark and he thought about things.
He thought about the first awkward blind date they had ever been on. And the second date, which was better. He remembered her laughing and that blue top she was wearing. He remembered holding hands in the snow.
He remembered the wedding and how nervous he was. The vacation to Niagara Falls in the winter and how she’d shivered in the mist. He looked around the kitchen and he remembered the day they’d bought the house, how scared they were and how broke.
He remembered how they’d redone the kitchen countertops and the floor, how they’d painted the spare bedroom that bright lemon yellow. He remembered how she’d cried when they sold the crib and the car seat.
He remembered, and he felt his chest tighten, and he wiped his face with his hand and stared at his old graying reflection in the back window.
He stared at his reflection for a while.
He thought about the Michelle he’d seen downtown that day, the penthouse apartment and the tall, handsome man and the smile on her face when she made the man laugh. He thought about how happy she looked, and healthy and vibrant, and he wished he could have made her that way.
He rinsed out his glass and set it out to dry and he went back upstairs to the bedroom. He sat on the bed in the dark and listened to his wife breathe and he let his eyes get accustomed to the darkness. He watched his wife sleep for a while.
He watched her sleeping, her breathing shallow and labored, her small body frail and sick. He watched her for a long time and he tried to force himself to remember.
Then he kissed her forehead again. He stood and walked to the closet and pulled out the brass bell from his pants pocket. He sat down on the bed and he cradled the bell. He looked at his wife and he rang it.
At first, like before, nothing happened.