The Time Keeper

by Mitch Albom

  He was doing what man does when left with nothing.

  He was telling himself his own life story.

  27

  Lorraine knew there was a boy involved.

  Why else would her daughter have worn heels last night? She only hoped Sarah hadn’t picked a jerk like her father.

  Grace knew Victor was frustrated.

  He hated to lose. And it saddened her that this last fight, against a terminal illness, was destined to be a defeat.

  Lorraine heard the front door open, and Sarah, without a word, whisked upstairs to her room.

  It was how life worked between them now. They lived together but apart.

  Things were different even a few years ago. When Sarah was in eighth grade, a girl in gym class stuffed a volleyball under her shirt and, unaware Sarah was within earshot, cooed to a group of boys, “Hey, guys, I’m Sarah Lemon, can I have your French fries?” Sarah raced home crying and buried herself in her mother’s lap. Lorraine stroked her hair and said, “They should all be expelled, every one of them.”

  She missed being of comfort like that. She missed the way they once leaned on each other. She heard Sarah moving about upstairs and wanted to speak with her. But the door was always closed.

  Grace heard Victor return from his outing.

  “Ruth, he’s home,” she said into the phone, “let me call you back.”

  She came to the door and took his coat.

  “Where were you?”

  “The office.”

  “You had to go on Saturday?”

  “Yes.”

  He hobbled down the hallway, still using his cane. She didn’t ask about the manila folder under his arm. Instead she said, “Do you want some tea?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Something to eat?”

  “No.”

  She remembered a time when he’d kiss her at the door, lift her a few inches off the ground and spoil her with questions like “Where do you want to go this weekend? London? Paris?” Once, on the balcony of a seaside villa, she said she wished she’d met him earlier in life, and he said, “We’re gonna make up for that. We’re gonna live a long time together.”

  She reminded herself there were moments like that once, and that she had to be patient now, more compassionate; she could not know what he was feeling inside—the dwindling days, the impending death. However cranky or distant he got, she was determined to make the little time they had left more like the start of their life together, and less like the vast, joyless middle.

  She did not know, as Victor disappeared into his study, that he was thinking about another life altogether.

  28

  Mankind is connected in ways it does not understand—even in dreams.

  Just as Dor could hear voices from souls he could not see, so, too, on occasion, could a sleeping man or woman see his image from beyond.

  In the seventeenth century, a portrait of Queen Elizabeth featured a skeleton looking over one shoulder, and an old, bearded man looking over the other. The skeleton was meant to represent death, but the mysterious bearded figure was, the artist claimed, a symbol of time that had come to him in a dream.

  A nineteenth-century etching depicted another bearded man, this one holding an infant, symbolizing the New Year. No one knows why the artist chose this image. He also told colleagues he had seen it in a dream.

  In 1898, a bronze sculpture showed a more robust man, still bearded but bare-skinned and fit, holding a scythe and an hourglass and positioned over a giant clock in a rotunda. The model for this bearded man remains a mystery.

  But he was referred to as “Father Time.”

  And Father Time sits alone in a cave.

  He holds his chin in his hands.

  This is where our story began. From three children running up a hillside to this lonely space, a bearded man, a pool of voices, the stalactite now within a millimeter of the stalagmite.

  Sarah is in her room. Victor is in his study.

  It is this time. Right now.

  Our time on Earth.

  And Dor’s time to be free.

  FALLING

  29

  “What do you know about time?”

  Dor looked up.

  The old man had returned.

  On our calendar, it had been six thousand years. Dor gaped in disbelief. When he tried to speak, no sound came forth; his mind had forgotten the pathway to his voice.

  The old man stepped quietly about the cave, examining the walls with great interest. On them he saw every symbol imaginable—circle, square, oval, box, line, cloud, eye, lips—emblems for each moment Dor recalled from his life. This is when Alli threw the stone … This is when we walked to the great river … This is the birth of our son …

  The final symbol, in the bottom corner, was the shape of a teardrop, to forever remind Dor of the moment Alli lay dying on the blanket.

  The end of his story.

  At least to him.

  The old man bent down and stretched out his hand.

  He touched that carved teardrop, and it became an actual drop of water on his finger.

  He moved to where the stalactite and stalagmite had grown to within a razor’s edge of each other. He placed the teardrop between them and watched it turn to stone, connecting the two formations. They were one column now.

  Heaven meets Earth.

  Just as he had promised.

  Instantly, Dor felt himself rise from the floor, as if being pulled by strings.

  All his carved symbols lifted off the wall, moving across the cave like migrating birds, then shrinking into a tiny ring around the narrow throat that joined the rocky shapes together.

  With that, the stalactite and stalagmite crystallized into smooth, transparent surfaces—forming an upper bulb and a lower bulb—the shape of a giant hourglass.

  Inside was the whitest sand Dor had ever seen, extremely fine, almost liquid-like. It spilled through from top to bottom, yet the sand in each bulb neither grew nor diminished.

  “Herein lies every moment of the universe,” the old man said. “You sought to control time. For your penance, the wish is granted.”

  He tapped his staff on the hourglass and it formed a golden top and bottom with two braided posts. Then it shrank into the crook of Dor’s arm.

  He was holding time in his hands.

  “Go now,” the old man said. “Return to the world. Your journey is not yet complete.”

  Dor stared blankly.

  His shoulders slumped. Once, the very suggestion would have sent him running. But his heart was hollow. He wanted none of this anymore. Alli was gone, she would always be gone, a teardrop on a cave wall. What purpose could life—or an hourglass—serve him now?

  He brought a sound up from his chest and, in a faint whisper, finally spoke.

  “It is too late.”

  The old man shook his head. “It is never too late or too soon. It is when it is supposed to be.”

  He smiled. “There is a plan, Dor.”

  Dor blinked. The old man had never used his name before.

  “Return to the world. Witness how man counts his moments.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you began it. You are the father of earthly time. But there is still something you do not understand.”

  Dor touched his beard, which reached his waist. Surely he had survived longer than any man. Why was life not finished with him yet?

  “You marked the minutes,” the old man said. “But did you use them wisely? To be still? To cherish? To be grateful? To lift and be lifted?”

  Dor looked down. He knew the answer was no.

  “What must I do?” he asked.

  “Find two souls on earth, one who wants too much time and one who wants too little. Teach them what you have learned.”

  “How will I find them?”

  The old man pointed toward the pool of voices. “Listen for their misery.”

  Dor looked at the water. He thought about the billions of voices
that had wafted up through it.

  “What difference could two people make?”

  “You were one person,” the old man said. “And you changed the world.”

  He picked up the stone that Dor had used for his carvings. He crushed it into dust.

  “Only God can write the end of your story.”

  “God has left me alone,” Dor said.

  The old man shook his head. “You were never alone.”

  He touched Dor’s face and Dor felt new spirit filling his body, like water being poured into a cup. The old man began to fade away.

  “Remember this always: There is a reason God limits man’s days.”

  “What is the reason?”

  “Finish your journey and you will know.”

  30

  After Ethan’s cancellation, Sarah might have thought twice about another date.

  But a desperate heart will seduce the mind. And so, two weeks after the disappointment of the black-jeans-and-raspberry-T-shirt night, two weeks’ worth of boring science classes and nights eating dinner in front of the computer, Sarah tried again. She got up extra early on a shelter Saturday, 6:32 A.M., and dressed as if she were going to a party. She wore a low-cut blouse and a skirt that was just tight enough. She spent extra time on her face, even checking a few websites that gave tips on blush and eye shadow. She felt awkward, considering all the times she’d criticized her mother’s heavy makeup (“It’s like you’re screaming for attention,” Sarah would complain), but she justified her efforts because a boy like Ethan could have beautiful girls anytime, girls with even more makeup and even lower-cut blouses. If she wanted him, she had to change some habits.

  Anyhow, Lorraine was still sleeping.

  So Sarah slipped out, took her mother’s car, and drove to the shelter, feeling OK with her decision, until a few of the homeless men saw her, whistled, and said, “You look fine, young miss,” and she blushed and made up a story about an event she was going to later, and suddenly she felt ridiculous. What was she thinking? She was not the kind of girl who could pull this off. Luckily, she’d brought a sweater. She yanked it on.

  And then Ethan entered, a box under each arm. Caught off-guard, Sarah straightened up and ran a hand through her hair.

  “Lemon-ade,” he said, nodding.

  Did he like this look?

  “Hi, Ethan,” she said, trying to be casual, but feeling a rush all over again.

  31

  Victor sat at his desk, looking through the manila folder. He remembered what Jed, the cryonics man, had said two weeks ago.

  “Think of the freezing as a lifeboat to the future—when medicine is so advanced, curing your disease will be as simple as making an appointment.

  “All you have to do is get in the lifeboat, go to sleep, and wait for the rescue.”

  Victor rubbed his abdomen. To be rid of this cancer. To be free of dialysis. To live all over. As simple as making an appointment.

  He reviewed the process as Jed had explained it. The moment Victor was declared dead, his body would be covered in ice. A pump would keep his blood moving so it wouldn’t clot. Next, his bodily fluids would be replaced with cryoprotectant—a biological antifreeze—so that no ice could form inside his veins, a process called “vitrification.” As its temperature was continually lowered, his body would be placed inside a sleeping bag, then a computer-controlled cooling box, then a container where liquid nitrogen was gradually introduced.

  After five days, he would be moved to his final resting place, a giant fiberglass tank called a “cryostat”—also filled with liquid nitrogen—and lowered in headfirst, where he would remain suspended for, well, who knew?

  Until his lifeboat found the future.

  “So my corpse stays here?” Victor had asked Jed.

  “We don’t use the word ‘corpse.’”

  “What word do you use?”

  “‘Patient.’”

  Patient.

  It was easier when Victor thought of it that way. He was already a patient. This was just a different kind. A patient being patient. Like waiting on a long-range stock fund or enduring a negotiation with the Chinese, who always insisted on endless levels of paperwork. Patient. Although Grace might disagree, Victor could be patient when he had to be.

  And being frozen for decades, maybe centuries, in exchange for coming out the other side, ready to resume his life—well, that didn’t seem a bad trade.

  His time on Earth was almost up.

  But he could grab new time.

  He dialed a number on his phone.

  “Yeah, Jed, this is Victor Delamonte,” he said. “When can you come by my office?”

  32

  In the immeasurable centuries he spent inside the cave, Dor had tried every form of escape.

  Now he stood, the hourglass in his arms, and waited by the edge of the pool. He somehow knew this was his only way back.

  Could this really be over? he thought. This endless purgatory? What kind of world awaited him now? The Father of Time had no idea how long he’d been away.

  He thought about what the old man had said. Listen for their misery. He looked down at the glowing surface, shut his eyes, and heard two voices rise above the din, an older man and a younger woman:

  “Another lifetime.”

  “Make it stop.”

  Suddenly, a wind roared through the cave, and the walls lit as if splashed by a midday sun. Dor clasped the hourglass to his chest, stepped back, and leapt into the air above the pool, whispering the only word that ever truly gave him comfort.

  “Alli.”

  He fell right through.

  Dor descended in open air.

  His legs flipped over his head, then his head back over his legs, and he dropped quickly into a gleaming mist filled with light and colors. He saw fleeting views of bodies and faces, the men being shaken off of Nim’s tower; only they were going up and he was going down. He tightened his grip on the hourglass and sped into brighter light and deeper colors, the wind piercing his flesh like the blades of a rake, until he was sure he was being torn apart by the sheer velocity. He fell through bracing cold and searing heat, through blowing rain and swirling snow and then sand, sand, pelting sand, whipping sand, spinning him and cushioning him and finally dropping him the way sand dropped through his hourglass, a straight line until he came to a stop.

  The sand blew away.

  He felt himself hanging from something.

  He heard distant music and laughter.

  He was back on Earth.

  EARTH

  33

  Lorraine needed cigarettes.

  She pulled into a strip mall and passed a nail salon. She remembered taking Sarah here once, when she was eleven.

  “Can I have ruby-red polish?” Sarah asked.

  “Sure,” Lorraine said. “How about your toes?”

  “I can do them, too?”

  “Why not?”

  Lorraine watched Sarah’s amazed expression as a woman placed her feet in a small tub of water. She realized how little anyone doted on her daughter, what with Lorraine working and Tom always getting home late. When Sarah turned to her, beaming, and said, “I want whatever color toes you’re getting, Mom,” Lorraine vowed that they would do this more often.

  They never did. The divorce changed everything. Lorraine walked past the salon window and saw many empty chairs, but she knew Sarah would rather be arrested these days than sit next to her mother for a manicure.

  Grace needed groceries.

  She could have written a list, sent someone from the staff. “You don’t need to do chores,” Victor always told her. But over time, she realized the tasks that swallowed many people’s days only left a hole in hers. Gradually, she took them back.

  She moved her cart up the supermarket aisles now, taking celery, tomatoes, and cucumbers from the produce department. In the last few months she had resumed cooking to prepare healthy meals for Victor—nothing processed, everything organic—hoping to buy him more time
through a better diet. It was a small gesture, she knew, a stick against the wind. But all she had to cling to was hope.

  A healthy salad tonight, she told herself. But as she passed the ice cream freezer, she grabbed a pint of mint chocolate chip, Victor’s favorite. If he wanted a moment’s indulgence, she would have that ready, too.

  34

  It was a December festival in a small Spanish town.

  Street musicians gathered in the plaza, amid tables loaded with tapas of shrimp, anchovies, potatoes. A fountain in the plaza’s center contained coins thrown by hopeful lovers. Visitors sat on the edge and dangled their feet in the water.

  Hanging near that fountain, from a plywood base, was a life-sized papier-mâché mannequin of a bearded man holding an hourglass. EL TIEMPO, the sign read. FATHER TIME. Beneath it was a plastic yellow bat.

  Every few minutes, someone walked by and swatted the mannequin with that bat. It was tradition. Whack out the old year, welcome in the new. Onlookers yelled, “Ooyay! Ooyay!” and laughed and toasted.

  A little boy broke free of his mother’s grip and ran to the mannequin. He lifted the bat and looked for approval.

  “OK … OK …,” his mother yelled, waving.

  Just then, the sun emerged from behind a cloud, and a strange light cloaked the village. A sudden wind blew sand across the plaza. The boy paid it no mind. He brought the bat around full force on the papier-mâché figure.

  Whack!

  Its eyes opened.

  The boy screamed.

  Dor, hanging from a plywood wall, felt a twinge in his side.

  His eyes opened.

  A little boy screamed.

  The scream so jolted Dor that he jerked backward and his robe ripped off two nails from which it hung. He fell to the ground, dropping the hourglass.

  The boy’s scream suddenly stopped. Actually it held and faded, like a long trumpet note. Dor scrambled to his feet. The world around him had just slowed to a dreamlike state. The boy’s face was locked in mid-scream. His yellow bat hung in the air. People at a fountain were pointing but not moving.