The wizard lived down the street from me, on the other side of the intersection without stop signs, in a quiet house with red trim. Wildflowers speckled the overgrown lawn, wilting under another wet Georgia summer. Things could die in this heat.
Sweating under my arms, I rapped on the door, which swung open to reveal a gray-bearded man, knobbly as an old tree. Eyes wrinkling against the sunlight, he smiled a knowing smile, as if he’d been expecting me to knock at exactly this time. “Don’t give me your name,” he said. “It’s more difficult that way.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.” Behind me, a car zoomed past. I felt a familiar urge to drop what I was doing and petition the county for road markers, but my business with the wizard was more important. “Can we get this over with?”
The old man chuckled like I’d made a joke. “It won’t be pleasant, you know.” But he stepped aside, ushering me into the house.
No lights on. The place was black and cluttered. A certain dampness. The sense of having entered a cave in winter.
Then—the rip-flash of a match, like a tiny Big Bang. The smell of a pipe: a red cherry pulsing. “Take a seat if you’d like,” came the old man’s voice from the shadows.
I groped for a chair, and the room began to take shape: a table dripping with half-melted candles, a carpet puckered with burns, a bookshelf crammed with dusty leather tomes, and… was that a bundle of scrolls?
The ember of the wizard’s pipe floated toward me. A firefly in the night. “I suppose you’ve made all the necessary arrangements?” The old man sat down across from me, puffing until the darkness between us filled with smoke. I was reminded of my grandfather, who’d always had a pipe in hand…
No, don’t start remembering things again.
I cleared my throat with what I hoped was the right amount of forwardness. “How much is this going to cost?”
“You need not pay me. You’ll be paying enough as it is.” The wizard’s brow furrowed, digging trenches across his forehead. He struck another match and lit the candles. “You do understand… I cannot simply make you forget some of it. The spell gets rid of all of it. Everything.”
Like a ripcord, that word—“everything”—spun my memories into their usual whirlwind. “That’s what I need,” I said, sounding steadier than I felt. “All of it—gone.”
“Isn’t there anyone you would miss?” He exhaled another cloud, ignoring me when I coughed. “You’ll basically be a child. You’ll need to be taken care of. It might be years before you learn to speak again, to walk. There’s a chance you’ll never fully recover.”
“I’ve planned accordingly.”
With a wheezing sigh, the old man hobbled over to a window. He heaved away the mothy curtains, letting daylight flood the room. My eyes fell to the cushioned wicker chair on the porch outside, where neighborhood cats would often bask in the bright swampy heat. But now the chair was empty, waiting in a ray of sunshine.
“Why throw it all away?” asked the wizard.
With those words, the candles on the table snuffed out, inexplicably and all at once.
I swallowed nervously. “I’m not going to just tell you about my trauma.”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do. If I must remove you from yourself, I need to know why.” He searched my face with eyes as cold as his cave of a house. “Consider it my payment, if you’d like.”
I watched thin wisps of smoke rising from dead candles. How quickly a flame could die. “All right. You want to hear my waking nightmare…?”
And I told him all of it.
Afterward, an hourglass on the bookshelf trickled to its end; the old man flipped it over, starting it again. He stood with bony hands clasped behind him, perusing the leather spines of his library as if, after hearing my tragedy, he’d thought of a book he wanted to recommend. But eventually he just sat down again and dutifully contributed to the silence.
The darkness of the house had blended with the yellow light of day until a truce between warm and cold was found. Outside, another car sped noisily through the unmarked intersection.
“I’m sorry I asked you to explain it,” said the wizard finally, softly.
“It’s all right.” I sniffled, sitting in my tears, my shame. “Now please, do it.”
He seemed surprised. “You still want me to make you forget?”
“Didn’t you just hear everything I told you?”
“I heard you relive something you thought was too painful to face,” said the old man, “and yet, that’s exactly what you’ve done.” My anger shook me, but he laid a hand over mine, radiating a spell of calm. “Don’t you see? You can work through this. I can’t promise the pain will ever go away. But it grows dull with time.”
“I only want everything to be over,” I said, horrified by the truth of it.
“I don’t think that’s what you want.” The wizard cracked a sad grin. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt if we introduce ourselves after all.”
“You’re asking for my name now?”
“I’m asking whether you’ve chosen to keep it.”
I walked over to the window. The sun bled through the peach tree in the yard, painting me into a red box. Another brilliantly humid day. The heat through the glass baked my wet cheeks.
Before I knew I’d made a decision, the wizard said, with relief, “I believe that’s wise.” And his eyes no longer looked so frozen. They were the eyes of another man entirely. Smiling eyes which I recognized. A perfect, striking copy, down to the wrinkles in the corners.
The magic only lasted an instant, but in that flash I’d seen my grandfather again.
When I left the wizard’s house I was lost in my head. My legs guided me toward the road, squishing rotten peaches underfoot. I felt as if the old man had infected me with something. The evening was a heavy haze. The salt of sweat on my lips. A buzzing-quiet day. Perhaps it was time to move out of this small-town swamp, this soggy way of life. Find a new home. Start over, but not completely over, no. Best not to forget certain moments… people…
I realized, belatedly, I wasn’t crying anymore.
At the intersection, a car flew past. I waited at the curb, looking both ways, then turned to gaze upon the wizard’s house again, with its red trim and wild lawn. Peaches all over the deck, staining the wood in gory clumps. That cushioned wicker chair, still waiting for someone. That tree pluming in the yard, aflame in the dying light…
I breathed, and was alive again. Perhaps not again—perhaps for the first time. I imagined my grandfather rocking in that chair on the porch, and the memories sliced me like razors but I gave into their sting, allowing myself to smile. I would visit the wizard again, I decided. Not to have my brain wiped, but to thank him, for showing me who I still recognized.
Happiness was possible. I did want to remember.
Stepping into the intersection without looking, I was still smiling when I heard the screech of tires—
“Squeeze my finger if you can hear me.” The kind, patient voice sounded like it had said these words before.
Floating in nothingness, I squeezed a stranger’s finger.
“That’s good. Really good. Can you open your eyes?”
Slowly, I opened them. A face, out of focus. Heaven shining brightly from a surgical lamp overhead.
“Amazing,” said the blurry angel with the patient voice, “you’re doing great, Cathy.”
A hammering pain in my skull. A feeling of acute illness.
I asked, “Who’s Cathy?”