Running the Rift (49 page)

Softly, Jean Patrick kissed the ink. He was sitting on a step, although he did not remember the act of sitting. The dim light of the hallway quivered in the folds of his parka. The sound of footsteps came to him slowly, a steady musical
clup,
pause,
clup.

“Dear, are you all right?”

His upstairs neighbor, Mrs. Greenbaum, peered into his face. Seated, he barely had to look up into the hazel of her eyes. She balanced two heavy shopping bags. Jean Patrick guessed her to be eighty years old, and yet she walked to the store and up three flights of stairs daily.

“Yes, Mrs. G., thank you. I am fine.”

She set down a bag and patted his arm before continuing up the steps. The song of her boots faded and then became silence.

Jean Patrick stared down at his open suitcase. It had been snowing since early evening, and as midnight came and went, the snow still fell. His clothes were neatly folded, his presents for Auntie Spéciose, Uncle Damien, and the little cousins protected by sweatshirts and pants.

From Susanne and Jonathan, he had an album of photos to give to Bea. The pictures were all from Jean Patrick's new life. Jean Patrick leaping from a sand dune on Cape Cod, waving in front of the Green Building at MIT, his first snow, his first Red Sox game, Red Sox cap cocked over one eye and beer and hot dog in hand. Susanne and her pregnant belly.

“What do you think?” Susanne had asked him.

“I think it's OK. I think she will want to have them.” But then he had wondered if the want was more his—pushing himself back into her life.

Rwanda, all the pictures from Easter, had been neatly excised. It had been only in the past year that he had found the strength to look at those himself.

He put his economic geology book into his backpack. Midterms were the week after he returned. With his thick sweaters and all his running gear, he worried about the weight. He took the album out. Flipping through the pages, he stopped at a picture of himself and Jonathan finishing a 5K, their joined hands held high. It had taken courage to sign up for his first race in his new life, courage to run without expectations. Standing at the start line, all those people crowded together, he had nearly panicked and walked away. Then, out of nowhere, Coach's voice had come to him:
Your mind will tell your body what to do.
A mixture of profound grief and a sense of nostalgia that felt almost like joy filled him. He was able to relax, to tell himself again that he was doing this for fun. But as soon as the horn sounded, his muscles fired with the mad surge that instinct brought to his legs, and Jonathan had had to call him back.

“Whoa, J. P.!” Jonathan shouted. “Run as one, right?” They had made a pact.

Far removed from the few at the front who cared about placing, it seemed so strange: no tight pack jockeying for position, no serious race faces. A jubilant tumult of noise instead of silence broken only by the
slap-slap
of eight pairs of shoes. So Jean Patrick had settled into an easy pace beside Jonathan and let the festive air of his fellow runners infect
him. And after the initial blow of finishing midpack in his age group, he let that go as well.

It was a lot easier than it had been to watch that first Olympics, his physical and emotional wounds so close to the skin's surface. He had wedged himself between Jonathan and Susanne, squeezing the edge of the couch so tightly that he could barely uncurl his fingers when the eight-hundred final was finished. Although Gilbert hadn't qualified, a Kenyan came in third, and Jean Patrick was genuinely happy to see an African medal.

The next picture was of Kweli, taken shortly after Jonathan and Susanne arrived home. She was in midstride, running through tall grass. Suddenly, Jean Patrick was supplicant by the side of the bed, cold sweat trickling from his armpits.

He was back in Jonathan's office, face pressed to the window, watching Bea on the grass with the puppy, then seeing her shirtless in the window's light, shadows tattooed across her breasts. With a vividness so sharp it cut, he tasted her salt on his tongue, felt the warmth of being inside her.

And then gone. He repacked the album, drew himself up, and wiped his face with the edge of his sweatshirt, dried his clammy fingers. Beside the suitcase was a small white box. Inside the box was a gold cross, and its resemblance to the first was uncanny—the delicate plaited chain was nearly identical. The thought of putting this gift into her hand terrified him. Maybe she believed God had abandoned her. Maybe she had abandoned Him.

O
N THE PLANE
, Jean Patrick opened his eyes and let them adjust to the darkened cabin. He could not say if he had slept. Beyond the window, running lights pierced the dark. The engines droned, a comforting hum in his head. He turned on the overhead light and checked his watch; in five hours' time he would see her.

Once more, he took the letters and the card out of his knapsack. He had read them so many times he was afraid they would disintegrate in his fingers. With each reading, he pulled the lines apart and put them back together again. Still, he couldn't find the hidden ones that whispered, I have my health and there is no one else. Of course the first was most important, but he couldn't stop himself from asking for both. He felt like someone bargaining at the market. But if—God forbid—he could have
only the second, he would seize the chance. He would cup each moment he had with her in his palms, a precious gift.

It seemed unlikely that no one else had claimed her. In his moments of doubt, he cursed himself for his spontaneous travel plans. More than once he had held the phone in his hand to cancel his reservations. But even if Bea turned out to be an impossible dream, it was time to stand on the earth where his family had lived and hear for himself the stories of the bones. He had just needed this one push to see him through his fear.

He had written Bea that he would be going to Cyangugu, but he had not asked her to accompany him. He did not want to leave her in the uncomfortable position of refusing. When he had requested the name of a Kigali hotel so he could make a reservation, she told him she would take care of it. She had not offered to open her home to him. He put the letters back in his bag and pressed the pair of socks to ensure that the cross still nestled inside them. In the end, he had to keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other.

He maneuvered into the aisle to stretch his legs. Slowly he made circles with his foot: clockwise first, then counterclockwise. Sitting for long periods of time made him feel like an old man, his ankle perpetually stiff and prone to swelling. After what the doctors had told him, he was thankful he could run at all. If he had found a doctor immediately, the damage might have been repaired, they said. A chance he could have healed completely and even competed again.
If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a trolley car,
Susanne liked to say. Jean Patrick rubbed out his Achilles tendon and headed for the back of the plane. He wondered if Bea would notice right away the slight favoring of his right leg.

In the galley, a stewardess loaded a cart with drinks, and Jean Patrick asked her for a water. He took the bottle and held it to his cheek a moment, letting the cold sink in. The electric jolt when he drank made him wince. Two weeks ago, he had bitten into a bagel and broken off a fresh fragment from his chipped tooth. He had meant to get the tooth fixed, had been meaning to get it capped for years, but the high-pitched whine of the dentist's drill left him breathless and faint, the sound too close to the whistles. There was always a reason to put it off. At least this way, Bea would recognize him when he smiled.

I
T WAS MORNING
when Jean Patrick awoke, the lustrous African light penetrating his eyelids. Clean clothes tucked under his arm, he headed for the bathroom to wash up and brush his teeth. The seatbelt sign was on when he emerged, and he squeezed back into his seat. He took deep breaths and tried to relax into the first dizzying moments of descent.

Beneath the wing, a verdant landscape tilted. Soon his country would take shape from the blurred geology. Terraced hillsides would rise to his sight. At this time of year, the green was intense enough to damage him. He wondered what remained of Cyangugu. He wondered if children still waded into the waters to wash, if women brought basins of clothes to launder, if fishermen still sang the old songs when they returned from fishing. Jean Patrick brought his seat to the full upright position and prepared himself for landing. Lake Kivu gleamed beneath him—windswept, bejeweled. His longing for his family left a cavernous space inside him. He had heard that during the genocide, the bodies in the lake were so thick you could have walked across them to Zaire.

J
EAN
P
ATRICK CLEARED
customs and stared through the glass at the crowded lobby below. After the third sweep, he panicked: Bea was not there. I never should have come, he thought. He shouldered his knapsack, waited for his suitcase, and then walked to the tourist information booth. His ankle hurt, and his head felt packed with cotton. He made a mental plan for an immediate journey home.

“Nkuba Jean Patrick, you said?”

Jean Patrick nodded, too shaky to speak another word. “Let me see if there is a message for you.”

The woman behind the window shuffled sleepily through a sheaf of papers. “You are to wait by the door. Your friend has been delayed because of an accident.” Quickly she gave him a sympathetic smile. “Don't worry,” she added. “She was not involved.”

He pushed through the bustle of travelers and luggage and stood in the long line to change money. His foot jiggled as he waited impatiently for his turn. I've become American, he thought, always in a hurry.

He had pocketed the colorful bills and was threading his way through
the crowd when he heard the voice. “Mana yanjye! Nkuba, you haven't changed one bit. Even the sneakers are the same.”

The bright timbre of words crashed through the years of lost time. He gripped the handle of his bag to steady himself. Then he turned around to greet Bea.

She was a flash of morning color: a cream-yellow pagne with red roses, a billowy orange blouse, gold sandals, thin strapped and glittery. The neck of her blouse was high, so he could not see if she wore a necklace. Her hair was straight, an ear-length bob, and her trademark gold hoop earrings swung with her step. She was thinner—yes—but she did not look unhealthy. In truth, she looked radiant, if possible more beautiful than he remembered. If possible, as if every instant of time since he had last seen her had merely glanced off the coppery shield of her skin.

“A
RE YOU EXHAUSTED
?” Bea opened the trunk of her tiny car—a Toyota, Jean Patrick noticed—and he put his bag inside.

Since his landing, the weather had turned; an anemic sun poked through a sky messy with charcoal clouds. The airport was high on a hill. Kigali unraveled, a multicolored skein, below them.

“How could I be?” he said. “I am looking at you.”

“Soon you can have a sleep, but I wanted to welcome you properly first, and I am not much of a cook. That gift I did not inherit from my mother.” Bea unlocked the car door, and he climbed inside, into the lap of her perfume. “Would you mind if I take you for lunch?” she said. “The place is not much to look at, but each time I go, I am reminded of the Murakazaneza.”

At the mention of the restaurant where they had eaten together, Jean Patrick felt a yearning stir. Gingerly he put a toe into the river of the past. “I would like that,” he said. “Nothing in Boston comes close.” As if searching for a wallet or a piece of gum, he put his hand into his knapsack and found the pair of socks. With the tip of his finger, he felt the square corner of the box that contained the cross.

T
HE RESTAURANT WAS
noisy, packed with a lunchtime crowd. Their table was small, covered with a shabby white cloth, and the plates
of brochettes and chips, isombe, green bananas, and beans took up most of the space. Jean Patrick inhaled the rich aromas and sank back against the chair. He did not know what to do with his long legs, his hands, his power of speech.

Bea spooned isombe onto their plates, and Jean Patrick closed his eyes with the first taste. His childhood floated before him in all its olfactory richness. He had bought the packets of dried cassava leaves in the States and tried to fix it for himself, but it wasn't the same. Even at the homes of his Rwandan friends who were excellent cooks, some important taste was always missing. “Biraryoshye cyane,” he said. It's so good. He watched her expression carefully, but his exploration into shared memory went unanswered. He could not crack the mask of her face.

Over lunch, Jean Patrick told Bea a little of his life in Boston, his studies, his desire to go on for a PhD. She spoke of her work with the women, her plans to further her education as well. All around them was the sound of silverware clacking, plates and pots banging, a constant surge and ebb of conversation. Jean Patrick felt as if they were two ships navigating the waters of Antarctica, icebergs looming beneath them.