Page 81 of Twice
Things my mother said she loved about me:
“The way you pray.”
I think a lot about heaven these days. The dying often do. I wonder, if there is such a place, will I be overcome with its magnificence as others are? Or am I destined to experience things differently? The allure of heaven is that it’s a second chance, right? But I have had second chances all my life. They’ve only left me with a failure to appreciate.
When Gianna and I separated, I told her I would find a place to live nearby, but I knew I wasn’t going to stay in New York. I took what money I had out of the bank and headed straight for the airport, where I began a long journey of risk-taking adventures, hoping to erase my wife’s haunting looks of disappointment. This was when I still believed that a heart could be distracted from itself.
I flew to China and took a thirty-hour train ride through the Gobi Desert, following the Silk Road trade route. At one point in the mountains I disembarked and wandered off. I tried not to focus on Gianna, but I wasn’t very successful. I kept wondering what she was doing without me. I turned when I heard a train approaching. Then, as if moving in a dream, I stepped onto the rails. I wasn’t planning to kill myself. Just trying to empty my head.
I watched the train grow larger as it approached. I heard the horn, or alarm, or whatever they use, blasting at me. Only when I could make out a figure behind the front car glass did I holler “Twice!”—and was instantly back at the Xi’an railway station that morning, sitting on a blue plastic bench.
A minute later, I was thinking about Gianna again.
I repeated this failed daredevil bit in numerous spots around the world. I joined a mountain climbing group in the Pyrenees in Spain, and when we stopped to rest on a large crag, I quietly unhooked, turned from the others, and flung myself off the side. I remember how quickly their screams faded as I fell. I slammed my eyes shut while yelling “Twice!,” then opened them, safely back in my tent that morning.
There was a great white shark encounter in Australia that still kind of haunts me (they are terrifying creatures, even if you know you can escape them) and a foolhardy motorcycle jump in the Philippines. When tempting death failed to move me, I tried a monastery in Malaysia for three months, to see if doing nothing was the answer. A waste of time. I thought of Gianna through most of the meditations. And the food was lousy.
During this long, ruminating walkabout, I met many people. I made small talk, ate meals, even went to bars with a few of them. There were plenty of women to connect with—backpackers, local workers, vacationers, escapees from the rat race—but I stayed away from relationships. I didn’t want to complicate matters with Gianna. I kept my wedding ring on my finger.
But Iwaslonely. Now and then, if I spotted a woman I found particularly alluring, I’d find myself thinking not about my wife, but about Nicolette Pink and that moment in the elevator, with her suggestive purring as she undid my belt. I visualized it more than I should have. I missed Gianna’s tenderness. But I fantasized about Nicolette. A split had formed in my heart. And here is another Truth About True Love: only a whole heart can support it.
I finally decided to go back to Africa and see what had become of the village where my family once lived. It took me a while to find it, but once I got there, I was pleasantly surprised. It had grown some, and the plumbing in the buildings had improved. But the cinnamon dirt soccer field was still there, as was the small church, and overall it hadn’t changed that much, given the thirty years that had passed. No one remembered me except the village pastor, who smiled when he first saw me and leaned backward, as if looking at a skyscraper.
“How tall you have become!” he said.
He was completely bald now, with a gray beard that reached his chest, but he still wore a tweed jacket over his clerical collar. And he still had a goat. A different goat.
“Your father?”
“He’s good, yeah.”
“And your church back home?”
“Yeah, also good, thanks.” I was lying. I hadn’t been there in decades.
“We were blessed to have your mother with us for thetime she was here, and we are still sorry she went to our Lord so soon.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
“Come and pray with me, Alfie,” he said.
I followed him into the small church, and he knelt and recited his devotions in Swahili. He ended with the “Our Father,” and nodded to me to join in English. I hadn’t said it in years, but I still remembered every word. When we finished—“for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen”—the pastor looked over and whispered, “Well done, Alfie,” and I choked up because my mother used to say the same thing. I thought about what she and my grandmother had both told me before they died: “I want, and you want, and God does what God wants.”
Was this what God wanted? My meandering life?
?
Before I left, I asked the pastor if he still let the village kids ride an elephant on Saturdays. He grinned and said, “Oh, yes, Lallu still amuses them.”
“Lallu is still around?”
“Of course. Elephants live a long time.”
I wanted to see for myself, so I caught a jeep ride out to the farm. To my surprise, I still recognized the owner, who was standing on his porch, leaning on a long cane. When I said “Lallu,” he pointed to his son, who was working on a nearby tractor engine. He looked to be about my age andwas wearing a tight yellow soccer shirt and lime-green basketball shorts. When I introduced myself, he looked up, a toothpick in his mouth.
“American?”
“Yes. I lived here as a boy.”
