She put the leaf beneath her nose to smell it. Then she remembered the potato. She picked it up again and put it back in the basket. Her scrupulousness endeared her to Zoe. Regardless of what was happening around her, Kuyeya insisted that her world make sense.
When Zoe had downtime at home, she devoured everything she could find on the Internet about her father’s presidential campaign. Her allegiances were capricious. Some moments, she pilloried him for his policies; other moments, she found herself defending him against personal attacks. As the Iowa caucus voted and the debates and stump speeches accelerated on the road to New Hampshire, his rhetoric became increasingly strident. On everything from immigration to health care to education and defense, he preached a message calibrated to appeal to the fringe. On foreign assistance, he called for substantial retrenchment from all non-defense-related largesse. She remembered his excuse over dinner: “That’s just politics.” And Trevor’s: “A lot of that is posturing.” But Zoe wasn’t sure. In turning his ambitions from finance to politics, Jack had submitted his convictions to focus groups and advisors. He had lost his moral clarity.
After watching the New Hampshire debate, Zoe channeled her agitation into action and began to write. Initially, the essay was a vague pastiche of impressions, related but not fused. As she poured her thoughts onto the page, however, an article began to take shape. It was her mother’s story and it was her story, a story of charity and justice, of ideals in action. It was the story of America, the America Catherine had taught her to believe in—the country that had rebuilt Europe after the Second World War, founded the United Nations and the Peace Corps, funded the World Bank and PEPFAR, and transformed the world with not-so-random acts of kindness. It was also her father’s story—the middle-class kid whose ticket into the world of influence was a full scholarship to Harvard. She depicted him kindly, describing him as an ardent supporter of her mother’s work. Writing about him offered Zoe an unexpected gift. It allowed her to resurrect the Jack Fleming she had loved as a child—the man, not the partisan. At four thousand words, the piece was at once a deeply personal memoir and a passionate argument against parsimony—a call for governments and citizens to rise above debt crises and economic woes and provide for the poor and oppressed. Mom, she thought, this one’s for you.
She sent the article to Dr. Samantha Wu, her favorite law professor and the closest thing to a mentor in her life. An expert on international human rights, Dr. Wu had taken Zoe under her wing, advising her on the Yale Law Journal, steering her toward a clerkship with Judge van der Merwe, and encouraging her to write. Zoe’s article on justice in post-apartheid South Africa had been her idea, and she had brokered the connection at Harpers to get it published. After that success, she had made Zoe a standing offer: “If you write it and it’s good, I’ll find a home for it.”
Dr. Wu responded promptly:
Zoe, I have to admit I was a bit skeptical about this. But you won me over. It’s fresh, it’s timely, it’s meaningful and controversial. Given your father’s platform and your publishing history, I shouldn’t have any trouble placing it. I’d love to see it in Time, but I think it’s a stretch. I’m going to give it to Naomi Potter at the New Yorker and Brent Lyle at the Atlantic. I know both of them well. I’ll get back to you soon!
In the latter part of January, something shifted in Zoe’s heart. She knew she could no longer keep Joseph at arm’s length. He had been impossibly tolerant, treating her with kindness when work required collaboration but making no move to close the intimacy gap. It was she who had grown impatient. The situation required resolution. He deserved the dignity of a choice.
The next morning at work, Zoe received a call from St. Francis.
“Kuyeya had an accident,” said Sister Anica. “She seems to be all right, except for some pain in her neck. I’m taking her to see Dr. Chulu. Sister Irina asked me to call you.”
“What happened?” Zoe asked.
“No one knows. She just fell down.”
“You’re coming to UTH?”
“Yes. The doctor agreed to see her at fourteen hundred.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
She turned around and saw Joseph watching her. “Is it Kuyeya?”
When she relayed the news, he looked pensive, like he wanted to say something. She felt the pressure building in her chest. At last, her mouth formed the words her heart had already chosen. “Why don’t you come along?”
He looked uncertain. “You want me to?”
She saw the query for what it was—a plea for acceptance. “I’ve missed you,” she replied, answering his question and her own.
They met Sister Anica and Kuyeya on the terrace outside the pediatric center at UTH. Kuyeya was holding her monkey by the arm and shifting her weight between her feet. Her eyes lit up when she saw Zoe, and her grimace quickly turned into a grin.
“Hi, Kuyeya,” Zoe said.
The girl made the balloon sound. “Hi, Zoe. Do you have your music?”