Long Bright River: A Novel (28 page)

I descend the staircase, still holding the papers and cards in one hand. Thomas glances up at me as I pass him in the living room.

—Stay there, I say to him.

In the kitchen, Gee is holding a beer in her hand. Leaning against a counter. She looks at me, pale-faced, resigned. She knows, I think, that I know something new. Her outfit, which pleased me when I first saw it, has become sad to me: a sad attempt to cover over many years of wrongdoing.

For a moment, I say nothing. But the hand that’s holding the evidence I’ve gathered is shaking slightly in anticipation.

—What’s that, she says. What are you holding there.

She’s looking at the paperwork.

I walk to where Gee is standing and put the stack on the countertop forcefully. Standing next to her, I notice again that I tower over her. I wait, but Gee doesn’t pick up the documents.

—I found these, I say.

—Don’t waste your time looking for your sister, says Gee. When Kacey goes missing, she wants to be missing. Don’t waste your time, she says again.

—Look at them, I say.

—I know what they are, Gee says. I can see them all right.

—Why did you lie to us? I say.

—I never lied to you.

I laugh. How do you do that math, I say. You complained about child support every day of your life.

Gee looks at me sharply.

—He left you, she says, simply. He got my daughter hooked on that shit and then he left when it killed her. I was the one who raised you. I was the one who took over when everyone else left you girls behind. A couple hundred bucks a month doesn’t change that.

—Is he alive? I say.

—How should I know, says Gee.

—Gee, I say. Was your life ruined by having us?

She scoffs. Don’t be dramatic, she says.

—I’m not, I say. I’m serious. Did we ruin your life?

Gee shrugs. I guess my life was ruined when my daughter died, she says. My only child. I guess that’s what did it.

—But we were kids, I say. Kacey was only a baby. It wasn’t our fault that she died.

Gee whips her head around. I know that, she says. You think I don’t know that?

She points to the refrigerator suddenly. Look at that, she says. What’s on it? Just look.

For years, the front of it has looked something like a collage. Yellowing, curling papers are taped to it everywhere: notes from our teachers, the one good report card that Kacey ever got, school photos. A card Thomas made for Gee last Christmas.

—I’ve always cared for you, Gee says. Cared for you, cared for Kacey. You’re my family.

—But you didn’t love us, I say.

—Of course I did, Gee says. She nearly shouts it. Then settles down. But talk is cheap, she says. I cared for you with what I did. Spent my life on you. Every paycheck. Spent it on you.

I wait.

—I was soft, I say, and you made me hard.

Gee nods. That’s good, she says. The world is a hard place. I knew that was something I had to teach you, too.

—You did, I say.

She looks away. That’s good, she says again. That’s what I wanted.

I have nothing more to say.

—Gee, I say, changing my tone, adding into it a sweetness that she very occasionally responded to when we were children. Please. Do you have any idea where Kacey might have gone?

—You’ll leave her, Gee says. Her face has hardened into something impenetrable. You leave her alone if you know what’s good for you.

—I’ll do what I want, I say.

I have never in my life spoken to Gee in this way.

Gee pauses for a long time, as if she’s been slapped.

Then she looks at me, hard.

—She’s expecting, she says at last.

The word is so old-fashioned that I try for a moment to make it mean something else. Anything else. Expecting what, I want to say.

—That’s why we fought, says Gee. Now you know. Might as well hear it from me.

Gee is watching me, measuring my reaction. I keep my face still.

Then she looks past me, over my shoulder, and I follow her gaze. Behind me, Thomas has quietly entered the room. He is standing still, looking worried.

—There’s your baby, says Gee.

Let me say this. I have tried, to the best of my ability, to live my life in an honorable way.

The idea of living
honorably
has guided my behavior both professionally and personally. For the most part, I am proud to say that I have stayed true to my sense of what is right and just.

Nevertheless, like all people, I have made one or two decisions in the past that, today, I admit I might reconsider.

The story of the first of these begins around the time that Kacey relapsed while living with me in Port Richmond.

Swiftly, I asked her to leave.

The idea of her staying with me was always contingent upon her sobriety. When she arrived on my doorstep, I told her that there would be no second chances. And I knew, always, that in order for her to believe me on this point, I would have to know, in my heart, that I’d do it.

So when I came home to find her using, and when I found all of the evidence of her use in a drawer of her dresser, she said nothing to me, and I said nothing to her. She only packed up her things, in silence, while I wept in the basement of my home, hoping that she wouldn’t hear me.

I had so loved having her there.

She left without a word.

The first time I ever saw my sister working, I didn’t know for certain that that was her intent.

It happened one morning soon after she moved out. I was on a shift, and a priority call came in that drew me out of district, northeast, toward Frankford. Truman was with me on that day, and he was driving. I was in the passenger’s seat.

Driving high up on Kensington Ave, I caught a passing glimpse of a woman who was standing on the sidewalk in shorts and a T-shirt, her purse slung over her shoulder. A moment later, I thought: That was Kacey. But it had happened so quickly that it felt like a mirage. Was it really Kacey? I couldn’t be sure. I whirled in my seat to look back at her, but she was already out of sight.

—You okay? said Truman, and I told him I was.

—I just thought I saw someone I knew, I said.

Truman had never, at that time, met my sister.

On the way back from the call, I asked Truman to let me drive, and I intentionally steered our vehicle past the same intersection.

Yes: it was Kacey. She was bent at the knees. High. She was leaning down now, into the window of a car, the driver of which pulled away when he noticed our cruiser, attempting to look nonchalant, nearly taking Kacey’s arm with him in the process. She straightened abruptly,
stumbled a few steps backward, annoyed. She hoisted her purse up on her shoulder. Crossed her arms around her middle, dejected.

I was driving so slowly that Truman again asked if I was all right.

This time, I didn’t reply.

I didn’t plan to, but when the car was directly in front of my sister, I slowed to a halt right there in the middle of the road. Nobody beeped. Nobody would beep at a police vehicle.

—Mickey? said Truman. What are you doing, Mickey?

A long line of cars was forming behind us. Several cars back, someone sounded their horn at last, unable to see what the holdup was.

And this, finally, is what drew Kacey’s gaze upward. She saw me. She straightened her posture.

We looked at each other for a long time. Time, in fact, seemed to slow and then stop. What passed between us in that moment was an unbearable sadness, the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same, the crumbling to dust of all the ideas we ever had as children about the better life we’d one day make for one another.

From inside the car, I lifted my hand and put one finger to the window, pointing in her direction. Truman leaned forward to see past me.

Kacey looked her worst that day, as bad as I’ve ever seen her: already too skinny, her skin marred with red dots where she’d picked at it, her hair unwashed, her makeup smeared.

—You know her? Truman said. But there was no snideness in his voice, no disgust. In fact, I heard in the phrase he used a great tenderness, a readiness to embrace her if she was any friend or relative of mine. Yes, Truman, I thought. I know her.

—That’s my little sister, I said.

That night, I was inconsolable. I called Simon over and over again, but he didn’t answer.

At last, he picked up, sounding peeved, as he always did when he didn’t want to be contacted.

—What’s the emergency? he said.

I asked very little of Simon. I was always hesitant to seem too demanding, too desperate. That night, though, I was lost. I need you, I said.

He told me he would be by soon.

In an hour, when he arrived, I told him what I’d seen.

To his credit, he was extremely attentive as he listened, and extremely generous in his dispensation of advice.

—You don’t want to do this, he said to me, when I told him I had cut her completely out of my life.

I told him that I did. That I had to.

He shook his head. You don’t, he said. Not really.

—Let me talk to her, he said.

We were sitting side by side on the sofa. His leg was crossed ankle to knee, so that from above, his body would have looked like a four. Absentmindedly, he touched the place on his calf where the letter X was tattooed.

—One last try, he said. You owe her that much. And yourself. I don’t
think you’d be happy with yourself if you didn’t give it one last try. I can help.

At last, feeling tired, I acceded.

—I have a history with this, he said. Don’t forget I have a history with this. Sometimes you just need to hear it from someone who’s been there.

Within a week, Simon had located Kacey at the abandoned home in which she was squatting with friends. He had put his detective skills to use, he told me: as he phrased it, he asked some of his contacts on the ground.

She was resistant at first, he told me, but he persisted.

Each day he interacted with her, he reported back to me: Kacey looked bad today. Kacey looked good today. I took Kacey out for lunch. I made sure she ate something.

For a month, he narrated his experience of seeking her out. And it made me feel better, feel cared for, to know that someone else in the world was watching out for her in this way. Someone else was helping me to shoulder the responsibility I felt I had been assigned at four years old. Simon still seemed to me so capable, so reliable, so
adult
, in some unquantifiable way.

—Why are you doing this, I asked him once, marveling at his generosity.

And he told me, I’ve always liked to help people.

After two months or so, one day, he called me and said: Mickey, I need to talk to you.

Which I knew sounded bad right away.

—Just tell me now, I said.

But he insisted.

He came to the house in Port Richmond. He sat down next to me on the sofa. Then, taking my hands in his, he said, Mickey. Listen. I don’t want to scare you, but Kacey’s bad-off. I think she’s delusional. She’s started ranting about things I can’t make sense of. I don’t know if it’s just the drugs, or something else. Either way, it’s something to be concerned about.

I furrowed my brow.

—What’s she saying? I said.

He sighed. I can’t even make it out, he said. I know she’s angry about something, but I can’t tell what it is.

Something about what he was saying sounded strange to me.

—Well, I said. What words is she using?

It seemed, to me, like a reasonable question, and yet Simon looked annoyed.

—Just trust me, all right? he said. She’s not herself.

—All right, I said. What should we do?

—I’m going to try to get her help, said Simon. I know some folks in social services who might be able to help her if we can get her a diagnosis of psychosis, or something like that. The first step is getting her seen by them.

He looked at me. Yes? No? he said.

—All right, I said again.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, awake, counting the hours until my morning shift began. It occurred to me that I had not seen my sister on the street in all the time Simon had been reporting on her—a development I took to be a sign of progress.

It was one in the morning, and I was due to start work at eight. But, discovering that no amount of self-hypnosis could coax me toward sleep, I at last gave up the chase and rose from my bed.

I put on clothing. I located the most recent picture of Kacey that I had.

I walked outside, got into my car, and drove to Kensington.

I had a vague idea of where Kacey might be living, based on certain things that Simon had said.

So I went to the nearest intersection, and began to ask around.

Overnight, Kensington is usually fairly active—and never more so than on warm and balmy evenings close to the summer solstice, as that one was. It was early May, and the few flowering trees Kensington boasts were in full bloom, waving their white, heavy branches in the wind. They looked uncanny, lit up by streetlamps, sun-seeking flowers in the darkest part of night.

Plaintively, I held out Kacey’s picture to several people standing on the street.

Right away, someone recognized her, a man I eyed suspiciously,
wondering if he was a client of hers. Yeah, I know her, he said. Then he asked me, What do you want with her?

I didn’t want to tell him any more than I needed to, so I only said, She’s a friend. Do you know where she’s living these days?

He was hesitant.

In Kensington, though it often seems like everybody knows everybody else and all of their business, it is difficult to get anyone talking. For most, it’s a matter of convenience: Why butt in when you don’t have to? Why invite trouble your way?
Keep my name out of your mouth
is a common refrain, one that might be emblazoned on Kensington’s crest, if it had one. Besides, it was possible that this man remembered my face from seeing me around the neighborhood, dressed in uniform. Perhaps he thought I was undercover, and had a warrant for her arrest.

There is, fortunately, a relatively easy way to get people talking, and it’s green.

A five—the price of a nickel bag of heroin—most likely would have done the trick, but I’d come prepared with a twenty, which I offered to him if he could lead me to where she was.

I also had a weapon strapped to my back, under my shirt, in case he tried to take the money from me. I did not tell him this.

The man glanced left and right. I didn’t like the look of him. I sensed he was so hungry for a fix that he’d do anything to get it. A person in this state is loaded like a spring. Their minds are often disconnected from whatever innate code of ethics they otherwise might have.

The man led me down two streets—farther and farther away from witnesses, incidentally—and I kept my body tight and ready, prepared to unholster my weapon if I needed to. I walked several paces behind him so I could keep an eye on him and scan my surroundings as well.

At last, he stopped outside a house.

To me, it didn’t look abandoned. No boards were covering the windows. No graffiti marred its siding. Two planters outside, in fact, were
well maintained, and red geraniums sprouted from the dirt inside them.

—She’s been staying here, said my guide, and he held out his hand for the money.

I shook my head.

—How do I know she’s in there? I said. I can’t pay you until I know.

—Aw, man, he said. Really? I feel so rude knocking this time of night.

But he sighed, and complied, and I felt bad, actually, that I had underestimated him.

He rapped twice at the door, first gently, and then firmly.

The woman who answered, after about five minutes of knocking, was not Kacey. She looked annoyed, blinking at us sleepily, but she looked well, and didn’t look intoxicated. She was wearing pajama pants and a T-shirt. I didn’t recognize her.

—What the hell, Jeremy? she said to the man. What’s going on?

He stuck out his thumb at me. She’s looking for Connie, he said.

I could see inside the house: it was well kept, neat, with clean carpet on the floor. It smelled of fresh garlic and onions inside, as if someone had recently prepared a wholesome meal.

I noticed, after a moment, that the woman was staring at me, annoyed. She snapped her fingers at me. Hello? she said. Can I help you?

I turned so my back was to the woman. I handed the money to Jeremy as subtly as I could. He departed. Then I faced the woman again.

—She’s my sister, I said. Is she in here?

Reluctantly, the woman stepped aside.

I found Kacey asleep in a twin bed in a tidy room. She was breathing lightly. She’d always been a heavy sleeper, ever since we shared a bed as children; it did not surprise me that she could sleep through Jeremy’s pounding at the door.

—Thank you, I said to the woman, expecting her to leave. But she
waited there, unmoving, one eyebrow raised. She was staying, I realized, to gauge Kacey’s reaction to my presence. She wanted to make sure I was welcome. And I felt certain she was prepared to intervene if I was not. She had a tough, determined expression on her face—a look she shared with many of the women I grew up with, including Kacey, including Gee. Over the years, I have manufactured a facsimile of that look to wear when on the job, but it still does not come naturally to me.

I placed a hand on Kacey’s shoulder and I shook her gently, and then firmly.

—Kacey, I said. Wake up. Kacey. It’s Mickey.

When, at last, she opened her eyes, her expression changed quickly from disorientation to confusion to surprise to shame.

And then, just as rapidly, her eyes filled with tears.

—He told you, she said.

I said nothing in response. I wasn’t certain, yet, what she meant.

She sat up and lowered her head into her hands. Her roommate shifted slightly in my peripheral vision.

—I’m so sorry, Mickey, Kacey was saying, over and over again. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.