Long Bright River: A Novel (37 page)

Sean Geoghehan; Kimberly Gummer; Kimberly Brewer, Kimberly Brewer’s mother and uncle; Britt-Anne Conover; Jeremy Haskill; two of the younger DiPaolantonio boys; Chuck Bierce; Maureen Howard; Kaylee Zanella; Chris Carter and John Marks (one day apart, victims of the same bad batch, someone said); Carlo, whose last name I can never remember; Taylor Bowes’s boyfriend, and then Taylor Bowes a year later; Pete Stockton; the granddaughter of our former neighbors; Hayley Driscoll; Shayna Pietrewski; Pat Bowman; Sean Bowman; Shawn Williams; Juan Moya; Toni Chapman; Dooney Jacobs and his mother; Melissa Gill; Meghan Morrow; Meghan Hanover; Meghan Chisholm; Meghan Greene; Hank Chambliss; Tim and Paul Flores; Robby Symons; Ricky Todd; Brian Aldrich; Mike Ashman; Cheryl Sokol; Sandra Broach; Lisa Morales; Mary Lynch; Mary Bridges and her niece, who was her age, and her friend; Mikey Hughes’s father and uncle; two great-uncles we rarely see. Our cousin Tracy. Our cousin Shannon. Our mother. Our mother. Our mother. All of them children, all of them gone. People with promise, people dependent and depended upon, people loving and beloved, one after another, in a line, in a river, no fount and no outlet, a long bright river of departed
souls.

Some days, I spend hours on my laptop, visiting online memorials for those who’ve died. They’re all still there: Facebook pages, funeral home websites, blogs. The deceased are digital ghosts, the last posts they ever made buried beneath a tidal wave of grief, of commands to Rest In Peace, of in-fighting between friends and enemies who claim that half the people on the page are
fake
, whatever that means. Their girlfriends still posting
happy birthday baby
two years after they’re gone, as if the Internet were a crystal ball, a Ouija board, a portal to the afterlife. In a way, I suppose, it is.

It’s become a habit of mine to look at these pages, and at the pages of the friends and family members of the deceased, first thing in the morning. How is the mother holding up, I wonder. And I check. How is the best friend? The boyfriend? (Usually, it is the boyfriends who move on first: down come the profile pictures of the happy couple, posing in a mirror; up goes a picture he has taken of himself; next will come the new woman in his life.) Sometimes, friends are bitter.
u promised kyle. i swear if one more person dies. why kyle. rip.
People in the throes of addiction are hardest on others like them.
THA WHOLE NTHEAST IS FULLA FUKN JUNKIES,
one of them rants, and I know I’ve pulled him in before for dealing. In his pictures he’s glazed and dreamy.

When I think about Kacey, when I wonder whether she will find the strength and luck and perseverance to get and stay clean, it is these souls
I think of first. How few ever seem to make it out. I think of the Piper, the whole town of Hamelin, shocked in his wake, abandoned and condemned.

But then I look at Kacey—who comes to visit most Sundays now, who at this moment is sitting on my couch, who on this day has 189 days clean—and think, maybe she’ll be one of the few. The veteran of some war, wounded but alive. Maybe Kacey will outlive us all, will live to be a hundred and five. Maybe Kacey will be all right.

Letting hope back in feels right and wrong all at once. Like letting Thomas sleep in my bed when he really should sleep in his.

Like letting him meet the woman who brought him into the world.

Like breaking an oath of loyalty when you know a secret needs telling.

I turned in my uniform. Thomas was happy to see it go. The day I did, I worked up some courage and called Truman Dawes, holding my breath until he answered.

—It’s Mickey, I said.

—I know who it is, he said.

—I just wanted to tell you I quit, I said. I quit the force.

Truman paused for a while. Congratulations, he said finally.

—And I’m sorry, I said, closing my eyes. I’m so sorry for the way I treated you this year. You deserve better.

I could hear him breathing. I appreciate that, he said. But then he told me he had to go tend to his mother, and in his voice I heard that he was through, that I had lost him forever.

This happens, I tell myself. Sometimes, this happens.

The PPD, nationally embarrassed, is denying that they have a widespread problem. But I know differently, and Kacey knows differently, and the women of Kensington know differently. So I called Lauren Spright, and told her that I wanted to give her some information on condition of anonymity. The story was on public radio the next day.
Police sexual assault is not uncommon in Kensington,
the reporter began, and I turned the radio off. I didn’t want to hear.

Some days, I still wake up with the sick feeling that I’ve done something terribly wrong. I worry I’ve sold out the people who’ve
protected me all these years, who’ve always had my back—sometimes literally.

I think of the many honorable people who work for the organization. Truman was in the PPD. Mike DiPaolo still is. Davis Nguyen. Gloria Peters. Even Denise Chambers, who recently phoned me personally to apologize.

Then there are the Laffertys, the evil ones. They’re few and far between, but everybody’s met one.

The hardest cases, I think—perhaps the most dangerous ones—are the friends of the Laffertys’. People like Sergeant Ahearn, who has possibly known for years about what goes on in Kensington. Maybe he even participates himself—who knows. And he’ll never be fired, never be questioned, never even be disciplined. He’ll go on with his daily routine, showing up for work, casually abusing his power in ways that will have lasting effects on individuals and communities, on the whole city of Philadelphia, for years.

It’s the Ahearns of the world who scare me.

I still don’t have a job. I probably could have gotten a lawyer and sued the PPD, given all that happened, but I don’t have the inclination.

Instead, I live on unemployment. I work at my uncle Rich’s car dealership in Frankford, doing paperwork and answering phones, being paid under the table, all cash. With a more regular schedule, I have found a regular babysitter, someone I trust, to watch Thomas two days a week now. Mondays and Wednesdays, I bring Thomas with me to Rich’s. And Fridays, Mrs. Mahon watches him.

The system isn’t perfect, but it’s working for now. Next year, Thomas will go to kindergarten, and everything will change again. Maybe I’ll sign up for classes at the community college. Maybe, eventually, I’ll get a degree. Be a history teacher, like Ms. Powell. Maybe.

When I get it, I tell myself, I’ll frame it, and then send a copy to Gee.

On a Tuesday morning in the middle of April, I open all the windows in my apartment. A rainstorm has just come through, and the air outside has that plump spring smell, wet grass and new earth. A pot of coffee is on in the kitchen. Thomas’s new babysitter is due to arrive soon. He’s in his room now, playing with his Legos. I’ve taken the day off work at the car dealership.

The babysitter arrives, and I say goodbye to Thomas, and then I go downstairs and ring Mrs. Mahon’s doorbell.

—Ready? I say, when she opens the door.

The two of us get into my car. We drive toward Wilmington.

The outing has been long anticipated.

The seeds of it were planted one day back in January, when I had both Kacey and Mrs. Mahon over for dinner. That first dinner turned into a weekly one. Now, every Sunday, we put Thomas to bed and then we watch TV, the three of us, something silly, whatever new comedy is on demand. Kacey likes comedies. Other times we watch a murder show—the term Kacey still uses, despite recent events—a show that is almost always about a missing woman, who was almost always murdered by her abusive husband or boyfriend. The host narrates the whole thing
with alarming calm.
That would be the last time the Millers would see their daughter.

—He did it, Kacey usually says, about the husband. He definitely did it, my God, look at him.

Sometimes, the victims are poor. Other times they are rich women, blond and impeccable, with husbands who are doctors or lawyers.

The rich women look, to me, like grown-up versions of the girls at
The Nutcracker
, the one time Kacey and I ever went, decades ago. All those blond girls with their hair in buns. All of them wearing different-colored dresses, like rare birds, like the dancers themselves. All of them loved.

Each Sunday dinner, Kacey has made the two of us swear that we’ll visit her in the hospital when her daughter is born.

—I want visitors, she says. I’m afraid no one will come. Will you visit me, both of you?

We will, we tell her.

Today, Mrs. Mahon and I turn into the parking lot of the hospital.

The child was born yesterday. She still doesn’t have a name.

Our father has told us she’s in the NICU for now, until her condition is better assessed.

Kacey can see her as much as she wants. She’s been cooperative with the doctors. Everyone knew, going in, to monitor the baby for signs of withdrawal.

Mrs. Mahon looks at me, before we get out of the car. She puts a hand on my hand. Holds it there firmly.

—Now this will be hard for you, she says. It will make you think of Thomas, and remember the pain he was in. You’re going to be mad at Kacey all over again.

I nod.

—But she’s doing her best, says Mrs. Mahon. Just think: She’s doing her best.

There is one memory I have of my mother that I’ve never shared with Kacey. When I was small it felt too precious: speaking it aloud, I feared, might make it disappear.

In this memory, I can’t see my mother’s face. All I can recall of her is a sweet voice talking to me while I took a bath. We were playing a game. Someone had given us plastic eggs one Easter, and I was allowed to take them into the tub with me. They were yellow and orange and blue and green, and they were split down the middle into two halves. I could take them apart and put them back together again so they didn’t match: yellow with blue, green with orange. Everything out of order.
Oh no oh no,
my mother would cry, teasing me.
Put them back together again!
And for some reason, this was the funniest thing in the world to me.
Silly,
my mother would call me. The last time I was ever called anything so young-sounding. I remember the smell of my mother, and the smell of the soap, like flowers in sunlight.

When I was younger, I used to think it was this single memory that saved me from Kacey’s fate, that made me the way I am and Kacey the way she is. The sound of my mother’s voice, which I can still hear, and its gentleness, which I always took to be evidence of her love for me. The knowledge that there was once a person in the world who loved me more than anything. In some ways, I still think this is true.

In the hospital, Mrs. Mahon and I are given visitor badges. We ring a small bell, and we’re admitted into the ward. We’re following a nurse named Renee S.

We see Kacey, first, at the end of a hallway. She’s out of bed already. Our father is standing next to her. The two of them are looking through a glass window at what I presume is the NICU.

—Visitors, says Renee S., brightly.

Kacey turns.

—You came, she says.

Renee swipes her badge through a reader and opens the door. A doctor greets us quickly on her way out.

Inside the NICU, it’s dark and quiet. White noise is on in the background.

There are two basin sinks to the right of the door and a sign over them instructing us to wash our hands.

We comply, all of us. While Kacey is scrubbing, I look around. The room has a central aisle that divides two rows of plexiglass bassinets, four on either side. Machines and monitors flash steadily but silently. At the opposite end of the room there is another nurses’ station, slightly removed, lit more fully.

There are two nurses in the room, both at work: one diapering a baby, another entering something on a computer that sits on a rolling, waist-high stand. An older woman, a volunteer or a grandparent, sits near us in a rocking chair, moving slowly, a newborn in her arms. She smiles at us but says nothing.

Which one of these babies, I wonder, is Kacey’s?

My sister turns off the water. Then she turns around and walks across the room to one of the bassinets.

Baby Fitzpatrick
, says a name tag at the head of it.

Inside is a baby girl. She is sleeping, her eyes closed and swollen from the work of being born. Her eyelids flutter a little, and she turns her perfect face from left to right.

All four of us stand around her, looking in.

—Here she is, Kacey says.

—Here she is, I repeat.

—I don’t know what to call her, Kacey says.

She looks up at me, plaintively. She says, I just keep thinking,
That’s what she’ll be called for the rest of her life.
And it stops me.

The room is very quiet, all of the sounds in it faraway, as if underwater. And then, from behind, there comes a high-pitched cry, a wail of pain.

Thomas,
I think, reflexively.

All of us turn toward it. The cry comes again.

It’s a sound I’ll never forget: the newborn cry of my son. How many times a night did it drag me from sleep? Even in his waking hours I would flinch, in anticipation, every time his small brow furrowed.

I glance at Kacey and see that she’s a statue, unmoving, eyes fixed.

—Are you all right? I whisper, and she nods.

The crying child is five feet away from us. We watch as a nurse materializes, leans down into the bassinet, and lifts into her arms a tiny baby in a blanket and cap.

Where, I wonder, is his mother?

—There, says the nurse. Oh, now, there.

She places the baby on her shoulder, begins to sway. I think of my mother. I think of Thomas. My body remembers both being held and holding.

The nurse pats the baby firmly on the diaper. She puts a pacifier into his tiny mouth.

But his crying continues: little hiccupping wails, high as a birdsong, that can’t be soothed.

The nurse lowers him again into his bassinet and unswaddles him. She checks his diaper. She swaddles him tightly again. Lifts him into her arms. Still, he cries.

Another nurse walks past her and reaches for the chart at the end of the bassinet.

—Oh, she says. He’s due.

—I’ll bring it, she says, and walks away, toward the other end of the room.

My sister, beside me, is still frozen in place. I hear her breathing, light and quick and shallow. Gently, instinctively, she places a hand on the head of her sleeping, unnamed daughter.

The second nurse returns with a dropper.

The first nurse places the child, still crying, into the bassinet.

The dropper is lowered. The child turns his head toward it, toward the medicine, seeking it. He remembers it.

He opens his mouth. He drinks.