Long Bright River: A Novel (8 page)

The first time Kacey overdosed, at sixteen, in that house full of strangers in Kensington, it was Officer Cleare to whom I turned for help and advice.

It was the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. I was seventeen years old at that time, and by then he and I had become very close. Our conversations had expanded: in addition to making recommendations to me and instructing me in various ways, he now also confided in me about problems he himself had faced as a child, problems he was facing in the department, colleagues who were causing him trouble, problems he had with his family. His mother, he feared, had developed a drinking problem after his father died, and she had recently fallen and broken her hip. His sister was a busybody who was always advising him about his life. I listened carefully, nodding, mainly staying quiet. I hadn’t, yet, told him much about my own family. I still preferred listening to talking. Unlike Gee, he seemed to like how serious I was, how thoughtful. He complimented me frequently on my intelligence, on how observant I was, how sharp.

I had recently graduated from being an unpaid member of the PAL’s teen program to a paid counselor in the organization’s summer program for neighborhood kids—which made me, I told myself, an equal to the officers, in certain ways, anyhow. Along with a dozen other employees, I shepherded day-campers from room to room, planning activities, coaching them half-heartedly in sports that I myself didn’t know much about. Really, though, I used the time to talk to Officer Cleare.

The day after the episode in question, I was distraught. I wandered through the PAL building, pale and abstracted, uncertain whether I should be there at all. Maybe, I thought, I should be at home with Kacey, who was in very serious trouble with Gee, and who was probably in withdrawal.

I was standing in the largest room at the PAL, my arms crossed around myself, lost in thought, when I saw Officer Cleare looking at me across a dozen cafeteria tables. There was enforced silence that afternoon because of too many behavioral infractions, and everyone had been instructed to read or draw quietly.

He walked slowly toward me, glancing at children whose heads popped up to look at him, directing them back to their tasks.

When he reached me, he inclined his head toward me, inquisitively. He looked at me from under his handsome lowered brow.

—What’s wrong, Michaela? he said, with so much tenderness that it surprised me.

Unexpectedly, quickly, my eyes filled with tears. It was the first time in many years that I’d ever been asked. It opened something in me, some chasm of longing I would have trouble closing ever again. It made me remember my mother’s smooth hands on my face.

—Hey, he said.

I kept my eyes on the floor. Two hot tears spilled down my cheeks and I swiped at them furiously. I rarely cried, and I especially avoided crying around adults. When we were smaller, if we cried, Gee often warned us that she’d give us a reason to. Sometimes, before we grew bigger than she was, she made good on this threat.

—Go out back, Officer Cleare said to me, too quietly to be heard by anyone else. Stay there, he said.

It was 90 degrees that day. The outdoor area behind the building consisted of a basketball court with rickety bleachers and a half-dead field that could be used for soccer or football. The surrounding streets were similarly dead. No passersby, no bystanders, no windows to the inside of
the building. Flies buzzed lazily around my head, and I swatted them as I walked.

I found a shadowed spot and leaned against the brick building that housed the PAL. My heart was pounding. I wasn’t sure why.

I was thinking of Kacey: of the hospital bed she’d been put in after her arrival at Episcopal Hospital. Of the silence between us.
I don’t understand this,
I had said, and Kacey had said,
I know you don’t,
and that was all. Kacey had looked to be in pain. Her eyes were closed. Her complexion was very, very pale. Then the ward doors swung open and through them stormed our grandmother, her face steely, her hands clenched. Gee has always been a thin woman, full of nervous energy, the kind of person who never stops moving. That day, though, she had stood frighteningly still as she whispered to Kacey through clenched teeth.

—Open your eyes, she had said. Look at me. Open your fucking eyes.

After a pause, Kacey complied, squinting, turning her face away from the fluorescent lights above her.

Gee waited until Kacey was focused on her.

Then she said, Listen to me. I went through this once with your mother. I’ll never go through it again.

She was holding a tight finger out toward Kacey. She took her by the elbow and dragged her from the bed, so that the IV attached to her arm was ripped painfully out, and I followed. None of us had stopped when a nurse called after us that Kacey wasn’t ready to be discharged.

At home, Gee had slapped Kacey once, hard, across the face, and Kacey had run up to our room, slamming the door and then locking it.

After a while I followed, knocking softly, saying the name of my sister over and over again. But there came no answer.

The brick of the PAL building was so warm that it was uncomfortable to lean against, and so I stood upright again. I had my back to the door I’d come out of, and when I heard it open and close quietly behind me, I didn’t turn around. The air was thick with humidity. Trickles of sweat ran down my sides, beneath my shirt. I looked straight ahead as Officer
Cleare approached me. I could feel him stop and pause behind me, perhaps to think. I could hear his breathing. Then, swiftly, he put his arms around me. I had reached my full height several years before, and there were not many boys in my school who towered over me the way that he did. But when he enfolded me, he outsized me so completely that he was able to rest his chin on the top of my head.

I closed my eyes. I could feel his heart beating against my back. Ever since my mother died, I had had the same recurring dream: in it, some faceless figure cradled me in its arms, one arm behind my back, one beneath my legs, both hands clasped together on the other side, so that I felt that I was tight inside a little case. And in its arms this figure rocked me back and forth. It’s been years since I have had this dream, but I can still recall the feeling I had whenever I awoke from it: I was comforted. Pacified. Lulled.

Encircled in this way by Simon Cleare, I opened my eyes. Here he is, I thought.

—What’s wrong, said Simon, again.

This time, I told
him.

I regret to say that it takes me quite a while to compose myself after my conversation with Alonzo. I sit in the car for ten minutes and then begin, distractedly, to patrol my assigned sector. The people on the sidewalk are a blur to me. Every so often I think I see my sister, only to discover that it isn’t her, and that it actually looks nothing like her. Although it’s very cold outside, I roll the window down to let the air cool my face.

Several calls come in but I am slow to respond to them.

Enough of this, I tell myself, finally, and I pull over again—too abruptly; a civilian car screeches to a halt behind me—and I ask myself how I would approach the case of a missing person if I were, in fact, a detective.

Hesitantly, I touch the MDT fastened to the center console of my vehicle. It’s something like a laptop, and I’m fairly good with computers, but these systems are notoriously terrible and sometimes even broken. Today, the one in my assigned vehicle is working, but only very slowly.

I’m going to look up Kacey’s name in the PCIC database.

I’m not supposed to: technically, we are required to have a valid reason to search for any individual, and my log-in credentials will reveal what I’ve done to anyone who cares, and I dislike violating protocol in this way—but today, I’m banking on the idea that no one actually does care. No one has time to, in our district.

Still, my heartbeat quickens slightly as I type.

Fitzpatrick, Kacey Marie,
I enter.
DOB: 3/16/1986.

An arrest record a mile long is displayed. The earliest one I can see—the others, presumably, expunged due to her then-status as a juvenile—is from thirteen years ago, when Kacey was eighteen. Public intoxication. It seems almost mild now, almost funny, the kind of escapade on so many people’s records.

But the kind of trouble Kacey was getting into got quickly more serious, after that. An arrest for possession, an arrest for assault (an ex-boyfriend, if I remember correctly, who used to hit her and then called the police the first time she ever retaliated). Then solicitation, solicitation, solicitation. The most recent item on Kacey’s record is from a year and a half ago. That one is for petty theft. She was convicted; she spent a month in prison. Her third period of incarceration.

What I don’t find—what I was hoping to find—is any indication that she’s been brought in more recently than that. Any indication, I suppose, that she is still alive.

There is a natural next step. Any detective on any missing persons case would, of course, interview the missing party’s family members as soon as possible.

And yet, as I consider the phone in my hands, I am stopped by the same queasy feeling of unease that overtakes me anytime I contemplate getting in touch with the O’Briens.

The simplest explanation is this: They don’t like me, and I don’t particularly like them. My whole life, I’ve had the uncomfortable feeling that I am in some way a black sheep in my family—as is, I should add, anyone who evinces signs of wanting to productively participate in society. Only in the O’Brien family would a young child’s good grades in school, or her reading habits, or her eventual decision to enter law enforcement, be
looked at with suspicion. I’ve never wanted for Thomas to experience the very lonely feeling of being an outsider in one’s own tribe, or to be influenced in any way by the O’Briens—who, in addition to dabbling in petty criminality, have a tendency toward racism and other charming forms of prejudice as well; and so I made the decision, after he was born, not to inflict the O’Briens and their strange set of ethics upon him. My rule is not hard and fast—occasionally we see one of them on our annual or biannual visit to Gee’s house, and occasionally we run into an O’Brien on the street or in a store, and on these occasions I have always been cordial—but largely, I avoid them.

Thomas doesn’t, yet, understand why. Not wanting to frighten him, or to overwhelm him with information he cannot, at this age, process, I have told my son instead that our limited contact with my family is mainly a product of my work schedule. Lacking a better reason than this, he often asks after them, asks to see the ones he knows, asks to meet the rest. Once, when he was enrolled in his last school, all the children were given the assignment of constructing a family tree. When Thomas asked somewhat breathlessly for pictures of various members of ours, I was forced to confess that I had none; so instead he drew illustrations of what he imagined everybody looked like, sad smiley faces with mops of curly hair on top in a variety of colors. He has this diagram hanging, now, on the wall of his bedroom.

Sitting in my patrol car, I prepare to put aside my pride: to extend a hand to my extended family.

First, I generate a list of people to contact. This time, I do take out my notebook, and find a blank page at the very back, and rip it out. On this page, I write down the following names:

Gee
(again)

Ashley
(a cousin of ours, around our age, to whom we were very close when small)

Bobby
(another cousin, less likable, who is himself mixed up in the
business, and who used to deal to Kacey until I found him one day and threatened him with arrest, and more, if I ever caught him doing so again)

Next I move on to others:

Martha Lewis
(at one time, Kacey’s parole officer, though I believe she has since been assigned a new one)

Then a few bus acquaintances. Then some of our neighborhood friends. Then some of her grade school friends. Then some of her high school friends. Then some of Kacey’s current friends, who may, for all I know, be enemies by now. One can never be certain.

Sitting in parked patrol car 2885, I go through everyone in turn.

I call Gee: no answer. No answering machine either. When we were younger, this was probably to avoid creditors. Now, it’s out of habit, and probably a certain amount of misanthropy. People want to get ahold of me, says Gee, they can keep trying.

I call Ashley. I leave a message.

I call Bobby. I leave a message.

I call Martha Lewis. I leave a message.

Finally it occurs to me that almost nobody listens to voicemails anymore, and so I begin to text everyone instead.

Have you heard from Kacey lately?
I type.
She’s been missing awhile. If you have any information please let me know.

I watch my phone. I wait.

Martha Lewis is the first to respond.
Hi Mick, sorry to hear that. That’s a shame. Let me research a little.

Then my cousin Ashley.
No, I’m sorry.

A few old friends text that they haven’t seen her lately. They wish me luck. Send me condolences.

The only person who doesn’t text back at all is our cousin Bobby. I try him once more, and then I text Ashley again to make certain I have the right number.

That’s the one,
she replies.

Then, quite suddenly, an idea occurs to me. Today is Monday, November 20—which means that Thursday is Thanksgiving.

Every year since I was small, the O’Briens—Gee’s side of the family—have come together for the occasion. When I was younger, Thanksgiving took place at the house of Aunt Lynn, Gee’s younger sister. These days, Lynn’s daughter Ashley typically hosts, but I haven’t been in many years—since before Thomas was even born.

I’ve made the same excuse, over and over again, for missing the O’Brien Thanksgiving: that I have to work. What I don’t tell anyone is that, even in years when I have had the option not to, I have elected to do so for extra pay.

This year is a rare one in which I happen to have Thanksgiving off. I had planned to spend it alone with Thomas. I was going to buy canned sweet potatoes and instant mashed potatoes and a rotisserie chicken. I was going to light a candle in the middle of the table and tell my son the true story of the first Thanksgiving, which I first learned from my favorite high school history teacher, Ms. Powell, and which is much different than the version that is typically taught in schools.

But it occurs to me, now, that attending an O’Brien family Thanksgiving might be a way to ask after Kacey—and, more specifically, to inquire about her with Cousin Bobby, who still has not responded to my texts.

I phone Gee once more. This time, she answers.

—Gee, I say. It’s Mickey. Are you going to Ashley’s for Thanksgiving?

—No, she says. Working.

—But she’s hosting?

—According to Lynn, says Gee. Why?

—I was just wondering.

—Tell me you’re thinking of going, she says, incredulously.

—Maybe, I say. I’m not sure yet.

Gee pauses.

—Well, she says. I’ll be damned.

—I just have the day off for once, I say. That’s all.

—Don’t tell Ashley yet, I say. In case I can’t make it.

Before I hang up, I ask her once more.

—No word from Kacey, right? I say.

—Goddammit, Mickey, says Gee. You know I don’t talk to her no more. What’s going on with you?

—Nothing at all, I say.

I spend the rest of the day fruitlessly scanning the sidewalks for anyone I might talk to. I check my phone compulsively. I manage to respond to only a handful of calls, cherry-picking ones I know will be easy.

That night, when I go home to Thomas, he seems worried about me. In fact, he asks me if something is wrong.

I want to tell him, everything is wrong except for you. These days, you are the only great pleasure of my life. Your small presence, your small observant face, the intelligence within you that grows unceasingly, each new word or turn of phrase that enters your vocabulary, that I take stock of, that I store like gold for your future. At least I have you.

I say none of this, of course. I say to him, Nothing’s wrong. Why?

But I can tell by his expression that he doesn’t believe me.

—Thomas, I say. How would you like to spend Thanksgiving at Cousin Ashley’s?

Thomas leaps to his feet, his hands clutched to his chest, dramatically. His hands are boy hands, ragged cuticles, strong fingers, palms that smell always of the earth, even when he has not dug in it that day.

—I’ve been missing her so much, he says.

Against my will, I smile. I think the last time we saw Ashley was two years ago, at Gee’s house, when she stopped by on Christmas; I doubt, therefore, that he actually remembers her. He knows about her because of the homemade family tree on his wall, which he traces sometimes with a finger, chanting every name. Cousin Ashley, he knows, is
married to Cousin Ron, and is the mother of his other cousins, Jeremy, Chelsea, Patrick, and Dominic. Cousin Ashley’s mother, he knows, is Aunt Lynn.

Now, Thomas raises his hands into the air in victory, and asks me how many days until we go.

I put him to bed. The weeks I’m home for his bedtimes, our routine never varies: bath, books, bed. We are frequenters of our local libraries—first in Port Richmond and now in Bensalem. Each librarian there knows Thomas by name. Each week we choose a stack of books to enjoy together, and every night I let Thomas select as many as he would like to read. Then, together, we sound out the words and describe the pictures, inventing scenarios, speculating about what will happen next.

The weeks I’m on B-shift, when Bethany puts Thomas to bed, I am under the impression that she does not read to him much, if at all.

Once he’s tucked in, I linger in his dim and peaceful room, thinking how nice it would be to let myself lay my head next to his on the pillow, to drift to sleep there, just for a little.

But I have work to do, and so I rise, and kiss my son’s forehead, and quietly close the door.

In the living room, I open my laptop—an ancient one of Simon’s that he gave to me, years ago, when he bought a new one—and open an Internet browser.

I have always resisted ‘social media.’ I don’t like being connected to anyone at all times, let alone relative strangers, people from my past with whom I have no reason to remain in touch. But I know that Kacey uses it—or at one time used it—frequently. So I enter
Facebook
into the search bar, and click on the link, and try to look for her there.

And there she is:
Kacey Marie.
The main picture on the page is of my sister holding a flower in her hand, smiling. Her hair looks the same as it
did the most recent time I saw her on the street, so it must be at least somewhat up-to-date.

Below, on the page itself, I don’t expect to find much. I can’t imagine updating her Facebook page is at the top of Kacey’s list of daily to-dos. But I am surprised to discover that her page is littered with posts. Many are pictures of cats and dogs. Some are pictures of babies. Strangers’ babies, I presume. Some are vague rants about loyalty, or fakery, or betrayal, that look as if they have been created by others for the purpose of mass-marketing. (Reading them, I am made aware, again and again, of how little I know, today, about my sister.)

Some—the important ones—are by Kacey herself, and these are the ones I scroll through most avidly, looking for clues.

If at first you don’t succeed . . .
says one from last summer.

Anyone have a job for me??

I want to see Suicide Squad!

Rita’s!!!
(Here, a picture of Kacey, grinning, holding a water ice in a cup.)

I love love,
says one from August. Attached to it is a picture of Kacey and a man, someone I don’t recognize, someone skinny, white, short hair, tattoos on his forearms. He and Kacey are gazing into a mirror. He has his arms around Kacey.

He’s tagged in the photo:
Connor Dock Famisall.
Beneath it, someone has written,
Lookin good Doctor.

I squint at him. I click on his name. Unlike Kacey’s, his page is marked private. I think about sending him a friend request, and then decide against it.

I enter
Connor Famisall
into Google, but there are zero results. I’ll run a search on his name in the PCIC database tomorrow, when I’m back in a police vehicle.