Long Bright River(105)

She navigates it expertly. She opens Facebook and enters, as a search term, Edward Lafferty.



* * *



—

Together, we look at the screen. Of the seven Edward Laffertys who appear in the results, one of them seems to be him. There he is, wearing sunglasses, his bald head uncovered. He’s grinning and he has an arm wrapped around a dog that looks like a pit mix, which I can recall him talking about.

Before I can point him out, Kacey touches a finger to his face, on the screen.

—That’s him, she says.

It’s not a question.

I nod. That’s him.

—He’s Connor’s friend, she says. I’ve met him before, she says.

Connor. It takes me a second to process.

—Dock? I say, without thinking, and Kacey says, How do you know that name?

—I know that, I say, because I was looking for you, and I came across him. Unfortunately.

Kacey nods.

—Yeah, she says. Yeah, he’s tough.

—Tough? I say. That’s one way to say it.

Kacey twitches suddenly, straightens up on the bed, puts both hands on her belly. Oh, she says softly.

—What’s wrong, I say.

—She’s kicking, says Kacey.

—She, I say.

Kacey shrugs. She looks as if she wishes she hadn’t said anything. Again, she hugs her stomach. Protecting it.

—Maybe I better start from the beginning, she says.





Last summer, says Kacey, I started seeing this guy. Connor. That was his name. People call him Dock but I never did. He was nice to me. First boyfriend I’d had in a long time. Came from a good family. I never met them but he told me stories about them. Told me he missed them. We were gonna get clean together, he told me, and I wanted that too.

Of course it never happened. We’d get clean together and then one of us would cave, me or him, and we’d bring the other one down with us.



* * *



—

—You don’t want to be alone, is the thing, she says. Whether you’re clean or you’re sober, whichever one you are, you want the person you love to be there with you too. So we couldn’t stay straight.



* * *



—

—In September, says Kacey, I realized I hadn’t had my period in a while. Now, I don’t know how long, because I wasn’t keeping track of stuff like that. I tried to use condoms until I got together with Connor, and then we just slipped up, you know. It happens. So all of a sudden I notice it’s been a while, and I go to the free clinic, and I get a pregnancy test. They do an ultrasound right there. And there’s a shape in me, I could see it on the screen. The second time in my life that I’d seen something like that. That’s your baby, they said.



* * *



—

    Kacey is starting to cry. She wipes her nose on her sleeve. Tucks her hair behind her ears with both hands, just as she did when she was a child. I have the sudden urge to comfort her. I don’t.



* * *



—

—They told me I was eleven weeks along, says Kacey. That was in September. They asked me if I’d been drinking or using any substances. I was honest with them. I told them yes, I’d been using heroin, I’d been using pills. I’d been drinking. Yes to all of it.

So the nurse, really nice nurse, says to me that she’s going to refer me to a methadone clinic, that the recommended course of action was to get on methadone, because if I quit cold turkey that could have a really bad effect on the baby. You know. I’d heard that before. I have other friends on the Ave who’ve gotten pregnant while they were still using, so this wasn’t news to me. But I still felt, I felt awful, Mick, because I just, if I ever got pregnant again I wanted to do it the right way. It’s something Connor and I used to talk about sometimes, having a baby after we got clean. It was a nice thing to think about. But I never wanted another baby taken away, says Kacey, looking at me.

I knew it would kill me, she says.



* * *



—

—I told Connor the news, says Kacey. He was happy, really happy. I started going to the clinic and he came with me. The two of us were really motivated for the first time.

For two weeks, I went to the clinic every day. So did Connor. We found a decent place to stay, it was abandoned but it was clean, and it was still warm enough out so it wasn’t a problem to sleep there at night. We knew we had to find something better when it got cold, but for the time being we were happy.

One day I went to the clinic at our regular time, and Connor was supposed to meet me, but he wasn’t there. So I get my dose, and I go back to where we were living, and I find him high.

That’s when I knew I had to make a change. I prayed, she says. I’m not religious but that night I prayed to God for help.



* * *



—

—The next day, she says, Dad showed up at the door. Like a sign, she says. Or an answer. Crazy, right? Connor was out. Dad offered to take me to Wilmington right then and there, no questions asked, but I couldn’t do that to Connor. He was the best guy I’d ever known. I know you think I’m crazy, but at the time, I thought that it was true.