Long Bright River(109)

That was at the beginning of November. I’ve been at his place ever since. He’s been taking care of me, Kacey says. Making sure I have what I need. Making sure the baby will have a good home when she’s born.



* * *



—

She looks at me, and for the first time I register the presence of fear in her expression.

—We’ll have everything we need, she says.

And I tell her, Kacey. I believe you.





This is not something Kacey asks for. But I have the notion, suddenly, that I should bring her to see Thomas.

Quietly, the two of us walk toward his room. Quietly, I open the door. Low light from the hallway spills in. By that light we can make out his shape in the bed, a landscape of covers and sheets and pillows and, curled inside them, my son.

Kacey looks at me, asking permission, and I nod.

She walks to the foot of his bed and kneels down before it. She puts her hands to her knees and gazes upon him. She stays like that for a long time.



* * *



—

We had five books in the house as children. One was the Bible. One was a history of the Phillies. Two were Nancy Drew books that had been Gee’s when she was small. And one was an ancient compendium of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, wildly illustrated and frightening, full of witches and woods. The same one I gave to Thomas, this year, for Christmas.

In this volume, the story I liked best was the one about the Pied Piper of Hamelin. It frightened me: the way he came from nowhere to lure the children away. I was frightened, too, by the helplessness of the parents, the way the town failed them, the way they, in turn, failed their children.

Where did those children go, I wondered. What was their life like after they left? Were they hurt? Was it cold? Did they miss their families?

I have thought of this story every day of my life on the job. I picture the drug as the Piper. I picture the trance it casts: I can see this trance quite clearly every day that I work, everyone walked around, charmed, enthralled, beguiled. I imagine the town of Hamelin after the story ends, after the children and the music and the Piper have gone. I can hear it: the terrible silence of the town.



* * *



—

Now, looking at Kacey as she kneels at the foot of the bed, repentant, I see the possibility, very faintly, that one day she might return.



* * *



—

Then I look at Thomas, and I am reminded, as always, of the ever-present threat of departure, of permanent loss. It hovers there, foreboding, a faint, high melody that only children can hear.





Kacey and I return to my bedroom, and to my laptop, on the bed.

She points to Eddie Lafferty again.

—This guy, she says, used to come around all the time while I was living with Connor. It was before I got sober. It’s hazy. I remember him, though, because he talked to me. He was friendly. He talked to me and kind of eyed me up. I thought maybe he was looking for a date, but he never asked me for one. He and Connor usually went off someplace together. I don’t know what they were doing. I thought he was just there to get high. Connor dealt. Still deals, I guess.

—Try to remember more, I say.

Kacey looks up at the ceiling, then down at the floor.

—I can’t, she says.

—Try again, I say.

—There’s a lot in my life I can’t remember, says Kacey.

Both of us go quiet for a while.

—We could just ask him, Kacey says suddenly.

I look at her, incredulous.

—Connor? I say. Dock? You want to ask Dock for help after what he did to you?

—Yeah, says Kacey. I know it’s hard to believe, but he was a pretty good guy. Treated me better than any other guy has treated me, at least.

—Kacey, I say. He attacked you.

She pauses, considering this.

—But I bet I could get him to talk, she says, finally.

I’m shaking my head now.

—Absolutely not, I say.

Kacey turns away.

—We’ll figure it out in the morning, I say. Both of us need sleep.

Kacey nods.

—All right, she says. I guess I’ll get going.

She doesn’t move, though. Neither do I.

—Do you mind if I just take a nap? she says.



* * *



—

I turn off the light. Both of us lie down, awkwardly, next to each other on the bed. There’s silence in the room.

—Mickey, says Kacey, suddenly. It startles me.

—What, I say, too quickly. What.

—Thank you for taking care of Thomas, she says. I’ve never said that.

I pause. Embarrassed.

—You’re welcome, I say.

—It’s funny, she says.

—What is? I say.

—All the time you were trying to find me, she says. I was trying to hide from you.

—Funny is one word for it, I say after a while.

But I can hear, by her breathing, that she’s already asleep.



* * *



—

It’s been sixteen years, half of our lives, since we slept next to each other in the back room of Gee’s house. I picture us, just children then, telling each other stories to get to sleep, or reading books, or looking up in the dark at a domed ceiling light that rarely contained a working bulb. Below us, the hoarse voice of our grandmother, complaining on the phone, or chanting to herself in anger about somebody’s misdeeds. Put your hand on my back, Kacey would say, and I would comply, remembering tenderly the way my mother’s hand felt on my own skin. In retrospect, I believe it is possible that I was trying to bestow some sense of worth upon her; to be the vessel through which our mother’s love poured, posthumously; to immunize her against the many hardships of the world. In that position, my hand on her back, we’d both drift to sleep. Above us was a flat tar roof, poorly engineered for winter. Beyond the roof, the night sky over Philadelphia. Beyond the sky, we couldn’t say.