Long Bright River(24)
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.
NOW
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.