Long Bright River(49)

Today, she keeps her face quite still.

—Hello, Paula, I say.

She says nothing.

—I’m glad to see you, I say. I heard Kacey was missing. I was just wondering if you had any idea where she is.

Paula shakes her head. Drags from her cigarette.

—Nope, she says.

—When’s the last time you saw her?

She snorts. Says nothing.

I’m confused suddenly.

—Is it true, I say, that you told Alonzo she was missing? Because— She cuts me off. Look, she says. I don’t talk to the police.

I’m taken aback. I’ve never before heard this from Paula.

I try a different tactic.

—How’s your leg? I say.

—Terrible, says Paula.

She drags on the cigarette again. She’s inches away from me.

—I’m sorry to hear that, I say.

I’m not certain how to proceed.

—Do you want me to take you to the hospital? I say, but Paula waves me off. Shakes her head.

—I was wondering if I could ask you something else, I say.

—Go ahead, says Paula. But her voice is dismissive, and her implication is clear: You can ask anything you want. I won’t answer.

I take out my phone and play the video for her. She can’t help herself: she’s curious. She leans down to inspect the phone.

When Katie Conway crosses the screen, Paula looks sharply at me.

—Yeah, she says, that’s Katie. I knew her.

—You did?

She nods. She turns back to me, looks at me hard.

—Little girl they found off Tioga, right? I knew her.

I consider Paula. I’m not sure why she’s telling me this.

—She was such a nice girl, says Paula. She was just a baby. Such a nice kid. I knew her mom too. Her mom was godawful. She’s the one turned her daughter out.

Paula is still looking hard at me. Something about her expression looks accusing in some way. The cigarette goes into her mouth. Every time I speak to Paula I recall her as she was on a particular day in high school: head held high, leading a pack of popular girls down a hallway, laughing and laughing at a joke someone told. Even now, despite how much our lives have changed, I feel a certain intimidation around her.

—Do you know anything about how she died? I ask Paula, who regards me for a moment before speaking.

—Isn’t that what you should be telling me? Paula says levelly.

Again, I grasp for words. This time, none come to me.

—You’re the cop, right? says Paula.

—We’re working on it, I say again.

—Sure, says Paula. She squints down the Ave. Judging by the quickness of her movements, the chattering of her teeth, she’s dopesick. She’s stooped over slightly, her arms folded across her middle. She’s nauseated.

—Sure you are, Mickey, Paula says. Well, work harder.

I know enough to know that I should leave her now, let her find her fix.

Before I do, though, I say to her, Can you watch one more time? The important part’s at the end.

Paula rolls her eyes, agitated, but she bends her head toward the screen, squinting. She watches as the man crosses the screen, then grabs the phone out of my hand. She looks up, eyes wide.

—Do you recognize him? I ask.

I notice suddenly that her hands are shaking.

—You’re kidding me, she says.

—You know him? I ask.

Paula begins to laugh, but there is an angry edge to her laughter.

—Don’t bullshit me, she says. That’s all I want in life, is not to be bullshitted.

I shake my head. I don’t understand, I say.

She closes her eyes, just briefly. Takes one last drag, then throws her cigarette on the ground. She stubs it out with the toe of her sneaker.

Finally, she looks at me appraisingly.

—That’s one of your guys, Mick, she says. That’s a cop.





THEN





Just as I’d hoped, Kacey’s yearlong incarceration at Riverside changed her.

Ask anyone who’s ever detoxed in prison what it’s like, and then watch her face as she recalls it: eyes closed, brow furrowed, mouth turned down, summoning the nausea and despair, summoning the feeling that this version of life might not be worth living. This, Kacey told me, was her conviction during the lowest moment of her withdrawal: that she should take her life. With her teeth, she tore her sheets into long strips. She twisted them together. She fastened this makeshift noose to a light fixture on the ceiling and then, standing on the sink, prepared to jump—but something stopped her; some force, she said, that told her something good was waiting for her if she’d only stay alive.

Shakily, she stepped down from the sink and decided, at last, to write a letter to me.

In it, she apologized for the first time: for breaking promise after promise, for lying, for failing us all, for betraying herself. She told me she missed me. She told me that I was the only person in the world whose opinion she cared about. And she couldn’t stand having let me down so badly.

I responded. For a month, we wrote back and forth: an exchange that reminded me of our childhood, when we would write notes to one another to leave in the space beneath the floorboard of our room.

Soon, I decided to pay her a visit. When I saw Kacey, I barely recognized her. She was clear-eyed and sober. Her face was pale in a way it had not been in years. She lacked the flushed cheeks, described in children’s books as a sign of good health, that now signify addiction to me. I began to see her regularly. Each time I went, a new version of my sister greeted me. A year is long enough for the body to begin to readjust to sobriety, for the broken brain to shakily begin to go to work, for the production lines therein to rustily churn into action, manufacturing small doses of the natural chemicals that, for years, have been artificially imported through the veins.