Long Bright River(6)

And when two days went by without my hearing from her, it wasn’t her disappearance that was surprising, or even the idea that something was going terribly wrong with her. The only thing that surprised me was the idea that Kacey could leave me so completely out of her life. That she could hide, in this way—even from me—her most important secrets.



* * *



—

Shortly after Gee phoned the police, Paula Mulroney paged me, and I called her back. Paula was a great friend of Kacey’s in high school, and the only one, in fact, who deferred to me, who understood and respected the precedence of our familial bond. She said she had heard about Kacey, and she thought that she knew where she was.

—Don’t tell your grandmom, though, said Paula, in case I’m wrong.

Paula was a pretty girl, strong and tall and tough. She reminded me in certain ways of an Amazon—a tribe I first encountered when I read the Aeneid in ninth-grade English, and next in the DC comic books I fell in love with at fifteen—though the one time I mentioned the resemblance to Kacey, meaning it to be complimentary to Paula, she said, Mick. Don’t ever tell anyone that. In any case, although I liked Paula—like her still—I also realized even then that she was probably a bad influence on Kacey. Her brother Fran was a dealer, and Paula worked for him, and everyone knew it.

That day, I met Paula at the corner of Kensington and Allegheny.

—Follow me, said Paula.

As we walked, she told me that she and Kacey had gone together two days ago to a house in this neighborhood that had belonged to a friend of Paula’s brother. I knew what this meant.

—I had to leave, Paula said, but Kacey wanted to stay for a little longer.

Paula led me up Kensington Ave to a little side street that I can’t, now, remember the name of, and then to a tumbledown rowhome with a white storm door. On the door was a black metal silhouette of a horse and carriage, only the horse’s front legs were missing: I got a good look at it, because it took five minutes of knocking for anyone to open up.

—Trust me, they’re home, said Paula. They’re always home.

When, at last, the door opened, on the other side of it was a ghost of a woman, as thin as anyone I’d ever seen, with black hair and the flushed face and heavy eyes I would later come to associate with Kacey. I didn’t know then what they meant.

—Fran’s not here, said the woman. She was talking about Paula’s brother. She was maybe a decade older than we were, though it was difficult to tell.

—Who’s she, said the woman, before Paula could reply.

—My friend. She’s looking for her sister, said Paula.

—No sisters here, said the woman.

—Can I see Jim, said Paula, changing the subject.



* * *



—

July is often brutal in Philadelphia, and the house was incubating the heat, baking beneath its black tar roof. Inside, it reeked of cigarettes and something sweeter. It was very sad to me to think of that house as it had been when it was first built: home to a functioning family, maybe, a factory worker and his wife and children. Someone who went to work each day in one of the colossal brick buildings, abandoned now, that still line Kensington’s streets. Someone who came home at the end of each workday and said grace before supper. We were standing at that moment in what was maybe once a dining room. Now it was empty of all furniture except some metal folding chairs, leaning against a wall. Out of respect for the house, I tried to picture it as it might have been a generation ago: an oval table covered in a lace tablecloth. Plush carpet on the floor. Upholstered chairs. In the windows, curtains that somebody’s grandmother made. On the wall, a picture of fruit in a bowl.

Jim, the house’s owner, I supposed, came into the room in black T-shirt and jean shorts and stood looking at us. His arms hung loosely by his sides.

—You looking for Kacey? he said to me. At the time, I wondered how he knew. Probably I looked innocent, like a rescuer, like a guardian, like somebody who searched, rather than fled. I have had this look my whole life. In fact it took me quite a while, after I joined the force, to develop certain habits and mannerisms that successfully convinced those I detained that I was someone to be taken seriously.

I nodded.

—Upstairs, said Jim. She hasn’t been feeling good, is what I thought he was saying, though I didn’t hear exactly, and he could have said any number of things. I was already gone.

Every door on the upstairs hallway was closed, and behind them, I thought, might lie unknown horrors. I was, I admit it, afraid. For a little while I stood still. Later I would wish that I hadn’t.

—Kacey, I said, quietly, hoping she would simply emerge.

—Kacey, I said again, and someone’s head appeared from behind a door, then disappeared again.

The hallway was dim. Downstairs, I could hear Paula making small talk: about her brother, about the neighbors, about the police who’d lately been working the Ave in great numbers, to everyone’s dismay.

Finally, summoning my courage, I knocked lightly on the door closest to me and, after a pause, opened it.

There was my sister. I knew it first by her hair, which Kacey had recently dyed fluorescent pink, and which was now spread out behind her on a bare mattress. She was on her side, her back to me, and in the absence of any pillow her head was tilted at an odd angle.