Long Bright River(84)
—Did you call the police? I say, and Gee laughs, not kindly.
—Now why would I do that, she says, when you’re the police.
She pauses. Then she says, Besides. I don’t know what all she took from me. Can’t figure it out. Wouldn’t know what to report, if I did.
A theory is beginning to form in my mind.
—Looked all over the house, says Gee. Money was there. TV was there. Jewelry was there. Silver was there.
She continues, naming items on the mental list she keeps of her meager possessions, after I’ve left the kitchen and headed for the staircase.
—Where are you going, she calls, but I can no longer see her.
—Bathroom, I reply.
* * *
—
At the top of the staircase, I turn instead into my childhood bedroom: the room that Kacey and I used to share. I haven’t been in it in years. I have no reason to go in there when I visit Gee; I keep my visits short and formal and mainly stay on the ground floor, only going upstairs to use the facilities when necessary.
Gee, I notice, has stripped this bedroom of any sign of us. All it contains now is the full bed we shared as children, and even that has been remade, with a calico bedspread that looks like it’s made of polyester. There is no other furniture in the room. Not even a closet. Not even a lamp.
In the corner of the room, I get down on my hands and knees and lift the edge of the wall-to-wall carpeting. Beneath it is the loose floorboard, and under that, our childhood hiding place. Our home for notes and treasured objects. Our sacred space—the one that Kacey later co-opted for her paraphernalia when darkness first crept into her life.
Maybe, I think, Kacey didn’t break into this house to take something, but to leave it.
* * *
—
Holding my breath, I lift the floorboard.
I reach into it. My hands touch paper. I pull some out.
* * *
—
I don’t understand, at first, what I’m looking at. It’s a check from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 583 dollars, dated February 1, 1991. I look through the rest. It seems that there’s one a month for a decade, in amounts that slowly increase.
More: three documents processed by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services on behalf of Daniel Fitzpatrick. Our father. The beneficiaries of the agreement are listed: Michaela and Kacey Fitzpatrick. Support services, it says, will go to Nancy O’Brien. Our guardian. Our grandmother, Gee.
Gee always kept a PO box, so we never got mail at our house. Now, suddenly, I understand why.
I reach back into the hollow. There’s more. Dozens of Christmas and birthday cards. Dozens of letters. Halloween cards. Valentines. All of them signed, Love, Daddy. Some contain references to money, to dollar bills included and, presumably, extracted by Gee.
The most recent one I can find is from 2006, when I was twenty-one years old, and Kacey was nineteen.
The realization arrives with a thump in my gut: This is after I thought he was dead.
I descend the staircase, still holding the papers and cards in one hand. Thomas glances up at me as I pass him in the living room.
—Stay there, I say to him.
In the kitchen, Gee is holding a beer in her hand. Leaning against a counter. She looks at me, pale-faced, resigned. She knows, I think, that I know something new. Her outfit, which pleased me when I first saw it, has become sad to me: a sad attempt to cover over many years of wrongdoing.
For a moment, I say nothing. But the hand that’s holding the evidence I’ve gathered is shaking slightly in anticipation.
—What’s that, she says. What are you holding there.
She’s looking at the paperwork.
I walk to where Gee is standing and put the stack on the countertop forcefully. Standing next to her, I notice again that I tower over her. I wait, but Gee doesn’t pick up the documents.
—I found these, I say.
—Don’t waste your time looking for your sister, says Gee. When Kacey goes missing, she wants to be missing. Don’t waste your time, she says again.
—Look at them, I say.
—I know what they are, Gee says. I can see them all right.
—Why did you lie to us? I say.
—I never lied to you.
I laugh. How do you do that math, I say. You complained about child support every day of your life.
Gee looks at me sharply.
—He left you, she says, simply. He got my daughter hooked on that shit and then he left when it killed her. I was the one who raised you. I was the one who took over when everyone else left you girls behind. A couple hundred bucks a month doesn’t change that.
—Is he alive? I say.
—How should I know, says Gee.
—Gee, I say. Was your life ruined by having us?
She scoffs. Don’t be dramatic, she says.
—I’m not, I say. I’m serious. Did we ruin your life?
Gee shrugs. I guess my life was ruined when my daughter died, she says. My only child. I guess that’s what did it.
—But we were kids, I say. Kacey was only a baby. It wasn’t our fault that she died.
Gee whips her head around. I know that, she says. You think I don’t know that?
She points to the refrigerator suddenly. Look at that, she says. What’s on it? Just look.